Get naked, say the pervy scrubbing bubbles
What's really inside your household cleaning products? It could be a bunch of dirty-minded chemicals, who are all bright and bubbly and innocent in TV commercials but who indulge in debauchery off camera, hanging around long after cleaning time to watch you give your naked bod a good scrub in the shower. That's the warning in the video below from Droga5 and Method, the maker of environmentally friendly cleaning products. "When did clean become so dirty?" the company asks, and wants you to ask your elected officials. The goal is to require all cleaning products to list their ingredients on their labels, and to keep depraved bubble gangs out of your bathroom. UPDATE: Method has now pulled the video off YouTube after complaints that the spot is sexist.
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Published on November 20, 2009 | Permalink
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U.S. Marine makes intense anti-poverty plea
This nearly five-minute clip by newly formed humanitarian group Nuru International might be the most compelling PSA you'll see this year. It fuses animation and news footage with a story line provided by Jake Harriman, the group's founder and CEO. He's a U.S. Marines Special Ops veteran who saw combat in Iraq and took part in aid missions around the world. A shot of the burning towers on 9/11 shows up early, as Harriman makes the case that desperate people do desperate things, and that eliminating extreme poverty and hopelessness is key to fighting terrorism. That's not a new idea, but it resonates here, in part because the storytelling and pacing are so strong. But Harriman ultimately sells it. The guy's articulate but not slick, compassionate but no bleeding heart. By simply stating what he's experienced and felt, he transforms and elevates his plea from a purely emotional appeal to a credible call to action. In the war on despair, this former soldier's savvy use of media is a potent weapon.
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Published on November 16, 2009 | Permalink
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HBO still taking shots at George W. Bush
The George W. Bush era is thankfully gone, but HBO and Venables, Bell & Partners channel the former president's less-than-lucid vibe and penchant for incoherent phrasing in this banner and billboard push touting the DVD release of the Will Ferrell special You're Welcome, America: A Final Night With George W. Bush. The election-poster-style ads include Bush-inspired slogans like "Never misunderestimate me," "Celebrate the era of strategery" and "Mission still not accomplished." The work's amusing, but the tongue-twisted ex-leader of the free world is such an easy target, attempts at parody are, as the man himself might say, akin to shooting fish in apparel. OK, he probably would've said something worse. He wasn't good with words, though his eight-year record of anti-achievement speaks for itself. |
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Published on November 6, 2009 | Permalink
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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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Nicolas Sarkozy, child star of a detergent ad
Much like two of his wives, it turns out French president Nicolas Sarkozy is a former model. He's shown here in a Bonux detergent ad, which has just surfaced. The ad is from 1967. Sarkozy was 12 then, but it's assumed the photograph was taken well before publication. Bonux was apparently the Cracker Jacks of detergents, so it made sense to put a child in the ads. Sarkozy's father, Pal Sarkozy de Nagy Bocsa, worked as an illustrator for Bonux at the time. His side gig was making young Nicolas feel like a complete loser. But while a bit embarrassing for the president, this glimpse into his past suggests future work for him once he leaves office. He could recreate that very picture as an adult for Airbus. —Posted by David Kiefaber Previously on AdFreak: |
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Published on November 3, 2009 | Permalink
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BBH staffer's Mrs. O blog, now in book form
Everyone in the ad industry loves stories where agencies do things for themselves rather than clients. The success of these projects can be debated. See Honeyshed. Now, BBH New York is celebrating the fruits of its labor with the release of Mrs. O: The Face of Fashion Democracy, a companion book to the Mrs. O blog that BBH account planner Mary Tomer started last fall to celebrate the style of Michelle Obama. The blog has remained popular. According to Quantcast, it gets about 27,000 visitors a month. Brain Pickings has an interview with Tomer. —Posted by Brian Morrissey |
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Published on October 28, 2009 | Permalink
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Heather Graham is hot, limber public option
Let's break down MoveOn's "Track Meet" commercial. Healthcare providers and insurance companies: bloated, bad. Public option, personified by Heather Graham: limber, good. Healthcare competition: good, because it would give consumers more choice, drive down rates and keep MoveOn from producing more ads. Heather Graham's acting career: fading fast. Apple pie: tastes good, but while quintessentially American, no healthier than the greasy fast food eaten by the people representing the insurance companies in this commercial. (That said, it'd be dumb to say, "Competition is as American as salad.") Peter Coyote's voiceover: authoritative but kinda preachy. Sounds annoyingly like Sam Waterston in the TD Ameritrade ads. TD Ameritrade: I dunno ... bad? Previously on AdFreak: |
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Published on October 26, 2009 | Permalink
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New ads turn healthcare into a gender issue
The non-profits are duking it out over healthcare, with new campaigns practically every week. Now, the National Women's Law Center has joined the fray with a bold ad from New York agency The Concept Farm that reframes the debate as a gender issue. The tagline, "Being a woman is not a pre-existing condition," pretty much sums it up. But in case you missed the point, there are some nice shots of a domestic-violence victim and a cesarean scar. Apparently, women can also be rejected by insurance companies if they're pregnant or were raped. The NWLC says 25-year-old women have been charged as much as 84 percent more than their male counterparts for health plans that don't even offer maternity coverage … all things I honestly didn't know until I saw the ad. With the mild uproar over last week's suggestion by Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz., moron) that as a man he shouldn't have to pay for a plan that covers maternity care, NWLC's little campaign is getting extra press—and will no doubt spawn more campaigns as other women's non-profits rally around the call. And around Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), who pointed out to Senator Kyl that while he may not need maternity insurance now, his mom probably did. Oh snap, here's one right now from the DNC. |
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Published on October 23, 2009 | Permalink
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Ireland shows a gay-marriage ad done right
Commercials in support of gay marriage are everywhere these days. Lots of them are less than impressive. Here's one of the better ones, from Ireland, showing a straight man who's faced with quite a task in trying to secure his girlfriend's hand in marriage. Via Osocio. UPDATE: Well, well. As The Dog & Pony Show points out, the Irish ad looks like a cloned copy of the spot below, from the U.S. The earlier ad is listed in Advertolog's archive as a 2005 spot by Publicis in New York for MTV. —Posted by Tim Nudd
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Published on October 19, 2009 | Permalink
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New FTC rules screw Jared, Bowflex granny
The long-awaited FTC guidelines concerning the "use of endorsements and testimonials in advertising" were posted today, and they're sure to get lots of buzz for their first-ever rules for bloggers, including mandatory disclosure of paid reviews. But the real game-changer may be the crackdown on the use of "Results not typical" disclaimers in advertising, a loophole that's enabled decades of preposterous claims such as, "I lost 50 pounds in a week!" and "I made $100,000 in my first month!" Here's how the FTC summarizes the change: "In contrast to the 1980 version of the guides—which allowed advertisers to describe unusual results in a testimonial as long as they included a disclaimer such as 'Results not typical'—the revised guides no longer contain this safe harbor." While this could represent a much-deserved kick to the crotch of late-night snake-oil salesmen, it also seems to be bad news for mainstream brands like Bowflex and Subway, whose success stories (hot granny and Jared, respectively) center on rare cases of extreme willpower. Sounds like they might have to try out some new copy, like, "Bowflex. You'll burn dozens of calories hauling it from your closet to your yard sale!" |
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Published on October 5, 2009 | Permalink
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Amnesty's noise keeps evildoers up at night
Amnesty International plays the annoying neighbor to Muammar Ghaddafi, Kim Jong-il and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in this French ad showing the rogue leaders being kept awake by music blaring outside their residences in the middle of the night. The spot, by ad agency Rapp, promotes Amnesty Nights, a four-day festival across France from Oct. 22-25, benefiting the human-rights group. The ad is meant to be metaphorical—Amnesty itself, not loud music, is supposedly what keeps these leaders awake at night. Though of course, actually blasting loud music at political villains has been known to work in the past. —Posted by Tim Nudd Previously on AdFreak: |
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Published on October 5, 2009 | Permalink
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Will Ferrell ad mock-defends health insurers
Here's the latest commercial parody from Funny or Die—a video that pleads for help for insurance-company executives, the forgotten voices in the healthcare debate. Will Ferrell stars (and produced the ad with MoveOn.org), along with various vaguely recognizable actors, including Jon Hamm and Olivia Wilde. "Insurance companies are detail-oriented enough to deny claims for things like typos," Ferrell says. "If you spell something wrong, do you really deserve surgery? I don't think so." |
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Published on September 23, 2009 | Permalink
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Avaaz.org stirs the pot again with latest ads
Avaaz.org gets provocative and goofy all at once with its new ads, which feature Dick Cheney, Barack Obama and Osama bin Laden. The Cheney ad wonders if the former vice president is "Al Qaeda's best recruiter." Obama, looking presidential, naturally, is quoted from his inaugurual address. And bin Laden idiotically dons an "I love Guantanamo" T-shirt. The mission, according to Avaaz: "Close Guantanamo. End to torture. Investigate all abuses." This group always aims to incite (as opposed to lending "insight," some might say), but I suppose a sharp edge is required to slice through the clutter these days. Is it just me, or does the issue seem weirdly dated, a vestige of the George Bush era already lapsing into history? I had kind of thought Guantanamo was already closed. All the more reason for campaigns like this, I guess, lest we perpetuate mistakes that aren't yet "history."
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Published on September 18, 2009 | Permalink
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Let the Wilson v. Miller campaign ads begin
In light of Rep. Joe Wilson's heckling of President Obama last night, and the subsequent flood of campaign donations to his electoral opponent from last fall, Rob Miller, it looks like the first congressional campaign of 2010 is under way. Wilson, a Republican, defeated Miller, a Democrat, last November for the 2nd congressional district seat in South Carolina, but Miller is reportedly jonesing for a rematch—all the more so now, presumably. Here are a couple of their campaign commercials from their tussle last fall. In Wilson's spot, above, the voiceover complains: "Rob Miller is running a shameful campaign, attacking Joe Wilson. Miller doesn't share our values." One of Miller's spots is below. |
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Published on September 10, 2009 | Permalink
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Angela Merkel underwear ad roils Germany
This billboard featuring German chancellor Angela Merkel in her underwear is causing a fuss in Berlin's premier shopping district. In and of itself, the image is pretty tame. (Those are other German political figures in the background.) Weirder things have happened in Germany, and it's not like Merkel is unaccustomed to showing off the goods. It's the ad's message that's off-putting. It promotes an underwear exchange program. In an effort to replicate the success of "cash-for-clunkers" car ads, the campaign offers Germans who trade in their old underpants a €5 discount on a new pair. Which is just gross. "The country needs new undies," is the slogan. |
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Published on May 4, 2009 | Permalink
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Miss California anti-gay-marriage ad debuts
Ya know, there was a time when you could depend on religious zealots to deliver hateful, blustery dogmatism. But this new breed just doesn't have the same fire. Case in point: Miss California's new anti-gay-marriage ad for the National Organization for Marriage. The title of the commercial is "No Offense," which begs the question of how NOM thinks that's going to get across the message that gays are immoral and disgusting. At least its earlier "Gathering Storm" spot showed a healthy amount of fear-mongering. That they're strapping a glorified swimsuit model to the front of their movement is apt, because evidently they're as clueless as she is. —Posted by David Kiefaber |
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Published on May 1, 2009 | Permalink
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Zimbabwe ads printed on trillion-dollar bills
The Zimbabwean, a newspaper written by Zimbabwean journalists in exile, is running an ad campaign in South Africa courtesy of TBWA Hunt Lascaris that uses the most pointed substrate in history: thousands of worthless Zimbabwean bank notes. With inflation so out of control that a trillion-dollar banknote can't even buy a loaf of bread, TBWA came up with the genius idea of plastering them across billboards and posters, offering free tear-away trillions with information on The Zimbabwean. Headlines like, "It's cheaper to print this on money than paper," "Thanks to Mugabe, this money is now wallpaper" and "Fight the regime that has crippled a country" are screened onto the bills, which were also sent via direct mail to South Africa's top corporate executives. It's a bold statement to the Zimbabwean government, which has already put a 55 percent "luxury" tax on the newspaper, and was most likely behind last year's torching of a Zimbabwean delivery truck. Check out paper's Flickr stream for full coverage of the Trillion Dollar Campaign. Via Boing Boing. —Posted by Rebecca Cullers |
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Published on April 14, 2009 | Permalink
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Anti-gay testimonials were faked. Shocking!
The National Organization for Marriage is apparently spending $1.5 million to air this anti-gay-marriage ad, but some of that money was probably used to hire actors. Yes, a testimonial from "real people" on the TV box turned out to be fake. We know, we're shocked and appalled, too! Are viewers really so gullible—do they have such faith in televised testimonials—that they really believe people who oppose gay marriage are somehow more "real" than those who support it? These same viewers are probably Slimsuiting themselves thin as we speak! |
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Published on April 10, 2009 | Permalink
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Will adland be the next industry bailed out?
It seems like every time we turn around, the government is bailing out somebody else. The automakers, the mortgage brokers, the big-spending insurance companies, Wall Street. Why not Madison Avenue? That's the idea put forth by former AOL exec Bob Pittman in Fortune. The rationale is straightforward if a little self-serving, as he's got a stake in publishers that would gladly take those extra ad dollars. The stimulus package is designed to get people spending again, so what better way to stimulate consumption than running some heavy-duty ad campaigns? "There's a reason that America is the largest consumer market in the world: It also happens to be the largest advertising market in the world," Pittman writes. "Advertising works—and it has been proven again and again for over a century." I can't imagine that the idea of taxpayers paying for lavish shoots in Australia and talking-animal commercials would go over too well in the Heartland. Photo: DavidDMuir on Flickr. |
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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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Ashley Judd shoots Sarah Palin from the air
Voters wisely kept Sarah Palin out of the White House, or wherever it is the vice president works. But Alaska's wacky gun-toting governor is still grabbing headlines. Now, she's in a catfight with Ashley Judd (I wish), who chides John McCain's former running mate in this Defenders of Wildlife video for supporting the aerial killing of wolves from helicopters. "It's time to stop Sarah Palin and stop this senseless savagery," the actress says. Palin has countered that the practice helps keep local wildlife populations under control. I'm thinking it's also probably good to shoot from the air because wolves can't fly. Yet. And if they ever learn how, we'll really have something to worry about. Bottom line: Palin and Judd are both hot, but neither should be trusted with firearms. |
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Published on February 5, 2009 | Permalink
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Green groups air clean coal's dirty secrets
Some environmental groups have teamed up as the Reality Coalition to set the record straight about "clean" coal. Echoing a recent New York Times op-ed by Al Gore, a new TV, print and online campaign claims there is no such thing as clean coal. The spot above, from Crispin Porter + Bogusky, gives viewers a tour of a "state-of-the-art clean-coal facility." (It's non-existent.) The tone is sarcastic and injects some humor in an otherwise serious subject. But the timing feels a bit late. This campaign is an interesting counterpoint to the endless messages from the American Coalition for Clean Coal that we heard on CNN before the election. The Reality Coalition is a comprised of the Alliance for Climate Protection, League of Conservation Voters, Natural Resources Defense Council, National Wildlife Federation and the Sierra Club. —Posted by Eleftheria Parpis |
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Published on December 10, 2008 | Permalink
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Good losers give their thanks to Sarah Palin
This goofy ad from OurCountryPac thanking Sarah Palin for her efforts during election season almost play like parody misfires on Saturday Night Live. Sadly, it's for real, and will apparently be running on network TV during Thanksgiving week. The Democrats are probably even more thankful that Palin was on the GOP ticket. Commentators (myself included) thank her for being her kooky bad self and generating lots of copy. Our loss is Alaska's gain. No moose is safe from the governor's twin-barreled attack and Bowie knife, at least until 2012. |
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Published on November 24, 2008 | Permalink
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Obama also dealing with load of ad appeals
Brandweek notes that a week after the election, advertisers continue to run ads that speak directly to Barack Obama. In The New York Times, the ACLU reminds the president-elect of a humanitarian pledge and bids him to "restore America's moral leadership in the world." At the opposite end of the spectrum, Pedigree in USA Today touts DogsRule.com and says, "We'd love to help you fulfill your first campaign promise" to buy a dog now that the race is over. (See a larger version here.) There was no such phenomenon when Bill Clinton or George W. Bush took office—it's hard to imagine the latter reading a newspaper, and the former probably focusing on the entre nous section in the back. These Obama ads underscore the level of personal investment that individuals, groups and corporations feel they have in Obama's election. The true test, of course, will come as soon as Obama makes a few unpopular decisions. That's when we'll learn how strong these connections forged during the run-up to the White House truly are, and if the incoming administration's view of media is as social as it now appears. —Posted by David Gianatasio |
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Published on November 11, 2008 | Permalink
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Watch the music videos, and then go voteHere's some musical accompaniment to enjoy on Election Day: the classic pro-Obama video "Yes We Can," by will.i.am of The Black Eyed Peas, and a rollicking new music video titled "The Mac Is Back," just released yesterday by the McCain campaign. |
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Published on November 4, 2008 | Permalink
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