"One market. Infinite possibilities." That's the going slogan for the NYSE, a brand so big and so embedded in the American financial subconscious that seeing an ad for it almost confuses us.
This pair of spots -- dubbed Market Conditions and One Destination -- are chock-full of NYSE listed companies and glorify the speed and interconnectedness so necessary to business today. The agency responsible is Fallon Worldwide, but the smooth production comes from Stardust.
We were really fond of the last spot, which moved slowly and did a better job of illustrating a blooming world of "infinite possibilities."
All in all, these do a serviceable job of keeping the NYSE salient in ad land, but they're not especially resonant. It could just be the new narrator. He has a smack of fresh 90s dot-com-ness to him.
So last night, we're three quarters through yet another now shitty episode of the once-brilliant Heroes and what do we see a few minutes after a commercial break? No, not one of those banners that promotes some new show that will likely suck or some news tease that will make it impossible for us not to "stay tuned for more" at 11. No, we see a big black banner fill the bottom fourth of the screen touting the new Denzel Washington, Russel Crowe movie American Gangster. WTF?
So this is what it's come to, people. The nets aren't going to take any more of our ad skipping shit and they're now going to bombard us not only with annoying in-program promotions but with ,annoying, unskippable in-program ad banners. Apparently taking a cue from YouTube's video advertising efforts, NBC is going to get is ad revenue no matter what it takes.
While we can't fault a media company for protecting its revenue stream, it's beginning to reach the point of insanity. Watching a show recorded on a DVR is now going to be just as annoying as watching one live with commercials. Maybe worse. With old-school commercials, at least you could miss the ads by getting up to take a piss or grabbing something out of the fridge. No longer. And this isn't the last (and likely it's not the first) we'll see of these DVR-fighting tactics. Protecting that revenue stream is a very powerful motivator.
Sorry, we didn't get an actual screenshot of the banner.
Fans of the long-running PG Tips chimp ads will be happy to know the simian is back. (As a sock puppet, sure, but CAPS may call this innovation.)
Founder Duncan Richardson of JDI Integrated Advertising told us that the PG Tips chimps are among the most beloved ad icons in the UK, with campaigns running 20 years deep, give or take a little.
Now the monkey's got an up-to-date left-field wit, a broader sense of drama, and a strange kind of innocence that can only be conjured by braided cotton and beaded eyes -- all of which you can see in The Return.
Monkey (or triangle teabag?) fans can hit PG Tips' Monkey Store to buy shirts, or monkeys wearing shirts, with stuff like "Mr. Shifter?," "3% invisible" and "Monkeh!" printed on them -- none of which we understand, but that only makes it funnier. (And we're not even high!)
We are leaning toward the flirty pink "Back to mine for a cuppa?" That monkey is raunchy.
We like checking up on the BBC, mainly because its home nation seems really nervous about the internet (whose merits and demons we were comparably quick to embrace).
In the last few weeks, the BBC has furnished vigilant parents with terror-stricken warnings about Cyber Bullying and ID theft (social networking's mainly to blame), the "worsening" state of child porn, and the denigration of basic human values resulting from virtual worlds. (Well, we could've told you that.)
But we can't hate that hard. NY state is home to investigators that posed as kids to tempt sex predators on Facebook. Nice.
Here's a series of hilarious, fake recruitment ads from Saatchi, McCann, Berlin Cameron United and TBWA\Chiat\Day. Modeled after actual recruitment ads, these ads quickly show their true colors. McCann wants blind people. Saatchi wants Black and Latinos. TBWA\Chiat\Day wants midgets. And Berlin Cameron United wants women..especially exotic minorities.
See? Even diversity in advertising efforts can be funny.
Previously on Adrants. Everyone who works in marketing and any business touching it should take the time to read this article. On CBSNews.com, Dick Meyer wrote an editorial hammering home points we've touched on here before such as the portrayal of men as idiots in advertising, the hyper-political correctness foisted upon the industry and society at large and the acceptance, what scholar Charles Murray relates to "ecumenical niceness," of kids dressing and behaving like thugs fueled by marketers and the entertainment industry elevating "thug culture" to culture at large. If that's a lot to digest, just read the article and think long and hard about what cultural imagery you mirror in your marketing. Don't cop out using the tired, "Oh we're just identifying with culture," and turn a blind eye to what you are perpetuating.
more »
Over the years, we've commented on the emasculated, sole-searching, directionless, man syndrome made famous by those Verizon Dumb Dad ads. Writing in Entertainment Weekly about how today's man just won't grow up and how he's portrayed by show creators and advertiser as a aimless, child-like buffoon, Mark Harris captures, perfectly, the ironic attraction of AMC's Mad Men.
He writes, "...the 35ish Don Draper is a New York advertising whiz with a wife, a mistress, unquenchable ambition and not an iota of little-boy-ishness; in fact, he's determined to grind his inner child into dust and obliterate any trace of vulnerability...He's a relic of an ancient civilization, and a flat out terrible role model. But in his struggle not to lose his soul, he is also, indisputably, a grown up. No wonder he suddenly seems like the sexiest thing on television."
more »
Unlike Oldsmobile which tried to distance itself from its aging audience with the "It's Not Your Father's Oldsmobile" campaign, Beam Global Spirits is embracing the older generation for its Canadian Club whiskey by exclaiming, "Damn Right YOur Dad Drank It." Created by Energy BBDO, the campaign will launch in November with radio, out-of-home, POS and print. Ads will appear in Rolling Stone, Sports Illustrated and Sporting News, with additional placements in Playboy, Men's Journal, Esquire, Outside and Men's Fitness in December and into 2008.
Hauling out imagery 60's and 70's imagery from actual Beam Global employees and positioning Dad as a once cool manly man, ads state "Your Mom Wasn't Your Dad's First," "Your Dad Was Not a Metrosexual" and "Your Dad Never Got a Pedicure."
Are we seeing a full-on return to the glory days of the hard liquor cocktail when beer was for factory workers and wine was for sissies? Can we now go back to the three martini lunch, pinch asses in the afternoon and have three more martinis at night while watching Mad Men? We might not get any work done but it sure sounds like fun.
We always thought it was funny that Unilever would champion girls' self-esteem via Dove (courtesy of Ogilvy) and premit mass objectification of lusty ladies via Lynx/Axe (courtesy of Bartle Bogle Hegarty).
Boston's Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood is less amused.
"The hypocrisy is Dove positioning itself as a brand that cares and is trying to teach girls to resist this messaging," said associate director Josh Golin. "At the same time Unilever, in the form of Axe, is putting out some of the worst messaging there is."
Our take? Unilever's just a parent company.
more »
Here's a music and video campaign called Not For Sale. The object of the game is to raise money to stop the global slave trade, which is a $32 billion industry, apparently.
We're very moved but, having come from a country whose favourite export is mail order brides and domestic helpers, we're feeling a little nonplussed.
For each girl that's bought out of slavery, another handful leaps in, encouraged by angling parents and crappy governments (which, instead of using its money for roads or transport, may fund stupid shit like Imelda Marcos' shoe fetish, a social tragedy romanticized by fashionistas worldwide).
In the end, trying to end slavery is about persuading corrupt governments to stop swilling their countries and make more productive decisions. But that'll probably happen around the same time Bush stops throwing America's dollar value at the War on Terror.
|
|
