Another Post No One Will Comment On...

This commercial runs during college football season on ABC. I find it a little ironic that these spots run while the game is on. If you're already watching the game it's kind of hard to be sold on just listening to the game. However, I think this spot is a great example of really pushing the logo and the brand. Positioning man, positioning.

Who Doesn't Love Beer Ads?

I don't know why but I just remembered this commercial tonight, out of the blue. It has to be one of my favorite beer commercials. Anybody else have a favorite beer commercial they would like to share?

I'm not sure if any of you go to this site already, but if you want to see a bunch of great ads from all over the world and get a sense of how other countries advertising looks, check ou www.adsoftheworld.com/ There is a lot of great ads here.

McFarlane sells out...

No, not Todd McFarlane. We all know he sold out years ago. No, it's Seth McFarlane, of Family Guy fame. I caught him on Last Call with Carson Daly last week and he mentioned these animated shorts that he did for Burger King. Here's a taste:
This looks to be another BK attempt to go viral, like the subservient chicken thing. I think it's hilarious, but it remains to be seen how effective it will be.

I'm posting this ad because it made me recoil in horror. I'd say that means it is a pretty effective ad. There was another ad posted a few entries down for AIDS awareness. Both have the same in-your-face scare tactics that seem to be pretty effective to me. Which is interesting because I don't usually like ads that try to scare you into doing or not doing something. What are your thoughts?

Trust Me, I'm A Doctor...

Ok, maybe I'm biased because I'm a huge Dr. Pepper lover and I love the show Frasier, but I really like this commercial.



There's also this one with Dr. J running right now. I really like the "Trust me, I'm a doctor" tag line used in both commercials

Fart Jokes

I found this ad on Advertising Age as one of their top 5 ads as of September 22nd. I am not usually a fan of fart jokes but I think this is pretty funny and not overly disgusting. I still don't think that bathroom humour should be use in most ads just because it can be so offensive to some people. However, I do think this is one example where it is effective and not offensive.

Crap

Would you ever walk on a bed of tacs? I'd jump in a pool of them if I had to watch this ad again.

Remember when we had to do those Canadian Footware ads? If you don't, you were lucky. Unlike the poor bastards who put this ad together in REAL LIFE. What hell this would have been to film.

This isn't smart advertising. This ad only serves to remind you to change the channel.

The foot model they chose to go with is 87 years old. I challenge you not to vomit a little bit in your mouth during the close up of her foot.



"Why put up with foot pain any longer?"

What about other types of pain, like the pain of watching this. Or the pain of see that this is the best they could come up with. Or the shocking pain of realizing this is the type of crap they produce in Winnipeg.

At least it's educational... I think.

Hell finally freezes over.

This is awesome. Note the capitalone.ca and the maple leaf on the card. That right kids... made in Canada (I think).

Here you go folks

Sidaction
Uploaded by sabotage

F-ing in an Hour Glass

I was just on the Leo Burnett website and saw a very provocative promo that would never be run in North America. It's for sidaction.org which seems to be a non-profit battling AIDS in France. I couldn't find a You Tube video of this and the Leo Burnett site wouldn't let me pull the Flash video.

Thanks to Paul for finding the video. Check it out above folks.

Good Ad, Bad Ad

The World is Just Awesome: Discovery Channel. So this is one of, in my opinion, the best ads I've seen in a long time. It's well shot and I love the song. It's so catchy. The first time I saw this commercial I was humming and singing to myself all day.



Intercasino: Midgets are Funny campaign. Good god, what isn't wrong with this next one? I'm so sorry I was exposed to this...so now you have to be exposed to it! I'm so glad that American companies still approve of bigotry. This world would be that much less exciting if they didn't.

I'm peppering this thing with ads.

I recently signed up for a new ad mechanism for the website called Infolinks. What I do is paste a script into the HTML code of the page that in turn scours the page looking for keywords to make into hyperlinks. These hyperlinks formed out of plain text become small preview ads to be clicked on.

The technology is cool and it's perhaps less intrusive than the flashing banners or annoying pop-ups we're used too. What do you think?

Is this more intrusive, or more convenient?

I personally think it is a convenience, and less intrusive. Customers are on the site to read the text. If they see a highlighted item they're interested in, they click the link and everybody wins.

But what do you think?

You smell like death!

This was an interesting little blurb I saw in today's National Post. I can understand using holiday and cooking related smells for marketing purposes, but it makes me wonder what does betrayal smell like? And what type of product are you selling that would make use of the smell of death or war? It's an interesting concept at least and could be another way for marketers to create an experiential interaction with consumers.

Perfumes that smell of sex, death, book bindings now available
Canwest News Service
Published: Thursday, September 25, 2008
The perfume industry has begun selling more than just flowery or musky scents: Increasingly, it is producing "narrative perfume," scents associated with sex, death, betrayal, war, or even the precise smell of certain neighbourhoods. A perfume at Holt Renfrew called Secretions Magnifique is billed as "an olfactory coitus" due to its hints of bodily fluids, while a scent called Soldat Inconnu aims to replicate the smell of battle that sticks to a soldier's skin. There is even a fragrance that reproduces the exact aroma of a first edition of perfumer Christopher Brosius's favourite novel. Experts say these perfumes are changing the way Canadians think about fragrance and the nature of contemporary advertising. "When you're trying to influence someone, you want to hit them on as many perceptive neuro-pathways as you can," said Lindsay Meredith, a marketing professor at Simon Fraser University.

Check out our ads!

I signed up with Google ads and they took no time in installing a little box on our little site. Check it out! And cycle through them with the up and down arrows.

You'll notice they are exactly tailored to this site.

Keep in mind Google ads are Google's, and the webs, bread and butter. Click on them! Feed the internet!

Wasn't this the Standard at One Point?

Next thing you know they'll be advertising a deal for pillows and chicken or fish dinners...wait...

Viagra Ad

I was sent this ad from a friend. Apparently doctor's offices are now completely covered with drug company advertising. To be honest though I liked this one! And so did my Mom... I don't know if that is a good or a bad thing... Anyway, it's kind of cute- as cute as a stick man getting a boner can be! Enjoy!

I'm a PC and I Have to Pay People to Plug my Product

I heard wind of this ad a week ago in Advertising Age but only saw it today on YouTube after it premiered during the football game yesterday. I'm a firm believer in promoting your brand, not defending it, and this ad where a John Hodgman look-like claims that they he hates being stereotype screams of "Just because I play dungeons and dragons and know binary code doesn't make me a nerd!" It doesn't work in high school and it doesn't work in the marketplace. Mind you, if this wasn't such an obvious response to the immensely successful Mac v. PC ads it might work. There's nothing wrong with addressing misconceptions about your brand subtly, but in this case Microsoft through the proxy of the "PC" is playing defense, and you usually don't score points on defense.

This ad is pure gold.

Strangely, I could only find a older version of this ad from earlier in the year. Rest assured, it's now being aired on North American televisions in a home near you. I'm pretty sure it's funny.

Advertising and Memes

At this point we're all keenly aware of the staggering potential of the Internet to spawn pop culture phenomenons which, much like the carnivorous ear-wig from The Wrath of Khan, burrow into the public conciseness. These things have been dubbed memes by, I assume, out-of-work psychologists with an urgent need to put their institutional lingo to some use beyond the wowing of laymen of the opposite sex at group therapy sessions. Of course, the origin of the word is less important than the potential implications for advertising, at least as far as we're concerned.

This is something which goes beyond our universal love/hate of the Numa Numa Dance or the Star Wars Kid, and it all seemed to crystallize for me after seeking out one of my current favorite ads on YouTube. I urge you to check it out below.



Now, my enjoyment of this ad is due, almost entirely, to the infectiously catchy tune, which is why I was on YouTube searching for an extended version. Sadly there isn't one, but I found, scattered amongst the sea of audio loops and trailers, was a surprising number of acapella efforts and home-brew remixes. Granted, it is a musical ad and there are a great many people with meager musical talent, too much free time and a webcam, but since it had only been a few days since to spot had hit TV I wasn't expecting nearly as many as I found.

It was everything viral marketing wants, and generally fails, to be. It wasn't a contest aimed at getting people to generate this content, it wasn't paid bloggers pushing things down our throat, it was genuine engagement by members of the public with an ad and, because this is exactly the phenomenon we're looking to emulate with our own advertising efforts, it bears consideration.

A lengthy discussion of why people responded to this ad, and others like it, goes beyond the scope of this particular post, but I think this speaks to the willingness of people to consume, and respond to, advertising that's creatively executed and honestly presented.

Or this might just be a commentary on how marketable the fusion of hip-hop and indie folk music could be. If anyone wants to discuss this I'll be in my basement with my posse and my banjo trying to figure it out.

Big Rock Ad Contest

Big Rock Beer holds an ad competition every year called the "Eddies." First prize is $10,000 for the TV ads and $1500.00 for print ads. Burton and I produced a commercial for this contest last year, here it is:



We threw that ad together in a few days over the mini break last year. We actually ended up being invited to the eastern semi-finals in Toronto, but they don't pay for the trip and neither me nor B-Dunc could afford it. At any rate, this is the ad that ultimately won:





As you can see, it's pretty high end, but I think it's the idea behind the ad that wins the prize, not the production value. The deadline for this year's contest is April 1, 2009. I thought if we had enough lead time, our class could come up with a winner. Whaddya think?

D.

William Shatner

I'll let it known that the William Shatner irony well is one that has been dipped into too many times. Whether it's part of Sean Cullen's stand-up routine, Family Guy or *shudder* Comedy Inc, the comedy community always goes to Shatner for the easy laugh. Now the shame in this is that when a comedian is attempting to cultivate his or her own enclave in comedy's lore cracks about Shatner (or Paris Hilton or Celine Dion or Michael Jackson...) it does nothing to seperate themselves from the rest of the banal static of their peers.

But commerce is result driven, and while I have no emperical data to back this up, agencies seem to think Shatner delivers the goods. If you go onto YouTube and enter the tags "Shatner" and "Commercial" you'll come up with 250 results.

There is the current spot running for the popular World of Warcraft where Shatner depicts himself as some kind of WoW dude:



Evidentally in the early 80's creative departments thought that Shatner and video games also fit like a glove:



In the past year or so, Shatner has shilled for priceline.com, All Bran and even a Detroit area disability lawyer:



Apparently Shatner tests very well. Whoever can get his endorsement in the US Presidential campaign will surely get a sizeable "bump" in the polls.

Tom Ford pushes the limits of taste

Tom Ford, a famous gay fashion designer, released a fragrance for men last year. His print ads are some of the raciest I've ever seen. And they've appeared in regular, unwrapped men's magazines like Details and Out. They definitely command attention - I don't think anyone could pass by the page without taking a closer look at what's going on. I wonder, though, what kind of laws there are against nudity in ads or if it's up to the individual magazines to decide what works for their demographic.

As a gay man, the "butt" ad didn't appeal to me all that much. It caught my interest, but it didn't really inspire me to buy the cologne (although I appreciated a break from the regular, melodramatic and generic cologne ads). What do all the straight men of ad class think of the "boob" and "vagina" ads?

Krahn, your bolg makes me ashamed at the poor quality of my own.

Well, I have to admit I have seen some great ads over the years, but one in particular stands out above all the others. I have never seen an ad imitated by people I know like this one. This is a classic.

Free Credit Report.com

Maybe I'm a huge loser but I find the freecreditreport.com commercials to be kinda fun and catchy. Here's a link to a site with YouTube videos and lyrics for all of them for anyone who isn't familiar with them all.

http://www.garagespin.com/archives/free-credit-report-song-commercials-music-mp3-and-lyrics.html

Brilliant

The following is a neat poster by the Salvation Army to get people to donate.

I found this one interesting given the recent discussion we had in class on how to get people to donate to Agape Table.

I wish I would have thought of this, because it is so simple and serves multiple purposes: It educates, and functions as a blanket. And as we can see here, sometimes it serves both purposes at the same time.

Freaken sweet.

Hooray Krahn

Good work Krahn. Here's a guaranteed winner. Coke Zero? James Bond? Jack White (he claims ignorance on the use of the tune in the ad).

Hooray Beer!

Following a tip from my good buddy Mark Reimer, I took a look at some Red Stripe commercials on the Youtubes. What I found was a commercial that dared to declare it's product ugly... so much so that most ugly people look beautiful standing next to it.

This commercial is out there. I like their strategy here, it gets a laugh, and probably sells beer too.



And I have no idea what this next one is about... but it's pretty funny. It's a good thing they switch it up and don't just go on about how their product is ugly. They explore new terrain on this one.

More can be found, of course, on the Youtubes.