Hasta La Creative!

I put together a YouTube playlist with a compilation of 13 14 recruitment ads from different countries. Comparative military propaganda highlights of the weird:

The three Swedish spots are the best. Au Pair targets women and lures them with an opportunity to blow up bridges (when was the last time a Swedish soldier blew up a bridge?). Cube and Labyrinth are wacky but very stylish. Shows how the Swedish army values cognitive abilities over muscles.

British Army – shots of a party scene are there why? (another spot has a beach and women in bikini)

The Russian spot promises recruits that they finally will be able to afford to buy flowers and a night on the town for their girlfriends. Definitely not for external consumption. (The spot is for “kontraktniki”, the volunteer part of the army).

I can’t tell if the Ukranian spot isn’t a spoof. YouTube has a translated dialog script if you expand “About the video” part.

Other armies in the playlist are Pakistani, Indian, Canadian, American, Czech, Slovak, Australian, [update] and Estonia (thanks, Toivo).

From the creative media planning department: an ad for a mattress company on Brazilian TV’s test card after the end of the day’s programming. (via Ads of the World).

And below is what one of the first test cards ever looked like (from Test Card Gallery, an amazing site with lots of history and test cards from around the world).

This spot for Russian Gmail (Saatchi Moscow, via Armando) is a great demonstration of the paper prototyping method (see a wiki definition, and a good book).

Speaking of Google and the Iron Curtain, check out Google.by (.by is for Belarus), a project where a cybersquatter an enterprising individual who created a bannerized version of the search engine’s home page. Another google that’s not Google is google.vc.

“Recreating Movement is a computer program for analyzing film sequences and has been developed within a diploma thesis.”

On Kottke, a great round-up of time-merge visualizations. Below, “1000 cars racing at the same time“, a video overlay of many play-throughs. Besides the obvious fun factor, it’s a great tool for averaging user interactions within an environment.

First, the big question: if ad recall depends on viewer’s emotions, who do you think will remember more of the ads: Giants’ or Patriots’ fans?

Onto the stats.

Press release: “TiVo announced this year’s top Super Bowl commercial moments. This information was prepared using aggregated, anonymous, second-by-second audience measurement data about how TiVo subscribers watched the game.

Commercials featuring slapstick humor and celebrity appearances dominate the list, with stars like Justin Timberlake, Shaquille O’Neal, and Carmen Electra claiming a spot on the list. Yet, for all the star power they generated, the E-Trade talking baby may have upstaged them all, taking the coveted top spot thanks to a humorous look at using E-Trade.

TiVo’s audience measurement analysis is based on aggregated data from a sample of approximately 10,000 anonymous households with TiVo service. TiVo viewership information gauges the interest in programming content by measuring the percentage of the TiVo audience watching in “play” speed.”

It’s gotta be the first baby spot, not the one with the clown. I’m ashamed to admit that I’d never laughed so hard during a commercial as I did at baby’s “whoah” at the spot’s end. I also loved Coke’s balloons.

E-Trade’s “Baby” Superbowl spot.

USA Today AdMeter scores here: 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2000-1989. Since this year AdMeter celebrates its 20th anniversary, the newspaper asked its panel to rank all previous winners as well. The results are here: it’s a Pepsi spot from 1996.

USA Today: How AdMeter works.

Charmin’s public bathrooms in Times Square that were such a hit last year are back, with a microsite, maps and train directions. NY Times blogged last month:

“The restrooms — along with a plush waiting area — occupy a 12,000-square-foot space on the mezzanine of an office tower 1540 Broadway, between 45th and 46th Streets. The restrooms have luxurious features like wainscoting, hardwood floors, crown moldings and — new for this year — Kohler plumbing fixtures. About 200 workers (18 to 30 working on each shift) are available to clean each restroom after each use.

The Times Square program grew out of a Pottypalooza, a marketing effort that began in 2001, in which Charmin drove a 53-foot trailer, fitted with 27 toilets, around the country, to events like the Super Bowl.”

The first installment took about a year to plan.

Here’s a video of what the bathrooms looked like last year (and another one from a grateful reviewer).