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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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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Taxi's new MoMA ad takes closer look at art
Taxi put together this new commercial, about looking at art, for the Museum of Modern Art in New York. At first, a sculpture from 1913 seems remote to the museum-goer, but soon he realizes the jumble of metal speaks to today's crises, both personal and global. The actor in the short film is Meryl Streep's son, Henry Gummer, and the museum guide is voiced by Streep's sister-in-law, Maeve Kincaid. Via @ironicsans. UPDATE:
The press release, which just arrived, has more details: " 'I See'
shows a young man, played by actor Henry Wolfe Gummer, listening to an
audio description as he stands in MoMA's galleries viewing Symphony
Number 1, a 1913 sculpture by Russian artist Vladimir Baranoff-Rossiné.
He listens as the narration becomes more intimate, involving him
emotionally and intellectually, and flashes back to events of his
everyday life. The film seeks to communicate to viewers the personal
rewards of looking at art using their own experience and worldview as a
lens." The ad was written by Paul Lavoie of Taxi. The music
was composed and performed by Gummer, who is also a musician. |
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Published on May 12, 2009 | Permalink
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Taxi turns over every rock for new business
Taxi New York sent me a tweaked version of Asteroids. It's part of the shop's new business-solicitation effort. According to the agency: "Players' scores are tracked, and the leading participant receives Taxi's services at no charge on the project of his or her choice." One assumes the services in question would yield zippier fare than this self-promotion, which is a bit too much like the '80s arcade game—both boring and addictive—for my taste. Takes me back to those days at the mall, of staring into a video screen for hours on end until my vision blurred and my hands cramped up. That's exactly I how I spend my workdays as an adult, come to think of it. Same as it ever was. Thanks for that dose of melancholy self-realization, Taxi. |
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Published on April 23, 2009 | Permalink
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Canadian Tire has power over the seasons
There's a decent payoff at the end of this initially perplexing Taxi spot for Canadian Tire, but I'm not sure viewers will hang in for it, if only because that "Summer Breeze" song sucks so damn much! This is actually a fairly cerebral and well-executed concept, the type of commercial Philip K. Dick would've created if he had been a copywriter. PKD was, however, not an ad scribe but a mind-bending novelist whose works inspired Blade Runner, Total Recall and Minority Report. Indeed, such mind games are probably best suited to films and books, as they require more attention to detail than the average consumer normally gives to a 30-second commercial. That cloying soundtrack alone will drive most viewers screaming from the room. And, perhaps needless to say, the lifeless "For days when seeing is believing" line lacks any sort of literary merit. —Posted by David Gianatasio |
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Published on November 26, 2008 | Permalink
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Taxi yanks at the heartstrings in OLPC spot
I'd just begun to recover from Taxi's Motrin debacle when the agency's new One Laptop per Child campaign hit me square in the face. This unrepentant tear-jerker morphs into an eye-roller long before 7-year-old Zimi gets through her overwrought tale of woe. "I come from a place you've never heard of. A country you cannot pronounce. A continent you'd rather forget." Twelve seconds in, I thoroughly hated myself. But it gets worse. You see images of shantytowns and poverty, plus a heart-rending promise that a laptop will help change this adorable kid's world through education and self-empowerment. Make it stop! I'm a rich, pampered American, I'm so sorry! The Barbarian Group created this Amazon storefront to facilitate sales. It's a "give one, get one" deal, but Zimi can have both of mine if it makes the guilt go away. I'll even throw in a Zune! |
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Published on November 19, 2008 | Permalink
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Motrin targets moms but shoots self in foot
If you're going to launch an online ad on a Saturday and spark outrage among your target audience, you might want to plan to work the weekend. Motrin caused the aforementioned fuss with an ad aimed at moms who practice "baby wearing," the fine art of carrying your kid in a sling or backpack. The spot comes off sounding pretty insulting to these moms, whom it implies are treating their babies like fashion accessories. When mom bloggers got wind of the spot, they started a tidal wave of criticism, flooding Twitter with thousands of angry comments about Motrin. (Here's a video compilation of some of the irate feedback.) Assuming the ad was the work of Motrin agency Taxi New York, a blogger contacted the agency's director of corporate communications, who was reportedly unaware of the online firestorm. Social media professionals were quick to point out that there's no good excuse these days for failing to notice that your new ad went over like a fart in church. "Motrin apparently did little to no monitoring of their intended audience before or during the Twitterstorm," writes new-media maven Mack Collier, "which is still baffling to me in this day and age of free and easy tools to let you do just that." UPDATE: Motrin has now apologized in a message on its homepage. —Posted by David Griner |
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Published on November 17, 2008 | Permalink
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Google might (and should) advertise in U.S.
Despite being a global juggernaut roughly the size of Unicron, Google has long eschewed advertising in favor of word-of-mouth and PR. Now, the tech giant is rethinking its piddling $20 million annual ad budget and might soon hire an ad agency. According to The Wall Street Journal, Google is looking at Wieden + Kennedy and Taxi, among others. In recent months, Wieden has been running an ad campaign for Google in Japan, largely targeting rail commuters. Check out a gallery of the executions here. While I can't read the Japanese text, it's easy to tell that each ad focuses on the wide range of Google products that many casual Web users aren't aware of. I'd imagine Google faces the same knowledge gap here in the States and over in Europe. How many people even know about Google Scholar, Google Audio Indexing or Google Health? With so many companies struggling to create a brand image that will help sell their products, Google's biggest challenge is telling you how much they're already giving you for free. |
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Published on October 3, 2008 | Permalink
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Naked statues languish without healthcare
Nothing sells healthcare—or anything, really—quite like nudity. Which brings us to "Uncovered," an outdoor display by Taxi for Blue Shield of California that features 40 statues showing humans in "vulnerable positions." Maybe they wouldn't be so vulnerable if they wore some pants! The broader idea is to symbolize the 6.7 million Californians who have no health coverage. See some more pics here. The statues debuted last Friday in Los Angeles at an event with Blue Shield CEO Bruce Bodaken and former Olympic gold medal swimmer Janet Evans, who both kept their clothes on. The statues move today to San Francisco, where the public display of naked human bodies probably won't draw all that much attention. —Posted by David Gianatasio |
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Published on September 9, 2008 | Permalink
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