Hasta La Creative!

Last week when the mysterious ads for Obay cropped up around Ontario many a blogger speculated what it might really be selling. The Accordion Guy Joey Devilla posted the 15th about the Mysterious Ads for “Obay”

It’s obvious that the product doesn’t actually exist and that it’s some sort of viral marketing campaign. As for what the campaign is meant to promote, most people with whom I’ve spoken to about the ads think that it’s some kind of jab at parents who are following the disturbing trend of medicating their teenage kids out of normal teenage behaviour and into Stepford adolescence.

The comments are full of speculation on who the sender might be, from drug companies to anti-drug companies to churches before someone working for a College in Ontario reveals that they are the ones behind the campaign. So, now that the buzz it built, will people care?

Image from *J-Bl*’s photostream

Today in Canada.com the story Mystery ad gains momentum: whodunit? looks at the risks with a campaign like this. Just because people were curious when the campaign first went up doesn’t mean they’ll care when the sender is revealed.

In early 2007, an unbranded video of a bridezilla lopping off her hair in a pre-wedding fit drew 12 million views on YouTube but garnered next to nothing in the way of publicity for Sunsilk when, two weeks after the Canadian clip was uploaded, the hair-product company revealed its involvement.
…
Though Scientology and anti-pharmaceutical lobbyists have been widely named as suspects in the Obay whodunit, detective work by Canadian blogs Accordion Guy and Torontoist have pegged Ontario Colleges as the likeliest source of the ads – which despite being clustered in eastern Canada, have gained national attention online.
Questioned about their involvement with the campaign, Ontario Colleges spokesman Rob Savage was cautiously vague (“at this point, we don’t have any information we can give you”), but told Canwest News Service he would follow up before the end of the month about the “long-term marketing stuff” being undertaken by the organization.

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Total Beverage is a super-huge, enourmous, gigantic, really really big liquor store in Westminister Colorado. Denver based Sukle Advertising & Design has created a fresh new identity for Total Beverage that is the total opposite of cluttered booze-shops. Inspired by the simplicity of European road signs and informational graphics Sukle brought simplicity to a store large enough to contain all sorts of chaos. (Did I mention that the store is, like, big?)

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Something is going on with political advertising in the states, first we have Chuck Norris cameos, now we have ads so funny that I want to move to Oregon just to vote for Steve Novick. Check out these two.

Would you have a beer with Steve Novick?

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I’m only putting “deaf” in quotation marks as a super bowl commercial can’t really be deaf, it’s an ad for crying out loud. Coolness though, that PepsiCo who is sponsoring the closed captioning for the game and had the idea to do a silent ad.

“Bob’s House” which will air during the superbowl is an ad which illustrates a popular joke in the hearing impaired community, and was created and performed by EnAble, a network in PepsiCo which supports diversity and the inclusion of persons with different abilities. Super adgrunts click the image above to take a sneak peak at the superbowl ad, all others see the making of “Bob’s House inside (quicktime)

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Hey adgrunts, did you know that on Match.com started 2008 with a major UK advertising campaign, introducing two new characters, Cupid and Fate? Well they did, and since I have a major deadline looming (wish me luck! it’s a pitch!), I’ll just post and show you the release and all the pretty posters and the five films inside.

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Euro RSCG New York did some research and discovered – *gasp* – that 95% of Americans want more fun. No kidding? Really? That totally goes against my research that says 80% want to less fun. Lets do a double-blind study guys!
Anyway, armed with this groundbreakingly obvious knowledge they set out to create a new fun campaign for Ritz crackers, arguably the most iconic cracker brand around.

To kick off the campaign, these wild posters – more inside.

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According to the NYT Xerox Hopes Its New Logo Doesn’t Say ‘Copier’ – well good news Xerox, it doesn’t. It says “beach ball” or “hard peppermint candy” but not “Copier” or anything else you actually do.

“Our new brand reflects who we are, the markets we serve and the innovation that differentiates us in our industry. We have expanded into new markets, created new businesses, acquired new capabilities, developed technologies that launched new industries — all to ensure we make it easier, faster, and less costly for our customers to share information.” source press release

Sure, OK. Would you like a mint?

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Something strange happens at this time of year. People begin to take ads literally.

Seems that not everyone is liking the new Toyota campaign where people are shown doing all sorts of silly things in order to get rid of their old car. They’re killing them off by pushing them off rooftop parkings, cutting them in half with the help of the snowplow guy, chainsawing down trees next to it which will fall and crush the car just so.

Daniel Johnston, executive director of the Insurance Fraud Bureau of Massachusetts, said the only conceivable purpose for destroying your existing car, rather than simply trading it in, would be to collect insurance money to pay for a new car.

“Every scene that’s described in the ads is a crime,” Johnston said.

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