Hasta La Creative!

“Girl education ad” which won the young Lotus at ADFEST 2008.

The copy reads: “An educated girl can educate a nation”

Two cool things about the Samsung Instinct campaign site that encourages people to drop an image of the phone into their home videos: the refreshing honesty and this direct YouTube uploader that connects the users directly to their already uploaded videos.

Royal Pingdom has collected not only examples of funnily mis-targeted AdWords (“Buy Soul on eBay”), but also some true gems of creativity, such as this job ad tied to a search for a particularly volatile stock.

KFC: making POS displays TiVo-proof since 2008.

See if you can find a hidden image in this KFC point-of-sale ad because if you do, you are in for a free sandwich. If you don’t see anything, or see something that shouldn’t be displayed in a family-friendly environment, scroll down for the spoiler. If you thought it was too easy, try spotting the hidden image in the campaign’s TV spot.

The company says (in an email) that it is riding the culture wave where people see religious personalities in their snacks.

Earlier:
Giant KFC Logo Seen on Google Earth
Giant KFC Logo Seen From Space
KFC Creates TiVo-Proof Ad
KFC Claims Secret-Message Ad Successful
KFC Edits YouTube Clips into Spot

Google “Rampenfest”. Short. To the point. (How did they get to the top of Google results? Because of the URL?)

The “Interesting BWM viral” is this movie below (the campaign started some time in February with a teaser). There are also a few satellite sites, such as this one for the town Oberpfaffelbachen. Even though the town is mythical, you can find touristy pictures of it on Flickr. See also a blog by the documentary’s maker and his YouTube profile.

An aside: gotta start hoarding accounts on popular sites so that they look “aged” by the time they are put to action.

Earlier:
How to pitch bloggers

Note to self: Only approve creative that offends people in the countries that either don’t import your product or don’t have the internets and photoshops.

In Mexico, Absolut is running a print and a billboard that shows Mexico with borders from the early 1800s as part of its In An Absolut World campaign. LA Times blogs about it; pissed off readers create their own version of an ideal world:

Absolut responds on the campaign blog (742 comments to date): “As a global company, we recognize that people in different parts of the world may lend different perspectives or interpret our ads in a different way than was intended in that market. Obviously, this ad was run in Mexico, and not the US — that ad might have been very different.”

As one of the commenters on the blog points out, Absolut sales by country in 2007 were 50% for the US, 3% for Mexico.

This is fun. The creative is gonna be a hit on the Balkans where every country dreams of a “Greater” (and historically accurate) version of itself. A good place to start is Serbia that just lost Kosovo. Here, let me help: Greater Bulgaria, Greater Albania, Greater Macedonia, Greater Serbia, Greater Romania, Greater Croatia.

Kinda like this Smart billboard from South Africa boasting how there’s nothing American about the car.

Earlier:
Local Billboards and Global Information

These images of Gmail-branded soap have been circulating around over the past couple of months and eventually ended up on a Wired blog along with many others. They have been dismissed as either a clever Photoshop job or an art project. Instead, the soap apparently was an actual campaign done to promote Gmail’s spam filtering might to Russian students. The connection is the Russian wordplay on the soundalike slang for email and soap. The copy on package reads: “Gmail: the cleanest soap.” There’s an entire YouTube channel full of Russian CGM on the subject. There’s an official statement from Google’s Russian PR people on Sostav.ru.

You’ve seen this recent Russian TV spot for Gmail, of course.

This year’s ad prank is Trust Banners that gain “consumer trust through high frequency (90fps) banner adverts which stimulate specific regions of the visual cortex (Visual area V5/MT) producing instant effects on consumers.”

Turning black and white TVs into color sets by wrapping them in nylon stockings must be the best media-related April 1 hoax ever (Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds was on Halloween so it doesn’t qualify). Above is the original broadcast on the Swedish TV back from April 1, 1962.

Among the pranks that would actually make sense to implement for real is last year’s announcement by XM radio that it is launching a new channel entirely powered by podcasts.

The always adorable Google added a new function to Docs this year that creates a blank document with an outline of a paper airplane.

Also:
Remote Control Jammer Chip Activated By Commercials

One of the few press releases that reach the front page of Digg: Dr. Pepper promises (and blogs about it) a can of Dr. Pepper to everyone in the States if Guns’N’Roses releases its long-overdue Chinese Democracy album in 2008. Axl Rose is pleasantly surprised but isn’t promising anything.

Billboard: “It took a little patience to perfect Dr Pepper’s special mix of 23 ingredients, which our fans have come to know and love,” Dr Pepper director of marketing Jaxie Alt says. “So we completely understand and empathize with Axl’s quest for perfection — for something more than the average album. We know once it’s released, people will refer to it as ‘Dr Pepper for the ears’ because it will be such a refreshing blend of rich, bold sounds – an instant classic.”

Wonder about the decision to use four unskinned Blogspot blogs, though. Why? Authenticity? Speed?

Anyway, nice stunt with some press coverage. Almost free if the album doesn’t come out, and, what, $25M if it does? (300M people in the States / $.25 per can of soda).

Imagine this. You send out a bunch of promo stuff: schwag, catalogs, merchandise. Every item is equipped with a small chip. Next, you create a TV commercial and insert an “inaudible 200MHz molecular vibration sound mat”. When you run the spot on TV, the inaudible signal activates the chip, which in turn jams the signal from your remote control blocking people from switching channels. When your commercial stops playing, the remote goes back to normal.

Welcome The XV2083 Remote Control Jammer. The video is below.

Too bad it ain’t a real product, but a campaign by a communications agency. Very convincing, though. The next version of the chip should also emit signals that block microwave ovens and suppress bathroom urges.

It’s not entirely science fiction, though. Here’s a video of a working TV remote jammer and instructions for building one, and a diagram: