div|whisperer

The animation in this advertisement is fantastic. Kind reminds me, in terms of sheer epicness, of the Guinness award winning commercial Evolution, which is one of my favorite ads of all time (the Cannes judges agreed with me).

It’s in German, but you can’t tell until the very end - at which point you’re not sure if she’s trying to sell you something or asking if you want a spanking. The ad is called The Evolution of Technology and is actually for an electronics retailer called Saturn, if that helps you understand the concept. Probably not.

Client: Saturn Electronics
Agency: Scholz&Friends

My girlfriend and I almost never agree on commercials that we both enjoy. I enjoy good advertising, and she apparently does not.

Every couple of years however there comes along an advertisement whose quality is so beyond reproach that we manage to somehow agree. Jill found this one on YouTube and gestured me over with so much enthusiasm that I assumed something must be 50% off somewhere.

It’s about time someone realized they could sell stuff to Canadians by reminding them how much they loath winter. All this commercial needs now is that guy with the beard from the old Canadian Tire commercials and Midas had a classic on their hands.

Client: Midas
Agency: DDB Canada Vancouver

Wieden & Kennedy dropped Starbucks as a client in September and I’m not sure if this is a leftover from their work or from one of Starbucks’ other agencies. I love typography ads. Starbucks is promising to give everyone who votes in the U.S. election on November 4th a free cup of coffee (while supplies last of course).

This is a great idea. From a strictly profit standpoint it is sure to drive people through there doors where they will likely realize that free coffee is good, but a not-so-free triple mocha skin milk latte is even better. I expect the financial damage will be minimal.

PR wise this is a victory because while free stuff does not make for a good sales strategy is does help a company who is better known for being everywhere than helping anywhere.

Of course this could all be a clever Republican tactic. Those democrat-leaning Starbucks drinkers end up in eight-hour lines at the polls and a bladder full of Nicaragua’s best.

My American friends, please STFIL!

Fallon lets loose with four new additions to the Holiday Inn Express campaign that suggests that sleeping in their hotels can help ordinary people overcome being an idiot.

The latest batch includes some celebrity appearances from Cal Ripkin Jr. and Jeff Burton - neither of which is particularly funny.

The rapping spot above featuring a previously unknown (and presumably cheaper) actor is somewhat funny if only because in reality the statistics would suggest he would have been beaten, robbed and possibly killed.

The last spot, a delivery room scene, is also entertaining. The ad suggests humorously that a baby’s intellect is determined by where it was conceived - a fact we all already knew was true as proven by Arkansas.

Client: Holiday Inn Express
Agency: Fallon Minneapolis

At a previous job I designed a mobile channel for the brand. It was pretty introductory, just news and weather feeds, but a huge step forward in terms of entering the mobile space for a company which hasn’t really embraced change since they decided to switch from “paper boys” to “middle-aged men with cars”.

At one time, the trend in mobile brand advancement was to develop a really low resolution, graphically sparse, version of the brand’s web site. The idea being, I guess, that users could user their shitty mobile phone browsers to visit Google, or Yellow Pages, etc. and find the information they need to make horrible decisions while they’re drunk.

Personally, I wish those would just die off completely. I’ve created those creatively bankrupt web sites and I like to think that all of the trouble I manage to get myself into is my subconscious way of punishing myself for my creative indiscretion.

I have changed allegiances completely on this issue. I think the future is branded applications. Google, Blackberry and Apple (most famously) have all developed, or are in the process of developing, application marketplaces that allow users to easily download third party applications to their smart phones.

Continue reading A World Without Mobile Browsers

Thanks Mike for the heads up that the Jonzed movie came out earlier this month. I hadn’t noticed. For those of you who remember my first post on the topic, please remember to drop by the site and see the entertaining film that Revolve 360 and Egg Films put together.

There was some funny appearances from a few of the peeps from Picnicface (who seem to be in every web video coming out of Halifax shops these days) and a cameo from Landlord Lou, who plays a jerk.

In the end though, in my opinion, it doesn’t change the fact that 96% of the people who signed up for the Jonzed facebook group probably think it’s an iPhone contest and that for the 4% of those people who actually watched the video he likely had absolutely no impact on their binge drinking behavior.

Here’s my theory why:

Continue reading Needs a Penis Joke

A few weeks ago I mentioned the Landlord Lou campaign on this site as an example of a fantastic idea that, personally, I don’t think was executed to its fullest potential.

Over the past few weeks I have been inundated with friend invitations on Facebook to join the Jonzed group. The facebook fan page tells you to invite all of your friends because for every friend you get to add the fan page you get another ballot to win a MacBook or an iPhone.

How can they award an iPhone as a prize? Well the legalese says:

The required air time contract is the sole responsibility of the winner.

So what you’re really winning is the opportunity to spend $2,000 on a Rogers Wireless voice and data plan over the next three years. Awesome.

Continue reading Drinking Bad? Prizes Good?

Dentyne has allegedly released a new OOH campaign targeted towards youth. I say allegedly because I can’t find any agency interested in claiming credit for the campaign.

The campaign is attempting to connect with youth who the creators of the campaign would have us believe sacrifice intimate contact with attractive people because of “voicemail”, “chatrooms” and social networking features like friend requests. The people behind the campaign had a good idea - then screwed it up. Some of the ads tag lines are cute like people hugging with the caption “friend request” or two people kissing with “the original instant message”. They followed up the great tagline/art direction with some horrid explanation text advocating disconnecting and rediscovering personal interaction.

Anyone who is still getting laid regularly (ie. not in a long term relationship) knows that using sites like Facebook LEADS to more intimate contact. It is a dating and relationship tool. The campaign creators seem to be VERY out of touch. Who the hell hangs out in chatrooms anymore? The chatroom has become the domain of hockey moms exchanging recipes and pedophiles - exclusively.

The campaign is gaining notoriety, ironically, because people have been taking pictures of the ads on their cell phones in subways and uploading them to their Flickr accounts.

Bonus Funny:

Dentyne commissioned a national survey to “help further understand this phenomenon” and has partnered with relationship expert Allie MacPhail to “help Canadians get offline and get face to face“.

That’s right - they commissioned a relationship expert whose name is phonetically synonymous with corporate screw up.

While risking killing any watchers with a corn or cheese allergy, Microsoft has released the first ad in their second wave of advertising for the Vista. The first two ads from Microsoft featuring Seinfeld, which you can watch here and here, were in my opinion, targeted solely at a “nerdish” audience. They seemed specifically designed to attack Microsoft’s reputation as being formal and boring.

The new campaign is smart. The weakness in the incredibly popular Apple “I’m a Mac” campaign from TBWA/Chiat/Day is that the PC character played by John Hodgman is the funny one. Justin Long the Mac character comes across as not funny - I would go so far as to say dickish.

The new Microsoft campaign grabs a hold of this message firmly to remind ordinary people that they’d rather be the PC then some pretentious hoody-wearing snot. Then it reminds them that they’re not alone.

Client: Microsoft
Agency: Crispin Porter + Bogusky

Landlord Lou is real - and so is his mustache. A former co-worker of mine had Lou as his landlord while living in Halifax. The LandlordLou.ca campaign (which is almost a year old now) is, in my opinion, some of the best copy writing aimed at my demographic to come out of Canada. The original three videos (one, two, three) are absolutely hilarious.

Since those videos were released they’ve removed those videos and replaced them with new videos which aren’t as good. I had to hunt the original three down on YouTube from some random person’s uploads. The new videos are still funny but they aren’t as effective or clever as the originals.

They’ve started going for quirky dialogue that becomes more about character humour then about actually getting across the client (Killam Properties) message. Another sore spot has been the missed opportunity for distributing the campaign.

The web site allows you to join a facebook “group”, which is actually a “page” and add Lou as a friend. There is no ability to embed the videos in a blog or one click way to share them via Facebook, del.icio.us, etc. Stuff that’s considered the bare minimum of a digital campaign. And it shows. Four of the five videos on YouTube have under 1,000 views each.

If I hadn’t of been working for a web site that Colour paid to advertise this site on, I never would have heard of it. None of my apartment dwelling friends have heard of it.

For me this is an example of a fantastic idea, exceptional copy writing and fairly good production without much support. Here’s hoping they smarten up and realize the true potential of this campaign before it’s first birthday.

Client: Killam Properties
Agency: Colour