Orange loves your goofy self in Saatchi ads

Saatchi & Saatchi in Switzerland and European telecom powerhouse Orange get it right in this new campaign, which is amusing and filled with fun bits while not going totally over the top. A trio of character-study vignettes (one below, two more after the jump) unfold like Euro art-house comedies as they illustrate how balancing talk, text and Web services from Orange based on one's personality can be useful to consumers. The jockeys-emerging-from-manholes-and-cars sequence in "Tania the Party Planner" is especially inspired. So are the final frames of "Apology Nico," in which the perpetually late anti-hero leaps from a dock to catch a boat, slowly falls toward the water ... and makes a splash. Best of all is "Matteo the Online Romancer," with its lean-faced Lothario at one point getting a mouthful of blonde lip-service from a hygienist while in the dentist's chair. He's in for a different kind of root canal!

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Filed under Europe, Gianatasio, Orange, Saatchi & Saatchi, Telecom
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Sprint makes it easier to be a major asshole

The new Sprint commercials from Goodby, Silverstein & Partners are amusing. They portray Sprint customers as oblivious jerks who use their unlimited Web, e-mail and text to deliver terrible news to people—and then misinterpret those people's shocked reactions as concern over how much it must have cost to do so. A nice idea, wonderfully acted. See a second spot after the jump.

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Filed under Goodby, Silverstein, Nudd, Sprint, Telecom
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Droid 2 also quite hazardous to human flesh

Fears that the Droid 2 won't be shoved down our throats as far as the Droid X was have been eased. A big push for Droid 2 is planned, and this ad from mcgarrybowen hints at what's to come. Droid advertising is certainly high on special effects—the ads could be mistaken for movie previews until Verizon, Google and Motorola's names come up—and the visuals are impressing people. For now. Another three or four straight months of watching Droids turn white people into robots could wear thin, ya know? Plus, I think it's telling how much these ads harp on about how much work the Droid helps you get done. Does anyone want to be connected to their work e-mail all the time? Exactly. UPDATE: Plus, the phone itself, released last week, supposedly sucks.

Filed under Google, Kiefaber, mcgarrybowen, Motorola, Telecom, Verizon
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Ad casts Verizon as cure for racism, sexism

Verizon has dumped its oft-parodied "Can you hear me now?" tagline in favor of "Rule the air." To visually show just how much their network rulz, they've got the mcgarrybowen spot with the transmitters exploding out of buildings all Michael Bay style. But I'm interested in this one, called "Prejudice," in which a bunch of nice teenage girls tell us things like: "Air has no prejudice." "It does not carry the opinions of a man faster than those of a woman." "Air is unaware if I'm black or white and wouldn't care if it knew." Unencumbered by any air prejudice, they plan to "lead the army that will follow." So, a creepy army of racially diverse teenage girls will soon overthrow the Earth? That's a nice sentiment. But let me just say to my Gen Y counterparts: Verizon will not end racism and sexism with a cell phone, no matter how good the network or how wide the Droid X's screen is. Ain't going to happen. Of course, what cell phones really do for you is help you give birth to the 57th president of the United States.

Filed under Cullers, mcgarrybowen, Telecom, Verizon
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With BlackBerry, enjoy all play and no work

In this new BlackBerry spot, BBDO makes an exhaustive effort to portray the Torch smartphone as a device that makes the business world more fun. Subways and elevators become roller coasters! Rush-hour traffic turns into bumper cars! Airplanes are toy jets! (Sorry, no licorice-whip escape slides.) The gal who collects your TPS reports glides past on roller skates! Visually, this is an awesome ad with memorable imagery. Still, who wants a whimsical smartphone? Most folks would settle for one that doesn't lose its signal in midtown. Moreover, while the stuff shown here might be fun (for a 6-year-old), how exactly does this device lighten the soul-crushing load of one's workday? Sure, downloading the Buddy Holly song to your handset might make you smile, but what about the other seven hours and 58 minutes of your day? (Actually, if your workday is only eight hours long, you're having more fun than most of us.) UPDATE: Commenter is correct, this is technically an AT&T spot, co-branded with BlackBerry.

Filed under AT&T, BBDO, BlackBerry, Gianatasio, Telecom
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Virgin Mobile finds its niche: total nutjobs

In Mother New York's new campaign, "The Crazy Life," Virgin Mobile seems to be staking its claim as the cellular service for the mentally imbalanced. Well, I suppose Droid cornered the market on sci-fi geeks, and Apple has a lock on self-centered hipsters, so there weren't many niches left. The insane need cellphones too, mainly to talk to themselves. Some of the Virgin hijinks, presented in annoyingly loud, quick-cut fashion, include screaming man-hugs in the locker room, checking into Flickr while on the birthing table and an all-texting church congregation led by Rob Halford of Judas Priest. Some of these behaviors are a tad out of the norm, perhaps, but nothing outright crazy. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to take an important call. It's me on the line, and I'm just dying to know what I've been up to.

Filed under Gianatasio, Mother, Telecom, Virgin Mobile
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Droid X proves a bit rough on sensitive skin

The launch ad for the Droid X, from mcgarrybowen, reveals the phone's origin story. Considering the brand's connection to LucasFilms—the name Droid is a Lucasfilm trademark that's been licensed to Verizon—we're surprised the ad was this good. Apparently the Droid spends its pupa stage cocooned inside a floating rock that mechanizes human limbs. Which begs the question of why anyone would remove their protective gear to stick their hand in it all willy-nilly. Did Philip K. Dick make this ad? The Droid's a cool phone and all, but nothing's worth that kind of risk.

Filed under Droid, Kiefaber, mcgarrybowen, Telecom, Verizon
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Apple rolls out more iPhone 4/FaceTime ads

Here are four new spots from TBWA\Media Arts Lab for the iPhone 4, focusing on the FaceTime video-calling feature, which Apple clearly sees as a very big deal going forward. While the recently deceased "Get a Mac" campaign was based around wry banter, this series is full-court schmaltzy, delving into tiny, emotional families stories—daughters showing fathers their new braces and haircuts, a wife telling her husband she's pregnant, a grandfather seeing his son's new baby. It's good simple storytelling, but so sentimental as to verge on cloying. Perhaps the older generation will disagree. Three more ads after the jump, along with the original FaceTime spot from a month ago.

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Filed under Apple, iPhone, Nudd, TBWA, Telecom
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Verizon robot signal towers take over world

Wow, this Verizon ad from mcgarrybowen suggests the company's signal towers are basically Murphy beds, just popping out of everything. The spot is part of the carrier's new "Rule the air" campaign, which replaces the longstanding "Can you hear me now?" The special effects are cool, and it was an interesting choice to use a retro logo at the end, while everything else is so futuristic. Still, I hope the occupants of that building and the owner of that car are reimbursed for having their property destroyed so that a yuppie couple can have an uninterrupted chat.

Filed under Kiefaber, mcgarrybowen, Telecom, Verizon
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Droid teaser spots worth keeping an eye on

True to form, the new ad for the Motorola Droid X is long on aesthetics and short on information. The teaser is 15 seconds long and just shows a human eye changing into that of a robot. One practically needs a jeweler's eyepiece to make out the info reflected in the eye—which includes the name of the Droid's Twitter account ("Droid Landing") and a few hardware details (HDMI out, 4.3-inch WVGA Screen, 8MP camera). The drawn-out approach worked well for the Droid last time, and it'll probably do well now—there is a certain promise attached to futuristic, sci-fi imagery, especially when it's applied to gadgetry on the way. But will it still be cool a few months from now, when we've all gotten a little exasperated with all this fanfare for a fancy smartphone? It feels like the new Droid teaser is an ad for upcoming ads, not for the product itself.

—Posted by David Kiefaber

Filed under Kiefaber, Telecom, Verizon
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Microsoft's Kin ponders nature of friendship

Microsoft has created a series of webisodes for its Kin social-networking cell phone. They're meant to test friendships. And by "friendship," I mean the new definition of it that social networking has created. The slogan, "For your Friends, 'friends' and FRIENDS," makes more sense in three different fonts, but you get the idea. So, they picked a girl named Rosa, who has more than 800 friends across her networks, and sent her to meet them all in person and find out if they actually are her friends. The intro is posted below; the first six webisodes are posted after the jump. So far, we've watched Rosa make her way through the guy who uses chat to pick up women, her mom, the friend she never met, the job contact she failed to make, and the poker—you know, the guy who pokes. It's not just an ad campaign; it's a documentary on social media in (soon-to-be) 15 parts. At times touching and inspiring, it actually makes me want to try the same experiment. After all, no one ever said relationships that are made online have to stay there.

—Posted by Rebecca Cullers

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Filed under Cullers, Microsoft, Telecom
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Palm ads improve just in time for sale to HP

Just as the future of both Modernista! and Palm seemed in doubt, a strange thing happened: They started putting out some pretty good ads together. Palm had reportedly been shopping around for a new agency after the disappointing launch of the Pre smartphone when suddenly it was announced this week that Hewlett-Packard was buying Palm for a cool $1.2 billion in cash. In the midst of this chaos, a few new spots for the Palm webOS have quietly rolled out. They follow the "Don't miss a thing" theme that launched last month, and unlike the Pre ads, they won't be criticized for not highlighting features or the interface. Check out one of the new spots below and two more after the jump. UPDATE: As keen-eyed commenter Drew points out, BlackBerry seems to be going for a nearly identical visual effect in its new sneak-peek video.

—Posted by David Griner

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Filed under Griner, Modernista!, Palm, Telecom
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AT&T rethinks everything in new BBDO ads

AT&T has halted its Luke-Wilson-led charge against Verizon and now wants us all to "Rethink possible." The new campaign, from BBDO, is rather scattered, with no repeat characters, theme or even artistic style. Check out a bunch of spots below and after the jump. We get good old-fashioned domestic situations, people walking halfway across the country, a guy wishing he were still a 5-year-old ball of id who drew crayon monsters, and a spelling bee that goes on for 48 hours due to the new, super-intelligent race of kids weaned on the Internet. I can't find the common thread. In the most absurd spot, AT&T suggests that with a flap of its giant telecom wings, it could start the course of a relationship that will eventually spawn the 57th president of the United States. Rethink possible? Frankly, I'm not sure what to think. I'm already tired of thinking small, thinking different, thinking outside the bun and unthinking my chicken—now I have to rethink everything all over again?

—Posted by Rebecca Cullers

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Filed under AT&T, BBDO, Cullers, Telecom
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Anal sex not great theme for B2B phone ads

Random sodomy references are rare in B2B advertising, but it happens once in a while. This time, a British company promised to keep people from hacking into your business phone system by showing a woman wrapped in chains with an "Access Denied" sign on her bottom. This was beyond the pale, according to my old friends at the Advertising Standards Authority, which has banned the ad on the grounds that it could cause "serious offense." The company claims that three of its female employees were OK with it—always a good comeback. Hopefully they'll be more careful and respectful the next time they attempt to sneak crude sexual innuendo through the back door.

—Posted by David Kiefaber

Filed under Controversy, Europe, Telecom
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Palm: a victim of bad ads or a bad product?

With Palm reportedly shopping around for a new agency, the obvious assumption is that the client was unimpressed with Modernista!'s surreal campaign starring an ethereal ingenue on a hill. But allow me to go out on a limb here and say this: It isn't the agency's fault. Love them or hate them, you can't deny the ads were memorable, unique, hypnotic and buzzworthy. This isn't a case of a failed ad campaign. It's a case of a failed product. For three years, the telecom world struggled to find a device that could dethrone Apple's juggernaut iPhone, and the Palm Pre simply wasn't it. There's no shame in that. The same fate befell the BlackBerry Storm, the Samsung BlackJack, the Nokia N-series and dozens more. Where all these failed, Motorola's Droid has largely succeeded, thanks to both its technical sophistication and its staggering $100 million marketing budget (versus Palm's $35 million). So, while I'm not privy to all of Palm's reasoning for its review, I'll be disappointed if history remembers this as a case of a bad campaign instead of one that faced the ultimate obstacle: a product most people simply didn't want.

—Posted by David Griner

Filed under Griner, Modernista!, Palm, Telecom
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Pelephone's utopia fantastical but a bit loud

This impressive, fantastical Israeli ad from BBR Saatchi & Saatchi for Pelephone's Musix mobile-music service makes the "Got milk?" Mootopia look like Cleveland. Visual cues include Dr. Seuss, Dr. Doolittle and Willy Wonka in this land where music is everywhere. The storybook houses have giant gramophone speakers jutting from their roofs. There's a metronome castle. Folks float downstream in big violins. Even turtles and snails are equipped for sound. Now that I think about it ... this is one noisy utopia! And if the ad's oompa/la-la-la soundtrack plays all day long, I'll take Cleveland, home of the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame, any day.

—Posted by David Gianatasio

Filed under Gianatasio, Israel, Pelephone, Saatchi & Saatchi, Telecom
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Perks dizzying in Fallon's new Orange spots

There's some really funky camerwork going on in these two new Fallon ads for European telecom Orange, posted after the jump. Combined with the fluid editing and sharp writing, they're pleasingly goofy without losing sight of the selling points. (And you'll catch lots of fun details on repeat viewings.) The characters sure are odd, though. The actor in the first spot looks like he should be playing bass in Spinal Tap. He's killing what few brain cells he has left by trying to figure out who to invite to the movies, now that he's taking advantage of Orange's 2-for-1 ticket deal. The gal in the second spot decides who to add to her calling plan by playing spin the bottle—with a giant bottle! No one ever kissed me when I played that game. Maybe my bottle just wasn't big enough.

—Posted by David Gianatasio

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Filed under Europe, Fallon, Gianatasio, Orange, Telecom
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Life without Boost Mobile hard for dog-boys

Kids are soft these days. Case in point: 180/LA's latest "Unwrong'd" spot for Boost Mobile (posted below), which shows a youngster who travels inside a pet cage so the family can save money on their cellular bill. The whiny little prince wants a coloring book for the long airplane ride? Pipe down, dog-boy. Back in my day, they'd lash kids to the wing, and we'd have to squint through those little windows to watch the in-flight movie. Still, it's better than flying Southwest today. They lock me in a furniture crate with a treadmill and call it the "Kevin Smith special."

—Posted by David Gianatasio

Filed under 180, Boost Mobile, Gianatasio, Telecom
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Exit reality entirely with the Windows phone

I'm starting to think that if phones get any smarter, pickpockets will be able to retire by 30. Believe it or not, there was a time when people walked the streets with at least a vague awareness of the world around them. Then came headphones and, even worse, cell phones, which turned the world’s urban pedestrians into self-absorbed, inconsiderate drones. Now, Microsoft is hoping to complete the transformation with its new Windows 7 Series Phone. According to a preview video (posted below) smuggled out of the Mobile World Congress this week, Microsoft's entry into the smart-phone arena is perfect for those who want to browse multiple apps simultaneously, listen to music, watch videos and even take pictures of themselves—all while traversing a major metropolis on foot. I realize this is just a visual metaphor for how the new Windows phone "moves at the speed of life" or whatever, but maybe it's also time to ask ourselves how completely we really want to be jacked into the Matrix every time we leave the house. An all-encompassing digital experience is fine and good when you're in the safety of your own living room, but must we celebrate the idea of detaching from reality at every possible opportunity? If so, maybe we deserve whatever unwelcome surprise fate has in store, whether it's a purse-snatcher, an open manhole or just the public humiliation of walking full speed into a parking meter.

—Posted by David Griner

Filed under Griner, Microsoft, Telecom
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Verizon does Big Red, De Beers ad parodies

Verizon Wireless is clearly feeling giddy about its relentless pummeling of AT&T in the maps commercials, and is taking the campaign in all sorts of amusing and inspired new directions. Here are a pair of spoofs that McCann Erickson in New York whipped up. The one above is based on the classic Big Red gum commercials; the one below (timed to Valentine's Day) riffs on the De Beers diamond spots. Luke Wilson is going to be a busy man trying to respond to these.

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Filed under AT&T, McCann Erickson, Nudd, Parody, Telecom, Verizon
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Nokia points the way with huge London sign

To tout Nokia's navigation technologies, Swedish agency Farfar pulled off an ambitious feat: building and hanging a giant digital arrow above London that the public could control by sending (via text message or Web) any destination worldwide, which the arrow would then slowly turn and point to (and give the distance as well). These kinds of giant interactive installations perform the neat trick of making a global company like Nokia seem both powerful and personable—harnessing formidable technology for friendly purposes. Good thing they remembered to lower the crane a bit, too, so as not to take out an airplane.

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Filed under Europe, Farfar, Nokia, Nudd, Telecom
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Philip K. Dick estate paranoid about Google

In what would be a milestone for any evil, monopolistic corporation, Google has earned the official disapproval of Philip K. Dick—or at least, the estate of the long-dead sci-fi author. The point of contention: Google's new Nexus One smartphone, whose name, says the Dick estate, was stolen from the Nexus-6 cyborgs of Dick's 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, on which the classic '80s film Blade Runner was based. Google denies this. Hmmm … what are they trying to hide? If this were one of the author's mind-bending tales, layers of false reality would be stripped away to reveal that the Nexus One is really just an iPhone inside, and that Google's market-dominating search capabilities have been powered by Yahoo! all along. Alas, this is the real world, and that won't happen. Still, the flap is raising the late novelist's Google search rankings—an ironic twist true to the spirit of the author's work.

—Posted by David Gianatasio

Filed under Controversy, Gianatasio, Google, Telecom
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James Lipton's beard protecting teens' junk

LG and Young & Rubicam have enlisted James Lipton, and his great and powerful beard, for some amusing PSAs urging young texters to "give it a ponder" before spreading hurtful gossip and/or pics of their junk across the interwebs. The Inside the Actors Studio host literally lends his beard to each troubled youngster to get them to do the right thing. One spot is posted below. See all four here, along with four print ads. They're all hair-larious. It's just really fun to hear Lipton say things like, "The last thing he needs is tweets about his beets." Over at the Web site, JL's talking beard will guide you through the standard social-media components. Will these ads break through to jaded teens? My husband happens to have a whole class of 9th graders who saw the ads during homeroom. What did they say? "Why does she have a beard? I don't get it. That's retarded." But you have to know how to read a 9th grader. Apparently, they hate everything. The important thing is: They didn't say it was gay.

—Posted by Rebecca Cullers

Filed under Cullers, James Lipton, LG, PSAs, Telecom, Y&R
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Boost Mobile has Mrs. Claus on naughty list

Santa Claus and Mrs. Claus star in separate Christmas-themed Boost Mobile ads from agency 180, part of the long-running "Unwrong'd" campaign. When it comes to wrongness, Mrs. Claus is way ahead of her husband, engaging in some icy-hot lovemaking with a snowman in the stop-motion animated spot above. (Her friend can handle the heat of passion but not the hairdryer that's turned on him when the big man returns unexpectedly.) Santa, meanwhile, burdened by large cell-phone bills, has been forced to make some cutbacks in the spot below, and has replaced his reindeer with mules. Which seems like a minor sin by comparison, and he doesn't seem amorous toward any of his new hires, either.

—Posted by Tim Nudd

See also:
Boost Mobile ratchets up the repugnance
Use Boost Mobile, or get mauled by dogs
It's a hog-eat-hog world in latest Boost spot
Danica signs man boobs in Boost Mobile ad

Filed under 180, Boost Mobile, Holidays, Nudd, Telecom
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Vodafone ads show sad face of text bullying

It's not such a g'day Down Under when text-messaging bullies go all Qwerty on your ass. That's the basic thrust of this Colenso BBDO print campaign for Vodafone in Australia and New Zealand. The work effectively (if somewhat derivatively) plasters frowny-sad emoticons on the faces of school-age victims. Of course, if they actually look like that—bright yellow disk-shaped heads with no ears or noses—then they do have something to cry about and they will get teased. But seriously, this is a legitimate mobile-age problem that's generated its share of tragedies, so kudos to client and agency for confronting the issue, um, head-on. Via Ads of the World.

—Posted by David Gianatasio

Filed under Australia, Bullying, Gianatasio, New Zealand, PSAs, Telecom, Vodafone
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