It’s raining polar bears.

20Nov09

I’m not a fan of super shock commercials to try and get your point across – and holy shit does this spot by Mother, London use shock. It’s for climate change group PlaneStupid.com and actually does an ok job of linking airplane emissions to polar bears. Still, the link is rather tenuous and I walk away thinking “Um, ok… but how does 400kg compare to other things?” They don’t give us any reference to prove their assertion.

The spot itself is beautifully done. Excellent special effects and the editing makes the commercial truly attention grabbing. I just wish they could have given us some real facts and context instead of just bloody polar bears.

Via.

Filed under: Are you kidding me?, green   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: advertising, green, TV

Clients from Hell.

20Nov09

We’ve all had them – clients who aren’t just weird or dumb – but truly, completely insane. Clients from Hell is a new site that lets you read and submit anonymous stories of those so crazy we’ll never work with them again.

I can’t say I’ve had clients as bad as some of the stories on the site, but I did post a while back about the jaw-dropping ways clients have killed my work before.

Via.

Filed under: Are you kidding me?, Good Stuff   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: clients, Commentary, ridiculous

Maybe hire a proofreader?

20Nov09

A sharp-eyed Dog & Pony Show reader pointed this gaffe out today. Just Google “Ogilvy” and you get this embarrassing mistake.

Filed under: Are you kidding me?   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: proofreading, screw-up, search

Y!ou’re annoying.

20Nov09

I’ve never understood why Yahoo! creates a crappy user experience like this on their home page. It goes like this:

I see a news story on my homepage that I’m interested in. If I roll over it, a window pops up with the first 25 or so words. But if I click on the story, this annoying box appears (see above) that only shows me the first paragraph in the news story. I have to click AGAIN to get to the full story.

I just clicked on the story because I fucking wanted to read it. Opening a useless window and then making me click again is ridiculous.

It may seem like a little thing, but it makes me not even bother using my Yahoo page to read stories.

Filed under: Are you kidding me?   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: design, ridiculous, website

FAIL: Benefitting AIDS & Cancer.

19Nov09

As my friend @nicolemacias beautifully tweeted:  ”Benefitting aids and cancer”? I feel like this sign could use the word “research” or “prevention”.

Filed under: Are you kidding me?   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: advertising, outdoor, ridiculous, screw-up

The Best of the 2000s.

19Nov09

Want to start an argument at any ad agency? Here’s the best way to do it – AdWeek’s Best of the 2000s polls. You get to pick the best of everything from Top Agency of the Decade to the Top Non-Super Bowl Spot.

Knock yourself out here.

I didn’t see any egregious omissions on the ballot, but I did have a problem with many of the choices they offered.

Do we really need 148 Bud spots to choose from in the Top Super Bowl Spot category? And as of this posting, the lame “Free Doritos” spot is actually leading. Seriously, ask a million people to name a Super Bowl commercial, any Super Bowl commercial, and I guarantee you not a single person mentions that Dorito spot.

And somehow the annoying, stupid, cliché, hack, not-funny Snickers “Snacklish” campaign where one of the copywriters even admitted that the “basic idea [is] euphemisms for eating a Snickers bar written in over-the-top stupid dumb puns” is included in the Top Outdoor.

Voting ends the week of December 7th.

Filed under: Good Stuff   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: advertising, awards, poll

Best Non-Super Bowl Commercial

19Nov09

An aside to my previous post: While I voted for Honda “Cogs” as the Best Non-Super Bowl Commercial of the decade, I wanted to call attention to Crispin’s work for VW with “Like“. This campaign got some buzz when it ran, but it seems to have been forgotten in the rush to rip CP+B for losing the automaker.

Personally, it’s one of my favorite spots of all time. Arresting, shocking, beautifully shot – and most of all, it shows a consumer benefit in a truly original way. I don’t think it Crispin gets the credit it deserves for this one.

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Tags: advertising, awards, poll, TV

Long lost billboards – found! Or were they?

18Nov09

I love this story via The Denver Egoist because you know the client went to Heckler and Associates in Seattle and said “Hey, we need to sell more chowder. Can you do a print ad for us?” – and then this is what the agency came back with.

Here’s how it all went down: Ivar’s Seafood Restaurant announced that back in the 50s, their founder thought everyone would someday be trolling the Sound in submarines and wanted to be the first to create underwater advertising. So Ivar built underwater billboards that were recently discovered and were being pulled up from the ocean bottom. In celebration, Ivar’s was rolling back chowder to 1950 prices.

They got the local newspaper to run stories on the raising of the old billboards. They had a local historian talk about the history of the boards. And there was an ad campaign that went along with everything.

Of course it was all a hoax. The boards were planted just weeks before and the historian was in on the joke.

So why go to all this trouble just to advertise some chowder? Sales went from 19,000 cups to 83,000 cups.

I love it when an agency goes beyond the brief and comes up with a crazy idea, the client trusts them enough to buy it, and it all works like a charm. Awesome, awesome work.

Filed under: Good Stuff, Out there   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: advertising, concept, good, hoax

Ideas vs.

18Nov09

So, so, so sadly true.

Via.

Filed under: Commentary, Good Stuff   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: advertising, Commentary, ideas, wisdom

Armchair, meet Earth. Earth, armchair.

17Nov09

This is a pretty cool idea by Grey, London for the Toshiba Regza SV LCD TV. They strapped a weather balloon to a red armchair and sent it up, up and away. It reached 98,268 before the balloon burst.

There are a bunch of interesting details as to how this concept ties into the features of the TV and why the chair cost £2500, but I like it because it’s something different than all the usual TV advertising out there. Finally something original and engaging enough to keep me watching.

Filed under: Good Stuff   |  1 Comment
Tags: advertising, good, TV