Caffeinated posts from a copywriter/adgrunt. I write about advertising, design, astronomy, cooking, and pretty much anything else that strikes my fancy, including random bits of reference info for work purposes. You may also know me as 'that other gal' who helps run Adland. | make contact | RSS Feed | ATOM

Friday, May 16, 2008
[ Links to Sip: 05.16.08 ]

+ Black pencils were handed out. Check out the nominees, and winners of the D&AD Awards.

Here are some things you can't do coked up.

Funny Swedish Fish print campaign.

Ever wonder who else was considered for Morphus? Wonder what roles your favorite actor turned down? Check out the quite useful and entertaining notstarring.com

Labels: ad award, adgruntie, print, web

Wednesday, May 14, 2008
[ Home Depot Solid Gold ]

+There are no words. Just watch.

Labels: branding, commercial

Friday, May 02, 2008
[ Links To Sip 05.02.08 ]

+ Typo Hunt Across America blog.
No Pants Day.
Apparently, old guys rule.
Take care down there - funny site created to help parents and kids have a less awkward chat about the birds and the bees.
What real life would be like if it was like Facebook.
Cool hand-drawn websites.
Dr Pepper Pours First 'Ultra' High-Def Banner Ad.
Global Advertising on the Web.
Reach Gen Y Moms with a Softer Sell.
Think Your Marketing Is What's Driving Online Buzz? Think Again.

Labels: ad news, adgruntie, banner ad, design, links, web

Thursday, April 24, 2008
[ Links To Sip 04.24.08 ]

+ Meant to post this a while back...saved these links but never got around to getting it posted. Fixing that now.
Cog Factory - something to play with if you've got some free time or need to distract your brain while concepting. ;)

Crazy Fork Lift Training Video


Why the world is ending - a new kids book about mommy getting a tummy tuck, nose job, etc.

Why Heineken? Why? Oh right, it's the popular thing to do. ;)

Labels: adbiz, campaign, commercial, culture, game, links, watch

Monday, April 07, 2008
[ Links to Sip: 04.07.08 ]

+ Hilarious "Your Baseball Team Has No Playoff Hopes..." ecard at someecards.com.

Absolut ad steps in doo-doo.

Criticism Sandwich from Tom Fishburne.

Turn US Presidential candidates into finger puppets!

Nice list of why your site sucks.

Labels: adgruntie, campaign, controversy, fun, inspiration, interactive, print, web, wisdom, work

Monday, March 31, 2008
[ Bessies Promos ]

+Two spots for the Canadian Bessies....where only good TV lives. Hilarious. :) From the folks at John St. Advertising.

Since 1973 The Bessies Awards have recognized the best in Canadian television advertising. Each year the Bessies jury is given the arduous task of separating the good TV from the bad, awarding only the best ideas and effectively killing the rest. It is this analogy that Toronto agency john st. has successfully brought to life through a viral and print campaign to help promote the 2008 edition of the awards.

Labels: ad award, adgruntie, commercial, creative, watch

Sunday, March 30, 2008
[ Mother Embraces Content ]

+ Mother London is getting into the publishing business. Mother Comics published a stand-alone comic (aka graphic novel) entitled "Four Feet from A Rat" on the 19th of March in copies of London's Time Out.

Four Feet has four stories featuring killer zombie night-bus drivers, post-apocalypse aliens picking through the detritus of a long-dead human society, a gangster pigeon - Don Pigeone - and an anti-consumerist revolution where the vicious global hegemony of brands such as Starbucks and McDonald's inspire an underground movement.

None of Mother's brands feature in the comic, and indeed there are no adverts, apart from spoof branding for Sucks Coffee and Tesda. "It's about us providing content - something we've always said we need to do," added Med. "How can we sit in front of a client asking them to do bold work if we're not prepared to take a risk?"

The next piece of Mother content is a film, according to Med, but he insisted it is under wraps for now.

Labels: ad news, adgruntie, creative

[ SEO Rap ]

+Hilarious.

Labels: adgruntie, fun, interactive, watch, web, work

Monday, March 24, 2008
[ Got Band? ]

+ So, I had thought that the use of bands to sell products and as an attempt to go viral had already jumped the shark. Apparently not.



MediaPost has this on their site today:

The new effort by the California Milk Processor Board (CMPB)focuses for the first time on teenagers with a music and social networking strategy touting the healthful benefits of milk.

The campaign, via Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, introduces a fictive, milk-enhanced rock star, "White Gold," who sings about his love for the (other) white stuff. The star, with a perfect physique, calcium-enhanced hair, nails and teeth, plays a guitar filled with milk and is backed by the "Calcium Twins" on drums and bass.

All of which happens, initially at least, on a White Gold band Web site WhiteGoldisWhiteGold.com, to be launched soon, and music video pages on sites like MySpace.com/whitegoldiswhitegold, YouTube and similar sites. The effort is replete with "hit" single "One Gallon Axe," a song detailing White Gold's evolution from undernourished waif (sorry, Angus) to Herculean guitar king. The second phase breaks this month, with TV spots to hit all California markets.

Steve James, CMPB executive director, says the band site will have behind-the-scenes footage, music videos, biographical tidbits and other live-action features.

He says the effort, which will run at least through the year, will include contests, "maybe around getting your guitar solo on the White Gold site, a battle of bands to join the group for a virtual guest spot.

"We are going to see how many possible offshoots we can come up with," he says. "We feel that it's really almost limitless in terms of where we can take it."

Paul Charney, creative director at the San Francisco-based Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, says the goal is to establish the band and music as tongue-in-cheek. "We started out with five real songs and created music videos with singles and ultimately, a full album," he says.

He added that the campaign will include print ads in youth and music magazines. "I think at this point we are going to let it happen a little organically. We are seeding it with certain Web sites--some music-related, some that scour the Web for weird, wacky things." He says there will also be banner ads.

And of course the user that's posting the videos is WhiteGoldISWhiteGold. Didn't Crispin do this for BK? Haven't we seen this more than enough times already for numerous brands since, oh, 2000?

On the upside, at least it's done well.

Labels: ad review, adgruntie, campaign, creative, online advertising

[ Links to Sip: 03.24.08 ]

+ A bad idea. Using hypnosis in focus groups.

The Economist on social networks.

The big internet and media companies have bid up the implicit valuations of MySpace, Facebook and others. But that does not mean there is a working revenue model. Sergey Brin, Google's co-founder, recently admitted that Google's “social networking inventory as a whole” was proving problematic and that the “monetisation work we were doing there didn't pan out as well as we had hoped.” Google has a contractual agreement with News Corp to place advertisements on its network, MySpace, and also owns its own network, Orkut. Clearly, Google is not making money from either.

Facebook, now allied to Microsoft, has fared worse. Its grand attempt to redefine the advertising industry by pioneering a new approach to social marketing, called Beacon, failed completely. Facebook's idea was to inform a user's friends whenever he bought something at certain online retailers, by running a small announcement inside the friends' “news feeds”. In theory, this was to become a new recommendation economy, an algorithmic form of word of mouth. In practice, users rebelled and privacy watchdogs cried foul. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's founder, admitted in December that “we simply did a bad job with this release” and apologised.

So it is entirely conceivable that social networking, like web-mail, will never make oodles of money. That, however, in no way detracts from its enormous utility. Social networking has made explicit the connections between people, so that a thriving ecosystem of small programs can exploit this “social graph” to enable friends to interact via games, greetings, video clips and so on.

And speaking of social networks, Fortune reports on Facebook's push to attract adults to the site.

New Balance kicks off Love/Hate campaign. Makes me think of Honda's Hate Something/Change Something campaign...or Marmite's Love/Hate campaign.

Labels: ad news, adbiz, adgruntie, campaign, commercial

Wednesday, March 19, 2008
[ Links to Sip: 03.19.08 ]

+ Burger King to sell greeting cards...why?????? ugh.

Starbucks going back to basics, like smelling good again.

Labels: adgruntie, branding, coffee, news, work

Wednesday, March 12, 2008
[ This and That: 03.12.08 ]

+ D7 Coffee - Politician spot by Creative Juice/G1 in Thailand. I'm (almost) always a fan of most of their work.

Youtube opens up for developers.

The Silicon Valley-based video-sharing site said on Wednesday that it is providing wholesale access to YouTube's extensive video library, global audience, and the underlying video hosting and streaming network that powers YouTube.

Labels: ad news, adgruntie, commercial, social networking, work

[ Applebee's drops bad apple ]

+ KansasCity.com reports that Applebee's "self-professed 'bold, innovative' ad campaign featuring a talking apple voiced by comedian and actress Wanda Sykes is being dropped. It lasted all of four months. I really hated that apple. Or perhaps it was Sykes' voice that grated on me.

The Lenexa-based casual dining chain, which was acquired last year by IHOP Corp., had hoped to cut through the crowded clutter in its category by creating an iconic image that consumers would instantly connect to Applebee's. It thought it had a hit with the talking-apple campaign — the first from agency McCann-Erickson Worldwide in New York — which made its debut in late October.

IHOP spokesman Patrick Lenow said Friday that the campaign had "run its course."

"As marketing evolves, this has gone a new direction with a new campaign," Lenow said.

A new effort, which broke March 3, is a return to more traditional advertising seen in the casual dining segment — pretty people sitting around a table in restaurant having a good time.

"This was an opportunity to take our marketing in a new direction, that was produced by McCann-Erickson — and they're still on board with us — and highlights our desire, as the commercial shows, to raise the bar on grill and bar food," Lenow said. "We think it shows great images of the food that's unique to Applebee's and all in a setting that show guests out having a good time at their Applebee's."

Last week at an investor conference in New York, IHOP chairwoman and chief executive officer Julia Stewart further illuminated the company’s thinking about Applebee’s advertising, which totals $200 million a year.

"So we got rid of the talking apple," Stewart told a group of Bear Stearns & Co. analysts. "We've gone back to what we know best, which is an Applebee's that does things differently than everybody else, positions them well in the category. … You can get a quesadilla anywhere, but you can't get a steak tower quesadilla anywhere except Applebee's."

So now, the question is, how do you tell the difference from an Applebee's spot from a Friday's spot or a Ruby Tuesday's spot? They all blend together to me. More blandness will ensue.

As much as I hated the apple, it did at least set the brand apart from the rest of the restaurants in the same category.

Labels: ad news, campaign, commercial, creative

[ Adland's Scoop on Sony's new ad campaign ]

+ A couple weeks ago, I was invited to go to a Sony shoot to report for Adland on all the behind-the-scenes goodness. Unfortunately, I couldn't make it, so instead we sent our resident North Dakotan, Clay, to report back.

You can check out the Adland exclusive scoop with some pretty sweet pictures here:
+ Nothing but Bubble with Sony, Part 1
+ Nothing but Bubble with Sony, Part 2

Labels: ad news, adgruntie, adland, commercial