NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — A bevy of TV networks will host New Year's Eve festivities tonight — ostensibly to entertain the masses of viewers staying home or ringing in 2009 at parties — but also to wring the last few thousand dollars' worth of ad revenue out of 2008 as the last seconds of this year tick away.
The LA Times reported today about the first-ever sign spinning contest between a bunch of those guys you see standing outside strip malls in the summer heat holding flat signs for Quizno’s or whatever. If you haven’t seen one of these sign-spinners doing their thing, take an extra moment the next time you pass one to revel in the acrobatics.
Local business owners take note: for about $15 an hour you can hire one of these guys to entertain passersby, while at the same time pointing them toward your store. You’ll save money on a billboard and help a college kid buy beer — so naturally this advertising option is a win win.
The company that claims to have pioneered the trend is called Arrow Advertising, which was started…wait for it…by guys who used to stand on corners doing the same job as a sign post.
Click continued to see another spinning clip.
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To end the year on a fun note, here’s a silly but cute spot for Rexona.
Happy New Year and thanks a lot for visiting The Ad Mad!
Agency: VegaOlmosPonce, Buenos Aries
Director: Nico & Martin
Production Company: Primo, Buenos Aires
DoP: Cristian Cottet
Editor: Patricio Pena
Post Production: Bitt Animation / Che Revolution Post
(TrendHunter.com) Robert Pattinson and Twilight fans who received shopping gift cards for Christmas may want to spend it at Hot Topic.
The punk-style store has unveiled a new collection of fashion items inspired by the…
Sexist and Stupid Ads (Episode 34) from ImJustSayin on Vimeo.
The Denver Egotist shared the above video with us. The show, called “I’m Just Sayin'” is an unscripted four minute conversation between three women. We’ve seen it somewhere before, but check out what they have to say about a few of the ads we’ve covered here on AgencSpy.
We particularly like the comments about 35 plus year-old male creative directors who seem to think ads with women as sexual objects are effective. Apparently, that theme is kinda sorta passe.
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For those of you who haven’t heard, Pepsi recently rebranded their logo to look more like a smile — and it kinda sorta looks like president-elect Barack Obama’s logo. This week, the soda maker peppered Times Square with posters displaying their pretty new insignia, sneakily melding the “O” shape into words like (See above) “Optimism”.
The posters are part of the “refresh everything” campaign, But, as temperatures continue to drop in the Big Apple, we wonder if people will love or loathe the new message.
Think about it — you’re one of a few hundred thousand people lodged into the middle of the square, and as you look up holding in a lot of pee and anger, you see Pepsi logos. Everywhere. Just saying — it might not go over so well.
More: “Pepsi’s New Year’s Campaign is Unlevened“
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media
The news this morning coming from Dell on this last day of 2008 is that president of global operations Mike Cannon is retiring and Chief Marketing Officer Mark Jarvis is also leaving the computer maker.
Jarvis was one of new agency Enfatico’s strongest top level supporters, along with recently departed Casey Jones.
Despite laying off some 9,000 workers over the last year, Dell is struggling to cut costs — an effort that began with consolidating their advertising into Enfatico.
Sources inside Enfatico told AgencySpy they haven’t seen any hint of layoffs, probably because the understaffed agency doesn’t have the infrastructure to warrant cost cutting measures. Per our spy: it’s hectic inside Enfatico.
More: “Breaking: Casey Jones No Longer with Dell, Says Rep“
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media
Feng Shui has been a Chinese belief to which fortunes are told so that people who fall in a specific year and month can more or less have an idea of what is in store for them. You can believe them or not but the thing is, Feng Shui is a good guide that can really help you find your way for the coming year.
For 2009, the Year of the Ox does seem favorable to most. Career, relationships and health are normally the tops on the list and depending on the reliability of the Feng Shui expert you talk to, it doesn’t really hurt to check them out.
There are a lot of these Feng Shui sites on the web to which you can get your future fortune. If you have hesitations, go to the next and compare them for consistency. In the end, you can see the majority summary of what lies ahead.
On believing in Chinese horoscopes or not is entirely up to you. But for 2009 which has been branded a year of worst economic scenarios, maybe you would want to check out as well on how your life will go and thwart it if it doesn’t bring a good year for you.
Happy New Year Everyone!
A new TVC for the new Golf (Volkswagen) with engineers fighting each others.
I do recommend to see this excellent print ad for Golf.
advertiser: Golf Volkswagen (more creative ads from Volkswagen)
agency: DDB London (more creative ads […]
Here we have an old fashion spot for the Chocolate Bournville.
If you like the chocolate, you should appreciate these Chocomentaries.
advertiser: Bournville Chocolate
agency: Ogilvy & Mather Lt
All i knew about Jordi Colomer before entering his solo show at Le Jeu de Paume in Paris was his Anarchitekton series, i was prepared for the absurd. I didn’t know the absurd could make so much sense.
Colomer’s video installations focus on the contemporary city and in particular on the influence of urbanism on human behaviour. They toy with fake actors in real situations, fictions set in barren landscapes, artificial spaces, urban simulacra and architectural narratives. Behind their humour and irony, his productions never fail to reveal us something about the sociological and psychological dimensions of his subjects.
Jordi Colomer, En la Pampa (Cementerio Santa Isabel), 2007-2008. © ADAGP, Paris, 2008
Jordi Colomer, En la Pampa (Cementerio Santa Isabel), 2007-2008. © ADAGP, Paris, 2008
Colomer’s aesthetics and architectural explorations pervade the whole exhibition. The videos are screened onto wooden panels, or in some makeshift structures, there is a battered trailer in the middle of one of the exhibition rooms and a mix-match of what looks like second-hand chairs are aligned against the walls.
Models of the buildings used for the Anarchitekton performances, as displayed at the MACBA in Barcelona
Pozo Almonte, a body of works which was produced for the Paris exhibition, is a moving trip to one of the few surviving mining towns exploiting saltpetre (potassium nitrate) in the Atacama desert in Chile. Instead of documenting what was left of the mining activity, the artist went to the cemetery and photographed its constructions. Each of them looks like a small house that redresses the builders’ meagre resources with inventiveness and personal creativity. Architecture without architects at its best. As Colomer explains: The cemetery is a sort of parallel city, well and truly alive, and full of thoroughly terrestrial little houses. It is an area shared by the living and the dead, where the latter seem to be merely on holiday. And yet this family architecture also looks like the decor of another world…
Jordi Colomer, Pozo Almonte, 2008. Production Jeu de Paume, Paris. © ADAGP, Paris, 2008
Jordi Colomer, Pozo Almonte, 2008. Production Jeu de Paume, Paris. © ADAGP, Paris, 2008
The Pope’s protective vehicle, the Popemobile, is an icon that has traveled all over the world. Says Colomer: I wanted to put this highly meaningful image back into the street ? in three-dimensional form but disencumbered of its Vatican pomp, with the nakedness of a prototype ? so as to record the reactions of passers-by. The Popemobile’s sacred dimension being already somewhat slight, it was chiefly a matter of desecrating its spectacular side and leaving only the bare bones. It was first and foremost a pretext for portraying a heterogeneous group of people, conjuring up a setting, creating a situation and just letting things happen… What kind of people were going past at noon on that summer day in 2005 in the fast-evolving area of Barcelona that lies along Diagonal Avenue in the Poble Nou district?
Jordi Colomer, Papamóvil 2005. Extrait du diaporama. © ADAGP, Paris, 2008
En la Pampa is an attempt to find whether there is a place on earth that can ‘resist fiction’. A man and a woman, chosen because they are not actors, are left free to perform all sorts of activities and discussions in the Atacama desert in Chile. Viewers quickly realize that the mere presence of the camera turns the experiment into a fiction that contaminates the desert itself.
Jordi Colomer, En la Pampa (Vagar en campo raso es…), 2008. © ADAGP, Paris, 2008
Anarchitekton is a series of videos produced over two years and starring a quizzical personage called Idroj Sanicne. The films shows him cavorting around Barcelona, Brasilia, Osaka and Bucharest, brandishing cardboard models of buildings that are visible in the background. By doing so he stretches the boundaries of architecture, highlights its ‘backdrop’ character, drags reality into fiction and gains the attention of passersby in the process. Sanicne’s performance evokes moments of angry protests, popular parades but also religious processions.
Jordi Colomer, Anarchitekton, Brasilia, 2003
Jordi Colomer, Anarchitekton, Brasilia, 2004
The work of Jordi Colomer is on view at Le Jeu de Paume in Paris until January 4, 2009.
Just a quick video that will hopefully inspire you merry ways to end 2008:
Daniel Eatock spent two months in 2007 living and working in Vilnius (Lithuania). He noticed that car alarms were constantly interrupting the peace. The alarms were so sensitive that even a whisper would set them off. One day, out of sheer frustration, Eatock left his desk, found the car whose alarm had been interrupting his peace every five minutes, and waited patiently for the siren to switch on. When the siren sounded, he started dancing like a madman. He made videos of several of his car alarm dances, never touching the car, only dancing to the sound pollutants.
Seen at Nowhere, Now / Here, an exhibition that revisits the definition and perception of design.
Nowhere/Now/Here runs until Mon, April 20 , 2009 at LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial in Gijon, Spain.
Une réalisation intéressante de Mabona Origami autour de l’histoire de la marque de chaussures Asics Onitsuka. Un travail entièrement en origami de l’agence Nordpol+, à découvrir dans la suite.
Dans le même esprit : Origami
(TrendHunter.com) The crown jewel of our 2008 countdown, this massive micro trend report is an unfiltered list of the top trends in 2008. Just to make the list, the articles required 30,000 clicks, with the most popular…
(TrendHunter.com) Welcome to our 2008 architecture trend countdown.nbsp; This list features the top architecture trends in the last year.nbsp; The report is a crowd-filtered ranking based on TrendHunter.com monthly traffic (several…
Advertising Agency: Scholz & Friends DialogGroup, Frankfurt, Germany
Executive Creative Director: Martin Pross
Creative Director: Hendrik Halstenberg
Art Director: Toyanna Visavachaiwat
Copywriter: Karsten Zeber
Production: Marit Erb/Pina Arciuolo
(TrendHunter.com) This drinking trend countdown features the top drinking trends, alcohol ads and fun with beer in the last year.nbsp; The report is a crowd-filtered ranking based on TrendHunter.com monthly traffic (several…
(TrendHunter.com) This countdown features the top DIY trends and stuff you can make in the year of the credit crunch.nbsp; The report is a crowd-filtered ranking based on TrendHunter.com monthly traffic (several million monthly…
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