Witness with a growing sense of unease as a couple on its first date quotes lines from Romeo & Juliet.
$5 says they met on eHarmony.
"How Romeo Pulls Juliet," which vibes like a middling tribute to Baz Luhrmann's '96 oeuvre, was put together by Madeinmilan Wine. The company wanted to "tell a story about having fun with wine, indulging in intense pleasure" while incidentally promoting a suite of wines named after iconic characters, like Romeo. (There's also a bottle marked Brutus. Hrm.)
For requisite engagement purposes, check out the "wine pairing" section, where you (apparently...?) pair wine to other things, like "travel" or "chill out." (We have NO idea.)
Click on "sex" for an exciting shot of a mad couple crawling around on all fours. We're not sure why it's there, but it struck us as one of the few things worth mentioning at all.
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Remember those Little Thickburger commercials from last year? Riffing off that, Hardee's launched an ad generator app so fans could create their own Thickburger comparisons.
The company expected maybe one or two to shine, but it turns out about 16 spots turned out to be broadcast-quality. (Though when you think about it, it's a pretty tough formula to screw up: [Big thing. Little thing.] Extra points for wordplay.) See them here.
"And we didn't even offer them a million dollars. Or anything for that matter," Hardee's added, puffing its chest out for extra effect.
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With help from Cactus, ONE Step focuses on protecting the health of young children by encouraging smoker parents to go outside before lighting up.
The narration is soothing and the message doesn't direct smoking wholesale, although the smoke dragons and flesh-eating ravens -- which malevolently circle and eventually engulf the kiddies -- make things just uncomfortable enough.
We'll step outside, and we don't even have kids. Though this doesn't provide a gameplan for what to do when little kids walk by, but hey, those ones aren't yours.*
More on this at raisesmokefreekids.com.
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CNBC does the financial thing by day but they get all "original programming" at night. To let people know, they've launched some Woods Witt Dealy & Sons-created, program-specific ads to hype the shows. With the headline, "Show Me the Money," one ad touts American Original: Westminster Dog Show, a backstage look at the inner workings of the $43 billion pet industry. PETA?
Another ad carrying the ever-appropriate headline, "Demolished," examines "how the American dream became a nightmare" in a show called How the American Dream Became A Nightmare. Hmm, now that sounds like some seriously depression-inducing programing.
But, hey, we gotta face facts. Pet shows are stupid and the American Dream does not mean everyone should own a home.
See both ads here and here.
DIRECTV reminds us all of its relevance (...?) with help from fictional rival Cable Corp Inc. In this latest installment of boardroom bumbling, Cable Corp decides to battle DIRECTV with a new tagline: "Get Youthenized!"
Enter creepy puns. By Deutsch/LA.
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CollegeClickTV.com hopes to encourage more kids to get a college education -- and possibly get into football? -- by broadcasting soothing pro-college messages, spoken by President Obama, on network TV.
Hear everyone's favourite political personality wax poetic about the merits of an education -- and football -- while a static image reads, "And now a message about... COLLEGE ...the best investment that you can make." CollegeClickTV's URL appears at the end of each clip.
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For Dante's Inferno, an Electronic Arts video game, G-Net Los Angeles got into bed with Psyop. The natural result is an ad we suspect might be more lush than the game itself.
We could be wrong, though. Any English major will tell you Dante had a helluva good time describing Hell, and the work he did merits equal dedication from agencies, production firms and game developers alike. Still, this is just one more reason why future generations will be reading fewer books: you think CGI's had its way with women? It's bringing literature to its knees.*
Going back to the ad: like we said, it's gorgeous, but probably could've done without the toothy worm things. It's just too dental-visit-gone-wrong. And while we understand every good Hell scenario needs a bad-ass horned demon master, the one here looks too much like a Balrog.
Once something invites a comparison to LotR, even accidentally, it's gonna have trouble standing up on its own. Even if it is the bloody Inferno.
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Belin Crazy Rings/Tubes/Starfish are essentially drinking snacks. We'd call them beer nuts but the branding material reads "l'apero cingle" -- aperitif snacks. Classy.
Anyway, to best target its market of casual at-home cocktailers, the French company is broadcasting this ad from its website and in banners on sites like MySpace. Our best guess is that they thought, "Drunk people engage in slightly malevolent, poorly thought-out hijinks all the time, so what if our snacks did too?!", and went zealously from there.
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We have it on good authority that Nabisco's started circulating a new slogan, "Why Snackrifice?", to promote Triscuits -- and, to a lesser degree, Kraft cheese (its perfect mate).
Annoyingly, video searches for "triscuit snackrifice" or "snackrifice" yielded little more than videos produced by people that should not own cameras and a ton of Neopets-related stuff, respectively.
However, we did find a Why Snackrifice? page on NabiscoWorld, which promotes Triscuit (and Kraft!)'s health merits and pocketbook-friendliness. Also, there's a really rad shot of two women snacking responsibly while sitting in ecstatic postures normally reserved for yogurt eating. Scandale!
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The Partnership for a Drug-Free America enlisted Avenue A/Razorfish to help it talk to parents about talking to their kids about drugs, I guess because the Patsy angle didn't go over so well. (Actually, this probably didn't either.)
Don't Sound Like Your Parents is the fruit of this partnership. It plays with out-of-touch parental camp ("You don't need drugs for excitement -- you can help me dust!") but it's also really candid. (Video reels depict Boomer parents that generally meant well, but for the most part failed to adequately deliver the drug talk. But hey, like the sex talk, it's a tough topic to scale.)
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