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Archive for May, 2007

Ribbed Condoms

21 May 2007

A few cool ads from the Belgian front, for Lifestyles – a brand of ribbed condoms. I like the approach of the topic and the way they managed to picture this. Shows a lot of creativity and the photography is just splendid. They’re not too far-fetched either, and I guess anyone within the target audience will have at least a humoristic frown or a smile on his/her face when they think about the product’s benefits.

Juice Condoms 1

Juice Condoms 2

Juice Condoms 3

Agency: Mortierbrigade, Brussels, Belgium
Creatives: Niels Schreyers, Koenraad Lefever
Photography: Koen Demuynck
Thanks, Dave

 

Urban Surfing

21 May 2007

Incredibly kick-ass commercial for Quicksilver. I expect nothing less than seeing this become a trend. Might help the local fishermen on the pier too… They’ll just have to scoop the fish out of the water instead of waiting for hours on end for the little swimmers to bite the worm. But no, seriously, this is pretty damn cool stuff for the Quicksilver brand. I’ll see if I can dig up others… maybe there’s a sequel.

Video Link

 

Nezeril

14 May 2007

Mark Ardelius, the Copywriter from Åkestam.Holst, drops this funny little ad in the mailbox, fresh from their printer. We’ve all had those terrible colds where you just couldn’t speak clearly anymore and the Ms sounded like Bs. Well, for their client Nezeril, they turned this given fact into a pleasant campaign visual, hoping it would bring a little smile to those who are reading this text double or in a blur and to whom hot milk with honey is a life-saver. I like the idea. It’s easy to understand, somewhat comical and simple in execution. Although I wonder why the brandname is starting with an N. If you need to go buy it, it’ll sound like Dezeril anyway, so why not just name yourself like that in the first place? ;-)

Agency: Åkestam Holst, Stockholm, Sweden
Art Directors/Copywriters: Fredrik Josefsson, Lars Holthe, Johan Baettig
Ad assistants: Kenna Magnusson, Marcus Wallander
Published: April 2007

 

Scratch Yourself

14 May 2007

Pretty cool stuff coming up: here’s a fun way to spread your love to your friends and relatives. Instead of sending them those boring images of the lastest family gig in attachment, why not make it interactive and add a chance to win some money at the same time? ScratchYourself is a Flash application that lets users upload an image and build a lottery-style scratch card from it. Once a scratch card has been created, users can email it to friends or embed it on their site. Users could create and embed these on their blogs, MySpace page, etc. The only downside is that the card has a 550 px width and it’s just a little bit too wide to fit in the template.

Product Details:

  • Scratch card creators can email their scratch card link to other people or use a code snippet provided to embed the scratch card on their Web site.
  • Scratchers move their mouse over the scratch area to reveal the message underneath.
  • Every day, Scratchyourself chooses two winning times. The first person to scratch after each winning time wins an Instant Prize of US$10, and the scratch card creator wins a Bonus Instant Prize of US$10. Scratchers may reveal a message entering them into a Daily Draw for US$50. Users can scratch multiple times to win an Instant Prize but can only enter the Daily Draw once per scratch card per day.
  • Winners can choose to be paid via PayPal, check or Amazon gift certificate.
  • The current Scratchyourself promotion runs until June 7, 2007. Scratchyourself intends to run a second promotion from June 8, 2007, with bigger prizes.

Example (unscaled version – click here) :

The setup is very easy. First you provide the name of the ticket (the blueprint stamp you see before you scratch) – Next you upload an image (300k limit) and write the caption (text in the bottom left corner), then you pick a color panel and then you login or register for free, to send it off. (took me 20 seconds). Simple, cool and very nifty.

Get your own at: Scratch Yourself

 

Dirty

14 May 2007

It’s been a while since we’ve heard anything from Axe, the de-nerdifying shower gel that guarantees instant relief. I wasn’t worried at all since the latest campaign just kicked off in Europe a few days ago (I posted the US clip a little prior to the European launch here on the blog) – The ads below come from India, and despite causing a little stir and local riot every here or there, they look pretty ok to me and my European values. Everyone has his favorites, and yes, I have some too, but I never kiss and tell so don’t ask. ;-)

“Any excuse to get dirty. Axe shower gel.”

Agency: Lowe Mena, Dubai, UAE
Creative Directors: Dominic Stallard, Clinton Manson
Art Director: Dominic Stallard
Copywriter: Clinton Manson
Producer: Caroline Symmonds
Photographer: Clive Stewart
Via: AdsOfTheWorld

 

The Break-Up

11 May 2007

It’s almost here! The launch of “The Break-Up”, a video that a colleague of mine at Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions has been working on. The little movie was started to highlight the relationship with advertisers and today’s consumer, and especially how that has changed. They’ve just wrapped up the filming and the final cuts have been shown to some other colleagues in the company. It highlights in a funny way how the relationship has changed, a simple message that many of us still need to learn though.

Geert Desager (my colleague) and Stef Selfslagh from Openhere started a blog called ‘Bring the love back!‘ a couple of weeks ago that built towards the launch and described the whole process including the initial agency briefing. Pretty neat, I think. The video was shot in LA by Caviar and has Claire Coffee and Brad Raider as actors, both with a track record including television series like CSI, Bones, …

For the movie they created a poster as well in true Hollywood style which you can see below. To be continued…

The Break-Up

So, I admit, it’s late and I’m a bit tired and lazy. I would like to thank my other colleague Kris Hoet from CrossTheBreeze (and iBlogMustang) for writing almost every word of the above text. Really. Thanks. Next lunch is on me ;-)

 

Have Blog, Will Mortify For Cheese

10 May 2007

The end of blog marketing is near, that’s for sure. Instead of asking bloggers to place ads or to give them stuff to try out in exchange for a review, Belgian agency Duval Guillaume asked two Flemish bloggers (asfaltkonijn.be & stew.be) to create a commercial clip to give the campaign some extra buzz in the blogosphere. The two heroes sacrificed their blogging souls for a small monetary token of appreciation and a short period of fame and attention and started working. Although in the Middle Ages, it used to be a job for the local town idiot/fool to entertain people, nowadays you can ask bloggers, apparently. You’d think the agency would select a matter close to the bloggers and their lifestyle, and yeah, maybe it is… Who knows? I just find it a pretty risky precedent.

The campaign itself is for VLAM and it concerns the promotion of… cheese. Somewhere in Flanders, on 4 locations, cheese is hidden and people are invited to guess the location by means of visual hints with pictures. Although the campaign is promoting Belgian cheese, the four locations are Flanders-based. It’s not that we don’t like the south side of Belgium, but umm… yeah. That’s a small detail with a long story, probably. On the product site [www.belgischekazen.be] extra video, audio and textual snippets help visitors in their quest for the precious fungified milk. If you smell guess the location, you can win a cheese buffet at the comfortable altitude of 50 meters with 20 of your friends. Other prizes are: a boat trip with cheese picnic for 8 people, 10 cheese baskets or 100×4 entry tickets for ye olde cheese factory ‘Passendale’.

So. Is this campaign in any way related to blogging, bloggers or the blogosphere? No. Is there a link between the product and the blogs? No. Is the clip funny? Umm, apart from being a semi-clone of the Flemish Trigger Happy’s bunnies (two guys in bunny suits acting ridiculous in the city) and the Pac-Man at the university gag, it sometimes almost is. The overal feeling is that this is an attempt to become viral, based on leeching on the bloggers’ social networks. Judge for yourself, see the clip (some Dutch language present).

There is, however, a very cute visual for the campaign, something Duval is actually pretty good at. That’s about the only thing I like about this campaign. It’s true that this is ‘the first time in Belgium an agency asks bloggers to create a commercial for a product’. Let’s hope it’s the last time, or that the bloggers will get some sort of media training in advance. For that small compensation, I’d hardly call it ‘freelanced’ or ‘outsourced’ work. I wouldn’t exactly compare it to sweatshops either, I’m sure it was a fun afternoon and all that, but I’d never sign up for a proposal like this. I’d feel juuuust a little abused. But hey, that’s just me… ranting. You should probably just ignore this.

Find The Cheese

Copy:
“Find the cheese and win
Participate on belgischekazen.be

Agency: Duval Guillaume

 

Cloaked Bus Stop

10 May 2007

Nice idea from our Canadian creatives for the Science Alberta Foundation, a non-profit organization committed to increasing science literacy and awareness. The “nay-sayers” amongst the agencies worldwide can start their engines because yes, this only works if you are standing right in front of the side of the bus stop. Yes, it requires the viewer to interact and move his/her lazy ass to make the picture fit, just like the campaign for the Red Cross did. I still think it’s pretty cool to look at, given the context, topic, target audience and purpose. In this case I even want to pass on the fact that it’s weather sensitive, and yes, if the bus stop is empty and the weather is right it might still miss some of its effect. I just think it’s a nice idea. Not the greatest ever and not totally waterproof, but very nice.

Science Alberta 1

Science Alberta 2

Copy:
“Is invisibility possible?
Invent your future with a career in science.”

Agency: MacLaren McCann, Calgary, Canada
Creative Director: Mike Meadus
Art Directors: Brad Connell, Kelsey Horne
Copywriter: Andrew Payne
Via: AdsOfTheWorld