Power lines can kill you and that giant lizard
Giant-monster send-ups rarely fail to please, and this Canadian power-line safety pitch by Wonder Communications (video posted below) is no exception. The message: No matter how invincible you think you are, live wires can kill you. They're more likely to do so, of course, if you're a laser-shooting dinosaur who can actually reach overhead power lines. (Actually, the campaign is aimed at contractors who use tall equipment that could get snared in such cables.) Note how the hardhats, instead of trying to help out, just stand around and gawk at the creature's rampage. Typical union types. And we're clearly dealing with an inadequate defense plan here: Instead of tanks and planes, a couple of cops try to hold off the prehistoric fury with police specials! They're lucky the lizard lumbered into the lines, or they'd all be extinct. Via Ads of the World. —Posted by David Gianatasio |
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Published on December 21, 2009 | Permalink
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Park-bench plaque ads argue for euthanasia
Cundari Advertising placed stickers like this one, made to look like brass memorial plaques, on park benches around Toronto, memorializing (presumably fictional) people who were denied assisted suicide and thus suffered before death—pointlessly, according to DignityInDeath.com, which is the client here. See other ads from the campaign here. One reads, "Donald J. McLeod, 1961-2007, who spent six years in a coma before finally slipping into the afterlife while the court system continued to debate his fate." There's also: "Rosa Maria Allende, 1952-2009. She finally passed after being kept alive by machines for four years at the cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars that could have helped find a cure for the very disease she suffered from." The text seems heavy-handed and unfeeling, but there's no safe way to frame this discussion, and even though they're partisan, the ads remind us that we should consider such matters and plan ahead while we still have the faculties and good health to do so. Via Ads of the World. —Posted by David Gianatasio |
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Published on December 9, 2009 | Permalink
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Nissan's hamster-wheel guy is going places
How does the guy in this Nissan spot from TBWA Toronto (directed by Mark Ziebert) get from place to place in his giant rodent wheel? It's clearly stationary, not a mode of transportation at all. Does he take it apart and reassemble it in various locations during the day? If it's a metaphor, that's even worse, because I always interpret metaphors incorrectly. Let's see, his soul-crushing struggle with the wheel means he's … I dunno, happy? Whatever the case, he'd better get ready to really fly. The giant hamsters from the Kia Soul ad are in hot pursuit. They want their wheel back. —Posted by David Gianatasio |
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Published on December 4, 2009 | Permalink
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Sexy grandmas confirm wonders of science
Science World in Canada pays tribute to GILFs everywhere with its "Ice Creamy Goodness" spot above, from Rethink Communications in Vancouver. The non-profit group is devoted to "inspiring future science and technology leadership" up north, and yes sir, nothing gets the job done quite like a pack of horny septuagenarians. The kids'll be loading tubes into centrifuges in no time. The ad's final image is, in stark contrast to the ice cream they are sharing, particularly tasteless. But there may be a method to this madness. I'm pretty sure I'll remember that old men dig vanilla after seeing this, so they did successfully plant a scientific factoid in my head. We'll see if it outlasts the night terrors. Meanwhile, the print component takes a stab at the other end of the age spectrum, with the carefree umbili-bungee baby shown below. The campaign's tagline is, "We can explain," and yes, both agency and client have a lot of explaining to do. —Posted by David Kiefaber
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Published on December 4, 2009 | Permalink
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Canadians all sick and tired of cancer's crap
Web videos are the centerpiece of DDB's "Join the Fight" campaign for the Canadian Cancer Society. Non-actors whose lives have been ravaged (and in some cases, ruined) by the disease address the illness as if it were a person, expressing their outrage, grief and resolve to keep fighting. Unlike TBWA's recent prostate-cancer ads, where the disease is played by a guy in a costume, here cancer is an unseen yet palpable presence. We get the idea that the fight is tough, often heartbreaking, but sometimes winnable. The message is gritty and honest, but empowering. If I were cancer, I'd clear out, because that guy in the white T-shirt who spits into the mirror looks angry enough to whip the disease with his bare hands.
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Published on November 30, 2009 | Permalink
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VW driving rival engineers to seek new jobs
These Canadian Volkswagen ads from Palm + Havas use understated humor to tell the tales of auto engineers driven from the business after being unable to compete against the VW Golf. The model's back, much to the dismay of these type-A personalities. Yurie (above) seems a bit unbalanced at the hotel she opened in Japan, obsessively arranging colorful origami cars, one of which she angrily crumples up as she glares at a Golf that tools by. I'd check in somewhere else, just to be safe! Also bearing grudges: Enzo (below), who sails tourists around Italy, and Nigel, who owns a bookshop in England. Look, these sore losers all have saner, lower-stress lives since leaving the car business, so they should be thankful, not bitter. And frankly, if their designs couldn't beat out that middling machine, they must've been crappy engineers! Via Ads of the World.
Previously on AdFreak:
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Published on November 19, 2009 | Permalink
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Kids would prefer you not destroy the Earth
Zig's cinematic spot for Moms Against Climate Change pits child protesters (shouldn't they be in school?) against cops (don't they have parking tickets to write?) to illustrate that if kids knew what was at stake, they'd take action. There's no denying it packs a punch. That said, something feels off. I think I was expecting a boffo climax to really drive the point home. Why not have the sides embrace, each kid finding one of his or her parents among the riot squad, to symbolize that we're all in this together? Conversely, acid rain pouring from above and "frying" every last person? That would make a strong statement! Sure, it's easy for me to second-guess—that's why I enjoy it so much. Still, using children is a form of hot-button emotional manipulation. And to stretch a metaphor, failing to turn up that flame delivers a lukewarm message on a globally incendiary issue. —Posted by David Gianatasio |
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Published on November 6, 2009 | Permalink
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Local business needs your intimate support
The award for most memorable headline of the week goes to the Toronto Association of Business Improvement Areas, whose new ads promise that Toronto businesses treat their neighbors right—up to and including a little chicken-jerking. Ed Pottinger, shown here in his West Indian restaurant, should expect long lines from now on. Via Tabloid Prodigy. |
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Published on October 13, 2009 | Permalink
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Vinta's overgrown parrot is a cracker addict
It's been all chickens in advertising lately, so it's nice to see a parrot for a change. And it's quite an impressive parrot in this humorous Vinta crackers campaign out of Canada. His name's Paul, he's human-size with a human girlfriend, and he's totally addicted to Vintas. (Paully always wants a cracker.) As you can see in the ads (by Zig in Toronto), this causes problems in his relationship, both in the bedroom and at parties. Paul is constantly semi-apologizing for his embarrassing urges, in a stoned drawl that's reminiscent of the wasted Denny's unicorn. The tagline says Vinta is "the cracker that cracker experts go crazy for." —Posted by Tim Nudd |
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Published on October 1, 2009 | Permalink
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Canada's kids facing bleak, sports-less lives
This Taxi spot for Canadian Tire's Jumpstart program takes a bit too long to get off the "sidelines" and make its point. Still, it presents an effective visual metaphor for how kids feel when they don't have the financial means to play organized sports. The kid really does look sad, and I like how the jocks in their snappy uniforms ignore him as they run past at the end. Yeah, he's got a rough road ahead, with more noogies and wedgies than I care to consider. All that's left for him is to read books and build his mind. And that won't get him anywhere in life, now will it? Via Ads of the World. See also: |
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Published on September 8, 2009 | Permalink
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Canadian ads dramatize long reach of AIDS
After seeing these ads, Canadians hopefully won't get their health PSAs confused and stop sleeping with people who have Parkinson's. This effort, with similar limb-filled visuals, is an AIDS-awareness campaign by Bleublancrouge in Montreal. "Each time you sleep with someone, you also sleep with his past," says the text. (The client is Bristol-Meyers Squibb Canada's "One Life" initiative.) Extra limbs: never a good thing, whether you're talking PSA campaigns or cartoon villains. Via Copyranter. —Posted by Tim Nudd |
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Published on August 20, 2009 | Permalink
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Carling ads toast some great beer decisions
"Does this look like a whore's mouth?" That's the best line from a TV commercial so far this year, and it's served up in the ad above—one of several spots in Taxi Canada's winning "Great Beer Decisions" campaign for Molson Carling. The "whore" bit caught me off guard, uttered by a puritanical house-frau berating her balding, henpecked husband, who simply asked if he can have a beer rather than milk while catching the game on TV. In the spot below, the voiceover tags the hero as a "cheap bastard" for paying his pals just one bottle of Carling each for a hernia-popping day of heavy lifting. This type of humor is par for the course in the category, but the quippy scripts, cartoonish performances and self-deprecating attitude shine. The ads are honest enough to admit that beer-driven decisions usually aren't so great, and reveal the decision makers as schlubs just trying to get by. After all, handing the car-keys to someone sober is probably the only truly good "beer decision" anyone could ever make. —Posted by David Gianatasio |
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Published on August 20, 2009 | Permalink
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Low-sodium meals push salt shaker to edge
Poor Salty. In this animated clip from DDB Toronto (directed by David Hicks of Sons and Daughters, and with visual effects by AXYZ), the reduced-sodium Sidekicks entrees from Knorr send the sad salt shaker trudging out into a melodramatic dark and stormy night, unloved. Worst of all, he has to listen to Michael Bolton's version of "How Am I Supposed to Live Without You" for 45 seconds. It's a wonder he doesn't dive off that overpass! Too much sodium can take years to kill a person, but Bolton's overblown delivery could put you in your grave by the second verse. Salty should cheer up. He might get used even more if these Sidekicks meals turn out to be too bland. And if not, Pepper will be keeping him company in the cruel world just as soon as that family decides to cut out the spicy foods. —Posted by David Gianatasio |
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Published on August 18, 2009 | Permalink
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Gary Coleman will augment anyone's reality
I'm not easily surprised, but an "augmented-reality" campaign, starring Gary Coleman, celebrating the 25th anniversary of Canadian french-fry chain New York Fries ... I must admit, I didn't see that coming. Now that I have seen it, I wish I hadn't. We get a Facebook app that plops a tiny 3-D Gary (even tinier than the real Gary, obviously) onto your desktop, where he predicts your future freshness. Uh huh. The full-size version of the ad shown here has the headline, "After 25 years some things are still fresh." There, I must disagree. These days more than ever, Gary rhymes with scary. His outsized image leering down on hapless passersby from projections in Vancouver and Toronto is especially disturbing. Ad agency Zig is to blame. I know Coleman's an icon for some, but I've always been more of a Todd Bridges fan myself. |
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Published on August 13, 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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The healthcare debate can make you sick
Oh good, it's healthcare ad time again. This sure won't
get petty and pedantic in a hurry like it always does. This time our journey
begins with an ad, sponsored by Patients United Now, where Canadian ex-pat
Shona Holmes rails against the government healthcare system that would have
left her to die of a brain tumor had she not come to America for treatment.
"Now," says an ominous narrator, "Washington wants to bring
Canadian-style healthcare to the U.S." If this were true, it would be
awful. Canada is the only industrialized democracy in the world where people
can't seek health insurance outside the government monopoly, even for medically
necessary services. But President Obama's plan has been described as "an
optional, government-run plan to compete with private insurers," and the
total shutout of single-payer advocates is a sign that the only things we're
importing from Canada are oil, beer and the occasional Mark McKinney television
pilot. In any case, the Campaign Media Analysis Group says that $31 million has
already been spent on healthcare advertising this year, with more coming down
the pike. I hope an assisted suicide plan is in the works, because I'll
probably want to kill myself by the time these jackasses are through haranguing
each other. —Posted by David Kiefaber |
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Published on July 14, 2009 | Permalink
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How to pig out, Canadian style
The "typical Canadian family dinner" in this Real Food Movement ad is huge. I had no idea Canadians ate that much. Now I feel better about American portion sizes. The rest of this spot is surprisingly informative, with a level of detail generally missing in softly xenophobic public advisories. The corresponding Web site, EatRealEatLocal, is a hub for regional food awareness efforts and radiates levels of Canadian pride that we hadn't seen before. How they feel about being sponsored by Hellmann's/Best Foods, a multinational company with branches in some of the countries they're complaining about, is, however, left unaddressed. —Posted by David Kiefaber |
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Published on July 9, 2009 | Permalink
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Isn't it just wonderful to wake up Canadian?
Happy Canada Day to our northerly inclined readers. To celebrate, here's an ad that the Canadian government put together this spring to alert non-Canadians that one day (April 17, actually), they might wake up Canadian, too. It's a stirring commercial. Just ignore the excessively long URL at the end, and the confusion over what a forward-slash looks like. |
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Published on July 1, 2009 | Permalink
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Taxi PSA captures nightmare of Parkinson's
The problem with most PSAs about medical conditions is that they rarely convey what it would actually be like for the viewer to struggle with the afflictions they portray. No such problem here, as Taxi vividly illustrates that fighting Parkinson's disease is like fighting against oneself. In this spot for Parkinson Society Canada, crossing a room to answer the phone becomes a surreal and chilling nightmare. The quiet-violent-quiet rhythm of the spot puts the audience all too jarringly in the picture. A companion to the Toronto agency's fine print work for the client, this clip uses sound, motion and editing to memorably drive its point home. And it suggests the current sad logic of Parkinson's: Until there's a cure, when you fight against yourself, you lose. Via Ads of the World. —Posted by David Gianatasio |
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Published on July 1, 2009 | Permalink
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Canada church loses its mind with joints ad
"Does it matter how you achieve your spiritual high?" asks this ad directing users (ha!) to a Web site called WonderCafe.ca, a forum for religious discussion and debate. (See the full ad here.) You'll notice that joints form a cross. The work is from Smith Roberts on behalf of the United Church of Canada. They're Protestants. I knew right away the ad wasn't touting a Catholic venue. From what I recall from Catechism class, sacrilegious shenanigans of this kind would merit a stern lecture and about 10,000 "Hail Marys," though not a ruler across the knuckles. The joints would have to be lit for that. Via Ads of the World. |
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Published on June 19, 2009 | Permalink
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Another ad filmed from the POV of a vagina
Commercials shot from the point of view of the vagina are becoming ever more popular. Last year, we had that Grey Amsterdam spot for GlaxoSmithKline's Lactacyd vaginal cream. Now, Cossette in Vancouver offers up this cinema spot titled "Eye of the Cervix" for the B.C. Cancer Agency and its Cervical Cancer Screening Program. At this rate the vagina will soon be a regular walking-and-talking character in commercials. |
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Published on June 17, 2009 | Permalink
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Steam Whistle ad thinks it can, thinks it can
This Canadian ad for Steam Whistle beer, by Sharpe Blackmore Euro RSCG in Toronto, ties the brew's name and logo into a pretty clever train gag, although I hope different people are opening all those bottles. If it's the same guy, he spends his entire life in bars and people's kitchens, just getting wasted. |
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Published on June 16, 2009 | Permalink
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Attract weird strangers with Gain detergent
"It smells that good" is the tagline on these Canadian print ads from Leo Burnett Toronto for Gain detergent, showing strangers getting awfully close to people who are wearing Gain-laundered clothes. Basic problem: Public sniffing is only enjoyable for the sniffer. It's usually an invasion of privacy for the sniffee. What's worse, the airport, art gallery and subway stations in these ads are so sanitized, lonely and overly bright, it creates a kind of horror-film effect, like the calm right before the crazed slasher claims another victim. This impression is particularly strong in the subway ad. If someone gets that close to you on a train platform, you know you're in for a mugging, some lovin' or a trip headlong into the 6:05 express. Besides, how effective can the ads be if readers have to squint—and perhaps look twice—to get the message? —Posted by David Gianatasio |
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Published on June 10, 2009 | Permalink
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The less said of mime advertising the better
If a mime falls gravely wounded in the kitchen or on the factory floor, would anybody hear? Or care? The answer to first question is no, since mimes are silent. And the likely answer to the second makes one wonder why the Worker Compensation Board of Nova Scotia chose mimes in the first place for its new campaign warning people that keeping quiet about safety issues at the workplace isn't such a good idea. Still, the posters, like the annoying mimes themselves, do demand attention. The mime in the factory ad looks so sad, like he's lost a thumb in one of those packages passing on the conveyor belt. There's also a TV component. "Neck Brace" looks like it was shot in the AdFreak office. We have that kind of fun here every day. I can't wait to see how the agency, Extremegroup in Halifax, translates the campaign to radio. That won't be easy. Via Ads of the World. |
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Published on June 4, 2009 | Permalink
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Canada's a scream in new CTC tourism ads
Canadians want you to know there's more to Canada than Kraft Dinner and unendurably cold winters. And by "you," they don't mean Americans. They mean other Canadians. The Canadian Tourism Commission is sinking $10 million a year over the next two years into the national "Locals Know" tourism campaign, in which Canadians are invited "to seek out new and exotic experiences in places they didn't know existed." The idea is to keep tourism dollars at home instead of feeding the American economy. And it turns out there's a lot to do in Canada. You can scream while out on the town, scream on a surfboard, or scream from what looks like 50 feet in the air. Boating among whales is also an option. —Posted by David Kiefaber |
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Published on June 2, 2009 | Permalink
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