A print ad featuring a retouched photo of Tony Blair has stirred controversy in the U.K., which was no doubt what its creators, NO2ID, had in mind. The black-and-white effort shows the PM with a barcode mustache and includes the copy, “I.D. cards have worked well in Europe before.” NO2ID insists the ad was simply meant to evoke the fascist 1930s era in general. The Advertising Standards Authority (always keen to smack down junk-food promos aimed at children) has concluded that “although the ad may have been distasteful to some, it was unlikely to be seen as making a serious comparison between Tony Blair and Hitler, but instead as highlighting a lobbying group’s opinion that ID cards should not be introduced because of the threat to civil liberty.” Ohhh—he’s supposed to be Hitler?! I never would have guessed. Next time they should make it more obvious. Maybe Photoshop a swastika onto his lapels and say it’s a stylized Union Jack. Now that should ignite some animated conversation over Cadbury Crunchies and Burger King fries.
TBWA\Vancouver celebrates one of the guilty pleasures of the season in this 2005 video. Clients who see this may decide to skip the agency’s holiday party. Via Adverb.
So, how about that subtlety? The goal of this ad is to link smoking to erectile dysfunction. The way these people tell it, “smoking and erectile dysfunction have often been associated ... with plaque build-up in the arteries. ... The plaque obstructs blood flow through vessels, causing a host of circulatory problems throughout the body,” one of which is believed to be E.D. Either that or the ad is to be taken literally as a warning not to light your penis on fire. Either way, this is nothing a Hummer purchase can’t solve. Via Twenty Four.
The folks at 1up.com have done us all a favor and selected the worst print ads that have run in their print publication, Electronic Gaming Monthly, over the past few decades—in their words, “the absolute cream of the crap.” The first two installments focus on ads from the late ’80s and the ’90s, and there really are some stinkers. The commentary is inspired, too. Of this Solstice ad, they write, “A lot of us probably forgot the magical fluorescent naked bodybuilding hobo fad of 1989, but for a while they were everywhere, and if you weren’t in on it you just weren’t cool.” Their latest project identifies bad ads that ran in their sister publication, Games for Windows: The Official Magazine, formerly Computer Gaming World magazine, in the late ’90s. Be prepared for quite a lot of seemingly purposely ripped and bleach-stained jeans and women who are chained up for no obvious reason.
This ad guy is so tied up with blogging, he won’t even take a phone call from Donny Deutsch. From PhilTube via Golden Fiddle. Also check out PhilTube’s Alex Bogusky T-shirt. Read more about PhilTube over here.
Who can blame Eastern Bank for switching ad agencies? The Boston-area bank, which spends about $2 million annually on ads, tapped independent shop Conover Tuttle Pace on Wednesday, following a review. Judging from a quick check of recent headlines, the bank could use an image overhaul, starting with a heavy dose of positive PR. “Eastern Bank Robbed a Third Time” (in Saugus) was bad enough. But the pithy “FBI Looking For Bank Robber Who Wears Celtics Hat” (he knocked over a branch in Malden) hardly counts as a score for the home team. Then there’s the always-popular “Police Searching for Elderly Man Who Allegedly Robbed Bank in Melrose.” And the alleged perp caught on video in the Melrose heist looks freakish. Despite the mania for candid video, the new agency might want to keep such footage out of upcoming campaigns. —Posted by David Gianatasio
Coca-Cola is celebrating the 75th anniversary of its version of Santa Claus this year, with both on- and offline exhibits. Originally created by illustrator Haddon Sundblom, Coke’s St. Nick is nothing less than “the modern-day image of Santa Claus,” Coke says. While that’s the kind of hyperbole one would expect from a company that has touted its core product as “The real thing,” it’s also true. Santa screensavers (like the one above) and other online goodies are available at mycokerewards.com.
The December/January issue of BlackBook allegedly has a story in which Val Kilmer says he wants to start a line of organic foods that would make fun of Newman’s Own, with the profits going to what could be called the Kilmer Family Foundation. Says Kilmer, possibly tongue-in-cheek, “It will all be 100 percent organic, 100 percent profit. Here's why: I like my GTO convertible. And if you’ve got a vintage car, you’ve got upkeep. I have two gorgeous children. My son’s school costs more per year than my four years at Juilliard, plus rent and airfare back and forth.” Of course, we found the tip on Radar’s blog, which also informed the world erroneously that Justin Long would not be appearing anymore in Mac ads. Still, if Kilmer would do such a thing, there would be a certain honesty about it, since the vast majority of celebrity side ventures do the same thing for the family bank account that Kilmer’s business would do.
Is it possible for a company to practically own white? I got to wondering about this the other day when I came across an insert in The New York Times Magazine (I’ve since also seen it in Newsweek) featuring a white package tied not with ribbon but with a white power cord. Of course, my knee-jerk assumption was that it must be for Apple, particularly when I opened it and the first thing I saw was the baby monitor pictured here, which for a split second looked as though it were an iPod. It turns out the ad is from Philips, featuring a lineup of potential Christmas gifts and offering free shipping if you buy them on Amazon. But you have to wonder how many people flipped past it and thought of Apple. If it were up to me, I might have done something different. But then again, no one asked me.
Not to drag this ad through the mud all over again, but Lewis Lazare of the Chicago Sun-Times has gotten Draft FCB on the record calling it “a terrible mistake.” The Draft rep claims it was “submitted without proper approval” but won’t say specifically who created it or who sent it to Creativity magazine, where it ran in a Cannes section of the November issue. “I’m not going to point a finger at anyone,” the rep says. Whether that finger is being pointed behind closed doors at Draft is unclear. Here’s a link to our earlier post about the ad.
Which side are you on? As if the culture wars needed an additional battlefield, each of us is now required, at this time of year, to line up with those who say “Merry Christmas” or with those who say “Happy holidays.” The former group is far and away the larger, according to a Rasmussen Reports poll on this unlikely topic. It found 69 percent of adults prefer “Merry Christmas,” while 23 percent prefer “Happy holidays.” (The rest presumably hope we all have a “lousy December.”) The inevitable political gap: 85 percent of Republicans prefer “Merry Christmas,” as do 61 percent of Democrats. You’ll recall that some major retailers found themselves boycotted last year for dropping “Christmas” from their public vocabulary. Wal-Mart was careful to get on the popular side of the issue this year, with a spokeswoman saying the store isn’t afraid of the Christmas greeting: “We’ll use it early, and we’ll use it often.” That’ll show ’em.
This ad, from the December 1969 issue of Playboy, begins, “Let’s face it. Mistletoe might make a nice shrub and all, but a 100-proof ladykiller it’s not.” How right they are. A better way to kill off the ladies, if that’s your intent, might be to swing a giant bottle of Hai Karate aftershave at them. These girls look like they just came from an orgy at George Romero’s house, so actually, that might be the only way for this gentleman to free himself from their ravenous, giggling clutches. Seeing how current Axe ads appear to be inspired by stuff like this, maybe the Axe name is more sinister than I first thought, too. [Image from Flickr user I Am a Friend of the Squirrels.]
If only Tony Soprano had tried this. The Associated Press reports that a Mexican drug gang known as “The Family,” which is believed to have dumped five severed heads into a bar, took out a half-page ad in local newspapers in order to show its good side. In the ad, the gang claims to be an anti-crime vigilante group, driven by its love of the state, and takes swipes at its rivals. It also sets the record straight on its feelings about methamphetamine, declaring it “one of the worst drugs, doing irreversible damage to our society.“ Will the next hit be explained in print? No rivals have taken out any response ads, yet.
Sorry, Charlie. The vintage tagline from the old StarKist ad doesn’t make it onto TV Land’s list of the top 100 memorable TV catchphrases. But 10 other ads do, such as the classic Alka Seltzer tag, “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing.” Some of the ad lines are pretty strong. “I want my MTV!” seemingly foresaw the revolution in personalized media years before it happened. But others are pretty lame. There’s nothing terribly clever about “Time to make the donuts,” and I don’t remember it ever becoming a cultural slogan of any sort. If it were up to me, Charlie would kick the baker off the list. “It takes a licking but keeps on ticking,” the old Timex line, made the list, and rightfully so. It was always fun to see the producers devise new way to torture a watch. But how did they miss, “Mother, please, I’d rather do it myself!” So bad it was hilarious. The compilers probably weren’t born when that was on.
Here’s an ad (click to enlarge) from Leo Burnett promoting The Advertising Club’s 2007 International Andy Awards. The whole campaign has a lottery theme, the idea being that the Andys are so competitive, you might have a better chance of winning the lotto (or other games of chance) than the Grandy Award. Wrinkly creatives who are nearing retirement age (if there are any in this business) may appreciate the bingo theme here.
In case anyone still thought Justin Long had stopped playing the Mac in Mac ads, Apple has released some new ads in the series today. (I’m beginning to wonder if that whole “Justin Long no longer the Mac” thing was like the whole “Paul Is Dead” thing for the computer market, destined to create even more interest in a campaign that has already garnered its share of attention.) Anyway, per usual, it’s the PC that gets the best lines and is the most memorable, and not just because of his ridiculous Christmas sweater. But let’s do away with boring discussions of strategy. As usual, the ads are fun to watch.
You might not know this from looking around, but New York City, as we’ve known it since the 1600s, is in grave danger. A band of employees from PPGH/JWT Amsterdam has embarked on a tongue-in-cheek mission to “Give Us Back New York”—i.e., put it back in Dutch hands, renaming it New Amsterdam. But it doesn’t stop there. In their warped dreams of domination, they envision canals on Wall Street, a renaming of the Yankees, sidewalk vendors who sell herring instead of hotdogs, and Starbucks outlets that don’t limit their wares to coffee and Rolling Stones CDs. You can check out the site, which includes a piece of video propaganda, here. The strange part is that, if the site is any guide, colleagues in JWT’s New York office are lending their support.
Stumbled upon this quote from Werner Herzog yesterday: “Centuries from now our great- great- great- grandchildren will look back at us with amazement at how we could allow such a precious achievement of human culture as the telling of a story to be shattered into smithereens by commercials, the same amazement we feel today when we look at our ancestors for whom slavery, capital punishment, burning of witches, and the inquisition were acceptable everyday events.” Seems a bit excessive. I take it Werner won’t be directing the next McDonald’s commercials. The quote was published last winter in the Chicago Sun-Times. Herzog was agreeing with a letter writer who had complained about excessive commercial interruptions during the broadcast of Herzog’s film Grizzly Man on the Discovery Channel. Never mind that Discovery had financed a good portion of the film in the first place.
While the iPod and the Zune battle it out, the iBuzz — a unique MP3 player/sex toy — wants you to make love, not war. The original iBuzz, which we wrote about last year, was made for one; this updated version, the iBuzz Two, is made for couples. “Plug in two sets of headphones, and you and your partner can simultaneously listen to your music and enjoy the sensations from two vibrating bullets,” says the Web site. “With a skin-safe rabbit stimulator for her and a cock ring for him, only iBuzz Two gives you music-activated vibrations, 4 pulsing patterns and 11 speeds for pitch-perfect orgasms.” Available at LoveHoney.co.uk for £34.99.
That’s a fancy word for snake-ophobe, which Samuel Jackson is not. Did his agent tell him he could only accept projects with serpents in the title from now on? After starring in the recent royale-with-cheese release Snakes on a Plane, the King of Cool is set to appear in Black Snake Moan, Craig Brewer’s sophomore effort after Hustle and Flow. “Everything is hotter down south” is the movie’s official tagline, but once you see Christina Ricci writhing in chains and Justin Timberlake on the verge of a nervous breakdown, you may agree that “Southern gothic girls gone wild” packs a more descriptive punch. Instead of watching the trailer, why not go ahead and make your own?
The new-ish Perrier campaign, from Ogilvy & Mather in New York, is inventive, I’ll give it that. It does strike me as a tad unwise, though, to suggest that the product induces behavior like that shown above. And while I admire the purposely crude, eye-catching artwork (by Al Murphy and Paul Davis, according to Adland), the “Sexier” ad might call for something a little more sophisticated. Right now, it looks like the Brawny lumberjack’s zombie. But overall it’s a neat idea and one they can milk for years, since there are tons of words that end in -ier. Terrier, anyone? [Photos by reposaryan on Flickr.]
What is it about avatars that is so damn creepy? Is it that they never quite look like the person they are meant to depict? (Except maybe the Jesus avatar, because really, who’s to say?) While I ponder that, you can check out the Ellen DeGeneres avatar, pictured here, that is part of a new effort featuring the comedienne/talk show host from American Express. It features lots of animals and the opportunity to create a small clip featuring the Ellen avatar and the animals, although what it all has to do with American Express, well—not to be redundant—but who’s to say?
Cingular showcases another dramatic way to highlight the issue of dropped calls on this billboard outside the Marriott Marquis in Times Square. As Billboardom points out, this marks the second interesting execution in the lost calls, um, oeuvrerecently. Via Advergirl. UPDATE: Shedwa has posted an image of the new Cingular billboard in Times Square, which replaces this one.
This is not part of Dove’s “Real Beauty” campaign. It’s a public-service effort from Saatchi & Saatchi in Australia that imagines racism as a kind of face cream that exfoliates one’s tolerant epidermis to reveal the monster beneath. “Racism. The more you apply it, the uglier you become,” says the tagline. Interesting, in light of the Michael Richards affair. Via Coloribus.
