- Dog butt with flower in its ass sells dog food.
- To coincide with its famous Paint ad, Sony has put out a collection of optical allusion print ads - the kind that make you think there's something wrong with you but in a good way. See them here.
- The California Milk Processors Board, with help from Goodby Silverstein & Partners has created a two minute theater ad called Aliens.
- Tom Hespos weighs in on the Edleman/Wal-Mart blog drama. We couldn't have said it better ourselves.
Hello? Purveyors of contextual advertising? Are you there? Do you care? Hasn't your technology been around long enough to cease the endless contextual mishaps that keep popping up? Do we really need killer values from supermarkets offered next to articles about Amish killings? Do we need turpentine ads next to bits about a teen drinking turpentine to abort a pregnancy? How about putting Anna Nicole Smith's dead son up for sale? Or "card shark" credit card copy next to an article about a woman jilled by a shark? Haven't we seen enough of these to realize a tune up is needed? Apparently not. Here's another one sent to us by The Consumerist.
We do not profess to be an expert of any kind on contextual advertising. We do not believe any of this is done maliciously either. We know there are very reputable contextual advertising companies out there who are above board and provide a great service to marketers. We don't know if these "misplacements" can ever be stopped but we'd love to see if anyone can try. On second thought, maybe not because then we'd have nothing to write about on this topic.
Oh, what people will read into things. You've all seen the new Sony Bravia Paint ad where a building complex is covered in paint July 4th-style, right? Well, apparently some in the UK feel the spot is a bit too reminiscent of 9/11. OK. All together now. "WTF?" Good. Now go back to work and forget about these oddballs who seem to have nothing better to do than twist just about anything into some sort of conspiracy.
Underscore Marketing President and blogger Tom Hespos sent us this help wanted ad for a sandwich shop which we just couldn't resist sharing with you. While preparing salad is a much needed skill in a restaurant, wording the need for such expertise can, in this case, be a bit misleading.
This has absolutely nothing to do with advertising and everything to do with our love for typos. So it is with our pleasure we present the Dallas Observer's likening of Dallas Cowboy quarterbacks' performance, present and future, to two shits passing in the night. We offer our condolences and complete sympathy with the email tirade you are now currently experiencing from voracious readers who'd rather bitch about your typos than laugh at their humor.
While we're not quite sure just how different CarMax is from other used car dealers with their claims of return policies and "buy without sell" but they sure are different in that they look much more like a Wal-Mart of a Best Buy than most cheesy, flag-flying used car lots. The company has just launched a two-part Boone/Oakley-created television campaign. The first part focuses on the brand with three very un-used car-like commercials set in Rome and the Old West. A second set of commercial focuses on the unique differences between CarMax and other used car dealers. We especially like the freaked out 16 year old who pitches a fit after realizing the nw car her fathr just bought her int eh wrong color. Cue "5 day return policy" voice over. For the most part, good stuff if not a bit off the wall. (Click more for links to spots.)
more »
This Frisky Dingo plug for Scion is so awesome, we're willing to look past the fact of the car's ugliness and appreciate their magnanimous capacity to feed their own minions to Killface. We just love that long pause that happens between the words "PPO" and death.
More Scion inclusions here and here. - Contributed by Angela Natividad
If we thought pet enthusiasts couldn't get more bizarre then we were wrong because Purina just broadened the landscape. On the Toronto-based Talking Pets mini-site, pet owners can further distance themselves from the rest of humankind by sending "purr/woof mail," posting pictures of their furry friends and even gauging their Pet IQ's.
"It's unique in that it approaches the world from a pet's perspective," explains Christina Yu, VP and Creative Director at Lowe Roche. To be honest we're not too sure the local siberian husky would be receptive to having his grin admired and emotions dissected over the internet, but whatever. Purina knows better than we do. - Contributed by Angela Natividad
Having already raised $61,931, a "hopeless romantic" has created a site called My Super Proposal where he is trying to raise enough money to buy a Super Bowl commercial in which he will propose marriage to his girlfriend. The URL of the site is, of course, registered anonymously so punditry on whether this is real or the machinations of some brand will have to wait. Acknowledging thaefact there are some pretty dedicated (weird?) people in this world along with mischievous marketers bent on doing the next coolest thing, it could go either way. We'll just have to wait and see.
Copyranter amusingly analyzes the dating site wars comparing Match.com's more conservative style with True.com's approach which calls for each model to have one cup size larger than the former. Copyranter also wonders just how effective Match.com's paper cut outs are as compared to True'com's bulging cleavage. Pardon us while we visit MySpace to see if all that True.com cleavage affects us in any way.
|
|