Hasta La Creative!

Patrice Wilson, the guy who gave us Rebecca Black's "Friday" video, is back to his trolling ways with another ludicrously awful production starring a teen singer—Alison Gold's video for "Chinese Food." In it, Gold sings about—well, about how much she just loves Chinese food. "I love Chinese food/You know that it's true/I love fried rice, I love noodles/I love chow mein, chow m-m-m-mein," she sings idiotically. (Wilson, who appeared in the "Friday" video, shows up here as a rapping panda bear.) The aggressive stupidity of the lyrics matches that of "Friday," and the video is on the same general trajectory—almost a million YouTube views in 24 hours, and almost a 4-to-1 ratio of dislikes to likes. Chinese-food chain Panda Express gets a mention, but hasn't officially responded to the video yet. Judging by their own weird ads (see below), they'll probably like it.

Passionnés par les paysages désertiques de l’Arizona, le photographe Ben Sandler et le studio Zeitguised ont imaginé la série « Badlands », proposant des images surréalistes, mêlant photographie et modélisation 3D avec talent. Des créations à découvrir sur leurs portfolios et dans la suite de l’article.

Illustrating a campaign called “Escape the Ordinary” with a magician and soccer players from Arsenal makes sense thematically: Magicians do magic, and who could be less ordinary in Europe than soccer players from the English Premier League? Other than the British royal family, it’s hard to think of anyone else.

However, for CMW and Citroen, making a three-minute promo clip with cars and magic with extraordinary actors still resulted in a very ordinary spot. As you’ll see, the build-up drags, and the trick – which is more fake mind-reading than magic – isn’t very exciting. Pick a color, a card, and a year (and for whatever reason, the creatives decided to have the magician guess the incorrect year, maybe so viewers will believe it’s real?) To his credit, magician Drummond Money-Coutts brings enough energy and effort to make the clip watchable. The Arsenal players, Ramsey, pretty-boy Giroux, etc., are just show ponies who aren’t there to do much. Magic is supposed to wow, especially online clips that can be manipulated with editing, yet from the pledge, there was little chance that this wobbly trick would shock, awe, or bring out any sort of emotional response. But, with all the high-priced talent, the best trick may have been making an advertising budget disappear so quickly.

Some brief credits after the jump.

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(TrendHunter.com) Diggie Vitt is a 22-year-old Jacksonville, Florida native, whos latest photography project – ‘entitled 365 memories’—explores the surreal. Vitt attempts to challenge, channel and…

Rockstar Games’s “Grand Theft Auto V” (GTA 5) is poised to be the most successful video game ever based on initial sales, and that’s largely due its intricately drawn setting. The game takes place in Los Santos, a faux Los Angeles so detailed that video game website IGN called it “an extraordinarily well-realized world” unto itself.

That realism is only heightened by the game’s abundance of fake, yet recognizable, brand names.

But GTA 5’s brands don’t provide flattering representations of their real-life counterparts. Instead, the game’s parody brands provide a cutting satire of American consumerism and how it pervades our culture.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Interested in being ein Berliner?

German airline Lufthansa is running a contest in Sweden, dreamed up by the pranksters at DDB Stockholm, that features an impressive grand prize—a free trip, a free apartment in Berlin, a bike and "everything else you need to start a whole new life." All you have to do? Change your name, legally, to Klaus-Heidi.

Clearly that name would suit either man or woman, so that's the first hurdle out of the way. DDB tells us: "The first person to change their surname and upload a new legitimate passport or ID at the campaign site wins the whole shebang. So who wants to become a real Berliner? Who will he or she be? Who is Klaus-Heidi?"

For those not willing or able to take such drastic action, you can also change your name only on Facebook and get a discount on plane tickets to Germany.

It’s been a few months since we’ve heard from good ol’ Brian Thompson, aka @BrandWriter. Well, now that he’s done giving presentation tips while showing off his incomparable fashion sense, the T3 ACD/copywriter has returned with a Kickstarter effort to fund a new effort he’s dubbed “Passive Aggressive Notepads.” Yes, Thompson is reverting back to paper form to let people express their rage constructively via various messages printed on pads. His goal? To “solve life’s most annoying problems,” whether it be in the office or at home or when you’re going shopping. So far, three different notepads have been produced, and while we’re skeptical of the effectiveness of this project as a whole, Thompson is already a third of the way to his goal on Kickstarter, with 23 days to go. At the very least, we’re glad he’s once again sporting his presentation shirt, which he says he’s wearing “out of spite.” Whatever does the trick, sir.

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When Allstate’s Mayhem joined Twitter on Sept. 24 he got to work quickly, posting nearly 450 tweets in a single day. Then, he went silent for several days beginning Oct. 6.

The seemingly erratic behavior is actually a calculated effort by Allstate and its agency, Leo Burnett, to use the social-media tool to extend the reach of one of advertising’s most recognized characters with a judicious yet seemingly spontaneous approach.

The first question is what took so long to get him on Twitter? The TV campaign launched in mid-2010, and Mayhem has long had a Facebook page. But “we’ve been very careful about not overdoing Mayhem and not overexposing [him],” said Jennifer Egeland, Allstate’s director-advertising and integrated marketing communications. The marketer waited until it had “the right idea for launching him in the Twitter space,” she said.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

A lot of marketers don’t spend much energy courting them, but seniors are proving key to Rite Aid’s turnaround efforts.

In the first two and a half months the drugstore expanded its existing wellness+ loyalty program with a new national effort targeting seniors, more than 930,000 seniors enrolled in wellness65+.

It’s a lucrative demographic for Rite Aid, given the number of prescriptions seniors fill and the volume of monthly nonprescription purchases they make.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Mobile computing cemented Apple and Samsung as household names while the company that made the processors powering their smartphones went largely unnoticed. But now Qualcomm is out to transform itself from a relatively obscure b-to-b company to a widely recognized consumer brand on par with Cisco, GE and IBM.

“More and more consumers are starting to care [about] and be interested in the technology in their devices,” said Dan Novak, Qualcomm’s VP-marketing, PR and communications. “You can say Qualcomm is an unknown brand, and we still are to an extent, but early adopters are still concerned about what’s inside phones.”

Qualcomm is trying to tap into that interest with marketing initiatives including a branded tech blog; native ads; Facebook campaigns; a partnership with Major League Baseball to enhance smartphone connectivity in ballparks; integrations with blockbuster sci-fi films; a smartwatch; and its first major video-advertising campaign — a commercial for its Snapdragon processors that ran during the 2013 NBA Finals.

Continue reading at AdAge.com