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Showing posts with label advertising. Show all posts
Showing posts with label advertising. Show all posts

Friday, June 3, 2011

Hair Cubed can't possibly be real, can it?





I saw this commercial last night - - watch as a man pretends he's Jewish to hide his bald spot, and then uses "Hair Cubed" to spraypaint in the thinning hair.

Here's Ellen making fun of it:



The commercial's apparently the work of mad geniuses 4sitevideo.

Sunday, May 29, 2011

Link roundup

1. Sky on fire. Via.

2. Fast Company has a great article about Cargill's creation and marketing of the sweetener Truvia:
TRUVIA HAS ITS OWN tribute message, an ode to the comfort Cargill wants to provide. "Have you ever cured bad news with hot choc-olate? Ever snuck downstairs to eat a cookie before breast-feeding the baby at 3 a.m.?" If the answer is yes, you are part of Cargill's new demographic, the Yoga Momma, the company's name for the typically harried but well-intentioned working woman.

On a recent day, McFerson and Truvia's marketing director, Ann Tucker, explain the tao of Yoga Momma-ism. "The Yoga Momma wears yoga pants but may never make it to class," Tucker says. "It's more about a mind-set," McFerson adds. Both readily admit this sounds like them. "I've never been to class, but I have the pants," McFerson deadpans.

The brand homage was conceived by mothers at Ogilvy & Mather in Chicago. "What is cool about Cargill is it's a pretty female-based group," says Donna Charlton-Perrin, one of the campaign's architects. "There is a line in there about how women have a complicated relationship with sweetness. Everyone just had this autobiographical understanding of how that goes." Not surprisingly, Yoga Mommas tend to be prime spenders on health-related supermarket goodies. To reach them, McFerson spent lavishly to secure a name (which sounds like true plus stevia, and was devised by Lexicon Branding); a logo (light green type with a tiny stevia leaf, by Pentagram); and clever print and TV ads designed by Ogilvy.
3. Goofy mystery awaits Detective Rex Starbuck in House of Mystery #251.

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Friday, May 13, 2011

What is Envoy?





As the (rather disturbing) video explains, Envoy is supposedly a new service that takes over the Facebook profile of a dead loved one - - the program analyzes the Facebook user's history and then provides a steady stream of updates and chats so you can pretend your loved one is still around. "Using the Facebook API, we can take the dead's profile, and project it into environments outside of Facebook."

Presumably it's an advertisement for a new movie? Via.

Vader-esque samurai armor




Samurai-style Vader, and V with a sombrero - - ads by Leo Burnett. Via.

*Buy samurai helmets at eBay.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Free Twilight-themed inhaler if you live near a coal plant





From the Coal Cares website:
Why Free Inhalers? Because COAL CARES.

Coal Cares™ is a brand-new initiative from Peabody Energy, the world's largest private-sector coal company, to reach out to American youngsters with asthma and to help them keep their heads high in the face of those who would treat them with less than full dignity. For kids who have no choice but to use an inhaler, Coal Cares™ lets them inhale with pride.

Puff-Puff™ inhalers are available free to any family living within 200 miles of a coal plant, and each inhaler comes with a $10 coupon towards the cost of the asthma medication itself.
There's printable activity pages for kids, too.

(It's a hoax by the Yes Men.) Via.

Nissan shared banner ads with its customers





Clever ad campaign by TBWA\RAAD for the Nissan Micra. To emphasize the car's small size, Nissan posted banner ads with lots of space left over for customers to use to try to sell their own cars. In return for posting the user's ad, Nissan placed a Tweet about the Micra in the user's Twitter stream.

Monday, May 9, 2011

Sofa-shaped microwaveable popcorn bag





Sofa-shaped microwaveable popcorn bag by Ogilvy to promote (Brazilian department store) Magazine Luiza's sofa week event. Via.

*Buy vintage advertising at eBay.

Sunday, May 8, 2011

Link roundup

1. Mets pitcher R.A. Dickey gives his baseball bats geeky names, including Orcrist from The Hobbit and "hrunting" based on Beowulf.

2. I didn't read the article for fear of spoiling the headline:
'Mad hatters' gang of middle-aged women blamed for Detroit crime spree

Police in Detroit are hunting a gang of middle-aged women, nicknamed the "Mad Hatters", who they blame for a string of robberies, purse snatching and fraud.
Via.

3. My local theater doesn't show pre-movie commercials anymore, but the theaters that do are having trouble filling the slots:
Part of the reason for the shortfall, according to the firm's CEO, is lack of advertising from Japanese auto and electronics makers who are suffering following March's earthquake and tsunami, as well as the National Guard, which no longer needs to advertise as much because high unemployment numbers push so many candidates its way.

Friday, May 6, 2011

Link roundup

1. "In honor of the new crime thriller video game L.A. Noire coming to Playstation®3 and Xbox360® on May 17, 2011, the Los Angeles Times and Rockstar Games present this special archive edition Crime Map detailing just a few of the fascinating and frightening crimes that made 1947 such a landmark year for LAPD detectives." Via.

2. From a longer article about design school, advice I wish I had when I was still in school:
Ask anybody that went to school what they thought of it, and you will get the same response. “It was ok, not great. But this one teacher changed made it all worth while.” It’s exactly that one or two teachers that you connect with that make the school experience “worth it”. When you find your mentor, go out of your way to take more classes with them. Ask them for guidance and have them critique your work HARD. Their advice will be more than worth the tuition.
3. Plastic Army Men with PTSD and various injuries. (Some might find these offensive.) Via these sites.

*Previously: Killzone Army Men.

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Link roundup

1. The owner of a Porsche saved it from a flood by parking it on an anchored inflatable raft.

2. What a terrific sponsored post at Eater - - a secret dining society sponsored by Patron. These types of ads make so much more sense than banner ads, yet I see them done properly so rarely.

3. Since the NFL has locked out players, it's up to the players to organize their own offseason workouts. Drew Brees took it one step further and is paying for many expenses, including insurance and lodging for younger players.

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Link roundup

1. From Fast Company's article about the efforts to market carrots like junk food:
The company has been around for nearly a century now, but it boomed in the 1990s, with a breakthrough product. A local grower named Mike Yurosek had become frustrated with all the waste in the carrot business. Supermarkets expected carrots to be a particular size, shape, and color. Anything else had to be sold for juice or processing or animal feed, or just thrown away. Yurosek wondered what would happen if he peeled the skin off the gnarly carrots, cut them into pieces, and sold them in bags. He made up a few test batches to show his buyers. One batch, cut into 1-inch bites and peeled round, he called "bunny balls." Another batch, peeled and cut 2 inches long, looked like little baby carrots.

Bunny balls never made it. But baby carrots were a hit. They transformed the whole industry. Soon, the big growers in Bakersfield were planting fields with baby carrots in mind, sowing three times more seeds per acre, so the carrots, packed densely together, would grow long and skinny, for the maximum number of 2-inch cuts. Yields and profits climbed. The really big deal, the thing nobody expected, was that baby carrots seemed to make Americans eat more carrots. In the decade after they were introduced, carrot consumption in the United States doubled.

Then a couple of years ago, after a decade of steady growth, Bolthouse's carrot sales went flat. Sales of baby carrots, the company's cash carrot, actually fell, sharply, and stayed down. Nobody knew why. This was a big problem.

...

Dunn put together a series of focus groups and surveys and discovered something interesting. People said they were eating as many carrots as they always had. But the numbers clearly showed they were buying fewer. What people meant, it turned out, was they were as likely as ever to keep carrots in the fridge. When the recession hit, though, they became more likely to buy regular carrots, instead of baby carrots, to save money. But people used to eating baby carrots weren't taking the time to wash and cut the regular ones. And unlike baby carrots, which dry out pretty quickly once a bag is opened, regular carrots keep a long time. So people were buying regular carrots and then not eating them, and not buying more until the carrots they had were finally gone or spoiled.
2. And from an article in the same issue about the business of water:
The water bill at IBM Burlington -- just to get 3.2 million gallons a day into the plant -- is $100,000 a month. The water staff turns plain municipal water into a portfolio of products, depending on whether someone is mixing high-tech chemicals or running air-conditioning chillers. IBM's utility plant creates nine custom varieties of water. Each brand of water costs 4, 5, or 10 times more than the cost of the raw water itself.
3. FYI, if you want to get a hold of the Marvel Universe Cable with baby action figure (possibly the best action figure ever), check out the new Marvel Universe case available at Entertainment Earth. Instead of the last mix, which included several doubles (including two Gladiators), this new set has no doubles, and includes a Thanos.

And speaking of EE, buy 4 Funko items, get a 5th free (Funko makes very cute plush toys you've probably seen all around the net).

UPDATE: You can find the Cable for $25, including shipping, at Amazon.

Saturday, April 23, 2011

Octopus ad becomes visible only when it rains





Official description:
FRESH GREEN ADS has developed a RAINCAMPAIGN for SEA LIFE Scheveningen. Every time it rains the octopus of SEA LIFE Scheveningen appears on the streets and out of public drains and man-hole covers with its tentacles holding the text: "SEA LIFE laat je niet meer los" (SEA LIFE never lets you go). When the streets dry up the RAINCAMPAIGN disappears again.

In a surprising way the people in the streets are drawn to the wonderful world of SEA LIFE Scheveningen when it rains. When the streets dry up the octopus disappears again. These striking and environmentally friendly messages remain visible up to eight weeks.
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