We thought we'd seen the last of the (oft spoofed) (red) campaign but on the streets of New York, the red plague remains alive and well.
It made its most recent appearance in this Converse ad at left, touting (red) products as weapons of change. For those who can't read the blurry photo, the ad says, "Buy (Product) Red stuff. Join the movement. The time is now. Do something."
For a bold headline like "Weapon of Change," that follow-up entreaty leaves much to be desired. The only thing we feel genuinely compelled to do is trash the copywriter who put that desperate string of sentences together.
Cummins & Partners, Melbourne put together this ad for Multiple Sclerosis in Australia, in which the various body parts of a naked model are stamped with blank expiration dates. The text reads, "When you have Multiple Sclerosis you never know what will expire next."
Way to adopt decadence to educate. Cummins & Partners is the same firm that in March put a coin-operated scientist on the street, also for MS. Clearly these are the guys to go to when you've got a disease that merits discourse.
We were screwing around on some foreign news site when we saw the banner at left and thought, "Hey, Smokey Bear! Can't believe that guy is still around."
Out of curiosity, we hit www.smokeybear.com and found a creepy video that involves a child singing some song about forest fires, coupled with imagery of a spark igniting stenciled animals and a forest.
Smokey's Vault is a feature that brings Smokey into 2007 with a bunch of hip little spigot-thingies. There we discovered that Smokey was an actual baby bear that in 1950 rolled charred (and orphaned) out of the forest after a (clearly unprevented) forest fire.
And that's way more about fire-shy Bear than we ever thought we'd know. Those spigots, or at least that Bambi-esque banner ad, are clearly very effective.
Let's be realistic. Artsy qualities aside, one of the biggest selling-points for European films in the US market are the sex scenes. The hot, steamy, sometimes seamy or wholly improbable sex scenes.
With that in mind, YouTube user EUTube released a montage called Film Lovers Will Love This!, in which a bunch of steamy moments from EU films (well, mainly Amelie) are knitted together to join in one harmonious slogan: "Let's come together."
Supporters call it a celebration of European cinema but British Conservative MEP Chris Heaton-Harris called it a "cobbling-together" of "44 seconds of soft porn" that wastes taxpayers' money and does nothing to solve the European film industry's "image problem."
We figure it's a little lopsided to glean quotes from a British publication when it's the Italians, Spaniards and French doing all the grunt work. After all, where do you find those racy PSAs we love so much? Not at the home of Big Ben.
For the Epilepsy Foundation of Minnesota, agency Carmichael Lynch Thorburn, Minneapolis put together this poster as part of an installment series for the foundation's annual art contest.
"An epileptic seizure has been described as a brainstorm, a source of immense creative energy," explained Bill Thornburn of Carmichael Lynch, bless his heart.
The artwork may very well trigger said source. Cocaine, 'shrooms and an episode of Pokemon have also been said to catalyze brainstorms.
We're not quite sure this creative is very good...at all, but the message is an important one: get your lazy ass off the couch, off the Wii and out from behind your Webkinz and MySpace pages and exercise your lard-laden, muffin top-sporting, double chinned body for an hour a day. Of course, they said it a lot nicer than we just did so take a look.
Created by Brainchild Creative and given the XFX treatment by Phoenix Editorial & Designs comes a campaign for California's Flex Your Muscles energy efficiency PSA. Employing non-professionals and using a loose scripts, the "California" spot features parents promising to leave their children the beauty they know to be California. Closing with the tag, Global warming isn't just a fact. It's a choice, the spot urges people to realize what they do today has a serious effect on future generations. Three other spots, Climate, Drought and Floods complete the campaign.
The first two spots, California and Climate broke June 11. The second two spots, Drought and Floods will break July 2
Adpunch blew this print campaign by Extreme Group, Halifax, in our direction. The ads put "social smoking" on blast for the cheap sham that it is.
But excepting the Only When I'm Drinking Cigarettes (which lazy creative came up with that one?), we can't help but think that toting a pack of Sometimes Smokes and Midterm Menthols would draw jaded giggles during just such situations.
It would be just as funny as Shut the Hell Up Gum, which everyone always wants to try despite the implied pwnage.
The print ads invite users to hit uratarget.com, where other tongue-in-cheek fare will again generate wry smiles from the same sometimes-smoking 20-somethings who learned in 5th-grade that smoking can lead to unsightly throat holes and emphysema. But hey, we'll quit when we're 25, so it's all good.
Dallas-based Moroch Partners was just crowned Agency of Record by the National Osteoporosis Foundation. Interestingly, Moroch is responsible for quirky McDonalds fare (predating their "we're healthy we swear to God!" phase) like the excuse generator and the dolphin v. man face-off.
How best to respond to the designation? Moroch Partners considers. Then, in trademark style, it releases a gossipy Joan Rivers PSA where she examines the bones of red carpet stars. Rivers is also the National Osteoporosis Foundation spokeswoman.
The PSA could have been funnier but at least it wasn't a dolphin v. man or excuse generator revisit. Anything involving Joan Rivers triggers a reflexive wince, a little like preparing for a mental and emotional pummeling.
We're welcome to being wrong, and maybe it's the X-ray effect, but for the first time in our short lives we wondered if she's smarter than she looks. Maybe we grow more sympathetic as the likelihood of getting osteoporosis increases.
Brazilian youth magazine Simples is pushing a drunk driving awareness campaign with the help of DDB, Sao Paulo, which threw together these psychedelic concert flyers for dead musicians.
"These artists are all dead, but they are very alive in heaven -- or hell? -- and they must be happy playing their music there," says writer Aricio Fortes to AdCritic. "The only way to go see them is to die stupidly and fast."
Hey, if Mozart, Beethoven and Bach took the slip-and-slide to the fiery depths, it can't be that bad.
Anyway, posters like the one at left invite the curious onlooker to check out their (snarling?) composer of choice in the afterlife. All you have to do is drink and drive.
How very creepy.
For inebriates not keen on an eternity of Beethoven's Fifth, there's always slipper pong.
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