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Outrun the other rats with Toshiba's laptops
This Toshiba ad from Young & Rubicam in Irvine, Calif., shows what happens when you buy the wrong laptop: You end up sprinting in a panic through an empty city, trying to keep up with the rat race, only to get sucked violently into the air, legs flailing, or bump headfirst into an invisible wall, foiled by the more technologically advanced rats who were "set free" by their Toshibas. The ad is a weird combination of goofy and deadly serious, which is a bit of a disconnect. Special effects like these sometimes work a little better when they're balanced out by a more lighthearted tone, as with the classic Katamari-inspired Travelers Insurance spot from Fallon. |
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Published on July 31, 2009 | Permalink
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FreeCreditReport band still not phoning it in
Despite my best judgment, despite my knowledge of their deceptive practices, despite having even been one of their victims back in the innocent days of 2000, I just can't help but like these FreeCreditReport.com jingles. In the newest installment, the down-and-out trio go all nerd rock to explain how the lead singer ended up with the world's oldest cell phone. Other than the cringe-worthy lyrics about how he "coulda got my knowledge on," it's another commendably catchy tune in their commercial catalog. The month-old roller-coaster spot below is pretty good, too. —Posted by David Griner |
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Published on July 31, 2009 | Permalink
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Get your hands on these Elmo Tickle Hands
Bizarre product extension of the week: Elmo Tickle Hands. According to Brandweek: "Tickle Hands is a pair of furry gloves that emit the sounds of Elmo's laughter when they touch surfaces or objects." Sure, I'd fantasized about such a product, maybe even sent e-mails (and sketches!) to Fisher-Price. I'd expected a cease-and-desist order at best. Who knew they'd go and sell the fuzzy fingers for $29.99? There's a Facebook app that allows you to send a "Ticklegram" to friends. Per Brandweek: "Those who receive the Ticklegram get a 10-second video ... and Elmo's laughing voice saying various phrases including 'Elmo knows you can tickle better than that,' and 'Let's tickle somebody.' " That's been my voicemail greeting for ages, but it sounds less sinister coming from Elmo. —Posted by David Gianatasio |
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Published on July 31, 2009 | Permalink
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Does advertising cause everything to suck?
Craig Ferguson seems to think so, judging by his opening rant on CBS's The Late Late Show last night. Wonder how it went over with the program's advertisers—you know, the folks who created the universe-destroying cult of the young and stupid in the first place. Via The Live Feed. |
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Published on July 30, 2009 | Permalink
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Snuggie wearers at last can outfit their pets
After what has surely been an interminable wait, Snuggie fans can finally order mini Snuggies for their dogs. (You can probably put it on your cat, too, though you might lose some blood getting clawed in the process.) The advantages over a regular pet sweater are questionable (such sweaters "pull and they're tight," according to the infomercial), but it's not really as much about function as fashion. Via @woodlandalyssa. |
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Published on July 30, 2009 | Permalink
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HBO characters not wonderful houseguests
This HBO promo borrows stars from its various original series to convince bored families to stay in on Sunday nights and watch TV. They do a good job of fitting everyone in, and it amused me that Larry David can't even promote his own show without coming off like a whiny asshole. Come to think of it, a lot of those characters were pretty inconsiderate—finishing all the orange juice, breaking the smoke detector, and barging in on husband/wife time aren't things that get guests invited back. It's a shame Oz and Deadwood aren't on the air anymore. I'd love to see those guys wreak havoc in the suburbs. —Posted by David Kiefaber |
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Published on July 30, 2009 | Permalink
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Moan even more about your sad agency life
Want to blow off some steam about life in advertising? There's an app for that. Bitch, Co. lets you Tweet out your frustrations of agency life, which are then Tweeted out to the world, or at least to the 74 people currently following @BITCHCO. This should be an interesting experiment that lays bare the ugly side of the industry. The initial posts are typical fare: complaints about vendors, confessions of laziness, insults for project managers, etc. Sadly, Bitch, Co. is unlikely to raise the esteem of agencies in clients' eyes. Via @andjelicaaa. |
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Published on July 30, 2009 | Permalink
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Travelocity's gnome keeps going and going
I've never really gotten the Travelocity Roaming Gnome or understood the campaign's enduring popularity. Wasn't there a traveling garden gnome craze that inspired the ads, or was it vice versa? I'd Google it, but I think I'll wait for Microsoft and Yahoo! to release a new search product before I do any more research. In McKinney's latest Travelocity spot, we get to stare at the back of the gnome's head as he "watches" stock footage of travel destinations. Viewed from behind, the freakish creature looks a lot like an upside-down ice-cream cone from a Monty Python cartoon. There's a social-media tie-in that allows folks to use Twitter and Facebook to choose where the gnome should go next and upload photos to win prizes—or something. There's nothing wrong with vacationing on the cheap. But sadly, this campaign is flying coach as well. —Posted by David Gianatasio |
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Published on July 30, 2009 | Permalink
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A great beer ad, without the massive budget
Inspired by (or in her words, "obsessed with") the new Budweiser spot "All Together Now" below, advertising student Diana Mella created the version above. While the original is a commendably choreographed and ingenious spot, there's something even more charming about Diana's version. Maybe it's because she's better at evoking the true spirit of the Beatles song, covered here by the Hours. Maybe it's because she shows that quirky cleverness can compete with even the biggest budgets. Or maybe it's just because she does a better job selling beer. —Posted by David Griner |
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Published on July 30, 2009 | Permalink
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Huggies ads capture babies' crapping faces
Ogilvy Brazil gets down to the nitty-gritty of diaper advertising with Huggies print ads showing babies giving their most determined pooping faces. The copy reads, simply, "Anytime. Anywhere." The charming lad (or perhaps lass?) shown here is far and away the most charismatic of the bunch. See the others here. The photos were apparently gathered from Flickr-using parents, whose offspring now will never forgive them. UPDATE: As pointed out in comments, it looks like these ads are scam. |
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Published on July 29, 2009 | Permalink
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Cut back on watering the really stupid grass
Sukle Advertising + Design has a new conservation campaign for hometown client Denver Water that asks people to curtail their lawn watering by two minutes a day. You'll get away with this, the ads suggest, because "grass is dumb" and won't know the difference. The work includes quote bubbles stuck in the ground that reveal the depths of grass's stupidity, and a couple of TV commercials (the one below and this other one) in which a few personified blades fail to grasp even the basics of the reality that surrounds them. Sukle's "Use only what you need" campaign has been down this road before, of course, with the pretty great drunk-flowers spot. |
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Published on July 29, 2009 | Permalink
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Call the Palm Pre Girl crazy at your own risk
Life is obviously quite difficult for the woman in Modernista!'s new Palm Pre commercials. As she explains in her (unofficial) Twitter feed, she's trapped on a rock and worshipped daily by a dancing orange cult. And in her newest commercial, above, she admits that when she does venture out in public, people seem to think she's crazy. Let's see if they're so brazen in their mockery when her kung-fu army shows up to spirit her back to the land of surreal beauty and plain garments. |
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Published on July 29, 2009 | Permalink
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Fruit by the Foot combat often catastrophic
Man, do not cross the kid who can turn people's bones and DNA into Fruit by the Foot. That's on the level of Eric Cartman making someone eat his parents. Normally, I dump on commercials like this for their forced randomness, but in this case I can't, because I didn't know Fruit by the Foot still existed until I saw this ad. Touché, Gerry Graf and your team at Saatchi & Saatchi in New York. Touché. —Posted by David Kiefaber |
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Published on July 29, 2009 | Permalink
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Blue M&Ms could be very, very good for you
Back in 1995, M&M fans were asked to choose the candy's new color: pink, purple or blue. The electorate voted for blue, and it was apparently a wise choice. Researchers recently found that the blue food dye used in M&Ms (and other products such as Gatorade) might help treat spinal injuries. It worked on injured lab rats, who were able to walk again (and turned blue!) after an injection of the "Brilliant Blue G" compound. While any human treatment is likely years away, there's one group that's already benefiting from the discovery: the marketing folks at Mars. "Blue M&Ms" was the No. 1 trending topic Tuesday evening on Twitter as thousands of users shared the weird story. And really, this karma's been a long time coming for Mars, which once voluntarily shelved the red M&M for nine years due to a consumer freak-out over a red dye that the product didn't even use. With this latest news, it doesn't seem so weird after all that the Blue M&M wants to just sit around licking himself. —Posted by David Griner |
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Published on July 29, 2009 | Permalink
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Big Tobacco still seeking best and brightest
American Legacy's "Truth" anti-tobacco juggernaut rolls on with new executions from Arnold that expand on the campaign's amusing faux-job-interview format. Above, we get a customer-service role-playing session, with the superbly smug "recruiter" playing a smokeless-tobacco user who complains about losing half of his jaw. It's too bad the job seeker doesn't ask him how he can speak so clearly sans half his face—you gotta be quick with the comebacks to work for Ol' Smoky! The spot below takes place in a college lecture hall during a career seminar. The students all put down their hands when the recruiter asks if they'd consider working in an industry that could cause 1 billion deaths this century. Clearly, none of them are going for MBAs, and they'd never make the grade in law school. |
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Published on July 29, 2009 | Permalink
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'Un' is a dirty word in Fallon's Charter spots
7Up used to the "Uncola." The "Un" meant it was different, and you were different for drinking it—not as boringly assimilated as everybody else. Sure, it was a pitch to sell a soft drink, but at least it aspired to something beyond mundane normality. Now, we have Charter Communications, via Fallon, also using "Un," but taking the opposite tack. In these spots, "Un" (as in, non-Charter "unbundled" phone, Internet and cable) is a condition to be avoided at all costs. "Un" means you're anti-social, an outcast. "Un" = weirdo. "Un" = loser. Charter says we'd be happier, more productive members of society if we bundled our cable, Internet and phone and "undid the 'Un' " in our lives. Of course, it's actually Charter who'd be happier. We'd just watch more TV and avoid the real world even more. Which may be a good thing. There are lots of weirdos and losers out there! —Posted by David Gianatasio |
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Published on July 29, 2009 | Permalink
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Play sports as a child, avoid shame later on
Here's an odd little PSA campaign by DDB Vancouver for KidSport BC that encourages children's participation in sports—mostly so they don't become complete social lepers later in life. Of the three commercials, only the swimming-pool spot really pays off the tagline, "Sports skills are life skills." (Knowing how to swim could indeed help you save someone's life.) On the other hand, being able to catch Post-it notes thrown at you by the office hottie seems less crucial to one's general well-roundedness. And getting kids to play sports so they can use sporting clichés in their dead-end corporate jobs later in life—that's just depressing. How about this cliché instead: that sport is good for kids because it gets them off the couch and teaches them to play well with others? Via Osocio. |
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Published on July 28, 2009 | Permalink
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truTV's viewers are violent, blithering idiots
"When the stories are real, the effect is actual." That's the tagline for truTV's debut campaign from Mother in New York. It's probably best not to analyze the wording too deeply. Per press materials, the work targets "younger men who love real-life programming that immerses them in worlds they can't normally experience." In the spot above, that includes blows to the face, chest and other regions—experiences that guys have had, if they have brothers or any male friends. Yeah, guys like pummeling each other for any reason. If we get to watch someone else being smacked, all the better. The spot below is less captivating because there's no punching. Mother should feel free to include some gal-on-gal slapping in future commercials, and the gals could be wearing bikinis. I may be a doofus, but I know what I like. —Posted by David Gianatasio |
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Published on July 28, 2009 | Permalink
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Purity Organic juice calms the worst temper
Judging by the severity of his mood swings, the guy in this Purity Organic commercial (by McCann Erickson, New York) needs more than fancy orange juice to steady himself. Blood-pressure medication might be in order. But healthier organic juice is a start, and Purity is nothing if not organic. They mention this about a billion times on their Web site. Also, the only thing more entertaining than watching this hothead at choir practice will be the Parents Television Council complaints generated by this ad. |
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Published on July 28, 2009 | Permalink
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Mime just won't shut up about Klondike bar
What do you get when you mix Klondike bars, Michael Ian Black, a mime and a megaphone? You get this interminable "What would you do for a Klondike bar?" commercial, which the brand created with the help of Mindshare. Who's more annoying, Michael Ian Black or the mime? They're both tough to take. Anything with mimes is probably doomed from the get-go, but this spot really heads downhill fast once the painted-faced freak starts mouthing off. He'd better stay out of Canada, where mimes have been known to suffer cruel and senseless fates. At least they keep their mouths shut and take it. BONUS: Another crappy new mime commercial, this one from the U.K., for an online bingo game called Wink Bingo, is posted below. Via TV's Worst Adverts. —Posted by David Gianatasio |
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Published on July 28, 2009 | Permalink
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KanJam snuffs out dying embers of the '60s
Ad agency Cenergy has killed off the last of the 1960s spirit with a summer promotional tour dubbed "Peace, Love and KanJam." KanJam isn't a free music festival. It's a lawn game similar to Frisbee golf. It costs $39.95 and appears to include its own trash cans for quick disposal once buyers realize they've wasted their money. (The object of the game is to get the KanJam discs in the "Kans.") The tour involves some dudes tooling around, talking up the game and blasting Woodstock-era tunes from their '69 Volkswagen bus. They're called "Jambassadors," and the vehicle's been christened the "Kanabus." Leary, Hendrix, Joplin and all the other long-gone '60s icons must be rolling (some fat ones) in their graves, because KanJam's trip sounds like a colossal bummer. |
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Published on July 28, 2009 | Permalink
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PSA: chicks love guys who drunkenly puke
Belgium's drinking culture is a lot different than America's. In Belgium, you can get wasted enough to barf, and then still make out with hot girls who aren't turned off in the least. If you take away the guitar player, the anti-binge-drinking PSA above pretty much depicts the most unexpectedly happy ending to anything, ever. Oh sure, there's the "Don't fool yourself" message tacked on at the end, but that does little to shake the fantasy vision presented before it. They'd probably do better by just sticking with reality. Bonus points if it turns out the guy's kissing a dog. |
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Published on July 27, 2009 | Permalink
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Jewelry being made from MJ's charred hair
It's come to this: Greedy vultures at some outfit called LifeGem claim to be making jewelry out of the charred hair from Michael Jackson's ill-fated 1984 Pepsi commercial shoot. There's precedent for this sort of thing. During the height of Beatlemania, small pieces of towels supposedly used by the Fab Four to dry their faces after sold-out shows were popular. Still, a long-dried streak of Ringo sweat isn't as freaky and ghoulish as a crystallized sample of MJ's toasted mane. But then, few celebs were as freaky and ghoulish as the King of Pop, so maybe the product is fitting after all. Given his fondness for oddball esoterica, if someone had offered MJ a lock of hair from, say, the Elephant Man, he might've offered the entire Beatles' catalog in return. —Posted by David Gianatasio |
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Published on July 27, 2009 | Permalink
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Is 'kick-ass' appropriate for a press release?
It can be hard to tell when an obscenity becomes so mainstream that it's safe to use in the corporate vernacular. That seems to be the case with "kick-ass," an adjective that PR blogger (and sometime journalist scold) Lauren Fernandez was surprised to see in the first line of a TGI Friday's press release. "I ran it past both seasoned reporters and newbies," Fernandez writes, "and most said the same thing: 'It grabbed our attention, but we don't know how professional it is to use that.' " Coincidentally, there's a movie due out early next year called Kick-Ass, so you can expect to hear this debate again when the posters start going up. The difference, of course, is that movie posters are for the whole world to see, while press releases are aimed at journalists, who presumably have a higher threshold for colorful language (and have cause to use it often when hanging up on PR flacks). I think Friday's should push the envelope harder next time and just say, "Here's some more kick-ass fodder for you, assuming your dipshit rag is still in business tomorrow." —Posted by David Griner |
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Published on July 27, 2009 | Permalink
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The perfect gift for people who stink all over
Add Doc Bottom's Aspray to the list of products we hope are elaborate pranks, because we refuse to believe the market was crying out for a questionably named aerosol deodorant. A guy named Doc Bottom should be making toilet-seat covers or gay porn, not an all-over body spray. Still, kudos to that "contractor" for admitting on television that his butt stinks, though why anyone would be crouching down to smell it is beyond us. The product's Web site seems legit, though, so head over to customer service and ask why a grown man would call himself Doc Bottom. |
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Published on July 27, 2009 | Permalink
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