VH1 is Bullying it's way to our Consciousness

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.

We would have to disagree on this one.

Timeless love

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...

HBO presents: Family moments

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.

Heineken are playing games at the Milan Design Week

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.

Driving up the hills of marketing

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.

The publicity stunt that shows - Mama knows best

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 all, Mama knows best…

Coca Cola's rainbow of freedom

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.

Sexy to the Bones

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.

Ikea presents: Color

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.

PlayStation in a Shocking stunt

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".

Worth the effort? We're not quite sure

Dancing in blue

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.

Bringing Down the King

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.

Chicks on Speed

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.

Or is it?

Beautifull 3D kitchen hides in a newspaper ad

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.

Lurpak's pompous adventure

Oh! The drama! The Pathos! The sizzling sensation the advertisers must have felt when they first saw this spot in their inner mind, sitting in their corner cubicle in the agency, thinking about the big office they might get one day if their boss would be pleased enough with their dramatic pompous commercial.

So get ready for the ride of your life- Up Up and away. To the kitchen.

Sony presents - an eruption of colors

3.5 Tons of petals were used in the making of this hypnotizing spot for Sony's newest television technology.

The video was filmed in a small village in Costa Rica, that was washed by more than eight million petals, flown all around in order to create the special lava float throughout the streets.

It is indeed a remarkable sight, which reminds us once again how having large budget you can create almost anything you put your mind to. And as we all know, there are no bigger pockets than the ones of the big cooperatives, when they think about the glorious films they can produce in order to sell one more big screen HD television.

And here is the behind the scenes video

Volkswagen takes the last road to heaven

This wonderful Volkswagen spot starts like another one of those cliché videos- Blue skies, Green grass, A black road and so.

But then, when the narrator start telling the beautiful tale of the VW Kombi, you start realizing something different is happening on your screen.

And for the love of God, Try hiding your tears when you reach the end of the video. You're a grown man.

Who's that girl?

have you seen the latest Jimmy Choo commercial? Did you have a look at the young skinny model posing for the shoe designer's new collection? If we didn't know better, we might have thought it was Australian actress Nicole Kidman. But it couldn't be her, Could it?

Well, god save the special effects. A quick look at Nicole Kidman's Wikipedia page reveals her birth date- 20 June 1967. Yes, we can see your brain steam, she will be 47 next June. So how come she look like a 19 years old model in this short spot? Guess.

The real question is Why?

We pity the fool - April Fools' Day special

Don't you just LOVE April Fools' Day? Isn't it perfect that we have one day a year that it is ok to hoax people down, to pull pranks on everyone without thinking on the consequences? Well, no. We think April Fools' Day is a stupid day, and if you are older than 12, you have no business pranking your friend. Unless, of course, if you are working for Google.

It seems that in the past few years, the bigger brands around the world developed a tradition of hoaxing their customers at April Fools' Day. Big surprise there, as the biggest PR trend in the past two years or so is Prankvertising. So, if they are pranking us on a regular day, no surprise the advertisers doubles their effort at April 1st.

The first that comes to our mind is Google. The Company was one of the first to adopt the trend with their yearly April's fools' prank. Actually, for a few days many people thought Gmail was a hoax, because it was announced at April 1st. this year, the brand came up with a great improvement to it's online translating service, that can now translate words to Emoji.

Well, great Google, you had your fun, now let some other brands play. Brands like Honda, which decided this year would be a great opportunity to communicate with the slow movement, and let people build their own cars' with their own hands, at their own time.

Yes, Ikea, you are no longer alone at the field of shipping long flat boxes to houses around the world, causing grown men to weep in frustration. If you ever felt lost while trying to build a couch, just imagine the long night of sleepless terror whilst building your own CR-Z.

We have a confession to make. We really, utterly, absolutely love airbnb. There is nothing better than getting on a plane to Barcelona and spend a week in someone's apartment for a low price. Well, maybe there is- working in someone's office for a very low price.

Have you ever gone shopping with your dog? Did you ever look at their sad eyes when you buy yourself a new outfit and they don't even get a scarf? No more! American Eagle presents- American Beagle, the first clothing shops for your best friends.