If there's one good thing to come out of the recent lunatic-fringe freakout over Coca-Cola's multilingual Super Bowl ad, it's definitely this parody featuring languages that didn't quite make the original cut.
Comedy troupe Garlic Jackson, which previously (and brilliantly) mashed up "Blurred Lines" with The Cosby Show intro, have dropped a new audio track on the Coke spot, "America Is Beautiful." The parody's additions include the dulcet tones of Star Trek's Klingon and Game of Thrones' Dothraki. I'll let you hear the rest for yourself.
Prepping for a two-man luge race looks like two dudes humping, says a new PSA from a Canadian equal rights group protesting Russia's anti-gay laws ahead of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.
The spot, created for the Canadian Institute of Diversity and Inclusion by agency Rethink Canada, shows a pair of spandex-clad sledders rocking back and forth before launching down the track, all to the tune of synth pop classic "Don't You Want Me" by The Human League.
"The games have always been a little gay," says the ad's copy. "Let's fight to keep them that way."
While many will chuckle at and share the "Luge" ad, the spot is not without its glaring flaws.
The Olympics have always been a little gay because certain sports happen to include activities that could be interpreted as homoerotic? Doesn't that joke basically just reinforce juvenile stereotypes rather than challenging them?
If you're going to talk about how The Olympics have always been a little gay, why not focus on the pioneering homosexual athletes who've competed rather than saying that it's "gay" for two men to work closely together?
The message that homosexuality has always been a reality and should be openly accepted is definitely one worth promoting, especially at a time when the Olympic host country is explicitly sanctioning homophobia. But resorting to frat-boy humor that would be dismissed as homophobic if it came from anyone except an LGBT advocacy group? That's not going to do anyone any favors.
In a loopy but memorable attempt to symbolize the sweetness of its biscuits and tea-cakes, McVitie's new British TV campaign shows cute, cuddly critters emerging from its snack packages.
Ordinary folks open their boxes and out pop puppies, kittens and, most disconcertingly, a wide-eyed, Yoda-like primate called a tarsier. (They're getting pretty lax down at the packaging plant, I guess.)
The snackers, unfazed, snuggle with their new furry friends, which vanish once the biscuit-munching begins. Oh, and classic TV themes—from Murder She Wrote, Fawlty Towers and the U.K. game show Blockbuster—play in the background, naturally.
The presence of twins in one spot and a hospital setting in another intensify the self-consciously weird vibe that agency Grey London was shooting for. Even so, director Owen Trevor does a fine job treading the line between "Sweeet" (the campaign's tagline) and "Creeepy" by making the spots feel more random than unnerving.
"We loved the idea that one word could encompass everything these biscuits might mean, but that each biscuit would have a different kind of Sweeet," Grey ecd Nils Leonard tells AdFreak. "We also wanted a cinematic way to evoke the feeling of McVitie's. A way to create unique experiences that brought to life the different feelings each of the biscuits creates. Nailing the essence of each biscuit was critical, so we ate loads of them to help the creative process."
What's more, "We sweated every element of this work to create conversation and appeal to our audience." (And hopefully sweated off some of those many biscuits they ate)
The offbeat approach is designed to speed social sharing and sweeten the campaign's shelf life, even if some viewers sour on all that saccharine. "I just fainted from sweetness overload," notes one YouTube viewer, while another confused viewer asks,? "McVitie's Digestives taste like live dog?"
Yesterday, I had a turkey and ham sandwich for lunch. I know that's incredibly uninteresting, which is why I didn't mention it online. But then, 30 minutes after browsing their menu, @FirehouseSubs followed me on Twitter.
That afternoon, I was researching some Shorty Awards winners from recent years (again without mentioning anything about it online), and 30 minutes later, @shortyawards followed me on Twitter. (UPDATE: See response below from Shorty Awards, who say their follow was a total coincidence.)
Even as someone who writes about digital marketing for a living, it took me a minute to realize what was going on. I had unwittingly joined the new world of Twitter retargeting.
It's a world where the sites you browse in the privacy of your home can apparently come back to haunt you quite publicly as your newest followers. Twitter likes to say, it's an experience "tailored" to your interests.
It's also, in a word, creepy.
Just ate @FirehouseSubs for the 1st time in months, didn't mention it online, and they just followed me. What sorcery is this?— David Griner (@griner) February 4, 2014
I'm typically not one to freak out over the privacy aspects of social media integration, because the results are often only visible to me and members of my network. For example, I know Facebook makes it easy on sites with Open Graph plug-ins for friends to see which news articles I've shared or which brands I like. And I've long since gotten used to retargeted ads for hedge trimmers or whatever following me across the Internet for days or even weeks after I was browsing lawn tools online.
But this is different. If it's true that Twitter's new retargeting options enbabe sutes to follow you, your Web browsing could leave a public breadcrumb trail in the form of new followers. Looking at a user's follower list, which sorts the most recent followers to the top, one could deduce (or even worse, speculate in public about) your recent browsing history.
Also, if this is the case, Twitter has not been transparent about this feature. Browse each blog post about Twitter's "Tailored Audiences" program, and you'll see zero mentions of brands following you based on the sites you browse. Instead, the network says its ad program "offers dynamic suggestions about people you might enjoy following." That clearly seems to imply I'd be the one following brands based on Twitter's recommendations, not the other way around.
In its most recent blog post on the topic, Twitter focuses on how the program generates highly targeted promoted content, meaning that you're more likely to see Hubspot content promoted on Twitter after visiting Hubspot.com. It doesn't mention anything about your user name literally falling into the hands of brand social media teams that can then follow you or start messaging you about the site you visited.
Now comes the mandatory part where I acknowledge that, yes, you can turn off the tracking that allows brands to retarget you. Just go to Settings > Privacy > Personalization and uncheck the box that says "Tailor Twitter based on my recent website visits."
But how many users will learn about this opt-out option before they have an experience like mine, where their casual Web browsing suddenly shows up at the digital door as new followers? And how awkward is this situation going to get as Twitter's retargeting tactics become more popular among less-reputable websites that you might not want following you anywhere, much less in public?
Given the lack of discussion I've seen about this issue, I'm reaching out to Twitter to make sure this is a real aspect of its retargeting options and not just a strange series of coincidences affecting only me.
But as Sherlock Holmes recently noted about coincidences, "The universe is rarely so lazy."
UPDATE: The Shorty Awards say their follow was indeed a coincidence and that they were following up after sending me an email pitch (which I hadn't noticed in my inbox).
@griner@jcoopernyc Was just a happy coincidence 🙂 — Our producer followed you yesterday after emailing you a pitch (sent at 3:52 yest) — Shorty Awards (@shortyawards) February 5, 2014
One of my favorite ads from Super Bowl night actually ran before and after the game, when Diet Mountain Dew bought some slightly discounted time for its new spot, "Dale Call." We see a duck hunter pull out his trusty turbo-powered call, which sounds like a Nascar engine and summons Dale Earnhardt Jr., regardless of location or time of day.
I can't think of too many scenarios where that would be useful, which might be why it's a bat signal solely reserved for duck hunters. As someone who took great joy as a child in scaring ducks into flight, I feel pretty certain these fowl would have scattered and flown away instead of sticking around to get blasted, but who am I to question Dale's abilities behind the wheel?
Below, you can check out another of the campaign's spots, featuring a rail-grinding horse worthy of the X Games.
Back in the aughts, when Google wanted to recruit developers, it famously put up a billboard with a complex math problem that led to a website with an even more complex math problem. Last year, when Flickr, owned by Yahoo, wanted to recruit developers, it less famously hid a link to its jobs site in the page's source code—which unlike some superhuman math problem, any old muppet from the non-coder underclass can access using the menu bar or keyboard hotkeys.
Last week, the buried ad—"You're reading. We're hiring"—drew new attention, because Flickr decided to turn its about page upside down in celebration of Australia Day. Because everybody knows everything is upside in Australia. The gimmick even earned a tongue-in-cheek 1990s-Sandra-Bullock-computer-themed critique over at Hacker News, which we guess is worth some kind of geeky street cred.
Flickr also tells Techcrunch that it changed the head shots of its team members on the site to better reflect Australia—like pictures of kangaroos. That's nice, but it would have been way more impressive if Flickr had actually taught kangaroos to code.
I never thought I'd hear Tegan and Sara in an Oreo commercial, but I also never thought Tegan and Sara would make bouncy dance pop, so everything's up in the air at this point.
The Canadian duo provided a pretty awesome version of the "Wonderfilled" jingle for this "Dare to Wonder" ad from The Martin Agency (it first aired during the Grammys) promoting a series of limited-release Oreo flavors including berry, peanut butter, lemon and mint. Honestly, all those sound really gross, but the jingle is right in line with Tegan and Sara's lyrical sensibilities, and of course they didn't even write them—the ad agency did.
Living in a world where Tegan and Sara play a song they didn't write for the purpose of selling junk food feels a bit strange, but they've said they don't make albums to keep their old fans, so perhaps that same principle has been applied here.
Esurance definitely pulled off a last-second marketing coup at the close of last night's Super Bowl, but now spammers are seizing the moment as well.
More than 100 fake Esurance accounts have been created on Twitter in the past 24 hours, and thousands of users are following and retweeting the accounts in hopes of winning $1.5 million.
While it's a clear bonanza for Esurance, it's also posing a potential security risk for aspiring millionaires. Fake accounts using the brand's logo and hashtag have gained large followings and promised "extra entries" to those who connect to their accounts.
The promotion ends at 4 a.m. Eastern on Tuesday, Feb. 4., so if you see some friends retweeting bogus accounts between now and then, you might want to tell them to watch for that little blue "verified" check mark on @Esurance's official account before following or sharing.
Scotch whisky brand Bell's and ad agency King James might just lift your spirits with this South African ad with an elderly man struggling to overcome his illiteracy so he can celebrate a family milestone.
Director Greg Gray of Velocity Films employs a restrained cinematic style to show "The Reader" diligently practicing his A-B-Cs at every opportunity. There are some deft details: Our hero initially misspells "Kat" while playing Scrabble but gets it right later on, and he places cards reading "Kettle," "Oven" and "Taps" on corresponding objects around his home.
The literacy angle might sound like a stretch, but the idea of celebrating personal triumphs by toasting with Bell's feels on target, and the heartfelt acting and storytelling are strong enough to yield a potent emotional payoff.
Indeed, good scotch should leave you with a warm feeling inside.
Attention men: Want hair-care products that turn your hair into a sentient toupee capable of the most charming antics?
No? Really, it's better that it sounds. It's great for when you're in a business meeting and some dial tone is droning on about whatever who cares, and the hot woman across the table is eyeing you hard … it will mack on your behalf without anyone noticing.
So says one of two new oddball spots from Wieden + Kennedy for Old Spice hair products, vaguely reminiscent of Axe's walking-hair-loves-headless-boobs commercial from 2012. (The director, Tom Kuntz, also has experience working with hair that has a mind of its own—going back to Skittles' "Beard.")
Another new Old Spice ad tells you that your creepy-furry head pet will also serve you exceptionally well when you're on a date at the boardwalk. Just look at the magical surprise it can pull, hands-free, out of the arcade claw.
It really is the perfect marriage of the campaign's tagline, "Hair that gets results," and the brand's classic marketing ethos—"If your grandfather hadn't worn it, you wouldn't exist."
Credits plus a print ad below.
CREDITS Client: Old Spice Spots: "Meeting" and "Boardwalk"
Agency: Wieden + Kennedy, Portland, Ore. Creative Directors: Craig Allen, Jason Bagley Copywriter: Jason Kreher Art Director: Max Stinson Producers: Hayley Goggin, Katie Reardon Account Team: Georgina Gooley, Liam Doherty, Nick Pirtle, Jessica Monsey, Michael Dalton Executive Creative Directors: Susan Hoffman, Joe Staples Head of Production: Ben Grylewicz
Production Company: MJZ Director: Tom Kuntz Executive Producer: Scott Howard Line Producer: Emily Skinner Director of Photography: Andre Chemetoff
Visual Effects Company: Framestore Visual Effects Supervisor: Alex Thomas Compositing Supervisor: Russell Dodgson Producers: Tram Le, Claudia Lecaros Flame: Stefan Smith, Trent Shumway Nuke Leads: Vanessa DuQuesnay, Jonni Isaacs, J.D. Yepes Nuke: Geoff Duquette, Jason Phua, Carl Schroter, Jack Fisher, Anthony Lyons, Katerina Arroyo, Nick Sorenson, Kenneth Quinn Brown
Music Company: Rumblefish Producer: Mikey Ecker
Final Mix Studio: Lime Studios Post Engineer: Loren Silber Assistant Engineer: Patrick Navarre Producer: Jessica Locke
Most businesses can only dream of growing big enough one day to advertise in the Super Bowl. So when an 18-month-old startup finds itself running an ad in the game for free, there's no playbook to plan what happens next.
Game maker GoldieBlox recently won Intuit's "Small Business Big Game" promotion, which promised a 30-second ad valued at $4 million in this Sunday's Super Bowl. While GoldieBlox proved itself a savvy marketer with a successful Kickstarter campaign and a highly popular video about empowering girls to invent, the business also ran afoul of intellectual property law and took some heat from the public when it used the Beastie Boys track "Girls" without permission.
Given the odd path that's led GoldieBlox to the big game, it's hard to predict how its Super Bowl ad, created by longtime Honda agency RPA, will be received and how the company will evolve in the year ahead.
So we decided to ask GoldieBlox founder Debbie Sterling about the contest, the controversy and the mission that have all shaped her company's unique fate.
AdFreak: In some ways, it seems like you won a $4 million lottery, but it's not like you didn't have to work for it. How did you react to hearing you'd won the Intuit contest?
Debbie Sterling: It's almost hard to describe how I feel and how I felt the moment I found out we were the grand prize winner. I felt almost like it wasn't just a win for GoldieBlox; it was a win for girls around the world.
One hundred million people are going to see our message about empowering girls. It feels just incredible, incredibly validating that America voted for us and wants us for their daughters. It's not just an ad; it's almost like a revolution.
GoldieBlox seemed to have an early lead in the contest, especially when your video was going viral. Then the debate over the Beastie Boys track seemed to change the tone. Did you worry it would distract people from the contest and supporting your product?
There was a lot of misunderstanding in the media at the time. A lot of people thought that video was supposed to be our big-game commercial, which it wasn't. It was a really hard time for us as a company and me as an individual.
Soundtrack aside, that online video was pretty ambitious. How did it come about?
My team and I were having lunch at a Mexican restaurant, brainstorming ways to get girls interested in science and engineering. We came up with this idea to create a Rube Goldberg device out of toys.
We had remembered seeing the OK Go video, and we wanted to set it to a girl power anthem. We're a pretty small team, but we're really passionate, and we made it ourselves (with OK Go collaborator Brett Doar).
You can never know if something's going to go viral. We had no idea. We made a video we felt kind of encapsulated our mission and we hoped would spark some interest in kids.
As great as it must have been to see the video getting all this love and attention, it must have been jarring when the legal debate started and it all got so negative so fast.
It was a really hard time. The controversy around it, it took away from our mission. If you ever come visit GoldieBlox headquarters, you'll see we have written on the wall, "The mission is more important than the company."
The last I heard, the Beastie Boys had filed a countersuit looking for damages and fees. What's the status of the legal debate over the song? Is it still going?
There's still legal stuff going on.
So nothing's been settled?
I can't comment on any of the legal stuff.
Your team is small, and I'm sure allocating resources is a big part of your daily life. Between the Rube Goldberg video and the Intuit contest, how have you made time for product and R&D along with the marketing?
Our main focus is product. We put a lot of work into our product each day.
We think of our marketing and advertising almost as a product, too, in the sense that the videos we've been creating and the community we've been building on our Facebook page, on Twitter and elsewhere in social media, they're all kind of bubbling up to the same goal. In a way, it almost feels like our marketing and product are one.
For most global brands in the Super Bowl, there's a lot of debate about how many millions of products they'll need to sell to make the ad worthwhile, but obviously you're in a different situation. Do you have any sales goals or other metrics for how you'll define a win from your ad this Sunday?
For me, we've already won, because the ad sends a very clear message that girls deserve more than the "pink aisle" has to offer. Having 100 million people see that and talk about it at the dinner table, or have a dad encourage his daughter to invent something … that already is going to come out of this, and that's a win.
This time around it was free. So over the next year, you just have to set aside $5 million or so to buy your next Super Bowl ad.
Hahah, yes. I hope this is not our last Super Bowl ad.
Debbie Sterling graduated from Stanford University with a degree in engineering before becoming the founder and CEO of GoldieBlox. The company now sells three games available primarily through independent toy stores, Toys-R-Us and Target. She hopes to expand the brand into animation and video games in the near future.
Every region had its own odd selection of local ads during last night's Super Bowl, but Utah surely takes the prize for most uncomfortable viewing-party moment.
In an eerily quiet and hypnotically rotating road-safety PSA, the Utah Department of Transportation depicted a dead child lying in an overturned car. A dead kid. During the Super Bowl.
"Sam looks like he's sleeping, but he's not," the narrator explains. "He's not thinking. He's not breathing. He's dead."
Unlike many of the evening's ads, this one makes a very clear point: Unbuckled adults can pose a huge risk to other passengers, including children, in the event of a crash. According to a statistic in the ad, unbuckled motorists increase the risk of injury or death to other passengers by 40 percent.
The state's Zero Fatalities microsite seems strangely pessimistic (or maybe just realistic) about the ad's impact: "If this doesn't inspire you to buckle up, we hope it at least shows you how your actions can threaten the lives of your friends and family members who are in the car with you. Seat belt use isn't just a personal decision; it affects everyone in the vehicle and others on the road."
A state spokesman admitted to the Salt Lake Tribune that the ad may be a bit dark for a festive event like the Super Bowl, but that safety officials "hope this commercial will spark a conversation and maybe inspire someone who doesn't typically buckle up to do so."
If you weren't bowled over by any of the Super Bowl commercials last night, well, you weren't watching in Savannah, Ga. The folks there, as Tenacious D would say, had their asses blown out—thanks to this insane ad from Jamie Casino.
The lawyer filled the entire first local ad break with the two-minute heavy-metal masterpiece below, which basically tells his life story. A Saul Goodman-esque figure, Casino was a lawyer to the crooks until something bad happened to him—and he reinvented himself. (No, he's not managing a Cinnabon in Omaha.)
The commercial is completely nuts, and completely entertaining. Grade: A.
Esurance is doing a fun little stunt tonight that should get some attention.
The online insurance company has bought the first commercial slot after the the final whistle of the Super Bowl. The company says that cost $1.5 million less than running an in-game execution—and it's using the ad to announce a Twitter sweepstakes in which it will give that money away to a lucky viewer who tweets the hashtag #EsuranceSave30.
To keep as many viewers' attention from drifting as possible, Esurance has gotten The Office star John Krasinski, its voiceover talent since 2012, to appear on camera for the first time in this spot, created by Leo Burnett.
After the ad airs, you will have 36 hours to tweet #EsuranceSave30 for a chance to win. Krasinski will unveil the winner on Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Wednesday.
Pepsi famously dialed back its volume of TV ads for this year's Super Bowl to focus on its sponsorship of the halftime show. Here's the ad from Mekanism that will run right before the halftime show begins. It shows New York City springing to life with music, with its landmarks serving as instruments. NYC is such a rich, inspiring place for this kind of approach. Nothing revolutionary, but a nice little opening number for Bruno Mars.
Lorde is a humble, homegrown New Zealand star, and she's taken out a full-page ad in the New Zealand Herald to make sure everyone back home knows she hasn't forgotten that.
Ahead of her performance at the Laneway music festival on Wednesday night this week (apparently her only summer show in New Zealand, where it's summer, Yankee suckers), the singer of anti-materialist anthem "Royals" penned a handwritten note for the ad celebrating her performance Sunday night at the Grammy Awards in L.A., not to mention the two awards she picked up there, for Song of the Year and Best Pop Solo Performance.
"hiya if you're reading this, Joel & I won. HOLY CRAP," reads the letter, referring to her producer Joel Little. "I just wanted to say thank you for the time you've given me over the past 14 months… without your support there's no way I would've ever gotten to stand in the middle of the Staples Center and perform in my school shoes."
It's a classy, charming statement of appreciation that fits nicely with her acceptance speeches, and broader down-to-earth positioning—a nice example of when marketing can perfectly align with honesty. Or at least, with an exceptionally convincing illusion of it.
With a cute canine-powered commercial from Budweiser chewing up its competition ahead of the big game, I decided to ask dog expert Brian Hare why a pooch is so often an adman's best friend.
"We share a lot of history with dogs that we do not share with any other animal," says Hare. "We've been evolving together for tens of thousands of years. This creates a special connection that is unique to our two species."
Judging from his pedigree, Hare should know. He serves as the director of the Canine Cognition Center at Duke University and co-founder of Dognition, a service dedicated to helping pet owners understand how their dogs think. (Ad shop McKinney helped create the service and its website.) With his wife, Vanessa Woods, Hare co-wrote The New York Times' best-seller The Genius of Dogs.
Sure, dogs are cute, but Hare believes there are deeper reasons that consumers respond so strongly, and in such positive ways, to ad campaigns that feature these animals.
"When you see a dog," he says, "it's not like looking at a tiger or a shark. It's like looking at someone familiar, someone you know and recognize. This sense of familiarity and comfort is very valuable to advertising."
That's certainly true for Budweiser's "Puppy Love," a 60-second commercial from Anomaly that tells the tale of a 10-week-old puppy who keeps escaping from an adoption center and cozying up to the Clydesdales on a nearby farm. The spot debuted on Wednesday's Today show, and in just over 30 hours online, "Puppy Love" is nearing 20 million YouTube views, making it by far the most-watched 2014 Super Bowl ad released prior to the game. It's also fetching massive feel-good buzz for the brand in social and mainstream media.
"This year's Budweiser commercial with the Clydesdales and puppy creates a very heartwarming story, pulling out all the stops and using our relationship with both of these animals very effectively," Hare says. "Seeing a dog brings up positive feelings that no other animal can to the same extent. Horses convey power and grace."
Overall, he says, the puppy-horse combo creates "incredibly strong positive feelings around the brand."
Hare maintains that no other critters meet advertiser needs quite like dogs (real ones, not CGI-created Doberman-Chihuahua hybrids on a rampage). He says the combination of cuteness and familiarity helps bowsers win every time, even over the cotton-tailed charms of bunnies. (Perhaps a surprising assertion from a guy named Hare.)
Should some animals be barred from ads entirely? "Depending on the ad's intent, snakes are something to be wary of." Hare's also no fan of primates in commercials "because the abuse of chimpanzees is well documented within the entertainment industry."
So what about the Internet's favorite animal, the cat?
The feline fiends inexplicably get a couple of showcases on Sunday They'll hiss and spit, I imagine, across Hallmark Channel's Kitten Bowl, and cough up hairballs on Animal Planet's Kitty Half-Time Show—which is just an intermission during the cable network's Puppy Bowl anyway.
According to Hare: "Even though cats have also been companion animals for thousands of years, our relationship with dogs seems to be particularly extraordinary in comparison. Research shows that dogs can read our gestures, feel our emotions and even sense changes in our health better than most cats."
There, science proves it: When it comes to ads at least, cats aren't up to scratch.
UPDATE: Anheuser-Busch released the 60-second spot on Friday morning, along with a longer five-minute documentary. See both videos below.
Anheuser-Busch InBev is certainly personalizing its Super Bowl commercials this year.
While its Bud Light work will depict an elaborate prank on a single unsuspecting person, the brewer revealed Tuesday that one of its two Budweiser spots will feature a single U.S. serviceman, Lt. Chuck Nadd, receiving a surprise hero's welcome home—from Bud and his entire town of Winter Park, Fla.
"The festivities included a full ticker tape parade, complete with marching bands, antique military vehicles, the VFW motorcycle club and an appearance by the world-famous Budweiser Clydesdales—all a complete shock to Lt. Chuck Nadd, who expected only to see his family waiting for him," the brewer says.
A-B says it was originally planned as a 30-second spot, but expanded to a :60—bringing the company's total time in Sunday broadcast to four full minutes. Its other spot, "Puppy Love," also a :60 and a sequel to last year's "Brotherhood" ad with the baby Clydesdale, is expected to hit YouTube on Wednesday morning.
When we heard GoPro was going to be a Super Bowl advertiser again this year, we were prepared for something epic. And while the event the camera brand chose to feature is definitely a monumental moment, it's also … kinda old.
GoPro today unveiled its 30-second Super Bowl spot, which shows the first moments of skydiver Felix Baumgartner's 24-mile plunge to the earth way back in October 2012. Baumgartner and sponsor Red Bull used seven GoPro cameras to document the Stratos jump, and GoPro's Super Bowl ad serves mostly as a teaser to the eight-minute short film created from all that footage. (Which you can also see below.)
Leveraging this partnership to create Super Bowl ad content makes sense on one level, but the decision also banks on the hope that Red Bull itself hasn't already sucked all the marketing marrow from the bones of this extensively publicized event.
Even last October, Red Bull released its own nine-minute video recapping the jump from Baumgartner's point of view. While the new Stratos video hosted on GoPro.com reveals a few new angles, it's essentially just the same thing we saw last October, which was the same thing live viewers saw a year before that.
In a statement, GoPro acknowledges that it's treading a bit of a worn path, but the brand is confident the Stratos jump still has a lot of excitement to offer:
"While many people are familiar with the Stratos event, what most don’t know is that GoPro rode shotgun during the jump, documenting every moment with seven HERO2 cameras. We want audiences to understand the insane versatility of GoPro cameras, from baby walkers (see our Baby Dub Step Super Bowl commercial from last year) to outer space. We want them to experience the Stratos event again, for the first time, through our video story, and with the out-of-this-world imagery that only a GoPro can deliver."
Millions have viewed Red Bull's footage, but clearly there are millions more who missed the hoopla the first few times around. Will they be impressed with GoPro's example of the great heights its devices can reach and document? Or will they miss the GoPro logos and just wonder why Red Bull is still running an ad from 2012?
A common lament among parents is the expense of going out after having children. Beyond shelling out the cost for dinner, there's usually also a hefty price of paying someone to tuck your kids into bed and then sit on the couch, watching The Bachelor until you come home.
So Olive Garden, known for its widely loved breadsticks and somewhat-Italian food, has come up with an ingenious campaign to get parents into their restaurant: The chain is covering your babysitting tab.
For its "Parents' Night Out" promotion, Olive Garden teamed up with MyGym—a chain that offers kids tumbling classes and birthday parties—to provide free babysitting on Feb. 7. Parents just need to reserve a spot at their local MyGym, if there's one nearby.
Of course such an idea is simple in theory but logistically quite complicated. Olive Garden fans have filed a litany of complaints about age restrictions, mandatory (though refundable) deposits, lack of convenient MyGym locations and other details. But Olive Garden has been responding to the questions with admirable diligence, and given the national exposure generated by the promotion, it's clearly a worthwhile effort.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
