Last week in his monologue, late night host Craig Ferguson went on and on and on and, yea, on about youth and advertising and how marketers all got together in the 50's and 60's to "deify" youth, put it up on a pedestal and focus all their advertising on that particular age group.
He goes on to explain how youth became the most important thing, how everyone wants to be young and how stupid that is because, well, the young are inexperience and, therefore, stupid. And how that deification of youth made being young fashionable which, of course, resulted in a bunch of idiots running around doing anything and every thing to be young no matter how old they were.
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While everyone's all a Twitter over EA's Act of Lust booth babe stunt, consider this: If the Booth babes were Booth Dudes and the rules were the same, would anyone care?
Of course, encouraging people to "commit acts of lust" and then photograph it in order to get a chance to win "dinner and a sinful night with two hot girls, a limo service, paparazzi and a chest full of booty" isn't going to win any prizes at a church fund raising competition but let's break this one down a bit.
The "booty" referred to in the promotion is not the ass of the "two hot girls." It's a swag bag full of geeky goodness any fanboy would lust over as much as he might lust over a booth babe. The encouraged "act of lust" is most certainly not meant to get people to do anything rude, crude or disrespectful to a woman hired to play the role of booth babe. Anyone who might actually do that is just a loser and in need of castration.
While this promotion can certainly be seen as crossing the ever-moving, hard-to-define line of decency, it's not encouraging rape, prostitution or other unseemly (and illegal) behavior. It's simply using a time-tested - if not tired and lame - marketing strategy to get people to do what a marketer wants.
The "two hot girls" are obviously paid for their participation in this promotion and while we're sure they'd rather spend a night with some hot dude - not to mention their own boyfriends - they knowingly took this job and the money and knew what they'd be getting into.
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Arnold is out with another mock interview ad for the Truth campaign. In this entry, a seemingly immovable woman is subjected to the interviewers over-excited explanation of yet another business acronym. This one's AMPED or Articulate Motivated Passionate Energetic, which, clearly this woman is not.
The interviewer is amusingly animated. The woman is a dead fish. Perhaps due to years of suffering under the weight of her...oh that would be so rudely sexist to say! How dare we? Oh but wait. AdFreak got all sexist by suggesting just because the woman is wearing a "bust-accentuating" top, the ad is a bit NSFW. Huh?
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As quirky (by our standards) as a Japanese commercial, brewer Taedonggang has launched North Korea's first beer commercial. The two-and-a-half minute commercial touts the beer as the new look of Pyongyang and that it will ease stress - not a bad selling point for a country which appears to have a lot of stress going on inside it.
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So Advertising Age is all over agencies today for their use (or lack thereof) of Twitter. A destined to be classic quote from a Euro RSCG spokesperson reads, "We're developing our Twitter strategy and in the meantime want to hold onto the name. It's a Catch-22: You don't want your Twitter handle stolen, but you also don't want to start using it before you're really ready."
On the one hand, all well and good. No one wants to make a fool of themselves. On the other hand, this is not rocket science. Certainly it's easier for a random individual to join Twitter and use it any way they see fit. That, however, is not entirely the case for a brand, an agency or an agency representing a brand.
While the wonderful world of social media is, as everyone insists, supposed to be one gigantic, happy conversation, brands, because they are more than one person, need an agreed upon approach to using the medium. But that doesn't mean they have to over engineer it or have every last detail of that "strategy" in place before they dip their toe.
Why? Because you can't develop a "strategy" unless you know the medium and you can't know the medium unless you use it. Yes, it is a bit of a Catch-22 but the Catch-22, itself, is a Catch-22.
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There was once a day - or at least it feels like there was - when music had deep meaning. It was very personal and, depending upon the artist or the song, could immediately transform your emotional state, cause you to ponder your worth in the world or simply celebrate the beauty of life and the moments you cherish with the one you love.
There once was a day artists - musical or otherwise - wouldn't dream of allowing their work to be used in any form of commerce other than that of selling their own work. But over the past ten years or so, music and all things pop culture seem to have become one with commerce. Almost by definition, performers (not necessarily musicians in every case) like Britney Spears, Miley Cyrus, The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Beyonce, M83, Dr. Dre, Kid Rock, Ozzy Osbourne, Iggy Pop, Christina Aguilera, 50 Cent, Kylie Minogue, Madonna and, yes, the Beatles must have an element of commerce in their portfolio.
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Oh we really, really like this. Absolut has launched Drinkspiration, an iPhone app which makes drink suggestions based on mood, location, time of day, weather, liquor type (yes, they don't just limit it to vodka), drink color, shape of glass, type of venue and a whole lot more. You'll never order the same boring drink again.
Every drink the app suggests comes with a recipe so if you want something a bit too exotic for your neighborhood bartender, you can tell her how to make it.
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In yet another effort to hipify itself with a generation that's never heard of The Sears Catalog let alone even noticed the store in a mall as they scamper by it on their way to Justice, American Eagle or Claire's, retail giant Sears has hired Disney cutie Selena Gomez for its back to school effort.
Wait, wait, WAIT!!!! Back to school? Stop! Stop! Stop!! Can we please start Summer first? Seriously. This is like summer blockbuster movies making their debut in April. Or Christmas promotions beginning the day after Halloween. There are rules here, people. Rules that must be followed. You can't just mess with seasons like this. You can't mess with our heads. Seriously. Why don't we just start celebrating New Year's 2010 today!
Anyway, Selena (Miley? Miley? Where did you go, Miley?), along with Demi Lovato, is Disney's new it girl so if the retail giant's trying to connect with teens and tweeners, they did choose the right spokesperson for its Arrive Lounge effort.
On the site, visitors can vote for the best styles in a series of air band competition videos. Design Kitchen created the work.
Saturday night: the show to end all shows, the one people actually queue in line for. (Though markedly less so than in previous years, as tweeted by Influencia.) And while recession-spawned conservatism was accounted for, the jury hailed from all corners of the globe and generated cheers -- like rock stars.
Saw some awesome work over the next two hours, but it remains a shock who ultimately won what.
There was a lot of talk about how Cannes Lions '09 differed from previous years. I'd say there was a greater focus on how efforts addressed users directly, although creativity remains a big part of that. And given who won the Grands Prix for Titanium and Integrated, it may be the first year agencies must take into account that the user has become a legitimate advertiser himself.
This is no death-of-the-agency foretelling; it's simply a call to listen more closely and respond more intuitively to the crowd. We have spent so many years trying to contrive artificial emotional connections between products and people; it is only natural that, now that they're able, consumers demand to know why those connections should exist in the first place.
What does your company stand for? Does it listen and respond to me? Crucially, is it as willing to incorporate me into its message as I am to incorporate it into my life?
Grand Prix recipients, and a wee bit o' work, listed below.
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Hey, Cannes Lions delegates! Have a big heaping slice of buzzkill, brought to you by Weisser Ring!
I get that these are for a good cause. Given the appropriate context, these particular pieces are damn stirring.
But given that this image ornaments the exterior of the Palais and these ads plaster the interior, you gotta wonder: which sadistic member of the ad festival planning committee picked out this year's damaged kids motif?
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