Ok, this is one of the creepiest, scariest, and crawling under your skin commercials we have seen in a long while.
No, this isn't a commercial to a new Stephan King movie, though it starts all the same. ho no, we are talking about something far more earthly than the ghosts horrors king is offering us in his novels.
Did you guess yet? Well, life guard, go home, you re drunk, and we can't think of any reason we would want anyone who approved this nightmare of an ad to come haunt us in real life.
It seems the advertising world didn't have much rest in the few week we had...
Well, here is one of the best marketing ideas we had laid our eyes on this morning-
Bumbershoot festival will take place at the end of this month in Seattle. As everyone knows, Seattle's weather isn't the sunniest of all to say the least.
Publicis Seattle decided to take advantage of the rainy weather in order to promote the festival. To do so, all they had to do, is use water resistant spray in order to write messages.
"This parrot is no more! It has ceased to be. It's expired and gone to meet its maker. This is a late parrot. It's a stiff. Bereft of life, it rests in peace. If you hadn't nailed it to the perch it would be pushing up the daisies. It's rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. This is an ex-parrot".
Well, we couldn't agree more. This IS a dead parrot. And quite a large one. In fact, this giant parrot has been displayed lately in London in a brilliant tribute to Monty Python and their wonderful (yet insane) sketch, in order to promote the live broadcast of the group's reunion show.
If you don’t know the original sketch you should be ashamed of yourself. When you are done being ashamed, click on the video below.
This must be the creepiest way to promote a vacuum cleaner. This is definitely one of those times I try as hard as I can to think what was going on during the Creative brief:
-"Ok, so we have a very silent vacuum cleaner. How can we promote it?"
-"Oh, I know, why won't we break into peoples' houses while they sleep and clean their place. There is no way in the world they would freak out when we tell them we were in their house while they slept last night".
Well, congratulations Bosch and BBDO Brussels, you are nominees for the Creative WTF award of the year
What is the Difference between a regular whopper and a proud whopper? Well, this is exactly what the diners at Burger King San Francisco asked themselves during this year's pride parade, when the Burger chain promoted a special offer for the event.
As you might guess, some of the less tolerant diners didn't even want to hear about the special burger, but others were curious. But when they asked the restaurant's worker what was the difference between the proud burger and the regular one, they didn't get any answer, because the workers didn't know.
When they unwrapped their colorful wrapping paper, the diners found a massage stating that the proud whopper is the same as the regular one.
How the hell did our parents managed to raise us without all the technology surrounding us today? How did they get to be there in our special moments? How did they help us to get ready for our finals exams? How did they read us a bedtime story?
Well, the answer to that is divided to two:
In some cases they did it easily
In other cases, they didn't
They didn't have the technology to work on our math while they were in a business trip to Hong Kong. In the other hand, they didn't go on so many business trips to Hong Kong, didn't they?
They didn't measure their heartbeat when they ran with us. No, they just ran with us.
And they did read us a bedtime story from an actual book. You know, the old school kind, the one that comes with papers.
Apple knows how to make beautiful commercial that touches your heart and make you go "ahhhh" the same way you do when you see a cute puppy. But the reality they try to sell us is an alienated one, A reality that divide us from our loved ones with a multi-touch screen and a designed cover.
Did you ever wonder how an Oreo commercial would look like if Wes Anderson will be the director behind the camera?
Well, this is your lucky day. No more sleepless nights while you imagine the best or the worst, wondering how much of a cliché the commercial could be. No more imagining hipsters wearing colorful sweaters with geometric patterns and stupid mustaches.
What can we say? This new spot foe mini Oreos by The Martin Agency is all we had hoped for and much more.
Usually, when we present a commercial we tend to write a few words about it. This is not the case. This time we are going to make an exception, and let this video speak for itself. The only thing we are going to say, is that this spot gave us Goosebumps the no other spot has in the past
Kids will play with everything. That's the way life works. When we are young, all we know is how to play, and we do it as best as we can. The branch we find in the middle of the street turns into a light saber, the bed sheets turns to superman's cape, and a small puddle in the back yard is an ocean, waiting for us to cross it in our ship made of leaves.
This is exactly what stands in the base of the new campaign by evolve, a group dedicated to change gun owners behavior. "If the find it, they'll play with it", is the slogan narrated at the end of this brilliant spot, showing the consequences of not locking away things you don't want your kids to put their hand on.
Here is a great colorful promotion stunt Toyota performed in Australia. The stunt took place during VIVID Sydney, a yearly festival of lights and multimedia, where the people of Toyota celebrated their brand by placing a cool installation consisting of interactive light show integrating with their cars.
In this installation, the visitors of the festival were invited to communicate with cars, embrace them and have real emotional interaction with them.
This brilliant stunt is the collaboration work of Toyota with Soap Creative, Sydney
When was the last time you drank so much you had to stop everything and just take a nap in the middle of the street? Never? You don't say! Maybe you were so passed out you don't remember? or perhaps you are not Japanese.
it seems it is quite common to see respectful men sleeping in the middle of the streets of Tokyo, after drinking too much. Way too much.
A Japanese bar chain named Yaocho, with the help of Ogilvy & Mather Tokyo, has decided to fight this nasty habit.
In order to do so, they used the oldest weapon in the world- shame.
In a guerilla campaign executed in the streets of Tokyo, they detected sleeping drunken men and turned them to a living billboard against overdrinking. Imagine how they felt the next day when they found their photos all over the net.
Can't say we liked this campaign. It had left somewhat of a bullying kind of feeling. Then again, we had never felt the urge to sleep in the middle of a Japanese street.
You are sitting in your office, trying to solve whatever crisis happened this morning, jumping from one phone call to another, answering Emails, focusing on your work and not letting any interference ruin your concentration.
Now stop working for a few seconds and try to think- when was the last time you had a drink of water?
As you have probably guessed, you are not the first, and by far the last, to forget to drink while working. Somehow, while concentrating on our tasks, we tend to forget one of the most important things.
in order to solve this problem, Ogilvy Paris and Vittel - a French mineral water brand, has developed this brilliant cap that reminds you to have a drink every hour.
It is broad daylight; you are in the middle of London, just minding your own business. Suddenly, you notice a loud conversation between a couple, young man and a woman. as they approach you, the guy is getting violent. he is grabbing the woman's hand, pushing her, yells at her, and when he finally pushes her to the corner, he start grabbing her face violently, accusing her of disloyalty, while she is begging him to stop.
What would you do? Would you ignore? Would you let him hit her? Or would you get between them, try to save the poor girl, encourage her to press charges and leave her violent couple.
Most probably you will try and help, as you should. No one should suffer this kind of behavior
Now, what if the situation was the other way round? What if the man was being treated the same way? Would you help him? Would you stand aside and laugh?
While you are standing there, laughing, try to remember that 40% of domestic violence is suffered by men.
After this long introduction, you are ready to watch this wonderful guerilla campaign by Dare and ManKind.
Ok, I saw a commercial or two in my life, and I think I understand the medium as much as any other, but the only thing crossed my mind as I saw Budweiser's newest FIFA World Cup commercial was WTF??
Yes, it is a beautifully photographed and edited video` yes, it can get one in the mood of football celebration` yes, it shows the beer bottle it tries to promote from various angles.
No, we didn't get it.
What, in the name of God, is the copy of this commercial? What is the story, why did this guy kicking a ball from a rooftop? What happens next? Why did I see this video? How is it supposed to get me into buying Budweiser? What the hell is this rooster doing there?
Now, as the kids say, the next video is Not Safe at Work, or at the cafe you are sitting right now, drinking the same coffee for the past few hours hoping the time will pass by and it would be late enough for you to go home and pretend you have had a productive day.
Sorry, did we bum you out? We didn't mean to. Really, we were just a tiny bit a bit distracted by the stunning blond dancing and stripping on our desk.
Yeah, right.
Well, seems that's what happens in the Netherlands when you try to study for you exams, or at least, that's what happens when a local juice brand decides his product will help you concentrate better.
In an objective point of view, we must say this promotion stunt reeks of sexism, but hey, this is Holland, let them do whatever they please.
You cannot argue that UNICEF is an important organization. Well, I guess you could if you are a cold hearted bastard, but you would be wrong, so why bother?
Anyway, as I said, you cannot say their cause isn't important and that their job isn't life saving.
And in the past few years, you definitely cannot say their campaigns are not doing it right. Just a year ago they have projected shadows of homeless children in the streets of Stockholm in an amazing guerilla campaign.
Now, this spot, from Australia (by Iris Worldwide Sydney), shouldn't really be in the same item with the one from Stockholm. It is an old school commercial designated for television or the internet and not a low tech viral guerilla thingy.
Actually, the only thing in common with those two campaigns is UNICEF
Here is a very good example of how taking a great idea and squeezing it's every last drop could harm your commercial.
Don't get us wrong, we think the new 'Pemperton' commercial is great. it does exactly what it's supposed to- making sure everyone who watch it knows Coca Cola is using only natural ingredients in the making of their famous Drink.
Well, the idea is to show how there were no artificial taste and food coloring substances, so, naturally, it is all natural to these days. How else could they create the same taste for over a 100 years?
The spot is really great, but we feel it could be much better if it was shorter, and if it would have used less of the main idea, thus keeping it fresh, rather than chewed as an old bone.
Besides, don't try to tell us the drink hasn't changed since it was invented. as we recall, the coca cola we bought yesterday at the local kiosk didn't contain cocaine.
all in all, a nice spot for Coca Cola by The Cyranos McCann and Glassworks London.
It seems there is a big war between French travel agencies, because we cannot think of a better reason two different agencies will start this kind of a unique billboard campaign almost at the same time.
The first one is this brilliant 3d campaign by TBWA Paris for voyages-sncf.com. In this campaign, the company had placed several unique 3D billboards that interacted with the Passersby in different ways.
The second billboard combined guerilla marketing activity in one of the cafes at the Bastille square, that helped Transavia.com show exactly what they can do.
Wow, Denmark, wow! Tell me you didn't really produce this cartoon to convince people to vote. The only thing we could think of while watching this spot was "WTF?!?!?!?!"
Did your campaign manager eat shrooms before handing over the brief? Did you go public without looking at the approved material? Or maybe you just hand over the wrong files?
What we really want to know is what Queen Margrethe had to say about this magnificent piece. Something tells us she didn't quote "There is a lovely country".
Then again, maybe we didn't get the joke. Maybe the Danish government is used to orgies and decapitations in their ads. Maybe the problem is with us.
Perhaps this wasn't an official video after all, just some joke that went way out of hand. or maybe Something is indeed rotten in the state of Denmark.
OK, this is a great spoof on Dove's "Real Beauty" campaign.
If you remember, about a year ago, Dove went out with a campaign designated to empower women. The campaign showed how women perception of their selves is distorted and unrealistic; how they see more flaws then the one's looking at them see.
Well, this is what the guys at above average thought about the campaign.
Is there anything selling more than sex? The first answer comes to mind is "no". The second answer is "hell no". The third is "are you kidding me"?
Well, here is a video proving that exact point.
Just four days has passed since this five members girl band from the Netherlands called ADAM has released this video for their song "Go to Go". All in all, we must say it is a nice song. Catchy lyrics, fun tune and so. But this is not a music blog. We are here to talk about advertising, and what these girls did is quite amazing. In the four days passed since they have uploaded this video, they have reached more than 4,000,000 views, and counting.
The idea is really a simple one. Three of the members of the band have been filmed trying to sing the song while experiencing orgasm. You can imagine how it must look like. Actually, why imagine when you can watch the video below.
After watching the hypnotizing video for several times, we came to realize it reminded us Clayton Cubitt's "Hysterical Literature" project, where he posed in front of the camera women and challenged them to read pieces of literature while having orgasms.
Damn you Procter & Gamble. Why did you have to do this?
Why? Why? Why?!
Why did you have to produce this spot, which makes us weep like little girls that got hit in the knee? Why couldn't you let us keep our cynical and sophisticated appearance, and had to throw our entire hard working trendy image to the trash.
Damn you for making us cry our hearts out in front of the computer, sobbing away as our hearts are clenched and twisted and beat in high speed.
Ever tried using a book to help you barbecue? No? Well, this is probably because you never had this book before. It is not just a cook book, but a whole bible for barbecuing.
But wait; let us start at the beginning.
Tramontina is one of Brazil's largest cookware companies. It is also the only company in Brazil creating a special barbecue cookware line. The problem? Not many are aware of this information.
In order to increase the exposure to this line, JWT Brazil has created this magnificent book, they had modestly called "The Bible of Barbecue". The pages of these books are to be used or destroyed, in order to have the best barbecue ever. While cooking, you could take one of the pages of the book and break it into coals, take another and wear it as an apron, another one is turned into a cutting board, and so on.
Watch out! Do not make the same mistake we did and watch this video when you're hungry.
May the 4th is unofficially known to be Star Wars day, celebrating the cult movie series by GeorgeLcaus. The specific date was chosen due to the Jedi blessing "May the force be with you"' turned into "May the 4th be with you".
To celebrate the holiday, Lego launched a new commercial dedicated to the Star Wars Lego series.
This is a funny commercial, by the German agency Jung von Matt, which almost anyone could emphasize.
This is probably the best commercial ever made for the Toronto Jewish Film Festival.
The commercial shows one of the most famous Jewish film makers in the world of film industry presenting himself and his work. We are not talking about some unknown newbie, but a man with thousands of films in his record. So why does the Toronto Jewish Film Festival keep rejecting his participation in the event?
Probably have something to do with the fact that Ron Jeremy is making Porn...
This is one morbid way to promote a TV serie. Well, it isn't the first time the people from "The Walking Dead" pull this kind of bloody stunts, after all, we all remember they time they've sent a zombie to a cinema theatre, and the time they scared the shit out of poor passersby in New York.
So, this time, they have decided to promote the series in Portugal by opening a blood store. I hear your "what?!" and raise it to "Wait, What What What?!".
If you didn't guess, as we didn't, the opened a store which offered special merchandise dedicated to the show's fans, but if you wanted to buy anything in that shop, you would have to pay in blood. The PR activity was teamed up with the Portuguese National Blood bank. This way, they got to make people bleed, promote their show and eve do a good thing!
Applause to the people from Torke agency, Lisbon. You are true dreamers.
If we would tell you we liked VH1's new anti-bullying campaign it would be a big fat lie. We didn't like it. We didn't love it, we didn't enjoy it, we didn't think it was funny, we didn't think anything good about it.
The whole idea of the commercial, showing a poor kid being bullied and planning his revenge at the kids bullying him by planning to be their boss when they are all grown up is not funny. Seeing this spot, the only conclusion is that the creative people who worked it out were never bullied. Far from it. We don't say that it is for certain, but they probably were the ones sticking a kid in his locker, too afraid to get out. If they ever were bullied, they would have known that a kid in this situation see only three options, each of them is worse than the other.
We are not saying the subject is a taboo, never to be touched. It is an important issue, which has to be dealt, but not like this. Telling the bullying kids that this "nerd" is going to be their boss one day is not very true, and will never work, for so many reasons. If you really want to make a change, there are many other ways.
But this is advertising we are talking about, not education, and I guess Saatchi & Saatchi did a good job. They did make VH1 seem relevant and up to date. They did get our attention.
AXE bodyspray is doing it again with an epic campaign by BBH London, demonstrating beautifully the "Don't rely on fate to help you find your soul mate".
The video starts in the ice age, where a nice caveman or whatever he is supposed to be, glances a beautiful woman and tries to reach her when the icebergs depart and he is taken away from her. Cut to the Roman days of Pompeii, where the same guy spots the same pretty girl, and walks towards her when a volcano erupts.
So it continues throughout the ages, when time after time some kind of a disaster is keeping them apart.
This, of course, until AXE bodyspray comes in to the equation...
Have you ever tried watching Game of Thrones with you parents? Quit a challenging experience, isn't it? Especially when they are trying to remember which house is which, and who this king is, and those white thingies that come from across the wall. And let s not forget the sex scenes, when you sit uncomfortably at the end of your sit, wanting to burry yourself in the nearest grave.
Apparently, HBO are aware of the trouble young people have watching their series, so they produced HBO GO, where you can get all their bloody and sexy and violent content on your mobile devices, away from the TV in your living room, where your parents might embarrass you and ruin your will to live.
To promote the new service, HBO and SS+K New York came up with this hilarious campaign, showing the rough life parents can give their kids during their shows.
In the advertising world a week is a very long time, ages even. This is why we are determined to do our best and give you the freshest stories about the newest campaigns.
Alas, sometimes we miss a thing or two when we blink, and the moment we look back we are not sure as if we really did see what we thought was blured object running through our vision.
And why do we bother you with this long intro? Because we are here to talk today about a promotion stunt that took place during the Milan Design Week, that ended more than two (!!) weeks ago.
Yet, we couldn't stand still and ignore this great production by Publicis Milan for the widely known Dutch beer brand- Heineken.
In this wonderful campaign, the PR people designed a room remotely resembling a Pinball machine. Did we say remotely? We meant exactly. We stand corrected- it was a real live Pinball game.
This is one of those times that we regret not listening to the weird guy down the road that tried to convince us to decorate his house for free, just o get our feet at the door of home designing.
There places that you need help getting. Some of them you will have to rock climb, others you will need a different kind of transportation. Having the right wheels, you could get to places you once needed a carabiner, or at least this is what the people at Jeep wanted you to think in their brilliant campaign taken place recently in Russia.
During this campaign, led by Leo Burnett Moscow, shoppers at the local camping stores were given a carabiner shaped like the traditional Jeep with every purchase at the shops. Attached to the carabiner was an invitation to enjoy a special filed test drive in one of the company's vehicles.
Of course, there is no need to mention the responds to the invitations were very high.
In our share of days, we have seen a vending machine or two. Once in a while, we meet another outdoor promotion stunt taking advantage of technology, and the never ending longing of people for free stuff, in order to get viral on the web.
Here is one more creative vending machine stunt, coming from Greece. In this activity, executed by socialab agency for Lanes Health, the agency placed a vending machine in the Athens mall, one of the biggest malls in Greece. Passersby were surprised when the machine called them and started talking to them, or to be exact, giving them orders the way a Greek mother would do.
The ones who participated in this activity and obeyed the machine's orders got free vitamins to help them keep their health.
After long years of Oppression and fight for freedom, 20 years ago, April 1994, the Apartheid government in South Africa gave away it's power. During the celebrations of the new democracy, Archbishop Desmond Tutu[ one of the known South African activists, referred to the country as a 'Rainbow nation', due to the vast variety of people in the country- each of them equal, with no regards to their color, religion or any other thing for all that matter. Since those days, every year the month of April is known as the month of freedom
Today, 20 years later, Coca Cola, with the people of FCB Johannesburg, has decided to celebrate the month of freedom in a special way. After a long preparation, they came up with a way to create a real Rainbow, which could accompany their billboards. The campaign came to life and succeeded to catch the attention of the customers, and the press.
As teenagers who grew up in the mid 1980th, we have all wanted one thing- X-Ray vision. Well, who could have blamed us, after watching all those Superman movies with Christopher Reeve. All those hormones running in our body, what wouldn't we do to take a look under a girls skirt.
Well, Energy BBDO Chicago are here to save the day and to make our old dream come true in this wonderful new campaign for Citracal- calcium and vitamin D3 tablets. Going with the slogan "Beauty is Bone Deep", they have produced this wonderful video, easily proving their point.
What can we say? we couldn't do it sexier ourselves.
Many people say that Belgium is a grey country. Hey, don't come to blame us for it, we didn't invent it or anything! Belgium is kind of grey… It has grey streets, grey buildings, grey people, grey trees, grey chocolate, grey… well, you get the hang of it.
In a new billboard campaign, DDB Brussels tried to put some color to the streets of Belgium in order to promote a small furniture and home improvement store. You might have heard about them, they're called IKEA.
Yeah, we know, IKEA hardly need promotion, but you can say that about every large brand (did anyone say Coca Cola?). In this great last campaign. IKEA spread large billboards around Belgium, which from a distance, looked like they only have one of three colors on them - red, green or yellow. When you got closer to the billboards, you could see an inlay of a product sold on the brand's stores.
There is no questioning the great impact and attention those billboards got, with their bright colors and seemingly emptiness.
Do you remember the first time your parents told you to get away from electricity? If ther is one thing everybody knows, is that whatever you do, you do not play with electricity. You do not push metal things to the electrical outlet, you do not try to force defective electrical devices in them, and no matter what, you do not push your finger into electrical devices.
That, of course, unless the people from PlayStation ask you to. This is exactly what happened during a campaign took place recently by TBWA Belgium. They have placed a machine in the middle of Antwerp train station, which invited the passengers to push their fingers into a large electric outlet.
"Hold for 5 Seconds", said the sign on the machine. Sound easy, isn't it? Well, not as you would think. Whoever was brave enough to push his fingers into the holes was surprised to feel an electric shock. But if they were strong enough, physically and mentally, they were awarded with the new PS game- "inFAMOUS: second son".
Well, if you haven't realized it yet, dancing is the next big thing. Actually, dancing is the next big thing for about two decades, but, you can never be too sure about a thin before some brand is taking it under it's wings and adopt it as one.
So it seems Diesel Jeans finally discovered the dancing craze, harvesting the world since the early 1980's, in the short A-Z of dancing video they released a few days back.
To tell you the truth, it is a beautiful video, and it does deserve the attention it gets around the world, but we didn't really get the connection between dancing and jeans.
Don't you just love HBO's Game of Thrones? The drama, the intrigues, the gallant knights, the beautiful princess and the tons of explicit sex and violence poured to your screen with no tenderness.
Oh, yes, we love Game of Thrones. We especially love the characters. Don't you just LOVE Tyrion? He is so smart, and brave, and cunning, and tragic. Oh, and don't you just L O V E Arya? She is so sweet, and strong minded, and cute. Oh, Oh, Oh, and don't you just L-O-V-E Joffrey?
No, you don't. Nobody loves that brat. I think there was never a more hated villain in the history of television or literature. In fact, there are more people wanting Joffrey to lose his head, then there were feeling the same way about any real living tyrant in the history of mankind.
Well, the PR people of the hit show in New Zealand have decided to take advantage of this hatred in order to promote the series' 4th season, which had started this week.
To do so, they have built a statue glorifying the (literally) bastard king and placed it in the middle of a large square. Tied to the statue's neck there is a rope, connected in it's other end to a machine that tighten the rope with any tweet one of the show's fan post with the hashtag #BringDownTheKing. Enough tweets helped the fans bring the statue down, in a metaphorical revolution act.
And if bringing him down is not enough for you, you can always take some pleasure from this wonderful video.
If there is one thing the guys at PETA know how to do, is get some attention to their spots. They do it with controversial ads, brilliant creative and beautiful productions.
This new short spot shows a lovely moment- small chicks learning to fly, trying their best to flap their wings and get on their way.
Seeing a new and surprising innovative print ad in a newspaper is something that doesn't happen every day. Yes, you can say that the print is dead, and that nobody is reading the newspapers this days, and that if it is not flashing and kicking the viewers head, there is no way he will pay attention to your ad, because of all the noise around his nose.
Well, we've got some news for you. As it seems, people are reading papers as ever. Yes, you are right, many read the news on their Ipads and tablets and so, but the real live paper is not dead. Yet.
So, as long as there are newspapers, and as long as people read them, we are happy to see hoe advertising agencies compose new ways to use the media in creative ways.
Here is beautifully executed 3D ad for a kitchen, hidden within home searching ads in a Colombian newspaper.
Translate: The Kitchen you are imagining is in HiperCentro Corona.
This brilliant work was copywrited by Felipe Salazar, SANCHO BBDO Creative Director.
