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Adland's 10 by 10 lists - top ads, mishaps and more in the past 10 years
As more than half the world has already welcomed in 2010, we bring you a master list of all the posts we've been doing here at Adland.tv wrapping up the past ten years of advertising. Something to enjoy as you recover from your hangover or as you prepare to get your drink on. Enjoy!
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Adland's 10 by 10 - top ten celebrity ads/campaigns in the past ten years.
1. Orange's campaign featuring many many celebrities over the years, including Macaulay Culkin, Snoop Dogg, Mena Suvari, Darth Vader among many others like Verne Troyer, Patrick Swayze and Sean Astin.
2. Gene Kelly for VW GTI - the advances of CGI technology allowed Mr. Kelly to be brought back to life with the help of some very talented folks.
3. Steve McQueen for Mustang
4. John Wayne for Coors Light
5. Virgin Trains brought out a slew of dead celebrities in 2005, including Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon from "Some Like it Hot", May Witty and Margaret Lockwood from "The Lady Vanishes", Albert Finney Martin Balsam from "Murder on the Orient Express", Sir John Mills from "In Which We Serve", and Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint from "North by North West".
6. Hulu launched their celebrity-focused campaign with Alec Baldwin during this past year's Super Bowl. Other ads featured actors such as Denis Leary and Seth McFarlane.
7. Yao Ming for Visa
8. Burt Reynolds for FedEx
9. SNL actors (plus others) for Pepsi. Andy Sandberg and Timberlake for Pepsi Stuff & Various for Pepsi Max - both Super Bowl ads
10. Luxor print campaign featuring Chaplin, Che and Hitler
Did we miss one you loved? Tell us in the comments.
Mini Tribute to Celebrities Who Have Passed On in 2009
2009 saw the passing of quite a few celebrities. Here is a selection of a few who had appeared in ads during their careers.
Brittany Murphy
Twix - If everything in life was as exiting as... (1993) :30 (USA)
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Patrick Swayze for Orange
Bea Arthur for Shoppers Drug Mart
Dom DeLuise for Ziplock
Ed McMahon for Cash4Gold and I had to throw in his rap for FreeCreditReport.com
Karl Malden for American Express
Michael Jackson for Pepsi
Pat Hingle for GE
Ricardo Montalban for Taco Bell
Soap predicts 2010 for digtial
soapcreative have put their finger in the air and predict what will happen in the digital realm 2010. ps - follow @100ftzombie
Soap's 2010 Predictions View more presentations from Soap Creative.<!--break-->
The list of 10 by 10s lists (so far).
Because I want to keep track.
Not done yet, but I need to get some sleep. :)
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Adland's 10 by 10 - top ten Viral ad campaigns in the past ten years.
#1 Ten years ago, Paul Malmström and Linus Karlsson (Now Mother New York ECD's) shot a few purposely crappy films during their lunch break, went home at night and built even crappier homepages for them, emailed their pals and before they knew it as the pages spread to places like Losers.org and beyond, they had kickstarted a viral teaser campaign for a Buddy Lee jeans. The pages spread like wildfire, and the Swedish idiom in literal translation on Curry's page "Do you think I'm out bicycling" tipped me off to the creators being fellow Swedes. The servers were slammed and eventually the films had to be removed due to their popularity. Rubberburner will never die. Long Live Rubberburner.
Curry shows the Panther move.
#2Nike - watch out for squirrels / Autumn in New York - because Nike laughed with us at the double-u-t-eff guy, then turned around and hired him before his initial hypewave on the interwebs had broken. I'll always think "Nike = Fast" now.
#3 What was once a cinema ad, specially designed to be extra funny in a cinema as one of the best viral ads. Because once Kylie got on that bull in 2001, and someone sent it out on the web, it seems she never got off it. (But I bet a few other people did, ha! I slay me.) A viral is after all, only something that is so much fun you'll pass it on, be it a game or a cinema ad that leaked online.
Agent Provocateur - Kylie says: Please stand up - (2001) - (UK)
#4 In 2001, Clay posted Three Bears Attack! John West Salmon spawns stateside offspring comparing karate-kicking bears, but it is the John West Salmon ad that everyone still remembers. The tradition of blurry "Home video" sudden unexpected change in action began with a swift kick in the nuts here.
John West Salmon - Bear Fight - (2000) :30 (UK)
#5 Quicksilver. Dynamite Surfing. And only because Dan Savage spent a myhtbusters show trying to figure out if this was even possible.
Quicksilver - Dynamite Surfing - (2007) :30 (Denmark) #6 The BIG ad, poking fun at all big ads, topping it with Carmina Burana, and adding a thousand men in robes makes perfect sense. I better have sold some bloody beer.
Carlton Draught - Big ad - (2005) 0:60 (Australia) #7 Honda Cog. It spawned a never-ending trend of domino-style ads and a thousand spoofs, and because the legal wrangling of possible copyright infringement we dubbed a wrench in the Cog. was almost as fascinating as the ad.
Honda Accord - Cog (2003) - 2:00 (UK)
#8 Dove evolution. Because it blew people away, used no hand-held shaky cameras, ad-sleauthing fakery, karate-kicking bears or risque humor to slice through the noise of the web. Refreshing.
Dove - Evolution (2006) 1:15 (Canada) #9 Coke and Mentos the co-branded brand hijack, because at one point, we were all dressing up as Fritz Grobe (the short one) & Stephen Voltz (the tall one) and splattering soft drinks all over the place. Mentos embraced it, Diet Coke did not, and I finally forgave Mentos for those horrible ads they had put me through during the nineties.
#10 The Subservient Chicken. Not because it was the viral that conquered the world and changed how most people looked at interactive advertising. No, I'm giving it the top spot for those leg garters. On the fifth anniversary the Barbarian group reflected on what they had done to the poor internet with CP+B.
I can't wait to see what the next ten years will bring.
Adland's 10 by 10 - Worst Art Direction Disasters in the past ten years.
There are jobs out there that I am not very proud of. Colors bled where they shouldn't have. There wasn't enough margin. A low resolution image made it to final print. A dusty design tomb married me to a font I could not learn to love. That sort of thing, so I know that things can get a little out of hand. There have also been times when I've snuck in something silly, just to have some fun. I can't tell if these are a symptom of the latter, created by AD's/Designers with more chutzpa or if they suffered total design blindness by the end of their project.
#1 "My ass opens at six am". I'm so happy for you.
#3 The Argentinian ox beef meat brings a whole new meaning to my favorite euphemism "100% beef thermometer" doesn't it? I found this in my local danish paper and naturally ran to the store to get some. ;)
#4 This is old. But once you see it, you can't stop looking.
#5 "You deserve the red shirt treatment - ok, so this one can be blamed on the writer, but I promise you, geeks were laughing up and down that highway.
#6 The Modern Tvätttid AB logo. No. Just ...no.
#7 The new mastercard logo goes Goatse. If you do not know Goatse, do not google Goatse. Trust me on this.
#8 Instituto de Estudos Orientais (I'm sensing a trend here).
#9 Uhm.....Please get your dog away from my poor pussy.
#10 ...And, because we're convinced the designer meant to do this - the UK Office of Government Commerce logo, which looks sleek and innocent until you stand it on its head. Then it becomes a logo for wankers. Subtle.
New Years Resolution 2010: Never work for these clients again.
The Oatmeal has the story of how a web design goes to Design Hell to show you, complete with insane requests from clients.
New bulb joke I haven't told you before.
Q. How many designers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A. I think really the issue is not so much the lighbulb in this case, but the relationship between the lightbulb and the ceiling around it, and if were to introduce a lighbulb at this point, what knock on effect would that have on the room in general. A lightbulb in this context may seem like a small addition but in actuality could have an effect on the whole which will require a considerable amount of subtle work to be carried out on the general interior design which would, of course, result in budgetary issues for you. Not saying we couldn't screw it in, but best to establish a baseline for this at an early stage.
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Adweeks @bmorrissey on CNBC TV
Hey look, it's @bmorrissey digital editor at Ad Week magazine on cnbc. He's the only one NOT SHOUTING. What on earth is everyone else on? And could that annoying swiping sound please stop?
Love the short notes: "Olympic hypes. Superbowl Deflates". Uh-huh.
Ballet slippers (and gold at that) only reached the states after the Obama kids wore some? That trend was so over here by 2008 that you'll only find them in the sales bins now. I love how US and European fashions are always two years out of sync with each other, that never seems to change.
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Adland's 10 by 10 - Top Ten Banned ads in the past ten years. (NSFW)
There are three ways to get your ad banned. Have sex, religion or suicide in your ad. If you managed all three, you'll be insta-banned. These are the funniest or craziest banned ads reported here in the past ten years. As you might expect, this list is NSFW if nudity is NS where you work.
#1
First out are Sofa King who managed with the feat of getting their slogan banned. What's wrong with an endline that fulfills the client critera of having the brand name in it, and touting their low prices? Nothing, except, their brand name is Sofa King. Our prices are Sofa King low read the ad, and all the noo yawakas thought it was Sofa King funny. The ASA didn't laugh.
#2 "Spank" fashion ads withdrawn, WE Sweden decided to pull their ads and underwear packaging as soon as they realized that nobody was buying their "we're a skater brand, the idea was that the girl might have fallen off a skateboard." defense for this image. Sure, sure - she fell off a skateboard, onto a mans hand, while pant-less....
#3
Christina Aguilera's naughty nurse ad canned - Center For Nursing Advocacy said: "This ad simultaneously exploits the 'naughty nurse' and the battleaxe/Nurse Ratched stereotypes, setting the nurse up both as an available sex object and a mock-malevolent authority figure, rather than a competent professional.", and presto, the ad was withdrawn. The incompetent professional photoshop hacker who pasted together the two Xtina's could have gotten it banned on the skintone alone, in my humble opinion. The full campaign can be seen here
#4 I'm still not sure what is going on in this Patric Cox ad where two men in jockstraps wrestle in the background but it was banned right fast after a reader complained it appeared to depict an "act of buggery". There are shoes in the foreground by the way. They're what's being sold.
#5 Suicides will get you banned. First Honda withdrew their "suicide car advert" down in Australia. In the ad a man on a rooftop carpark admires the new Honda so much that his own car commits caricide by driving itself off the roof. The people of Honda received calls from "People ringing in with heart-wrenching stories of their own personal experience with suicide" and decided to pull the ad then and there. Four years later, VW pulled the "jumper" ad they aired during the superbowl 2007 created by CP+B Miami after receiving similar complaints - even though in this ad, the car is a hero as it convinces the man not to jump. In a similar move, General Motors decided to edit the Robot Superbowl spot where a depressed assembly robot dreams that he jumps off a bridge. #6 It's not just airbrushed nudity that gets banned, Dove's pro-age campaign for real beauty, showing nude non-airbrushed mature ladies, was banned ......wait for it ....... because of nudity. Way to miss the point, people.
#7 Cult Shaker, did their best to try and shake up Denmark, but it wasn't until they doubled the amount of nude girls in the ads that they received enough complaints to be ordered to take the posters down. They continued advertising, now with more 'subtle' closeup portraits of partial female face and red lips receiving the foamy white spray from overflowing shaken bottles instead. Bukakka-producers took notes of their style.
#8 N-Gage ads deemed "offensive" and "distressing" british watchdog banned these because they "could be seen to encourage sexual violence towards women."
Speaking of violence toward women, the captivity 'abduction, torture and death' posters that caused such outrage when they mistakenly went up is another example of violence toward women, but that is what the whole movie was about.
#9 Nude Sophie Dahl for Opium. This ad has a special place in Adland's heart, not only was it the most complained about advert in ASA's history back in 2000 - four years later the curse of Sophie's nipple caused Paypal to shut down our account (where adgrunts upgraded to watch films, which allowed us to afford to show said films), right before the superbowl, which is our biggest crush of the year. The image of Sophie's pale white nipple you can so easily find being sold on Ebay (via paypal, ahem - consistency anyone?) sure has the power to upset some folk. Tom Ford, fashion creative director enfant terrible began the naughties on a naughty note and we wouldn't expect anything less from him. (fun trivia: Ex paypal employees started youtube only a year after the Paypal/Adland mishap. Coincidink? Probably, but a funny one.)
#10 Gucci's Hairy Ad, you can thank Tom Ford again, for the kerfluffle caused by him branding a models pubic hair. 272653 views later, the ad has gone down in history - it narrowly avoided the ASA banhammer, since it only got 17 complaints in the end. Unlike Sophie above, the image of Louise's shaven cootchie only appeared within the confines of fashion magazines, where the readers did understand it as it was intended: "to be the ultimate ironic pun for a sexy brand in a logo-led age"
It was never banned, but to balance out the nudity with some more violence that Red Cross Youth (RKUF) campaign designed to start a debate about human rights in conjunction with the Chinese Olympics was pulled after Red Cross Geneva received complaints from Chinese people worldwide. It gets an honorable mention as it was the campaign that I received death threats for posting (and keeping) [#1], [#2], [#3], [#4],[#5] , while the site was under massive DDOS-attacks from various scriptkiddies hoping that they could force me to remove it. Events like that makes hosting this site rather interesting shall we say.
I was just Skyped by Frank Garrett (or rather the recording)
I overslept today, and as I stumbled into the office without having touched my coffee yet I see my skype bouncing "Incoming call - Frank Garrett". I scrambled for my headphones and answer the call. Why do I answer calls from strangers? Well, I don't, Adland.tv does, I wait for people to state what they want since I've gotten plenty of really strange calls. "Hey, how are you?" says a voice and I act cagey because, well, I have no idea who this is and the conversation is a bunch of choppy little pleasantries back and fourth, when I don't respond, there's long silences. "I can't understand ya", says the man and I correct my position, asking if he can hear better, to which he responds something else. A moment later, there it is again "I can't understand ya" with the same exact intonation, and at that instant I hang up, block the caller and tweet fantastic, I was just skyped by a bot. I might be over-stating the bot bit, as the recording could have been controlled by a human, but if it was a bot then that would almost be impressive.
Now, fully awake, I go on a hunt to see what this Frank Garret phenomenon is. (For the record, his skype name was either duncanconstruction2 or duncan_construction1 - there's dozens of Frank's and Duncan's on skype). Turns out it's some poor guy who has been crank called, and now the recording of his voice is being used to crank call others, a.k.a soundboard pranks. In jackulator forums a thread talks about how the real Frank has filed a police report, and how there have people trying to file reports on him. Yikes.
I guess all I have to do now is kick back and wait for the latest prank call to end up youtube, though I probably spoiled all the fun when I hung up as soon as I heard the repeated phrase.
The Duncan collection soundboard prank calls
by happypranksgiving
moral of the story: always have at least one sip of coffee before answering the phone.
update, whoah the uncyclopedia presentation of Frank Garret is fantastic.
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Hoaxvertising: when a story is faked, is the ad still good?
Have you seen Duval Guillaume's latest ad for Alfa Romeo yet? In it, they show a filmed story of how they lower a poster to the lowest point on earth (which it isn't by the way), to make a point about low prices. Oh, hardy-har, isn't that clever. No. It's a long way for a drink of water, and the only way it'll spread (as the agency hopes, I'm sure) is if the punters believe that they actually did this. Watch the film.
Alfa Romeo - Expedition 147: Alfa Romeo advertises on lowest point on earth.
At 01:51 they leave what seems to be a pretty big clue, to let some folks in on the joke: "It'll be crushed before it reaches the bottom" says a man who knows about pressure. Then they spend some time elaborating on how the special billboard is filled with water and such to avoid this faith. But honestly, do you really think they put a billboard at that depth, when all they had to do was make a cute film somewhere tropical instead (way cheaper). Not to be a bore, but environmental agencies tend to really dislike advertisers tossing billboards all over the landscape. (I recall some soda-pop brand fined lots of money for painting a mountain somewhere years ago, but I can't find my old adland post about it now.) Agencyspy even posted the question: Is Alfa Romeo's latest campaign a fake?
I've been a bit wary of this particular Belgian agency ever since the Schweppes fountains of effervescence. Their release, which Caff caught first and posted stated: "... fountains through European cities in countries such as Germany, Switzerland, Sweden and Norway" - a really random collection of countries (and no cities actually named) coupled with a bunch of large photos that could just as well be photoshopped. Is it Hoaxvertising, as I coined it in the 10*10 - top ten new ad spaces in the past ten years, or did they actually do it? When asked them point blank, they kinda dodged me. Other works from them could clearly be done, like the bowling hole stickers, and then the question only is how many stickers did they actually distribute? Does it matter, when every newspaper and blogs picks up on the story? Not really, they reach the eyeballs they might have missed on the street, via those who talk about it. And that is the idea of "hoaxvertising".
Just look at the success of the largest drawing in the world, where the student project shown had one part GPS, one part DHL and one part gusto. Stir, mix, make a credible film and toss it up on youtube and bingo - the world was talking about the idea. Erik Nordenankar who made it later clarified with bright red text on his project page that "This is my graduation project on advertising and graphic design at Beckmans college of design. This is fictional work. DHL did not transport the GPS at any time". Which was fine, since it still kicked ass as a graduation project.
Now that he's working at Mother though, and is the guy on the left in The Honest Christmas Spam film, one might start to wonder if this film is a real as it portrays to be. Wouldn't that be funny, if it was set up? I mean, with the name "honest" in the film and all. The conversation might have gone "Hey, Theo Delaney, wanna look like a hero and play a part in our christmas card idea? We're going to give ten grand to Forward Nigeria and thought you'd be the right guy to help tell the story."
Then again, nobody actually expects advertising to be honest now, do they? That's like expecting reality TV to be unscripted.
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Adland's 10 by 10 - Top Ten Freakiest Ads of The 00's
In no particular order...
In 2008, Nike Brand Design EMEA showed us how much like second skin their shoes where. Literally. The result was a bit disgusting and freaky.
November 2007...we all knew French ads have a tendency to be a bit odd. We thought we knew just how odd. Oh, how wrong we were. Fred & Farid of FFL PARIS brought out the freaky guns with their ad for Orangina that gave homage to (at least what appeared to be) furries. Now oft referenced with any new furries-like spot that comes out, this is definitely worthy of the top ten for the decade.The UK's Gwent Police PSA from earlier this year was not only freaky, but graphic and jaw-dropping. The ad portrayed the dangers of texting while driving in a web video that was over 4 minutes long.
Gwent Police PSA - Texting while driving - (2009) 4:16 (UK) Possibly the freakiest advert for a new store opening has to go to a print ad for McDonald's by Leo Burnett, New Delhi. The ad was done in 2006. Hopefully this model will not grow up to be scarred for life, although I just might be.
Sunshine and coffee and freaky singing sunbeams. What else can one say about the Folgers Happy Mornings Sunshine spot from 2006 by Saatchi & Saatchi, NY?
South African agency, The Jupiter Drawing Room won a silver Lion for this ambient freakiness of drunkards in the bathroom (click image to see more). One of the freakiest PSAs by AMV BBDO for Anorexia Awareness. Sometimes the truth is disturbing.
Earlier this year PETA has found competition with this crazy spot for Wakker Dier (Animals Awake). It features Ancilla Tilia, who was crowned the sexiest vegetarian of 2008, and is a famous fetish model. Here she strips naked, only to be gutted alive by a chain-smoking fisherman. Fish and ladies, they're all the same, right? Double-u-T-eff?
Wakker Dier (Animals Awake) - Ancilla Tilia strips - (2009) :60 (The Netherlands) Burger King and CP+B. I was going to pick just one but, overall they have enough strange and freaky going on that it's worth lumping them all together as one. Let's see...Subservient Chicken, 2004. Chicken Fight, 2004. Fantasy Ranch, 2005. CoqRoq, 2005. Yes, that spot with Hootie. It was one of the first freaky spots Burger King started doing with the help of Crispin (after 2004's Subservient Chicken site and TV spot. In fact, it helped to set the tone for the types of ads we could expect from CP+B for the rest of the decade.
Check out the full video:
BK Burger King & Spongebob - Square Butts music video - (2009) 2:20 (USA)
Suckling on wolves is always a bit freaky. Especially when it's used to sell sandwiches for Quiznos. Cliff Freeman (RIP) was the crazy agency behind the madness that aired in 2003 across America. And, yes, that's Jim Parsons of "The Big Bang Theory", in case you were wondering.
And sure that was weird, but Quizno's brought it up a notch a year later with the unforgettable Sponge Monkey spots.
Did we miss one you would have liked to have seen listed? Post it in the comments.
Adland's 10 by 10 - Top Ten Marketing Mishaps in the past ten years.
#1 Cole, Russel & Pryce launched their agency web site by mailing out a chopped off lamb's foot to their pals and potential clients, but their pro-bono client "Djurens Rätt" (animals rights) were not in the least bit amused and soon the Creative Director had to become the sacrificial lamb; he was axed.
#2 johndoom posted the most bizarre ad for toothpaste we've ever seen and all the collective adgrunts scratched their heads. Why is the kid so amused at seeing his presumed mother naked? Why is she in the shower, yet not wet? Where's the towel? What does this oedipal scene have to do with white teeth? Not a marketing mishap as much as the best worst ad we've ever seen, and it has yet to be topped. <!--break-->#3 During the 2006 winter Olympics, Adidas sent the German ski team out on the slopes sporting Belgian flagged caps. Someone at Adidas made a mistake when ordering the caps. Instead of horizontal stripes they got vertical stripes, and presto you've swapped the land of Bratwurst for the land of fries. The irony of course is that Adidas is a German company, and should know which way the stripes of the flag go!
#4 Are the Swedish ice-cream names racist or nazi code words? When Nogger - the Nougat ice-cream classic - had a licorice-flavored brand-sibling launch, and named it Nogger Black the Center Against Racism we're mighty offended. Soon the Anti Discrimination Bureau joined in and reported the "88:an" for being named a neo-nazi codeword. That summer ice-cream loving Swedes found themselves very confused when choosing a flavor, what nefarious signals did eating a GB-sandwich send? Come to think of it, doesn't the winking clown logo look like an illuminati symbol? Nogger Black is no more, by the way, now there's a Nogger Mint instead. In a similar naming mistake - Kellogg's named their cereal after a street drug: Coco Rocks. I call that truth in advertising though, as anytime a kid eats a bowl of that they are as speeded as if they were on dark brown crack cocaine.
#5 More naming mishaps, this time dirty. H&M named their tight fitting jeans "Fit Sliq", which in Swedish means c*nt licking. Honda Jazz became "Honda Fitta" in Norway, where the F-word is the same as the C-word in English. Care to drive a c*nt-car? Meanwhile 7-11 in Sweden promoted their hot dogs with the headline "Bite Sale", yes, that's "dirty cock" in French. Keep your minds out of the gutter people! Could be worse, I guess, they could have checked with a web translation gateway and ended up with this error.
#6 In an Absolut world - in Mexico ... the borders would be drawn in a manner that antagonizes the hell out of the neighboring Americans. Miles of press articles were written about this, even here in Sweden where the average citizen has no idea how many states there are in the United States, nor are well-versed in the history between Mexico and the USA, but that didn't stop everyone from having an opinion. Lets be honest people, in an Absolut world, we'd all be drinking gold Tequila and never getting hangovers.
#7Fashion mistake makes Dunkin' Donuts accused of supporting terrorists. When shooting a banner-ad with Rachael Ray, the stylist had a silk scarf from Urban Outfitters with them, but some people thought Rachel was sporting a kaffiyeh - right-wings blogs like Little Green Footballs and Michelle Malkin went on a rampage against the Dunkin's that America runs on, equating the silk scarf with supporting terrorists. A rather hilarious thread erupted here where adgrunts posted as many images as they could find of celebrities "supporting terrorists" with their neckwear. #8 Dialog Solutions GmbH sent a form-letter to the wrong person, and I chewed them out in
"We want to seed virals on your [insert name here] site!" , which ended up being used as an example of how quickly the tide can turn against you in the world of viral marketing on the intartubes. The irony later when some of the folks who held said seminars, fell head first into a worldwide backlash when Karen26 went around the world asking "Who's my baby-daddy?" had me in stitches. Once I managed to stop laughing, I listed where this viral stunt went wrong. Karen26, who was played by actress Ditte Arnth, was an overnight sensation even talked about on the O'Reilly Factor. Perhaps the newspaper journalists who fell for the story felt they needed to shift the blame for their under-par "reporting", to the Visit Denmark agency, as they were calling for the Managing Director to quit. In the end, she did.
0xKaren26 - Karen in Denmark seeking August's father - (2009) (Denmark) #9 Adult Swim ATHF LED billboards cause havoc in Boston, MA. Gun-shy Boston did not take those blinking lights lightly, and what was meant to be a teaser campaign soon became a terrorist alert. Peter Berdovsky and Sean Stevens were arrested, and later released on bail. They called a press conference, which they spent talking about hair through the ages. You can't make stuff like this up. It was, in hairdresser terms, fabulous dahling.
Aqua Teen Hunger Force / Adult Swim bomb scare press conference
#10 this is by now classic. A whopping 136582 views later, most of the world has laughed at Locum's full page holiday cheer advert back in 2001. The designer got a little too lowercase happy, and everyone read the message as I love cum rather than locum. The body copy is saying something about saving trees, but we're still too busy laughing to bother with that.
We simply can't wait for more mishaps in the 10's! Bring' em on!
Honorable mentionsWoman sues Toyota over "stalker" campaign, because scaring the bejaysus out of your customers might be taken the wrong way.
Szul.com "orgasm" commercial - possibly the most expensive viral of 2007 - when producing ads, securing model rights is first on the list, kids.
The Adidas shoe bomber ad bombs, people honestly thought that the sight of a naked athlete with a cartoon fuse drawn to his sneakers would "encourage other people to copy the shoe bomber". Oh RLY?
The headline: "It descends from the heavens. Ironically it unleashes hell... Consider it a gift from above"... coupled with a photoshopped image of an Osprey helicopter descending on a Mosque, and presto - Boeing/Bell Helicopters successfully unleashed PR-hell on themselves. Congratulations.
W+K Studios share how they handcrafted those Rickrolling Dantes inferno boxes
To counterweight some of that christmas gooey-fluffy-lovey stuff, here's finally some more images on that terrifying rickrolling Dante's Inferno box we wrote about back in October when it annoyed the bejaysus out of Chud.com. WK Studio has posted lots of lovely images of how they hand crafted these evil, evil boxes. Via The denver Egotist.
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The decade that was - summed up in icons, in ads, in everything.
I knew I'd end up doing a list of list eventually today. The decade summed up in icons, and once again the NYT graphic designers have us with our mouths agape. Nice one.
Agencyspy has another list: Endorsements Evaporated: How Sex, Drugs and Teardrops Spoiled the Aughts. It is aughts or naughts? Or naughties? You'd think we'd have this figured out after ten years of zeroes, but nooo. I guess that memo was eaten by a spamtrap.
Adfreak's traditional freakiest ads list is out the thirty freakiest ads of 2009 are up.
25 predictions for Indian advertising might have some local injokes on it, but one thing in Adland never changes, only the names of places do: "Of the 10.5 copywriters left in advertising, 6 will quit to try their hand at writing scripts for Bollywood."
Campaigns sums up advertising in the naughties, oh so it's naughties now? Way to tell me just two days before I stop having to use it.
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What does "Adland" look like at the strike of midnight 2009/2010? You can show us!
We want the world to know what "Adland" - the mythical worldwide land where adgrunts reside - looks like on New Years Eve. Fancy being our fly on the wall in your part of the physical world?
All adgrunts can connect their accounts to Bambuser - just go to user/me/bambuser and hook it up. Once you have your adland+Bambuser account set, you needn't worry about hashtags, everything you Bambuse will end up on Adland's Bambuser page. Live! As you broadcast it. So please do share, and show us what New Years eve looks like in the part of Adland where you are.
You can use your webcamera or cellphone, and joy, the iPhone Bambuser app is now available for you folks who didn't want to jailbreak, or break, anything. For all other phones, check out the phone list to see if yours is on it. While you're there, peek at the getting started page for a quick how-to, as my talkative demo below might not make too much sense. ;) Come midnight and 2010, I'll be Bambusing to the front page, will you?
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Adland's 10 by 10 - Top Ten new ad space ideas in the past ten years.
Another countdown to 2010, in the past ten years the internet (and this website) has matured its way up to "2.0", everyone on earth learned to play along in the security theatre at airports and advertising has broken new grounds offline, these days its not so much ad creep as a great wave of advertising molasses seeking to cover every inch of the earth. Lets see the top ten oddest and most innovative new ad media ideas in the past ten years, shall we?
#1 Eggvertising. You can have your egg and brand it too. Egg ads media in Canada sold this space alone, meanwhile some folks in London decided that the sandwich wrapper made a great unused ad space, and now no food was safe - we had Printed pringles with logos straight on them, Nanner ads on Bananas, Gourmet impressions - selling ad space on pizza and even ads inside your Tokitos. It was enough to make us loose our appetite.
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#2
Acclaim Entertainment hoaxed when they claimed to use Homing pigeons to promote a computer tennis game during Wimbledon.
The idea of ads on animals wasn't so far fetched, as we'll later see, but this never actually happened. Acclaim also called dibs on "Deadvertising", stating that they put ads on tombstones for the game Second Coming. They never did, but people were far too busy being outraged about the idea to notice, and we think that the media on tombstones might soon be sold by an agency near you. Lets call this tactic "hoaxvertising", as in "if you press release enough people about it, it becomes true".
Not the first ads created only to be seen from the air, mind you, circlemakers and other agencies have helped out in creating ads on hills and fields, usually placed near airports. In the naughts, huge brands like Axe, Nike and Douwe Egberts had ads grown, painted and pressed into the landscape, to be seen only by airline passengers flying overhead. #4 One Second ads - 'Subliminal advertising' came of age, by not being the least bit subliminal. The One Second breath freshener ad which AdAge incorrectly reported was "the first one second ad ever", wasn't, of course - Guniess book of records ran this one second ad already back in 1993. Then Miller High Life joined in on the blipverts, by airing this one second ad during the super bowl, our Oscars night of advertising, making one-second blipvertising mainstream once and for all.
#5
Ads on Cash, what was once reserved for cheap car washes and underground ideas such as Washington stating "I Grew Hemp", advanced with GoGorilla claiming that they invented the media as they advertised the TV show traffic on bills, and MoneyMarketing media agency selling coin-ad space specifically. I don't know what happened to them after they discovered that defacing money is illegal though. The money-ad idea didn't want to die quite yet though and the Gothenburg post broke the law while pointing out that a subscription was only 2 SEK a day. #6
Bovine ads. moo-ving billboards, Banksy street art idea morphed into real ad space. Our oldest noted record of bovine billboards was way back in '96, but it was the mid-naughts where animals became billboards best friend. Or went to the dogs, depending on who you ask. In '02 it was called "Dogvertising" when strawberry Frog used it. In '01 it was called "barking billboards", and in '06 when Willy's sent out big and small dogs all over town they just called it funny. Not to be confused with the billboards meant for dogs, Bark of you love Bonzo with an actual dog whistle sound in it in '01. #7
Advertising on body parts was the trend that never ended. There was sponsor my melon, later dubbed headvertising with a media agency set on selling vacant adspace on students foreheads. There was pregvertising, an idea later used by a Jennifer Gordon to score tickets to the superbowl... and then there was the Dutch design student who came up with the clever idea of selling ad space on prostitutes.
Ever popular assvertising appeared everywhere, which even Gene Simmons used (not on his own ass, mind you). Assvertisnig should not be confused with bumvertising, the idea of using homeless people to promote Pizza Schmizza, for the price of a slice. The Sisterhood Augustinessen nuns even created special warm coats for the homeless where there was an ad space on the back, Ben and Jerry's used it to promote ice-cream in the middle of the winter. And you think us ad folk are cold. Tssk!
And to end this humans as ad space trend on a high note, a mother claimed to have tattoed her forehead with Goldenpalace.com so that she could use the "$10,000 to send her son Brady, left, to a private school." (clearly, not the brightest bulb in the box if she thinks that will cover tuition). I could not believe it and paged Snopes, even when the journalist himself told me that he witnessed the event, as Goldenpalace had a long string of temporary tattoo-sporting folks streaking in their name before. Goldenpalace also claims to have tattoed a few women's cleavages back then, but there is no mention of this on their web pages today. We blame ourselves for mocking the tattoo-idea in pigeon holed rant way-back when.
#8 Street art & Stencils - Not everyones cup of tea, and the backlash was pretty strong as advertising vs street art battle rages in New York and the real street artists get pissed. Still, stencil ads, and other uses of street art ideas reached new heights, with everyone from Vespa to Verizon joining in.
The most topical of these ads was the Visine Dry Eye Relief that 'cleaned' away dirt to reveal the message that visine could help those itchy eyes after the dust storm in Oz. Street art style, graffiti and ads-seen-from air was becoming mainstream already by '05, and new variations such as mud stencils and amazing 3D chalk drawings were used for ads. While the early adopters like IBM & their Linux chalk, were fined for their littering nobody learned as Verizon was fined for their orange chalk five years later. I'd teach you how to make that chalk actually go away, since I myself did a similar campaign back in '98 but you'll have to pay me for that how-to. (It's so much easier than you think too, which amuses me to no end)
#9 Beamvertising grew up. burning Pandas ran across building for the WWF, PUMA hijacked Stockholm library as adspace (and forgot to ask permission), a Lexus and a cheetah raced in Russia, Pepsi branded the most visible building in Stockholm... and then HBO Voyeur came and kicked everyone in the pants by showing us how it really should be done. They raked home the awards for this, including a Cannes Grand Prix.
HBO - Voyeur - (2008) 3:07 (USA) #10 Caff seems to have accidently predicted the future with her old post "butterfly wings? Lets hope not - as this year Eichborn sent out real live flies carrying banners as advertising at a book fair, and with that the trend of actually advertising on insects has begun.
Eichborn - Banners on flies (for real) - ambient, Germany
After all that, I'm not sure what to expect from the next ten years. Advertising is officially omnipresent.
Alfa Romeo - Expedition 147: Alfa Romeo advertises on lowest point on earth.
Expedition 147: Alfa Romeo advertises on lowest point on earth. What for? To bring home the point that they have really low prices. Oh dear.
Using the codename 'Expedition 147', Alfa Romeo dives to the lowest point on earth - 11000 meters below sea level - to promote the lowest price ever to be advertised for an Alfa Romeo.
• Campaign website: http://www.expedition147.be
Sheesh, how low can you go in advertising?
Alfa Romeo Belgium explains how the expedition got through: "a while ago we decided to put up a campaign for the 147-model. We wanted to re-introduce the car at the annual carfair in Brussels. The car would be advertised at the lowest price possible. Duval Guillaume answered our brief with an extra-ordinary brand momentum idea."
Geoffrey Hantson : "Price-communication for a car-brand. Not really your most exciting creative brief. Not to mention the fact that consumers get slapped with price offers endlesly. We knew we had to break through the masses and juice the orange and use creative leverage to get the message across. So, we focussed on 'the lowest' and started thinking from that point. We partnered with mediacompany ClearChannel and figured it would be possible to lower a 2m" billboard to the bottom of the ocean. To the lowest point on earth. Almost 11 kilometers below sea level!" — it worked.
If you, dear reader, noticed that a man said "the billboard will be crushed before it reaches the bottom", and then notice how the poster isn't when it reaches the bottom, you might be too clever to be a punter. You must work in advertising.
If Kim Kardashian makes ten thousand dollars a tweet, why can't Twitter? (or I!?)
Kim Kardashian reportedly makes ten thousand dollars per tweet, tipping people to Rebook EasyTone training shoes, quick trim body, and Carl's Jr - there's consistency for ya.
This leads Jim Edwards at B|Net to ask "If Kim Kardashian Can Get $10K a Tweet Why Can't Twitter?". He concludes with a thought:
One answer is that Twitter may not want to find out what its real revenue stream would be if it sold inventory to advertisers. The company may be (mistakenly) valued more highly by potential acquirers if they don’t know what the potential revenue actually is. The moment Twitter becomes a grown-up business and sells ads, it would generate a revenue stream that would allow investors to accurately calculate how much the company is worth.
What is Twitter worth? Techcrunch reckons (complete with pie-charts) that if Facebook is worth $10 Billion, Twitter is Worth $1.7 Billion. All that money on what people still say is just a waste of time.
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