IBM ad likes the job Mike Bloomberg's done
As if Michael Bloomberg didn't spend enough of his own money trying to win re-election as mayor of New York City, IBM's ad budget seems to have given him a further boost. This new spot in IBM's "Smarter Planet" series opens with a voice saying that "crime in New York City has dropped 27 percent since 2001." Viewers who vote in that city who saw the ad in recent weeks might have assumed at first that it was yet another Bloomberg commercial. As it becomes clear that this encomium to the city's declining crime rate is coming from a disinterested source, it's probably all the more potent as a seeming endorsement of the mayor's stewardship, at least where crime rates are concerned. One more reason to think Bloomberg's opponent in the election, William Thompson, just hasn't caught a break. —Posted by Mark Dolliver |
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Published on November 3, 2009 | Permalink
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Sleevie helps you look great ... and do good
This week's honors for best fictitious brand go to the Sleevie, a garment whose capacious sleeves make it easier to expose your arm and thus donate blood. Looking like something an especially fashion-challenged Franciscan monk might wear, it's presented in a bogus infomercial by Austin, Texas, agency Door Number 3. "You want to donate blood, but rolling up you sleeves can be a real pain," says a voiceover, as we're shown the Sleevie as the solution to this age-old problem. The non-bogus idea here is to drum up blood donations to the Blood Center of Central Texas. —Posted by Mark Dolliver Previously on AdFreak: |
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Published on October 16, 2009 | Permalink
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Peter Graves still loves his Turkish prisonsHonors this week for oddest Web-address redirect go to an online campaign by Cramer-Krasselt for AirTran airlines. In one of several roundabout allusions to his long-ago role as a pedophilic pilot in Airplane!, actor Peter Graves mentions "TurkishPrisons.com" as a site people spend time on now that the Internet has made them more productive. Typing in that Web address, with some trepidation, Adfreak found itself quickly re-routed to an AirTran site. The point of the campaign is to emphasize that AirTran offers in-flight WiFi service. Whether they care about that or not, viewers who recall the Airplane! movies (with their parodies of the previous decade's disaster-movie genre) will want to check out the campaign just for the pleasure of hearing Graves intone the phrase "gladiator movies" again. |
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Published on July 23, 2009 | Permalink
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Sultry French maids go on tour for Hardee's
Just when relations between France and the U.S. were showing signs of improvement, along comes this promotional campaign for the new Hardee's French Dip Thickburger. If a cross-country tour by four "Hardee's French Maids" (slogan: "French Me") doesn't rub France the wrong way, Hardee's is also offering instruction in French pick-up lines. —Posted by Mark Dolliver |
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Published on July 16, 2009 | Permalink
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Appalachian Trail last refuge of a scoundrel
It's not uncommon for a brand to find itself tied into a scandal in the role of innocent bystander. The Appalachian Trail is a current case in point. Since yesterday, the news has been full of the fact that South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford was not hiking the trail (as he had claimed he'd be doing) but instead straying from the straight and narrow—all the way to Argentina and his extramarital lover. Under the circumstances, it seems inevitable that "I'm going off to hike the Appalachian Trail" will become a popular euphemism for "I'm having an affair with someone in Buenos Aires." Then again, if this is a misfortune for the image of the trail, it might help promote tourism to Argentina. —Posted by Mark Dolliver |
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Published on June 25, 2009 | Permalink
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Would you take a vacation with Kelly Ripa?
Despite their stratospheric approval ratings, the Obamas lagged behind Kelly Ripa, of all people, in one bit of recent voting. An Ipsos Public Affairs poll asked adults to say whom of the following they'd choose to share a vacation rental home with them: Ripa, the Obamas, the Jolie-Pitt family, Oprah Winfrey, Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert. Ripa came in first, with 26 percent of the vote. The Obamas ran second (19 percent), followed by the Jolie-Pitts and Winfrey (16 percent apiece), while Stewart (13 percent) and Colbert (10 percent) were farther behind. And whom would respondents want as their celebrity chef while vacationing? Rachael Ray was the top vote-getter here (32 percent), followed by Paula Deen (27 percent), Wolfgang Puck (15 percent) and Gordon Ramsay (13 percent). Despite his visibility on the Top Chef show, Tom Colicchio finished in a last-place tie with Masaharu Morimoto (6 percent each). Maybe if he brought Padma Lakshmi along as sous chef ... —Posted by Mark Dolliver |
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Published on May 26, 2009 | Permalink
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Bojangles cooks up baggage-carousel oven
Is a new ploy for Bojangles restaurants a) clever or b) too clever by half? Its agency, Eric Mower and Associates, hit upon the idea of turning a baggage carousel at the airport in Charlotte, N.C. (where Bojangles is headquartered and the agency has an office), into a moving, 3-D ad for the restaurant chain. Thanks to some artfully placed artwork, fresh biscuits seem to be streaming out of a large oven. The idea is that this will whet the appetites of hungry travelers for Bojangles' "Famous Chicken 'n Biscuits." As well it might. The downside is that the biscuit decals will be most visible when there isn't luggage on top of them—i.e., when the people tend to be feeling impatient, if not downright irritable, as they wait for their baggage to emerge. And of course, they'll be obscured when the suitcases and whatnot start coming out, at which point people's mood is apt to improve. Ingenious though the effort may be, are these the kinds of psychological connections a brand would want to make? —Posted by Mark Dolliver |
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Published on May 15, 2009 | Permalink
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SNY ad honors Keith Hernandez's mustache
Fans of Keith Hernandez—and, especially, fans of his mustache—will enjoy this new commercial from Ogilvy & Mather promoting the cable-sports network SNY, on which the former first-baseman is one of the announcers for New York Mets games. In the spot, Hernandez is signing autographs at a sports-gear store, and pretty much everyone in the place has donned a fake 'stache as a sign of respect, or something. If it seems extravagant to build a commercial around the guy's mustache, it's less elaborate than handing out 20,000 free fake mustaches to people who come to the ballpark—which, according to an old blog item on the SNY Web site, is what the network did a couple of years ago at Shea Stadium to celebrate the fact that Hernandez had won "Top Sports Mustache of All Time" honors from the American Mustache Institute. (In case you're not familiar with its work, the institute is dedicated to "protecting the rights of, and fighting discrimination against, mustached Americans by promoting the growth, care and culture of the mustache.") In the unlikely event that Keith ever shaves off his mustache, New Yorkers can mess with his mind by pretending that he never had one in the first place, thus recapitulating the premise of a weird French movie from a couple years ago called La Moustache. —Posted by Mark Dolliver |
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Published on April 30, 2009 | Permalink
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Seattle Mariners live up to new ads, for now
With the Seattle Mariners perched atop the standings in the American League West—a phenomenon unlikely to persist for long, if the team's showing last year is any indication—this would be a propitious time to check out the franchise's 2009 TV commercials. Fans have been invited to vote to pick their favorite spot. Ad-agency types might take the opportunity to vote for anything other than the execution in which the "creative force" behind years of Mariners commercials turns out to be a chimp. For baseball fans, it's worth it just to get a glimpse of Jay Buhner's shiny bald head again. As it has done for years (with or without simians), Copacino+Fujikado of Seattle created the campaign. —Posted by Mark Dolliver |
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Published on April 17, 2009 | Permalink
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D.C. United kicks Fairfield hotels up a notch
Pro soccer players kicking a ball around in a place where they shouldn't really be doing so? That's what we find in this amiable video created by Marriott's PR folks to promote its Fairfield Inn & Suites brand. (It kicks off, so to speak, an integrated campaign that agency mcgarrybowen has created around the brand's "Staying is believing" theme.) Ben Olsen and some D.C. United teammates seem to be having fun as they play an impromptu game in a Marriott lobby. The downside, of course, is that there's already a legendary commercial in which big-time soccer players kick a ball around in an unusual venue: the one featuring stars of the Brazilian national team at an airport, on behalf of Nike in 1998. A new video can't help but invite comparison with the earlier one. And with all due respect to Marriott's effort, which is perfectly pleasant, D.C. United against Brazil isn't much of a contest. But the new video does end with a nice flourish as it offers this disclaimer: "We are professional soccer players. Don't even think about trying this inside a Fairfield Inn & Suites." OK, consider it not done. |
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Published on April 3, 2009 | Permalink
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Mom gives birth to teen in new anti-drug ad
The target audience for this new spot from the Partnership for a Drug-Free America isn't drug-using teens. It's the mothers of teens who might tumble into that category. It's aimed at persuading moms that they're strongly influential on their kids (appearances to the contrary notwithstanding) and should make good use of that power. Still, if a kid happens to see this oddball commercial while under the influence of some illicit substance, he may imagine he's having a "bad trip" (if that's what it's still called) and decide to clean up his act forthwith. The sight of a woman giving birth to a full-fledged teenager is, after all, a bit unsettling. Almost as unsettling as the sight of a cow giving birth to a hipster. Martin/Williams of Minneapolis created the spot. |
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Published on April 2, 2009 | Permalink
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Dell plays fashion accessory in Enfatico ads
In these times of austerity, people are skimping on fashion apparel. All the more reason, then, to buy a computer that can multitask and fill this role in addition to, you know, computing. A campaign by Enfatico certainly gives Dell's Adamo laptop the full fashion treatment. (The Web site adopts the manner of a runway show.) Looking at the larger ad from which this image was taken, you should be grateful to Enfatico for clueing you in that bell-bottoms have made a comeback—with cuffs, no less! |
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Published on March 30, 2009 | Permalink
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Benjamin Moore has every color you'd want
In a famous scene in Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, the Myrna Loy character gives the painter elaborately detailed instructions about the color she wants for each room—for instance, an apple red that's "somewhere between a healthy Winesap and an unripened Jonathan." New ads for Benjamin Moore's youngish-and-hippish Ben line of paints (via Cramer-Krasselt in New York) channel that spirit. See the full version of this ad here. Do your lips really turn a more vivid purple if you go outside in December with wet hair rather than dry hair? Sounds like material for a science-fair experiment. —Posted by Mark Dolliver |
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Published on March 20, 2009 | Permalink
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More exposure not helping Limbaugh brand
Good thing Rush Limbaugh isn't running for office—not even for chairman of the Republican National Committee, notwithstanding recent White House efforts to cast him in the role of that party's leader. In an Ipsos/McClatchy poll released this week, a non-landslide 11 percent of respondents expressed a "very favorable" opinion of Limbaugh, with another 19 percent "somewhat favorable." Nearly half the respondents offered an opinion that was either "somewhat unfavorable" (13 percent) or "very unfavorable" (33 percent). One is inclined to envy the 21 percent who didn't feel in a position to offer an opinion one way or another. In addition to not running for office, Limbaugh probably shouldn't quit his day job to become a polling analyst, either. His own Web site offers a transcript of a broadcast in which he characterizes the survey as having determined that "about a third of the American people have a highly favorable opinion of me." The Democratic National Committee, meanwhile, will try to remind Limbaugh of the unfavorable tally by putting up the billboard shown here in his home base of Palm Beach County, Fla. It's the result of a DNC contest spurred by Limbaugh's comments that he hopes President Obama fails. —Posted by Mark Dolliver |
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Published on March 13, 2009 | Permalink
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Virgin Mobile in front row for Britney's tour
Yes, we know it makes one a bit queasy to see the word "mother," or for that matter, the word "virgin," in close proximity to the name "Britney Spears." Our alarm at seeing this threesome in the headline of a press release was allayed, however, when we read on to learn that Virgin Mobile USA had enlisted creative agency Mother New York to help get mileage out of the brand's sponsorship of the 2009 Britney Spears Circus Tour. As the photo here shows, one feature of the campaign (which coincides with the launch of Virgin Mobile's Helio Ocean 2 multimedia device) is an opportunity to win a seat upgrade at one of the shows by dint of speedy texting. See a larger image here. Best of luck to one and all! —Posted by Mark Dolliver |
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Published on March 6, 2009 | Permalink
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Anti-coal group rolls out its poster child
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Published on February 19, 2009 | Permalink
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Callaway giving golf a little bit of basketball
What's with golf these days? Once the world's most buttoned-up sport, it is now flirting with serious weirdness. Earlier we had Doug deGrood's golf rap video. The latest example comes in this teaser ad for a Callaway driver, via San Francisco agency Eleven Inc. Didn't golf courses used to have rules about flagrant tattoo-display? Traditionalists will be tempted to offer a tactful referral to all concerned. For better or worse, though, one suspects the ad is in sync with the sensibility of young men who wish to win some status points by displaying high-end gear out on the links. |
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Published on February 17, 2009 | Permalink
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Doug deGrood has crazy golf hip-hop skills
If you're an aficionado of golf-related hip-hop (and who among us is not?), you'll want to check out this video Doug deGrood (of Minneapolis agency Gabriel deGrood Bendt) created in an effort to win some on-the-links time with Michael Jordan at the site of this year's U.S. Open. Whatever else you'd say about such an effort, it is not par for the course. —Posted by Mark Dolliver |
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Published on February 6, 2009 | Permalink
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Yes, there's a football game on Sunday, too
Who will Americans be rooting for to win the big game on Sunday? The answer may depend on whether they're real football fans. Among the public in general, a USA Today/Gallup poll finds respondents split almost evenly, with 31 percent preferring the Cardinals, 29 percent the Steelers and the rest indifferent. Among people who identified themselves as pro-football fans, though, the Cardinals beat the Steelers by three field goals (44 percent to 35 percent, with the rest not having a preference). If the Cardinals get creamed, as many people expect, does this mean disappointed football fans will tune out early? Advertisers who bought time late in the game will certainly hope not. —Posted by Mark Dolliver |
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Published on January 30, 2009 | Permalink
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Who'll win the game of endorsement deals?
Which of Super Sunday's players are likely to end up sought after by marketers for endorsement deals? Noting that much depends on how the game itself goes, a bulletin from Dave Brown Talent (which toils in the endorsement field) points to some plausible candidates, even while conceding no player on either sideline figures to reach Peyton Manning status as an endorser. Among players on the favored Steelers, quarterback Ben Roethlisberger and safety Troy Polamalu are singled out (the latter has already done that Coke Zero spot for the game), with wide receiver Hines Ward and running back Willie Parker also mentioned as possibilities. Of the Cardinals, quarterback Kurt Warner and wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald are obvious endorsement-deal candidates, with wide receiver Anquan Boldin and running back Edgerrin James also in the mix. The talent firm cautions, though, that a great performance on the field doesn't necessarily translate into success as an endorser—a point it illustrates by pointing to Dexter Jackson, who won the MVP award as a Tampa Bay Buccaneer in the 2003 Super Bowl but made little impact in the marketing realm. —Posted by Mark Dolliver |
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Published on January 29, 2009 | Permalink
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Show those banker dolls how angry you are
Given the amount of stress Americans are enduring these days, it ought to be a boom time for the "stress dolls" you squeeze to regain your equilibrium. CreativeFeed, a boutique agency with offices in New York and San Francisco, is betting that's the case as it launches a line of "Squeeze the Banker" dolls in the guise of former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan, current Fed chairman Ben Bernanke and former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. The agency notes that a percentage of the revenues (assuming there are revenues) will go to a charity, Modest Needs, which assists low-income workers. —Posted by Mark Dolliver |
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Published on January 22, 2009 | Permalink
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A good knock-knock joke will carry the day
If you believe that knock-knock jokes are one of humor's high points—right up there, say, with "man walks into a bar" jokes—this new ad for a gourmet-meals-delivery service will be to your taste. ML Rogers of New York created the ad for nu-kitchen. See a larger version here. The ad's reference to "forbidden rice" will intrigue some readers. Here's a definition for you proles who aren't familiar with the stuff, via one of the 25,000-plus hits that a Google search for "forbidden rice" will yield. |
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Published on January 20, 2009 | Permalink
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Obama fever reaches minor-league baseball
Getting elected president is nice, of course. But having a bobblehead doll of your likeness handed out at a ballpark? Now that's something! —Posted by Mark Dolliver |
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Published on January 14, 2009 | Permalink
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Red Sox fans feel the beat in dead of winter
If you feel the conjunction of music and baseball should be confined to ballpark organists playing cheery standards, this isn't the event for you. But others will relish the opportunity to mingle at a Boston hot spot (if that's not a contradiction in terms) with the likes of Red Sox front-office wunderkind Theo Epstein and veteran baseball journalist Peter Gammons, as various bands wail away. The event is the ninth in a series of annual fundraising concerts under the catchy rubric Hot Stove Cool Music. Boston-area agency Allen & Gerritsen created the campaign for this year's edition. —Posted by Mark Dolliver |
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Published on January 8, 2009 | Permalink
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'Tis the season for those weird bowl names
With the college-football bowl season getting into full swing, we're entering the time of year when corporate sponsorship yields some of its oddest names. Some are odd in a merely clunky way—for instance, the San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl. Some are vaguely slapstick, like the Chick-fil-A Bowl. Others sound cheesy, like the AutoZone Liberty Bowl—or, in the case of the Papajohns.com Bowl, extra-cheesy. Then there are the puzzling ones, like the Insight Bowl, which will pit Kansas against Minnesota at Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe, Ariz. (Rather pathetically, it shares a Web site with the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl—which, of course, makes one think of a Fiestaware bowl into which a bag of Tostitos chips has been poured.) The Insight Bowl sounds as though it ought to be something like the old GE College Bowl quiz show, with students from different schools competing to see who can make the most apposite remarks on the issues of the day. Still, even the Insight Bowl's moniker (which comes from a technology vendor that modestly goes by the name of Insight) can't match the sheer weirdness of the Roady's Humanitarian Bowl, which pairs "Humanitarian" with the name of a chain of truck stops. One pities the poor archaeologist who, some millennium in the future, unearths a football with this bowl game's name stamped on it and has to try to figure out what it could possibly mean. —Posted by Mark Dolliver |
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Published on December 23, 2008 | Permalink
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