Hasta La Creative!

We’ve covered this in previous years, but it bears repeating: Once again, White Castle cordially invites you and your significant other (or a “moderately important friend,” or even a “complete stranger”) to enjoy a candlelight dinner this Valentine’s Day at participating restaurants. This year, to promote the event, they’ve evidently employed the services of a randy copywriter, who encourages you to “Join us for a hot and steamy night at the Castle!” Need three more reasons? How about: “The steam. The passion. The hot little buns.”

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Here’s a spot called “Extraordinary” by TBWA\CHIAT\DAY and TEQUILA. In it, an Infiniti M twists around hand-drawn bends, somehow both away from the sun and toward it.

LONDON – Celebrity chef Jean-Christophe Novelli is the star of a new campaign for frozen food firm Findus.

I like Tom Asacker’s writing so much I asked him to be part of the team here. But even that’s not enough Tom Asacker. For more we turn to a comment string on Brand Autopsy.

…there are many companies in the CPG industry who are indeed dabbling in the social media space, as well as investing heavily in R&D to innovate for their customers. However, traditional advertising drives the lion’s share of their business. To suggest they focus that investment elsewhere, without specifying where and what results to expect, doesn’t really advance the marketing dialogue, IMHO.

This was a repsonse to Brand Autopsy’s John Moore, who wrote:

I believe advertising in the sense of blasting commercial messages at consumers is dead. I believe more in spending marketing dollars to make the product/service better, not to make the advertising “better.”

My interest in picking this up here is to see where we can take it. Spending marketing dollars on non-marketing activities sounds kind of radical and I usually like radical, but perhaps not this time. Then again, if you were in the CMO seat and had the ability to help a sister in R&D out with some of your allocated marketing funds, why wouldn’t you?

Stun Media, the people that did the Silver Jeans spec spot we liked so much, just completed a music video for Paul Price’s Her Planet.

“Unscrew America” could work as a slogan for most of the remaining presidential candidates. But it’s been snapped up by GSD&M Idea City for a pro-bono campaign aimed at getting Americans to unscrew their old lightbulbs and replace them with energy-efficient ones. The youth-friendly Web site, UnscrewAmerica.org, features a jittery land- and skyscape with comically named sections like “The high cost of awesomeness” and “Personal economics, or ‘Suck it, Earth!’ ” TV spots are due by the end of the week. For now, the “videos” section is limited to footage of a kangeroo playing the Australian national anthem on a keyboard guitar—Australia having already banned the sale of incandescent light bulbs.

—Posted by Tim Nudd

LONDON – Tyne & Wear Museums has appointed Agenda Design Associates to develop the brand identity for the Great North Museum, due to open in January 2009.

If standup comedians have taught me anything, it’s that scented candles are a tough sell for men. Yet here we have Mandles, whose more masculine scents include baseball mitt, A1 steak sauce, peeling out (burning rubber, most likely), and men’s locker room. While the spoof campaign loses a lot of points for including a Chuck Norris joke, the spot itself is pretty funny. And since Mandles have apparently been around since 1907, they can introduce a line of Vintage Mandles that mimic historically manly smells like mustache wax, steamship, and the triode thermionic amplifier. They couldn’t possibly sell any worse than burrito fart.

—Posted by David Kiefaber

Authors everywhere, including yours truly, are getting pretty jealous of Kelly Simmons. The former Tierney exec—now creative director at Bubble in Philadelphia—is calling in $200,000 in favors to promote her first book, Standing Still, which was just published by Simon & Schuster. The marketing effort, amazingly, is all bartered. The push includes fliers placed under commuter car windshields; handouts of the book’s first chapter on Amtrak trains; thousands of promo postcards; a pair of 30-second radio spots; a three-minute Web video (produced by NFL Films!); an e-magazine; and a reader sweepstakes. Jeez, all that on trade: did she ever do any paying work?! As I have no favors to call in, I’ll stand on the turnpike overpass and toss my next tome onto cars as they speed by. Or maybe at commuters as they board subway trains. I’ll be dressed like a panda. Free publicity will follow.

—Posted by David Gianatasio

LONDON – AutoTrader.co.uk attracted 1.63 million female users in November, placing it ahead of dedicated women’s lifestyle websites such as Hellomagazine.com and Handbag.com.