Copyranter thinks so. And, after watching it, I might have to agree.
Nov 152011
Oct 262011
Apparently, this infographic about the “Anatomy of an Agency” was created at Toronto’s Grip Limited, and sent to the ad blog copyranter, where I saw it.
Having only once been in the presence of a real, actual full-on ad agency, I guess I can’t say for sure how accurate these jokes are, but they look pretty standard. But funny. Even if you’ve only seen ‘Mad Men’ a couple of times.
Full graphic after the jump
It’s almost Easter time again, so you know what that means! No, no, not the end of Lent. It means bunnies! And candy! More specifically, the candy that only comes out at Easter, like Mini Eggs, and the ooey gooey favourite, Cadbury Creme Eggs.
Cadbury comes up with some interesting ads to sell their candy, especially the creme eggs. You might remember the ones where the rabbit lays a chocolate egg. That one is kind of weird, for obvious reasons, but also kind of cute.
In the last couple of years, though, Cadbury has come out with a series of ads for the creme eggs where the eggs are apparently committing suicide in order to “release the goo.” Yes, I just said commit suicide. Watch!
That is just creepy! Or there’s this one:
The eggs are straight up suicidal! This does not make me want a creme egg, when all I can think of is the poor suicidal eggs. Kind of like the Excel commercial using the adorable little mascots, making me feel sorry for them. It’s not very good advertising when I feel compassion towards inanimate objects like creme eggs, or concepts like bad breath!
Mar 192011
A documentary about product placement — funded by product placement in that very documentary?
I love this! This is exactly the kind of po-mo meta exercise that I can’t get enough of. It’s like a Borges short story, but in documentary form and about advertising.
It’s both wonderful and awful and I can’t wait to see it.
(via tdw)
Mar 042011
The first half of this clip is a Pabst Blue Ribbon television ad from 1976. The second clip appears to just be unrelated rocketbelt video with unrelated-to-that-even audio from “To Tell The Truth.” I like the non sequitur.
Also: I miss stubbies. But I had no idea that American beer used to come in a stubby!
(via Coudal)
Mar 032011
“Choddies are transmitted directly to the right hemisphere of our brains through our computer, TV, and movie screens. Once there, they begin to devour our imaginations until we no longer recognize original thought.”
Take the pledge: Stop the Choddy.
Feb 192011
Sigh. I guess you could play a drinking game based on product placement and selling out. But you’d get drunk pretty fast.
I can’t wait to see Black Mamba 2: Dark Secret, in which the Black Mamba’s secret past as a date-rapist is revealed.
(via tdw)
Actually, this is just a clever poke from one advertisting agency at all the others, making fun of how ad people advertise themselves. So meta!
(via Stimulant Online)
I think it’s from Russia? I’m not even sure what Викам is, but I think I want some?
(via this forum post, which I had up as a tab forever, and don’t remember where the link’s from)
“Things Real People Don’t Say About Advertising” is a new single-serving Tumblr that makes me laugh because I work in media and I see these attitudes on display all. the. time.
Like the one above.
Here’s a good way to tell Big Business to get stuffed: Get one of your friends to make a stuffed, plushy version of a corporate advertising mascot, and give it to your girlfriend for Christmas. After all, that’s what I did, using characters from this ad:
Amy loves that ad. She thinks the characters are sooo cute. I agree! But they don’t sell Excel-branded toys anywhere that I can find (I looked).
So I asked my friend Stacey if she could custom-craft them. Stacey, who blogs and crafts at nisseworks, has been a friend of mine for ages, and I’ve been impressed with her work when she posts it — so I was happy to hand her a custom job.
She tackled it with alacrity!
After Christmas had passed, and Amy had safely opened her gifts (she loved them), Stacey blogged a bit about the process. I’m happy to share some of it with you:
I’ve been waiting to post photos of my custom orders until after Christmas to keep from spoiling anyone’s surprises. I’ve also been waiting to hear back from everyone I did orders for about the recipient’s reactions – so far, everything’s been a massive success. Yay, me!
The amount of work that went into these characters was insane. I thought it would be simple – four stuffed things. No problem. Oh, was I wrong… I went through 6 versions of the donut; the coffee cup had a lid that was tilting at a bad angle until I ripped it off and hot glue gunned it again; and I couldn’t figure out how to make the onion and garlic actually look like an onion and a head of garlic.
In the end, I’m quite happy I did them. They were received very happily and they look pretty awesome, if you ask me.
They look pretty awesome if you ask me, too, Stacey!
Sadly, Stacey inadvertently erased her in-progress pics, so we’ll never get to see those flannelette characters with their plushy guts all over the place, which might be for the best.
But I do have a picture from Christmas morning:
That’s Amy, broadly beaming from behind her new favourite stuffed things. They’ve found a happy home on the top of our couch, where they make us smile and are (mostly) out of the way of our cat.
If you’re interested, Stacey runs online shops at Etsy, ArtFire and Cargoh, and I can vouch for: a) her; and b) supporting a local artisan, even if what you want is all corporate and stuff.
If you want a bargain on a Romanian SUV, apparently you have to bargain like a Romanian — a Romanian stereotyped to hell and back, at that.
On the other hand, I’m not going to spoil the ending of the next one. Just … wait for it.
(via copyranter here and here)
Dec 162010
I am both enthralled by this art project, and saddened that it’s come to this — we need an ati-billboard to remind us that the natural environment is worth looking at.
My friend and co-worker Colleen pointed me towards this piece in the Design Observer:
Out in Washington State, Daniel Mihalyo and Annie Han, of Seattle’s Lead Pencil Studio, recently put up a piece along the Canadian border that is stop-you-in-your-tracks beautiful. [[there is] a story about it in the new issue of Icon.] To counter the visual clutter along the road into the United States—countless billboards of garish, cheesy advertising fouling a once pristine landscape — they’ve created their own billboard, a negative billboard that frames the ever-changing sky. The structure itself is an evanescent thicket of steel rods, left incomplete along the top edge so your mind can fill in the shape.
Giant billboards are some of the most invasive forms of advertising, especially when you consider that they are strictly visual and mostly stationary. They’re just so huge!
What an interesting way, then, to make an artistic statement: to make the viewer mentally erase one of those billboards by providing, instead, a frame, and filling it with the natural vista behind. It reminds me of the artwork in Naomi Klein’s ‘No Logo,’ which showcased photos from which all the advertising had been erased — leaving blank circles, squares and ovals where ads and logos had been.
Instead of just blank gray spaces, though, this one gives the viewer a great gaping hole, something to look through and see what would otherwise be hidden.
I like it.
My only experience with self-storage companies are in police dramas and movies, where they cut into the suspect’s self-storage facility and find all kinds of evidence.
Oh, wait, isn’t there a William Gibson protagonist who lives in a self-storage unit? All of his books kind of blend together for me.
Ennneeewaaay….
This is one of the weirder ads I’ve ever seen.
(via — and apparently by — Coudal)
… because Santa is a responsible drinker!
The translation, at least how it’s phrased on the Vintage Ads LiveJournal page, goes like this:
I look like Santa because you’ve had too much to drink. It’s only October. If you drink, be considerate of the other passengers.
One of the commenters at LiveJournal calls him “The World’s Most Interesting Santa,” which made me lol, but it is supposedly a “manners” poster in the Tokyo subway.
Normally, I abhor both the overcommercialization and overSantafication of Christmas, as well as the nanny-state finger-waggery of polite society posters, but this one combines both of those into a delightful package, wraps it up with humour, and doesn’t scold you for having too much to drink, just reminds you that not everyone else has.
Now, time to start thinking about whether Santa would prefer whisky or wine left out for him this Dec. 24.
(via BoingBoing)