 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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If you've been reading Adrants for a while or if you've worked in the ad business for more than a day, you are well aware sex plays a big role in advertising. You are probably also aware, or should be, the phrase "sex sells" really isn't all that true all the time.
While everyone likes to create a hot ad featuring hot people who spew endless double entendres every once in a while, it's not always the right direction to take for every brand and target audience. Many times a sex-laced ad can turn people off and do more harm than good to the brand.
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Keepin' It Realtor, a blog devoted to rewarding realtors for being true ground-floor creatives, is objectively awesome, if only because you've sat one too many times on the face of a grinning stranger who's plastered himself all over your park bench.
I used to be partial to the "great wings" guy, but Mr. Lamb at left really takes all. Wondering whether realtor ads grow more conservative -- or just more insane -- as the economy whirls down the porcelain funnel.
- Doritos is holding another CGM contest for the Super Bowl. Ooh, but there's a twist: win $1 million if your spot becomes the FIRST EVAR! consumer-generated ad to take No. 1 in USA Today's Ad Meter. (Here's what won last year.) Entries welcome 'til November 16.
- Given that people and dinosaurs walked the earth at the same time,* it's totally probable dinosaurs caught the social media bug from its Homo sapien homies. Isn't Facebook, like, 200 million years old or something?
- Bill Gates in a condom ad! No, not really, but that penis makes a resonant impression.
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"We just keep saying 'Maverick, Maverick, Maverick' until that's all they hear!" snaps a fictional McCain campaign strategist. "It's not that hard." Because why write a jingle when you've got a word with the force of a heavy blunt instrument -- a word voters will remember long after all the other propaganda's melted together?
Dubbed "A Fly on the Wall," this :33 bit of masterpiece theatre was allegedly funded by Jeff Goodby and Rich Silverstein in the flesh, then uploaded onto YouTube from their own computers. Well, maybe not the latter.
Not the first "maverick" bitchslap we've seen in recent days. I'm just glad they didn't use children.
More where that came from, and good stuff too, though all this blatant Obama-loving has begun alienating some potential voters.
- A handful of rich-ass celebrities use reverse psychology to cajole MySpace users into voting. What, does Jennifer Aniston not do it for you? Maybe Leonardo DiCaprio's poverty-ridden excuse for a blog will.
- The wife of David Warthen, founder of Ask.com, is facing tax evasion charges on money she made while working as a hooker to pay for law school.
- Three thought-provoking reasons not to blog anonymously if you're gonna blog at all.
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by Angela Natividad
Oct- 7-08
Topic: Brands, Campaigns, Cause, Commercials, Online, Opinion, Packaging, Political, Strange, Trends and Culture, Video
- Last night Steve Hall hit Nokia Theater for Adobe's Battle of the Bands (photos here). Later he ran into Barbarian Group, which brought him a-frolicking to a hip hop club. Steve has all the fun.
- Guinness World Records taps greenfield media to manage its 3D book campaign. You'll need 3D specs to get the full experience from the ads, which run from Oct. 6 to Dec. 25 in the United Kingdom and United States.
- Blogging taxpayers aren't keen on this whole "Wall Street bailout" thing: "[We] have yet to see any online evidence of organic support for the Paulson proposal. Instead, what's going on may be the largest flowering of civic dissent since the antiwar protests of 2002-2003, but with a [bipartisan] twist." Our own online digging corroborates that (HuffPo! Michelle Malkin! YouTube junkies!), but Pew says 57 percent of the public favors the bailout. Confusing.
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In a rant worthy of the early, pre-corporate days here at Adrants, AgencySpy's Superspy (thank God she's back) rips into the assholes of, well, assholes whose twisted minds are still living on some early American Southern plantation and can't seem to realize "black folk" are not some alien race that just landed and that must continuously be probed and pigeonholed.
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