Hasta La Creative!

How tough is it to scout for pillow shams and window treatments, Mr. New Homeowner, while keeping your manhood intact? Extremely difficult, if not downright impossible, on chick-dominated Pinterest.

FirstBank of Lakewood, Colo., wants to help you unleash your inner Martha Stewart while disguising the whole House Beautiful jag as a much more manly exercise. Just download a browser extension—themes include sports, meat and power tools—and “manoflage” your Pinterest page. So, while you’re actually considering color schemes and area rugs, it’ll appear to nosy friends or coworkers that you’re shopping for drill bits or ogling raw beef. Instant stamp of approval from anyone mired in gender stereotypes!

The digital campaign comes from ad agency TDA_Boulder, and its intro video will run as paid pre-roll on sites like Hulu and YuMe. There’s a dedicated man-o-flage.com site for the free software, which is also available at the App Store.

Decorate to your heart’s content, dude.

Because we haven’t yet covered every single ad that aired during the Super Bowl, here’s one from TDA_Boulder that (almost) plays on the same theme as a certain short-lived campaign by Barton F. Graf 9000.

In order to promote the client’s Person to Person Transfers service, the first spot illustrates what might happen if one relies on the creaky old ATM:

Joking about puppies being sold as quickly as possible? How dare they!

No one in “the media” compared the two campaigns because this one was regional, airing during the pre-game in Arizona and the first quarter in Colorado. Unlike the GoDaddy spot, this one also included a post-game follow-up for those with a tendency to get offended at anything/everything:

Maybe the joke was simply more obvious and less risque in this case, but those Golden Retrievers do look pure enough to have come from…a puppy mill!

The eerily prescient press release reads, “For those Super Bowl viewers who might not appreciate unhappy endings to their Super Bowl spots, a follow-up will run later that night…”

Part two aired during Jimmy Fallon in Colorado and NBC’s NFL News Special in Arizona.

Credits:

Client: FirstBank

Agency: TDA_Boulder

AD: Haley Garyet
CD/CW: Jeremy Seibold
ECDs: Jonathan Schoenberg, Thomas Dooley
Account Dir.: Danielle Borden
Account Sup.: Charlie Wright
Agency Producer: Susan Fisher

Prod. Co.: Furlined, Santa Monica, Calif.
Directors: Speck and Gordon
D.P.: Jo Willems
President: Diane McArter
Exec Producer: David Thorne
Line Producer: Aris McGarry

Talent: Charlie Greenleaf, age 9

Editorial/Post: Stitch, Santa Monica
Editor: Andy McGraw
Asst. Editor: Eileen Miraglia
Prod.: Rebecca Baker

Telecine: The Mill, Los Angeles
Colorist: Adam Scott

Mix/Sound Design: Lime Studios, Santa Monica
Engineer: Dave Wagg

Animation: Bernard Tan, New York

Music: JSM?Music, New York
CD/Producer: Joel Simon
Exec Producer: Ross Hopman
Composers: Doug Katsaros, Nathan Kil, Joel Simon
Business Mgr.: Tricia Krasneski

You know summer is over when New York Fashion Week and its media maelstrom descends upon our fair city. TDA_Boulder, however, has some words of advice for the “super” models attending the events in this faux PSA for client Sir Richard’s Condom Co.:

Use protection lest your accidental children be too beautiful for this world.

The spot will run on TV during cable coverage of the Week on E! while simultaneously appearing on the web pages of big-name fashion pubs like Vogue and WWD.

It aims to “build brand awareness among social/style influencers, especially female”, though we wonder if the models themselves will relate.

(more…)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

This week brings us the latest in TDA_Boulder‘s series of shorts for client FirstBank.

The campaign, directed by the Perlorian Brothers of LA production company MJZ, highlights the always-relevant disconnect between the Amish community and the modern world in order to promote the client’s new mobile app, which allows for the remote and super-convenient paying of bills.

Here’s your protagonist reflecting on the number of expenses he may now resolve without having to visit the real world in “Manure Bill”:

The campaign will run across all broadcast networks and various summer cable summer programs (and yes, that includes Amish Mafia).

Credits and previous spots after the jump.

(more…)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Is it possible to have work-life balance in the advertising biz? Sure, with the right amount of self-inflicted sabotage.

That's the idea behind "The Happy Hour Virus" from Colorado agency TDA_Boulder, whose tongue-in-cheek recruiting effort encourages workaday types to fake a computer catastrophe and leave work early.

The HappyHourVirus.com site explains TDA's workplace philosophy: "We are all better employees if we achieve something called work-life balance. However, pursuing that goal is not always an easy task in today's corporate culture. Please use the Happy Hour Virus to leave work early and enjoy the company of friends, family or co-workers. We are aware that this might jeopardize your productivity the following day, but we are willing to take that risk on your behalf. And if this sounds like a philosophy you could live with, learn more about us here." That last word links to an employment application.

Visitors to the site can click a button to select one of three "crashed computer" motifs—"Kernel Panic," "Broken Monitor" or "Blue Screen of Death"—to make it seem as if technical troubles are forcing them to call it a day.  I'd use one of the fake screens to help me escape from AdFreak a few hours early, but I'd still need a hacksaw to break these ankle chains.