This is one of the better Halloween ads ever made. It’s for the Girls Costume Warehouse in Hackensack, N.J. This guy may have trouble getting his spot on the air, but he certainly has a great range of sexy costumes for women. Sexy Mustard and Sexy Jesus are nice. And Sexy Abe Lincoln will come in handy for all you Rozerem fans. Get down to the Girls Costume Warehouse today. If you don’t see it right away, keep driving around.
The Domino’s dumb dessert commercial strategy continues. First, there was the ridiculous ad with Fudgems the brownie, and above, there’s one of the new spots touting Domino’s Oreo Dessert Pizza, featuring the Oreo Dessert Pizza moustache. It’s so stupid—in a good way—I’m laughing myself all the way to the obesity clinic. You can see another spot in the series here. From the Perlorian Brothers and JWT.
If you ever wondered whether ESPN could manage to
turn anything into a sport, here’s more evidence that, yes, they may be able
to. Drill down on the site today, beyond the endless discussions of mid-season
NFL football, to find voting for the Ultimate Halloween Haul and the accompanying
Candy Bracket. Visitors can vote on their top 10; the bracket, meanwhile, is an
elimination tourney with four so-called regions: “Classic,” “Convenience Store” (think
Slurpees), “Movie Theater” and “Trick or Treat” (specialized treats like caramel
apples and candy corn). Curently among the “Classic” contests are Snickers vs.
Nestlé Crunch, Butterfinger vs. Tootsie Roll, Pez vs. Life Savers, and Twix vs.
Mounds. Winners will be posted later today.
Mister Rogers helps make the case for confronting global warming in this striking WWF spot from Foote Cone & Belding in Toronto and Untitled director Chris Sargent. Thankfully, the wildfire scenes don’t carry banners for Catch a Fire.
The St. Petersburg Times finds it newsworthy that good Halloween costumes need to be scary. Yet Abha Bhattarai’s article laments the evolution from the wholesome, all-American horror of the 1960s to “‘strange, erotic images’ like the ones in The Ring” and increasing levels of gore drawn from modern horror movies like the Saw trilogy. Obviously, Abha wasn’t filled in on a few things. Namely: a) most horror movies aren’t actually scary, because the protagonists are so stupid that the audience ends up rooting for the killer by default, assuming they can endure the corny dialogue, lousy acting and substandard budget; and b) any horror movie’s potential fright factor has been permanently eclipsed by the Internet, whose masturbatory exaltation of the mundane is infinitelymoreterrifying. And speaking of unnecessary fetishism, who really thinks The Ring’s drowned, prepubescent girl (shown here) is an “erotic image”?
Someone just e-mailed in some photos of a Wrigley’s Extra campaign in which stickers were affixed to the bottoms of coffee cups, giving the drinkers a toothy appearance. These kinds of promotions, of course, work better in photos than in the real world. In the real world, the teeth never line up right, and it ends up looking like your nose is upside-down on your chin and you’re gnawing on your eyeballs.
Ladies, you think comparison shopping is tough nowadays, with the grocery aisles filled with a gazillion varieties of every product. It could be worse. Once upon a time, if you picked up the wrong coffee, you’d be jeopardizing not just your housekeeping money but your backside. “Woe be unto you!” if you fail in your wifely shopping duties, says this old ad (click to see a larger version; you know you want to), as the husband prepares to deliver justice the old-fashioned way. To her credit, the wife does manage to steady herself with one hand and almost pose for the photo. She’s probably just happy it was the coffee that she screwed up. At least her man isn’t buzzing on caffeine as he prepares to strike. Via Flickr’s stanleylieber.
For what it’s worth, the U.K.’s Advertising Standards Authority has decided not to pursue an investigation into whether the new Sony Bravia spot (above), featuring paint explosions covering an-about-to-be-demolished apartment building, is inappropriate because of today’s climate of terror threats. There is a news item about this in The Guardian, for which you’ll need a subscription—and while we don’t usually link to sources that require registration, this whole complaint seemed so dopey in the first place we thought it worth mentioning that the alleged controversy will go no farther.
It seems like everyone is podcasting these days. Six months ago, Paris Hilton’s recording one merited mention. Nowadays, it’s hard to find someone who’s not doing it. And that includes the religiously minded. GodPods.com will get your minister up and running for $20 a month. Now, the Carmelite nuns are getting into the act. Starting Monday, the Sisters, who mind you are cloistered in their Indianapolis convent, are hitting iTunes with what their ad agency, Young & Laramore, is calling “Godcasts.” (The Carmelites have an ad agency. God help us all.) They’ll explore issues like what it’s like to live a contemplative life and engage in their trademark media criticism. As a Y&L rep helpfully puts it, “The voices of the Carmelites would otherwise by extremely difficult to come by, as their cloistered lifestyle prevents them from leaving the convent.” Steve Jobs truly is doing the Lord’s work.
Unless DraftFCB can find a way to make Wal-Mart’s smiley face seem tragically hip, there’s a good chance that the symbol of falling prices may vanish from the aisles of smiles. In an effort to elevate its image from its cinderblock foundations, Wal-Mart has already removed Smiley from its employees’ attire and from its redesigned Web site. Once Wal-Mart’s new ad agency begins working the account, Smiley may retire to the backroom, according to recent speculation. It would be a sad denouement for the symbol of cheapness, for which Wal-Mart fought a trademark battle earlier this year. Indeed, the issue of Smiley’s parentage is one of advertising’s longest-running disputes. The maniacal image has been traced back to 1953 in a New York Herald Tribune ad for the Leslie Caron movie Lili. More recently, the company SmileyWorld laid claim to the image, forcing the recent confrontation with the world’s largest retailer. SmileyWorld founder Nicholas Loufrani, of all things a Frenchman, claims his father invented the image in 1968. Smiley was an attention getter, Loufrani told Forbes, “because French people are never happy.”
Flickr user BlueAlgae was surprised to open up her mail the other day and find this postcard for a local dry-cleaners. “For starters,” she writes, “the image is an obvious rip from the Carl’s Jr. commercial featuring Paris Hilton. That I got, but I still have no idea why this image is relevant to dry cleaning. Perhaps the strategy was to grab people’s attention with a semi-naked ‘celebrity,’ but I kind of doubt that the 20-something guys who salivate over Paris’ image are likely to actually use a dry cleaning service.” It is a bit of a mystery, but if BlueAlgae’s subsequent reaction was typical, Delrey Cleaners may be on to something. “I tossed this in the recycling,” she writes, “but changed my mind in 20 minutes, and fished it out.”
With the NBA season just around the corner, we draw your attention to the Golden State Warriors, the only team to have apologized publicly (in newspapers and online) for their performance last season. Ads like the one shown here ran back in April. Could the Knicks not have done the same? The Warriors did not say sorry for the cramped-looking type treatment or the lack of a real headline.
You have to feel for Michael Krantz, the writer on Google’s official blog who was charged with explaining the company’s compulsion to fight the use of the word Google as a verb. It’s a losing battle, obviously, since “Googling” has long since become part of the vernacular. But anyone with a passing knowledge of trademark law knows Google has to defend its trademark or go the way of Xerox and Kleenex into what the legal eagles call “genericity.” But how does a corporation with a market cap of $146 billion tell people, in a nice way, not to devalue its brand? Krantz’s effort is an awkward read—lots of forced jokes, tough stabs at humility and not-so-subtle “the lawyers are making us do this” signals. It’s hard to keep up the little-guy act when you’re not.
Call me Ishmael! Plagiarism once more creeps in its petty pace—and I mean that “literally” (a word that figures prominently in this latest uproar, at the Harvard Crimson). There are, of course, more things in heaven and earth than can be rendered with true originality. Still, when, in the course of human events, people lift ideas for ads or steal other writers’ concepts for columns, they often get caught. Such behavior was wrong four score and seven years ago, and it’s still wrong today! And I frown upon those who make excuses, since I don’t drink ... wine. Personally, I live by this little saying I made up: To thine own self be true. As for all the idea thieves out there: Let them eat cake!
The Weinstein Co., which is distributing the new Dixie Chicks documentary Shut Up & Sing, says NBC and the CW are refusing to air the trailer (above) because it’s “disparaging to President Bush.” Of course, if everything that was disparaging to President Bush were taken off the air, we’d have hour upon hour of dead space. No doubt they’re going nuts about this news over at the Chicks’ fan blog.
What a shame about this ad, placed next to a story about the deadly wildfires in California. It’s for Catch a Fire, Phillip Noyce’s new political thriller. The tagline is, “The spark that ignites us, unites us.” It's a bit late to change the line now, but any punchy one-liner would have been fine, as long as it got across the point that the Tim Robbins vehicle is a how-to for making militants, a primer on radicalization, Rx for people who can’t fathom how nice boys grow up to be, say, al Qaeda recruits. No matter that the movie’s set in South Africa in the apartheid era, its retelling of oil-refinery foreman and soccer coach Patrick Chamusso’s (Derek Luke) call to action is based on a true story that’s still red hot. Thanks to Ben for the image.
First came “Inconsiderate Cell Phone Man,” Cingular’s interstitial “silence your cell phone” standard bearer. That funny series came out of an idea originated by Ketchum and executed by BBDO Atlanta. Cingular's current concept, from BBDO New York and Atlanta, is one that all of egocentric Hollywood can get behind. Filmmaker Sydney Pollack shows up in a guy’s living room as he’s sobbing an apology to his girlfriend over the phone. Pollack criticizes the guy’s “performance” before delivering the coup de grace. “Oh, I’m sorry. Is my directing interfering with your phone call? How rude of me!” The irony is that Pollack (seen here acting in Eyes Wide Shut) directed the spot and might be distressed to discover how often his bit is itself interrupted by the kind of audience gabfest that accompanies, for actual example, the FirstLook commercial programs, at least at Edwards screenings in the L.A. outland. There’s a rude crowd that’s learned too many Hollywood manners. This also means that the logical next step is to have directors like Joe Pytka ask audiences not to disturb their cinema spots.
Over at the New York Post’s Web site, I just came across a Flash-animated juggling game contained within a banner ad, promoting the release of the first season of HBO’s Big Love on DVD. (Look for the ad on the left side of the screen.) You move your mouse over the ad, and it reads, “You are Bill Henrickson. You have three wives. Let the juggling begin.” The game itself is pretty crude, but it beats a static banner.
The One Campaign, which aims to end world poverty, has just released this new commercial urging Americans to check where their candidates stand in terms of helping to end the cycle of global poverty and voting on Election Day. If earlier spots from the organization are known for their celebrity firepower, this one uses them intermittently—and to somewhat greater effect. The camera pans along a row of people waiting in line, and while most are average Joes and Josephines (?), George Clooney, Toby Keith, Matt Damon, Don Cheadle, Alfre Woodard and Julia Roberts are among those waiting—it turns out, waiting in line to vote. There is also some behind-the-scenes footage on the One Channel on YouTube.
How do you market a book written by a publicity-shy author? Time magazine wonders in a story about Thomas Pynchon’s new tome, Against the Day. Well, I guess one thing you do is tell Time that Mr. Pynchon won’t submit to an interview, and then they’ll write about it. Time uses Pynchon’s legendary reclusiveness to launch into a tale about how hard it is to market works of fiction these days. It may be hard, but that doesn’t apply to Pynchon. The man’s reputation precedes him. Announce he’s got a new book, and it will fly off the shelves. Of course, the viral-savvy minds at Amazon.com couldn’t resist having a little fun last summer when they put up a notice about the upcoming book, with a description that was allegedly written by the author. Sure it was. Which is why it was removed after the blogs started buzzing. Nice touch, but really necessary? Who hasn’t heard of V or The Crying of Lot 49? Probably far fewer souls than have read the books cover to cover. I tried reading V once, but the clever wordplay left me cold after the first sentence, which I think was longer than the first chapter. Clearly, the man didn’t learn his craft in J-school. Which is to his credit. At least, that’s what I hear from the J-school grads I know.
You have to wonder why they didn’t think of this before. BabyGap is holding a contest to find two of its next gurgling models. Gap’s agency, Laird + Partners in New York, will be in on the process of judging photos uploaded to the site. According to creative director Trey Laird, uniqueness of character counts for more than physical beauty. (If that’s really true, then this baby would have a legitimate shot at being in the next campaign.) Semifinalists will be chosen by Nov. 4, so hurry if you want to win some swag for your little one.
Let’s face it. For every Coleridge, da Vinci or Bernini that comes along, there are 500 guys for whom divine inspiration means using a dog’s anus as a flowerpot. Looking at this ad (“Perhaps it’s time to turn to Pedigree light dog food”) is like watching a clown die; it’s sad, but you can’t stop laughing. Let’s just pray the Weight Watchers people haven’t seen this. I would not be laughing then, I can assure you. I believe in adv has one other ad in the series and credits the work to TBWA\Paris.
Trying to market remakes of classic horror films is tough. You’ve got built-in name recognition, but you’ve also got movie nerds ready to tear you apart (remakes, by definition, being as inauthentic as it gets). But the studios don’t make it easy on themselves. Movie Marketing Madness has posted the new trailer for the Day of the Dead remake. Chris sums it up this way: “This is so bad I can barely find the words.” Imagine what the film itself will be like, considering that the trailer is the lipstick on the pig (the pig in this case being Mena Suvari, mostly). They’ve redone The Hills Have Eyes and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Maybe at least they’ll run out of material at some point.
Our perception of beauty gets seriously distorted in this spoof of the new Dove spot. It’s unclear what MWeeting 14 is, but it seems to be some sort of private Halloween party in Italy.
