- Massive inked a multi-year, in-game ad deal with THQ. So far, the only game that will for certain feature dynamic advertising is Saints Row 2.
- Queen Rania of Jordan has won the first-ever YouTube Visionary award for her daily videocast. I kind of love her.
- Six Apart has launched something called the TypePad Journalist Bailout Program. Under it, about 30 ex-bloggers or journalists will receive a free TypePad Pro account, tech support, representation on Blogs.com and auto-enrollment into Six Apart's ad network. 300 applications were received in less than two weeks.
- "Diddy is so Sarah Palin."
- Close-up on crotchvertising.
- New buzz word: sexting! Almost as fun as nuggnut. (Click on "Nuggnut pledge" for awesome brainwashing action.)
Here's a confusing metaphor. B-list star Kristen Johnston poses as Lady Godiva -- who rode a horse naked through Coventry to win a break on her husband's taxes -- in order to raise awareness about the hazards of horse-drawn carriages.
"Don't get taken for a ride," the ad reads. "Horse-drawn carriages are cruel."
I guess. Good fodder for the portfolio though -- a Maraschino cherry topping fine oeuvres like Austin Powers: the Spy Who Shagged Me and Strangers with Candy.
The holidays -- shopping, senile relatives, stuffing with raisins and endless variations on the nativity -- aren't for everyone. This Leo Burnett ad for McDonald's depicts just such a guy.
The scene: charades by the Christmas tree with extended family. After an over-obvious movie mime (chest-pounding, monkey noises) that wins him "Brokeback Mountain...?", he acts out the first two words of The Great Escape, then leaps into a secret tunnel that looks like it's been dug with gravy spoons. Off to McD's he goes.
The UK-based ad promotes McDonald's "festive menu," which launches Wednesday. A spokesperson told the Guardian it's "strictly a turkey-free zone" to give customers "a haven to escape from some of the stressful Christmas activities, like shopping."
Guess that makes sense. Nothing soothes the consumption-distressed soul like chicken ... McNuggets.
Or your aquarium, as the case may be. And while those winning numbers fall out of the sky, why not stick the dinette set under them? Fickle Fortune will buy you a new one. Someday.
By Colle+McVoy for the Minnesota State Lottery. The latter hosts a Daily Drawing show every night, which C+M helped reformat: instead of floating ping pong balls with lotto numbers, "viewers now get plummeting cast iron balls."
Who signed off on that idea?
Anyway, the spots linked above are two of 50 (probably equally disjointed) ads shot for the accompanying campaign. So if you're Minne-soootan, expect to see plenty of variants through '09. (Sorry.)
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- The American Cancer Society is hosting a Great American Smokeout today. How liberating. Excuse me while I light up.
- New Anheuser-Busch InBev logo fails to be a turn-on.
- Google is shuttering virtual world Lively, which it launched in July. Guffaw.
- Honeyshed's hurtin' for suitors.
- Clean your free t-shirt with our product. That's confidence.
- Hello Kitty Beaujolais Nouveau -- the bastard child of all things commercial, cavity-inducing and just generally wrong (or right?) with the universe.
- Oh snap, my email just went retro.
This, by far, has to be the strangest tourism ad we've ever seen. Talking snowflakes? Who "hook up?" And awkwardly complain about it? Well it's Utah and there's a lot of snow there so it kinda makes sense. Kinda.
- This...has nothing to do with anything. Call it a commercial break from all the...uh...commercials when through at you every day.
- And that video still of a woman in sexy lingerie? Just a tad misleading?
- Stranger tactics have been used to sell things but paint ball guns for...a coffee maker?
- Seriously. How the hell do you make a Photoshop error as obvious is this?
Riffing on some vague notion that Australia isn't sophisticated enough to conceive of "exotic" naturally-grown foods or handbags worth more than cars, the NRMA's "Unworry" ad invites simple Aussies to "uncomplicate, unstress and" -- naturally -- "unworry."
"We we once dubbed the Clever country, now I'm afraid we're the Un-clever country," whines the guy that sent this to us. "Our poor schooling has finally shown it's head in the workforce and is being broadcast without a comment."
...Was that supposed to be a joke?
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Just another idea by our good (if lazy) friend Chuck, who hashes it out like so:
"Give adult entertainment production companies such as Evil Angel and Vivid Entertainment limited rights to music from upcoming video games for use in their adult films, six months to a year ahead of release.
"The soundtracks for most adult films are fairly pathetic, and I am sure that many companies would welcome free, quality music for their films."
Chuck's previous epiphanies have included porno product placement -- but lest you fool yourself into thinking he's a one-track kinda dude, consider this: he also came up with Hacky Snacks (complete with working prototype!) and, um, candy cane chopsticks. Better for the environment, I guess, but potentially also extremely sticky.
Goes to show there are still a few unturned tricks left in advertising. (Pun much intended.) So think like Chuck. Or steal his ideas. Which, oddly enough, is what he wants you to do. (Just send him a kickback once in awhile.)
It's funny about this subsite. For a few seconds I seriously thought it was for a phone called the Pomegranate NS08 -- which I had already begun to covet more than anything else I've ever wanted, ever.
Then I realized it's unlikely that a phone -- even one with email, internet, GPS, music and a camera -- will actually shave your face, brew coffee or double as a harmonica. (Though it's easy to picture scenarios where all those value-adds would be useful.) So, taking my cues from the site motif, I concluded this must be a campaign promoting the universal merits of the pomegranate fruit.
I hit "Release Date" and got a message that kind of seemed to corroborate my theory:
Someday you'll be able to get everything you want in one device. Today you can get everything you want in one place.
Followed by the product reveal, which did blow my mind because it struck me as so utterly improbable:
"Nova Scotia."
Wait, what?
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