Anti-Suicide Folk Bring Sudden End to Songs, TV Shows

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Suicide Action Montreal needed to get its message of suicide prevention out to a jaded province. Faced with the challenge, the clever cats at Touche! phd, Sid Lee and Astral Media concluded there's no better way to illustrate suicide than to bring an abrupt end to things people like.

The campaign rolled out in two ways. To start, popular programs randomly went black to make way for the following (roughly translated) message: "Does this premature ending surprise you? Imagine if it happened to the life of someone close."

After a few seconds of darkness, the episodes started rolling again. Same thing happened with popular songs on the radio.

Refreshingly out-of-box. Check out examples of both the TV and radio executions (bad pun!) on the Touche! phd blog.

by Angela Natividad    Mar-10-09    
Topic: Campaigns, Cause, Good, Radio, Television



It's Barbie's 50th Anni!

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To celebrate Barbie's 50-year anniversary, Chanel's own Karl Lagerfeld designed a Barbie/Ken exhibit for Colette in Paris. The exhibit will be visible in Colette store windows from March 9-15th, including a "high security exhibition" of the first-ever Barbie and Ken dolls on the 12th.

See all the pretty pretties.

If you're less interested in the aesthetics of Barbie than in her history, you definitely wanna check out The Big Money's awesome timeline of Barbie's social progression over the past half-century. It made us glad she shafted Ken in the early '00s -- dude was never that hawt.

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by Angela Natividad    Mar-10-09    
Topic: Brands, Campaigns, Events



Hey, Burnout Frat Kid. Axe is Your Soap.

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Mekanism put together this sensory mindfuck of a week in the life of a single twenty-something. Impressive how he manages to get into all those shenanigans and still stay Axe fresh.

The slogan follows pat: "Axe will fix you up" (no matter how messy everything else around you gets). More interestingly though, the ad's stuffed with links to thefixers.com -- which we only managed to catch once, maybe because we weren't looking hard enough.

The Fixers is a fake talk show about questionable hook-ups and pranking friends. It's funny, but then again, Axe never had a problem being funny. Nice effort overall.

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by Angela Natividad    Mar-10-09    
Topic: Brands, Campaigns, Video



Love Hides Where You Least Expect It. Like in Condiment Bowls.

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With help from Blacklist, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners adds "Firesprite" to Frito-Lay's painfully adorable Made for Each Other campaign.

In the words of the pressie: "Made for Each Other is about that brilliant moment where two worlds collide to make an even greater whole. [...] Much like Dips and Chips, when our two heroes meet you just can't help but smile."

In this spot, a well-meaning little firesprite chars everything he touches -- until he finds unlikely harmony with a giant blanket on a windy day.

I realize how insane that sounds, but really, it's cute, and in keeping with the chip/dippy happy-ever-after we saw in the previous spots ("Sockets" remains our favourite).

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by Angela Natividad    Mar- 9-09    
Topic: Brands, Campaigns, Good, Video



'It's Just Such a Thrill When Somebody Comes Up and Says I'm Glad You Made Those Clubs.'

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To kick off its "engineering smiles for 50 years" campaign, PING puts founder Karstein Solheim on the platform. The work is a more bearable version of the sap-saturated Sprint/Dan Hesse material: it's just a simple, no-frills voiceover with product imagery.

Unpretentious, nice and neat. By The Martin Agency, whose class-act status was heavy on the spin last week as the result of news that it would lay off staffers -- and give competing agencies up to half the shafted Martinites' first month's pay in exchange for hiring them.

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by Angela Natividad    Mar- 9-09    
Topic: Brands, Campaigns, Commercials, Television



The FedEx Box: Both Medium and Message

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Diggin' these prints by DM9 DDB/Brazil. In each, a FedEx delivery box is positioned as a conduit for items that bear some storytelling cachet. Two sets of hands, reaching toward each other from top and bottom of the frame, represent giver and receiver.

Perfect delivery, no pun intended. (Don't you hate it when people say that? Because if the pun isn't intended, isn't it terrifically convenient that it's there?)

See Trumpet -- the more popular piece -- and Robot.

by Angela Natividad    Mar- 9-09    
Topic: Brands, Campaigns, Magazine, Poster



Sexting Suicide, Sad Pups for PETA, Evan Williams' Life in Longform

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- Adidas launches branded video hub. Welcome to Bandwagonsville!

- New Pearl Jam website by Freedom + Partners. Site includes a puzzle that lets users "unlock" songs from reissues of Ten. Puzzle completion can be timed; people can compete for speed.

- Evan Williams: just a poor but honest farmboy.

- BeanCastin' it up: "I'm for Sale" with Bill Green, John Wall and the spirit of Ben Kunz. (Take a shot every time I say "like" -- and thank me when you've got the goggles on tight.)

- Media that shapes Advergirl's worldview.

- Who Watches the Watchmen?

- Helping PETA help themselves.

- Sexting suicide.

by Angela Natividad    Mar- 9-09    
Topic: Brands, Campaigns, Guerilla, Strange



Handplay Advocates for Rubber Dish Gloves

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Gery Colombia interprets Scotch-Brite for whimsical clean-freaks with print ads where rubber gloves are manipulated in the shape of animal bits. At left is Chicken; also see Cow and Crab.

Not - terrifically - original, and heavy with the Real Simple aesthetic.

Wonder who still uses kitchen gloves to wash dishes. It'd be interesting to see a semi-campy glove ad where these bad-boys are used in unexpected -- and yet useful! -- ways. Like putting them on your feet to tightrope over electrified wire. Or something.

by Angela Natividad    Mar- 9-09    
Topic: Brands, Campaigns, Magazine



JWT's Anxiety Blog, Ogilvy's Recession Salve, Revisiting 'Like a Prayer'

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- Flashback to Madonna's banned Like a Prayer ad for Pepsi.

- Wolff Olins brings minimalist flickr magic -- and a forum for inquiry -- to "scientific" cosmetic brand Living Proof.

- Tracking (corporate accounts on) Twitter.

- The Guardian makes good observations about Twitter (scroll down to the bulletpoints).

- Ogilvy-branded solutions to a recession. Take that hype with a few spoonfuls of salt. Hat tip to our favourite mad man.

- JWT launches a blog called Anxiety Index.

- ScapeNation: another tween-targeting web destination, brought to you by Red Tettemer.



Cannibal Pigs Plug Boost Mobile Over Dinner

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Boost Mobile's "UNwrong'D" campaign continues with two fine-dining pigs that like ham. (Think of it as enjoying the flavours of a fallen friend. Don't act like you're too good to tear into the carcasses of the downtrodden, literally or otherwise.)

The talkier pig puts their behaviour in perspective by telling users the real wrong in life lies in mobile carriers charging hidden fees. In contrast, Boost Mobile charges a flat fee for dependable, unlimited nationwide service.

Hear-to-the-fucking-hear, then, and pass that human flank real quick.

At a loss for words? Doff your hats to 180LA.

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