It may not be the height of sophistication, but holy crap—Kmart's "Ship My Pants" ad is having a great run, to say the least. After just five days on YouTube, the pun-heavy spot from Draftfcb—in which Kmart shoppers are strongly encouraged to "ship their pants"—is quickly heading toward 10 million views on YouTube (it has 7.8 million currently) and is being passed around by viewers at an astounding rate of one share for every nine views, according to the viral experts at Unruly Media. With more than 800,000 shares total, it's already the second-most-shared ad of the past 30 days, eclipsed only by the "Bad Motherfucker" video from the Russian rock band Biting Elbows—which isn't really an an ad at all but counts as marketing because it's stuffed full of references to Neft vodka. Also, "Ship My Pants" seems destined to get a second big wave of publicity soon. Draftfcb—which is defending the Kmart creative business in a review that's down to three agencies—says the spot is living online only for now, but a TV run is in the works.
Mr. T guest-stars as a living pun in this Crispin Porter + Boguksy ad for Old Navy Best Tees, which are more stylish and durable than their previous ones. That's not a huge accomplishment, but whatever, it's their ad. (T also appeared in a two-minute Old Navy infomercial last year with Anna Faris.) I enjoyed the quiet irony of putting Mr. T on a plane, when B.A. Baracus was scared to death of them, but it's a little hard for the audience to accept that he can just kick the bathroom door down in a post-9/11 world. No T-shirt in the world can get you out of that kind of trouble.
CREDITS Client: Old Navy Agency: Crispin Porter + Bogusky Partner/Worldwide Chief Creative Officer: Rob Reilly Executive Creative Director: Jason Gaboriau Creative Director: Robin Fitzgerald Creative Director: Cameron Harris Associate Creative Directors: Alexandra Sann, Mike Kohlbecker Sr. Copywriter: Dafna Garber Copywriter: Chelsea O'Brien Art Director: Mary Dauterman Director of Video Production: Chad Hopenwasser Executive Integrated Producer (Music): Bill Meadows Executive Integrated Producer: Deb Drumm Junior Integrated Producer: Jackie Maloney Executive Business Affairs Manager: Amy Jacobsen Business Affairs Manager: Michelle McKinney Production Company & City: Smuggler, Hollywood, CA Director: Randy Krallman Assistant Directors: Jey Wada, Erin Stern Executive Producers/Partners: Patrick Milling Smith, Brian Carmody Executive Producer/COO: Lisa Rich Executive Producers: Allison Kunzman, Laura Thoel Head of Production: Andrew Colón Producer: Paula Cohen Director of Photography: Bryan Newman Editorial Company & City: Cut + Run, Santa Monica, CA Head of Production/Senior Producer: Christie Price Executive Producer: Carr Schilling Editor: Frank Effron Assistant Editors: Heather Bartholomae, Brooke Rupe Visual Effects Company & City: Method Studios, Santa Monica, CA Executive Producer: Robert Owens Producer: Colin Clarry Set Supervisor: Rob Hodgson VFX Supervisors: Jason Schugardt, Michael Sean Foley Lead Composer: Kelly Bumbarger Graphics & Animation Company & City: Buck, Los Angeles, CA Executive Creative Director: Ryan Honey Executive Producer: Maurie Enochson Sr. Producer: Nick Terzich Associate Producer: Ashley Hsieh Art Director: Jenny Ko Designer: Sean Dekkers Animator: TJ Socho Music Company & City: Search Party, Portland, OR Executive Producer: Sara Matarazzo Producer: Chris Funk Composer: Terence Bernardo Sound Design & City: Machine Head, Santa Monica, CA Sound Designer: Stephen Dewey Producer: Patty Chow Dewey Telecine & City: Company 3, Santa Monica, CA President/Colorist: Stefan Sonnenfeld Executive Producer: Rhubie Jovanov Partner/Managing Director: Steve Erich EGroup Account Director: Danielle Whalen Account Director: Kate Higgins Content Management Supervisor: Laura Likos Content Supervisors: Jessica Francis, Kendra Schaaf Content Manager: Alex Kirk, Michelle Forbush Group Director, Planning: Lindsey Allison Cognitive Anthropologists: Jennifer Hruska, Tiffany Ahern
Juvenile humor reigns supreme in this new Kmart commercial from Draftfcb, featuring store workers encouraging stunned shoppers to not be shy and just go ahead and "ship your pants." The shoppers take full advantage, too. Other folks later in the spot even ship their drawers and their nighties, and one old dude even gleefully ships the bed. (The point is, Kmart is offering free shipping of anything from Kmart.com if people can't find it at the physical store.) I'm not sure I'd sign off on a commercial that's basically 30 seconds of people punning about shit, but it's sure worth a chuckle. Props, too, for going all out and including the #shipmypants hashtag. Hat tip to @arrrzzz.
CREDITS Client: Kmart Vice President, Marketing Planning: Andrew Stein Vice President, Creative: Mark Andeer Vice President, Chief Digital Marketing Officer: Bill Kiss
Amazon has taken some heat for offering T-shirts with extremely offensive, upsetting slogans—"Keep calm and rape a lot," "Keep calm and grope a lot," "Keep calm and knife her"—from a merchant called, appropriately enough, Solid Gold Bomb. The T-shirt maker apologized profusely and deleted the shirts, claiming the phrases were automatically generated by a computer script from thousands of dictionary words. It's tough to fathom how language referring to raping and groping could find its way via algorithm onto $20 T-shirts playing off England's "Keep calm and carry on" World War II mantra. Yet I doubt the company would try such a boneheaded stunt for publicity. (After this fracas, it might not survive.) Most media coverage has portrayed the episode as a complex, cautionary tale of technology gone awry, pointing out the need for greater human oversight in our age of cost- and labor-saving automation. Fair enough. It's not like the machines could comprehend such phrases. But if they could, it would mean only one of two things: it's their idea of a sick joke, or they're taunting us about the rapey, knifey tech-mageddon to come.
“This film is a 100 year countdown to the grand opening of Westfield Stratford City on September 13th 2011, and celebrates a century of East London fashion, dance and music.
Directed by Jake Lunt with The Viral Factory, the film was shot over 4 days in east London locations with hundreds of costume changes. The music was commissioned from Oscar nominated genius Tristin Norwell who took a simple tune and interpreted it for each decade over 100 years.”
Client: Westfield Stratford City
Production: The Viral Factory
According to Associated Press, Microsoft-enabled smart carts will be rolling down the aisles of ShopRite later this year.
Customers with a ShopRite loyalty card will be able to log into a Web site at home and type in their grocery lists; when they get to the store and swipe their card on the MediaCart console, the list will appear. As shoppers scan their items and place them in their cart, the console gives a running price tally and checks items off the shopping list.
The system also uses radio-frequency identification to sense where the shopper’s cart is in the store. The RFID data can help ShopRite and food makers understand shopping patterns, and the technology can also be used to send certain advertisements to people at certain points – an ad for 50 cents off Oreos, for example, when a shopper enters the cookie aisle.
There’s an interesting personal story embedded inside this New York Times article on Apple’s mastery of the retail space.
Two years ago, Isobella Jade was down on her luck, living on a friend’s couch and struggling to make it as a fashion model when she had the idea of writing a book about her experience as a short woman trying to break into the modeling business.
Unable to afford a computer, Ms. Jade, 25, began cadging time on a laptop at the Apple store in the SoHo section of Manhattan. Ms. Jade spent hours at a stretch standing in a discreet corner of the store, typing. Within a few months, she had written nearly 300 pages.
Not only did store employees not mind, but at closing time they often made certain to shut Ms. Jade’s computer down last, to give her a little extra time. A few months later, the store invited her to give an in-store reading from her manuscript.
Apple stores generate sales at the rate of about $4,000 per square foot a year, and now account for 20 percent of the company’s revenue.
Apple’s stock is up 135 percent for the year. By contrast, high-flying Google is up about 52 percent, while the tech-dominated Nasdaq index is up 12 percent.
According to WSBTV, some people can’t get enough of Wal-Mart’s retail experience.
At the 24-hour Wal-Mart in Lilburn, GA police said a 70-year-old woman spent three days inside the store sleeping, shopping and eating at the on-site Blimpie.
The woman was able to blend in with the carts, crowds and chaos and go unnoticed for 72 hours a week before Christmas. When asked by Wal-Mart employees why she was there for so long she simply said, ‘I’m shopping.’
The woman was escorted home by police after she paid for her merchandise.
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