MTV sees you frolicking with muddy ladies

The folks at MTV, of all people, are urging young people to turn off their computers and TVs and go outside sometimes. In new ads from 180 Amsterdam (the agency that sounds like a skateboard trick), the reasoning is simple: As sweet as high scores and headshots are, the real world has its own treasures, like hot, dirty girls in bikinis trying to move pickup trucks that are stuck in the mud. The gamer in this ad doesn't actually meet the ladies, which may be a good thing. In fact, they might want to alter the campaign to include a sliding scale—Grand Theft Auto 4 and Halo players are probably mainstream enough to fit into polite society, but people involved in message board arguments about Fallout 3's departure from canon should stay on the couch. See more at the MTV Switch Web site.

—Posted by David Kiefaber

Published on October 1, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (1)
Filed under 180, Environment, Kiefaber, MTV

PSAs gone wild on World AIDS Day

As you may know, today is World AIDS Day, and if you don’t know by now it will definitely come home to you if you watch a little MTV today. The network is running 24 PSAs, aimed at HIV and AIDS awareness; from what I saw this morning on the site where the spots are housed, they have an overwhelming emphasis on safe sex as opposed to the myriad other issues surrounding the disease. Seven agencies contributed to the campaign, according to this story: Cake, (the newly Omnicom-owned) 180 Amsterdam, Wieden + Kennedy 12, Lowe Worldwide, Young & Rubicam and Ogilvy. There are certainly some, um, interesting executions and you can check them all out at staying-alive.org. The shot above is from the WK 12 work, where fingers do the, uh, sexual dirty work. On the site, the agency claims that their "spots" are merely safe sex instructional videos from an unknown foreign nation that the plucky youngsters in the WK 12 program somehow found.

—Posted Catharine P. Taylor

Published on December 1, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Filed under 180, Ogilvy, PSAs, Wieden + Kennedy, Y&R