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Coke Brings Together Republican and Democrat We actually like this Coke spot featuring Republican pundit Bill Frist and Democratic pundit James Carville who find themselves in the situation of saying the same thing at the same time. Of course, the rules regarding that apply and Frist calls "jinks" on Carville and tells Carville he has to buy him a Coke. The two then embark upon a day together in Washington. SalesGenie Super Bowl Ads Not So Cheesy This Year Ah yes, recall the cheesiness of last year's Super Bowl ad for Salesgenie in which a wannabe suave, debonair dude hops out of his mid-life crisis sports car and utter, "I don't work hard. I work smart." Eesh. At least this year we don't have a repeat of that debacle. But we will have cartoons. Two of them. And cheesiness works just fine in commercials. In the first ad, a married panda bear couple is stress out because they have now customers and fear they will go out of business. Thankfully, Panda Psychic comes to the rescue and recommends Salesgenie and its 100 free leads offered new users. Love that bamboo sports car at the end. Gatorade Wastes Derek Jeter on G2 Courtesy of MediaPost's Out to Launch, we have one of the two ads Gatorade will run for its G2 low calorie drink. One ad will feature Dwyane Wade and one will feature Derek Jeter. The Derek Jeter ad has Jeter walking through the streets of New York while elements of a baseball field follow him and fill in the landscape behind him. There's some nice special effects in this ad but aside from that, there is absolutely nothing special about this ad. It's run-of-the-mill celebu-sport figure 101. Not quite lame but close. Hyundai Twists, Uses Ad Industry Insider-Speak In Super Bowl Spots We've got two more advance Super Bowl screenings for you. They come courtesy of Goodby, Silverstein & Partners and, yes, they are those much talked about Hyundai commercials which, in a nice press-play "will we, won't we" dance, kept everyone wondering if we'd ever see them. Well, here they are. The first, called Tomorrow is a bit pompous in its assumption it'll rank quite highly on USAToday's Ad Meter and that Mercedes, BMW and Lexus aren't going to be too happy. First, who cares about the USAToday Ad Meter. Aside from the press play it gets, which can't, of course, be ignored, it's a highly unscientific, meaningless popularity contest. Second, apart from its insider appeal to the ad industry, it's a fairly innocuous commercial without much going on except for some nice beauty shots of the car. Having said that, it's a pretty amazing looking car coming from Hyundai which, in one sense, is the entire point of the commercial. Guinness Beer Made From Dots...Really Created by IIBBDO Dublin, this new Guinness Dot commercial explore the life of a dot and how it realizes it's many opportunities as it grows, meets other dots, explores and...becomes a glass of Guinness beer. Huh? A bit of a stretch but as one person pointed out, if you can be anything, be the best. The best being Guinness, of course. Right. Still a bit of a stretch. Wonderfully creative though and always great to hear Donald Sutherland's voice - even if it makes us think we're watching a Volvo commercial. 'Get the Glass' Wins FWA Site of the Year Award The Favorite Website Awards judging is complete. The results for the group's site of the year award are in and damn if my fellow judges didn't side with me! I voted for the infectiously engaging HBO Voyeur site but, apparently, more than half of the other judges thought the Goodby Silverstein/North Kindom-created Get the Glass site was better. While good, Get the Glass just didn't hold my attention the way Voyeur did. But, and this is important, it took quite a while to get my attention in the first place which may have been one of the reasons it wasn't picked as a winner. Get the Glass delivers its goods quickly. The HBO Voyeur site is a slow build but once you're in, you're hooked and you can't stop. That's why I voted for it and, perhaps, why others didn't. Scooby Doo Sleuths Nab Cable Guy For DIRECTV
OK, who doesn't love Scooby Doo? But this spot featuring the clan just doesn't seem to click. It's not really the agency's (Deutsch LA) fault. It's more the fault of the notion you can just suddenly implant a commercial message in the middle of a cartoon and everything will go swimmingly; no one will notice the blunt transition from show-focused action to commerce-focused action. Everyone notices. In this commercial for DIRECTV, the sleuths have caught a cable guy who was trying to stop everyone from switching from cable because DIRECTV carries more high definition programming, We go from Shaggy's "Zoinks!" directly to Velma's droll commercial message quicker than you avert your eyes from that Donny Deutsch Speedo shot. While these transitions are never seamless, this one just seems a bit blunt. Hmm. Maybe that's why they're calling it the 4th wall campiagn. Airplane Meets Twin Towers in Old Pakistani Airlines Ad Adland has unearthed an old 1979 ad for Pakistani Airlines promoting its flights to New York City using an ominous plane shadow cast upon the Twin Towers. Certainly in the seventies, everyone was enamored with the stature and size of the the then amazing looking towers but unless you were Irwin Allen, even in your most imaginative moments you weren't envisioning this ad's imagery would foretell the horror that occurred September 11, 2001. Barring that horrific day in 2001 and placing oneself in 1979, it's actually a good ad. The Towers were the premiere iconic image of New York city and they retained their iconic status through three decades until they fell that fateful day. No one in 1979 could seriously have believed an image like this would become reality. Sadly, it did. Similar images from the past will continue to pop up from time to time in old magazines, in old ads, in old movies and we'll wince a bit each time we see them remembering our connection to that day. Sally Martin. Hair Club and Playboy Frolic Together With Before/After Game When the vanity that is Hair Club for Men Hooks up with the vanity that is Playboy, it's clear we've entered a new chapter in the book of cultural vanity. When otherwise perfectly good looking but folically challenged men are paired with perfectly airbrushed (oh wait. that's so 70's. Photoshopped) Playboy Playmates, well, you have an online game, of course. Yes, really. After all, it's likely the only time you'll see a balding guy with a hot chic. The game, Photo Hunt was created by Cowboy, an agency George Parker recently riffed asking, "Cowboy!!! Fucking Cowboy!!! They have to be kidding, right?" Converse Grateful For Mindless Sitcoms, Pointless Pageantry Continuing its Anomaly-created Disruption campaign launched last month, Converse, in two new spots debuting tonight (Grateful, Pageant), attacks the idiocy of beauty pageants, American Idol, democracy, mindless sitcoms, reality shows and video games. While it seeks to set apart the viewer from the idiocy it highlights and, perhaps by disassociation, elevate the viewer in some way, one has to wonder whether or not calling everyone else an idiot is smart marketing. For sure, the above-mentioned items are idiotically mindless but in a capitalistic society such as the one in which we live, nothing gets created unless people want it. Even if they are idiotic and mind numbing. As current culture indicates and as Converse points out, perhaps a lot of people are suffering from some form of idiotic mindlessness. Or at least the creators of this so-called mindless stuff are. 
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