In highschool, the legendary food fight is always just that, a legend...until it happens and you find yourself in the middle of it, adrenalin rushing, throwing tray fulls of fries, chicken cutlet, American chop suey and soggy salad across the cafeteria at no particular target. After all the trays have been thrown and are on their way to their final, undetermined target, the "sky" above the cafeteria becomes a surreal event mentally captured for all time in Hollywood-style slow motion.
It's as if you were a camera filming The Matrix, slowly capturing every angle and every last detail as the food moved ever so slowly towards its destination. This imagery becomes so vivid, so real, so indelible it never leaves the mind and continues to replay itself at random moments throughout life.
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For the record, we think Crumpler's* Paint By Numbers toilet paper rolls -- in a stall near you! -- are totally rad. (Read the colour key!)
With that said, the effort lit a spark in us that ignites every time we see yet another brand trying to do something with toilet paper. Like the occasional outbreak of insanity, every few months somebody pitches us with some TP-oriented thing that they're sure will bring ruminations of their genius to public stalls everywhere. See examples one and two.
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The girl featured in this Trojan Evolve One Evolve All Community video sums up the teen sex/sex education problem quite well when she says, "What really gets me...is that health care covers Viagra but they can't cover birth control or teach about effective birth control."
Trojan aims to change that with its Evolve One, Evolve All community site on which videos from the community and well know artists point out the problems and offer solutions to what Colangelo (Trojan's agency) Chief Digital Officer Craig Lambert calls "a terrible, epidemic problem."
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- Make magazine offers Twitter support. Hey, neato.
- Wayne Wang's The Princess of Nebraska premiered on YouTube last Friday. Which brings up the usual "dawn of a new era?" questions.
- Ecast MixMaster helps decide how best to get you trashed.
- O noes, kids and search and porn.
- Little Big Planet alienates Muslims. I would never have guessed.
- The essence of blogging.
- Do you dare mess with someone else's Hummer -- even for love of advertising? Good luck and godspeed.
Just what is up with America and its refusal to accept the fact sex is natural and people do it all the time? Why do we shun it in movies and advertising while we gleefully glamorize and applaud violence and rampant stupidity?
Video games. Michael Bay movies. The Saw series of movies. All celebrate violence for the purposes of making money. And people love it. And spend billions on it. And rarely complain about it but sex...oh no. God forbid people actually celebrate the natural, biological joy of sex without coming off as some sort of perv trying to terrorize and sully the minds of poor little children.
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Why does it seem every ad created in non-English speaking countries consists of nothing more than a big ass photo and tiny logo or product shot? Oh wait, we get it. They want us English speakers to understand their ads as well. Or at least be able to convey the message within countries that may have several different dialects making copy unable to be understood by all. Or maybe it's just laziness. Or a shortage of copywriters.
Mo matter. Many of these copyless ads are quite good and do a fine job at delivering their message without the unneeded baggage of overly pompous verbiage and self important overtones which do nothing but further confuse the message with needless puffery.
Rumor has it yesterday was a holiday. Know what it was? ...No? Good rule of thumb: if in doubt, check Google.com to see what the world's most popular search engine did with its logo.
Those expecting to see, I don't know, an explorer rubbing his hands together, or the ominous silhouette of a ship, or natives cowering in fear, were vastly disappointed. Google has no love for the directions-challenged dude who mistook the Americas for India. And it's not alone: Berkeley observed Indigenous People's Day, and Venezuela celebrated the Day of the Indigenous Resistance.
What'd Google celebrate? Paddington Bear's 50th birthday.
A decidedly safe choice. Paddington never hurt anybody. Well, except for that one time he "poisoned" his birthday guests with Marmite. But even that rang cute, not devastating.
 Money Shot, Butchered May 8, 2005: When Tiger Woods made that famous 16th hole shot, leaving the Nike golf ball hanging on the edge of the cup, swoosh visible for two long seconds before dropping in, the ad industry speculated wildly over over how Nike would turn this moment into a commercial. Well, three weeks passed, nothing was released and the industry gave up hope. In the meantime - actually, the day the shot occurred, Joe Jaffe, pointed out this perfect opportunity for Nike and created a spec spot on his own. Simply and without un-necessary editorializing, Jaffe's version illustrated the miraculous moment and ended quietly with "Just do it." It took a fantastic sporting moment, which needed no additional explanation, and commercialized it beautifully.
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December 6, 2007: Hey kids! Guess what? If you study hard and get good grades, guess what you'll get? No, not a college scholarship, sillys. That would be too boring. No, if you get good grades on your report card, you'll get a Happy Meal coupon on the card that you can use to get fat...uh...have a free lunch.
Yea, people, you read that right. In-school advertising's idiocy has spread to report cards. Yes, report cards. For covering the paltry $1,600 printing cost of Seminole County Florida's 2007-2008 report cards, McDonald's was able to place the coupon on the report cards of kids who received all A's and B's. Yes, you also read that right. Only smart kids are allowed to get fat.
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In what appears to be nothing more than slapping the Green label on Bank of America's Keep the Change program, Citizens Bank has launched the Green$ense Campaign which pays customers ten cents for every electronic transaction they make but only up to $10 per month and $120 per year. Even without the facade of "greenery, Bank of America gives up to $250 per year with its program. And people don't even have to be green to get the $250.
Of course it's all to motivate people to bank electronically which uses less paper which, yes, is an admirable "green" effort. But, seriously, the real reason any bank would motivate its customers to bank electronically is to cut overhead (by hiring fewer tellers) and increase profit.
With cutesy headlines like "Being eco-friendly just got eco-nomical" and "The environment is like a bank account. Every little bit helps," the campaign rolls out in print, radio, outdoor and television.
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