Hasta La Creative!

Meet MAX, a bubbly 1964 black Beetle and the host of his own TV-show. Guests on Max’s show include supermodel Heidi Klum, pop and TV personality David Hasselhoff, Star Trek’s Leonard Nimoy, NASA astronaut Richard Searfoss, music-sharing innovator Shawn Fanning and former basketball coach Bob Knight. Max is the brainchild of Crispin, Porter & Bogusky and the commercials are directed by Roman Coppola.

“Volkswagen has always occupied a unique and positive place in both American car culture and American popular culture. And the brand is as relevant today as it has ever been,” said Tim Ellis, vice president of marketing at Volkswagen of America. “Max personifies Volkswagen’s past, present and vision for the future. Through him, we will reconnect with American consumers and let them know how Volkswagen understands and responds to what the people want.”

Volkswagen – Talk Show / The Hoff – (2008) :30 (USA)

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PriHere’s some print & TV for WatchThePope.com, a new ad campaign from a new ad agency, Cesario Migliozzi, llc. which is based in LA, CA. This campaign was created for The Prayer Channel who will have extensive live coverage of the Pope’s visit to the US (Washington DC and NYC). Who knew that catholics were such big fans of puns? (print inside)

WatchThePope.com – The Popes official title – (2008) :15 (USA)

WatchThePope.com – The Popes People – (2008) :15 (USA)

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As far as the known means of promotions and providing advertising mediums is concerned, digital media advertising is the new resort that most people turn to today. It has been hailed as the ideal means of getting ads across to a new market, especially the ones who hate to wait.

Normally, most digital media advertising campaigns can be found in the airports for captive audiences. This concept originates from the fact that whenever a person finds himself waiting for his flight or turn, he is seeking something to entertain him for the moment. Digital advertising aims to do just that.

You may be thinking that digital spending may be costly which is true. But if you are inclined to make each second count, rest assured digital media advertising is a worthy investment for vast exposure for your product or service today.

You can read more of it here at Digital Signage Today.

Q&A with PandaPanther who just completed work on the MTV Tr3s Top Twenty count. By the way PandaPanther just signed to Blacklist’s roster in January of 2008.

What was the project brief?
Our task was to develop an open and interiors for MTV Tr3s’ Top 20 countdown show. the brief was very open. we presented them with several ideas and they gravitated towards a live action based approach. they liked our treatment so much, that they asked us to create individual vignettes for each countdown number.

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Minneapolis based animation studio MAKE, along with Campbell Mithun, have completed a series of three new fifteen-second spots for The Hartford Financial Services Group. The spots will air during the 2008 NCAA tournament. Just click on each image to reach the ad itself in the commercial archive.

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Carlton Draught – Big ad – (2005) 0:60 (Australia)
Oh yes, we all remember the Carlton Draughts Big Ad fondly. It went on to rake in the awards and even had a fierce fight with Guinness Noitulove / Evolution for the Grand Prix spot in Cannes 2006. The later Carlton Draught flashdancer advert was kind either super funny or “meh” depending on who you asked. Carlton has thus done a big time gamble and brought back the thousand Carlton men who sort themselves into shapes.
Only this time… they’re skydiving.
Super adgrunts, enjoy the
Carlton Draught – Skytroopers / Halftime show – (2008) 1:20 (Australia)

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So, according to Radar Online the “Mac guy”, aka Justin Long, is not returning for the next batch of Mac ads. Why? Well if you ask Slate, it’s because he’s a smug little twit.

Perhaps for striking people as a “smug little twit,” in the words of Seth Stevenson, ad critic for Slate. Long, he adds, is “just the sort of unshaven, hoodie-wearing, hands-in-pockets hipster we’ve always imagined when picturing a Mac enthusiast…. It’s like Apple is parodying its own image while also cementing it.” Of the polymathic Hodgman, who has drawn acclaim for his work on The Daily Show and NPR’s This American Life as well as his book, The Areas of My Expertise, Stevenson writes, “Even as he plays the chump in these Apple spots, his humor and likability are evident.”

As much as I like to laugh at the PC guy played by John Hodgman – that Mac guys still wins. I never found him smug or annoying in the least. But then again, the only hardware I run is either a mac or something I put together which has a nice fast Athlon in it. Full disclosure, our server now has xeons which is Intel, but this still doesn’t mean I’m using anything from Microsoft, ever. How’s that for a smug mac user?

Here’s a little trip down memory lane of Mac vs PC commercials for you in the commercial archive, inside are links to the ads so far in reverse chronological order. Which one is your favorite?

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Saatchi and Saatchi, Stockholm has done an almost global commercial for Sony Ericsson which will be aired in “twenty to thirty” different countries. In the ad, several people sing Depeche Mode’s song “enjoy the silence”, and it’s the first time this song has been used in an advertisment.
The most interesting feature of this mood-ad is that there’s a transvestite in it. At least I think this lass is born a lad. Sony Ericsson – Enjoy the silence – (2008) :60 (Sweden)

Saatchi is also aiming for a world record in the amount of people who sing the same song and with the site Jointhesong.com created by B-Reel, Sony fans can upload themselves singing along to the same song. If the campaign works, a Guiness book of records place might be in order.

“I think that the current record is 275 000 [people singing the same song], so it won’t be easy to beat. Be we’re officially aiming for it.”

said Stefan Bergström Sony Ericsson’s Nordic communication manager to Resumé

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PETA is at it again, but instead of undressing celebrities they’ve stripped one of their “very pregnant” members named Noemie down to her skivvies and placed her on all fours and kneeling in a replica farrowing crate with the banner ‘Unhappy Mother’s Day for Pigs’, all in the middle of in Covent Garden. Do you know how cold it is in London these days? BrrRRRrrr! I hope Noemie didn’t catch one in her state.
PETA’s own blog Fish and Chimps explains the stunt:

Mother’s Day is a time to show love, respect and gratitude for mothers so it is only fitting that we extend that kindness to mothers that have a really tough time all year round – sows, who are squeezed into narrow metal stalls barely bigger than their own bodies. Unable to turn around, nuzzle their piglets or do anything that comes naturally to them, they live in misery. When weaned, the piglets are taken away to be fattened for slaughter, and the mothers are put through the process all over again.

PETA seems to prefer the nude approach when doing their ad stunts, you can see photos of the stunt here and PETA’s own channel on Friction.tv has video of the event.
PETA’s tactic of using the nude female body to attract attention has been grating people for a while, The F word responds:

Now I get that naked women attract attention, but I really don’t think that it’s because passersby give a shit about mistreated pregnant sows.

See, what PETA don’t seem to get is that society as a whole couldn’t really care less about women’s welfare, so showing women in exploitative or abusive situations to try and encourage us to care about animal welfare really isn’t a very effective strategy. In fact, their imagery is often very similar to that found in some genres of porn, hardly well known for encouraging the viewer to empathise with the women involved.
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Naked women, even dead ones, are stock images in our media; what shocks is not the alluded to mistreatment of animals, but PETA’s complete disregard for women.

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Director Eran Creevy – repped by Sleeper USA and between the eyes in London – has done the impossible, he’s made me nostalgic for the late eighties and made the “running man” dance look cool. Yes, in the video a lad down in Cardiff pub busts all the moves that became MC Hammer’s trademark, and he doesn’t look like a complete dork doing it. He does the running man/Vanilla ice and the the Hammer Dance with a pub full of people joining him. Check out the Utah Saints “Something Good ‘08” (Ministry of Sound) (2008) music video 2:45 (UK) in the commercial archive. The eighties were never that cool, kids.

In the late eighties, I despised MC Hammer and that dance, but then again I looked like this in 1989. Amy Winehouse eat your beehive out, mine was all my own hair. Useless trivia: my friends amused themselves for hours bouncing lighters and coins off my hair and when I removed my helmet the beehive would “pop” back up into shape. This beehive feature made for a particularly good arrival at a club once as I pulled up on a shiny red scooter removing my helmet, and the line of people waiting to get in broke out in spontaneous applauding.

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