KickinGreatDeals.com, the culprits responsible for the interactive celeb quiz banners where you can win Paris Hilton's G-string if you guess whose lips are whose, finally give up on that tired idea in favour of a new approach.
These celebrity surgery banners take the usual headline-whores and mash them up, nip/tuck style. We did a whole lot of staring before we even got to the awkwardly-posed question below: "Whos body is this?"
We started a snarky joke about that, then stopped. Hey, adult illiteracy is no laughing matter.
This, from FishNChimps, is just funny. Lynx/Axe is at it's silliness again, this time covering an unsuspecting father in law to be with body spray only to result in the oddly uncontrollable attraction from his son's fiance upon re-entering the room.
When you're a starving model and you're desperate to appear in a fashion ad, what do you do? You create a fake Gucci ad, get it placed in a newspaper and have the bill sent to Gucci, of course. An unknown man placed a call to Swiss weekly SonntagsZeitung, the paper ran the ad and, yes, sent the $50,000 bill to Gucci. Oops. The paper claims the order "came in too late" to be checked to validity.
The man has previously attempted to dupe once pretending to be Puerto Rican singer Chayanne to book concert venues. Does this man need help or is he the industry's answer to guerrilla marketing? He might want to steer clear of Boston if it's the latter.
It's not often you see an airline ad that goes the route of the bikini. Its also not often you see an ad of any kind that gives a bikini-clad girl a suitcase and has her walk down the sidewalk in the middle of winter with a big smile on her face while intrigued passersby watch curiously. Then again, this is Japan and they do all kinds of interesting stuff there. It's an ad for Jetstar airlines.
Proof positive people have way too much time on their hands, last week, the virtual stores of American Apparel and Reebok has suffered a terrorist attack inside Second Life. Yes, you heard right. Some people actually went to the trouble of "bombing" the two stores. The group behind the attack (we can barely write we are laughing so hard right now) calls themselves Second Life Liberation Army and the purpose of their actions is said to be a call for democratic decision-making inside the virtual world (oh for fuck's sake, it's a game!).
The bombing follows several "attacks" made by the group over the past six months and follows the famed flying penis attack (video here) made by another group during an in-world CNET interview with wealthy Second Life Resident Anshe Chung. Seriously, people. Grow up and get a real life.
It seems $50 million dollar marketing decisions can now be made on the basis of winning or losing a newspaper's ad popularity contest. Yes, that's right. CareerBuilder has placed its account in review because its ads did not make a top ten appearance in USA Today's Super Bowl ad poll, a tiny survey based on just a few hundred people with absolutely nothing to do with whether or not an ad affected sales.
Cramer-Krasselt President Peter Krikovich is pissed. Livid. Dumfounded. And steaming mad and tells Advertising Age he responded to CareeBuilder's opening a review based on the poll by asking, "You have to be fucking kidding me, right?" The agency has resigned the account and will not participate in the review.
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Australian arist Justine Cooper throws herself behind a drug-and-disorder parody show called Havidol: When More is Not Enough.
Havidol is for sufferers of Dysphoric Social Attention Consumption Deficit Anxiety Disorder (DSACDAD), or people who suffer from worry about life, tension, fatigue, aging, or stress. And we're not too sure how Havidol can help, but it does promise to increase your inclination to do spontaneous and exciting things - like jump off cliffs without restraints.
One testimonial reports, "I felt confident in myself and my relationships. I exercised regularly. I slept quietly through every night and awoke each morning feeling refreshed and ready to start a new day. I now know I had a treatable disorder." Thankfully for those in the dark, marketing for Havidol ain't shy - TV, print, outdoor and interactive work are accounted for, and we dig the Havidol merch. If only Zoloft made hoodies this hot.
Check out the exhibition info for Justine's show.
Imaginary disorders are stacking up as a wrist-slap to big pharma, but we wonder which will actually cross over into "Oh fuck, I really need help" land. Major drug companies, marketing mavens in their own right despite all the jokes we make about them, are notoriously clever like that. You know how it is: things start out as a joke, then spiral into serious real fast, and all of a sudden everybody's on Xanax.
Apparently, there are companies solely devoted to the care of bald heads. Who knew? Headblade is one such company and couldn't pass up the opportunity to leverage Britney's recent head shaving event into some of their own publicity. The company put together a video called Top Ten Reasons Britney Shaved Her Head in which random fitness pros, sports figures and some Swedish Chick offer up reasons why Britney may have offed her locks. The number one reason? Let's just say it has to do with matching styles.
We thought the Microsoft Butterfly was kind of nifty. The guy in the BlackBerry suit? Not so much. Giant plush costumes are so deceptive in their frozen state of cheer and rarely work outside Chuck E Cheese and college football fields, where they can be ridiculed at leisure by their own peers.
The requisite BlackBerry Mascot MySpace, as if we care.
Nothing motivates like a good scare - just ask Karl Rove or mom and dad. Somebody must have tipped off the Red Cross, because based on the billboards they're posting in Buffalo, NY for campaign Prepare WNY, they're running amock with the tactic, toting arbitrary future dates (like Nov 9, 2009) as sites of terrorism.
Fortunately the zealous .org is no Oracle of Delphi. Catch Up Lady says once you get past the hype the site's pretty mundane, doling out advice on how to make survival kits and wrap gauze and such.
Everybody knows all you need to prepare for nuclear war is a pack of bacon band-aids. They don't just soothe wounds; they make you feel awesome, provide comic relief, and, once you get desperate enough, are attractive enough to eat.
As a sidenote, it's funny to us how the Red Cross of all organizations can do something so flagrantly tasteless while Cartoon Network gets penalized for a bunch of Lite Brite Mooninites. Really, what the fuck, man?
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