Adgrunt Publigeekaire has found another ad campaign that uses 9/11 as a visual, which he added to the comments to the "Twin towers 911 in advertising. Not new, so why the backlash this time?" post. I figured this should be on the front page since everyone is talking about it, the campaign is for Courrier International, and carries the tagline "learn to anticipate", it's created by Saatchi&Saatchi France. Adfreak calls it the latest to offend with 9/11.

The tone of voice is all over the map. I'm sure the creators at Saatchi France though each scenario funny, as the towers "duck" for incoming planes (ha ha), JFK drives a popemobile (wait, that's not funny), and the astronauts on the moon find that there's already a Russian flag up there. That last one is funny. Spot the difference between the three scenarios? The two unfunny ones had death as their consequence. Keep that in mind, creatives, when you try and joke about historical events.

Note: Courrier is a magazine, not a newspaper. Newsmag.

As has been demonstrated in the past, winning this award can be the first significant milestone in the career of many a creative.
The perfect example is Menno Kluin, who – like this year’s winner – was also a student of Miami Ad School Hamburg at the time, and has since gone on to carve out a career for himself at Saatchi & Saatchi and Y&R New York. Today, he is to be numbered among the ad industry’s top creatives.
This year’s jury – Keeichi Uemura, art director with Saatchi & Saatchi Fallon Tokyo, Japan, Icaro Doria, art director at Goodby, Silverstein San Francisco, and our very own editor in chief, Michael Weinzettl – joined by 7,456 votings to help decide the outcome of the contest.

The Christian Democrats in Sweden have begin their election campaign and allow people to download their ads on their site with the caveat: "Please note that the posters shan't be worked up, changed or manipulated". Right, like anyone is going to listen to that. Predictably people have had lots of fun with these posters and twitpic has carried hundreds of variations between giggling social-media heads for days already.

The original posters seem to confuse most people, the leader of the KD-party is staring down wild animals, a gorilla, a hyena, an ostrich and an African buffalo, while the tagline asks for "a more humane Sweden".

"There's a bit of humor in it, and we use metaphors in this campaign" says Henrik Ehrenberg who worked on the campaign to SvD.

NPR had a piece on Sid Lerner, a former Mad Ave ad man, now using his mad ad skills to promote Meatless Monday. The ex-exec was somehow involved in the classic Squeeze the Charmin ads, but my exhaustive research (read: skimming a page or two of Google results) turned up no specifics.

For me, the most interesting thing was that this "classic" ad guy isn't going the traditional route, producing an ad campaign — instead, he's partnering with institutions, collaborating with restaurants and chefs, working the Earth-friendly angle. Taking more grassroots approach to vegetarianism.

OK, now take a moment to feel for the meat industry's PR flack there.

Unnecessary editorial: for a few years there, the missus Squirrel and I were basically weekday vegetarians; sure, we're no longer quite so strict, but not depending anywhere near as much on meat. It's far less traumatic than it's made out to be.

Vacations are over! Both Resumé ("Swedish adman behind Diesels film") and Dagens Media ("a Swede behind Diesel's campaign") have now caught up on the news that Swedish Director Tomas Mankovsky created the ass-kicking fire extinguisher vs flamethrower hillbilly duel for Dancing Pigeons and Diesel:U:Music. The one we posted july 28 - because Dabitch never takes vacation, that's us always on... ;)

The video has been quite the viral success for Dancing Pigeons, it's been spotted on Metafilter, Geekologie, Neatorama, Engadget, Petapixel, Trendsnow and many many more. It's been called "The rock paper scissors for men", and has brought the wanted attention to Phantom cameras, Dancing Pigeons, and of course Diesel.

Rock on, you crazy hillbillies.

So, you want to work in advertising? You want to bend the ear of Jimmy, Andreas, Andrew, Khai and Ty? The Big Ad Gig is your chance - send your portfolio, your resume and complete one of the clips they have on the site to get their attention. To get work from them, you have to make them work for you - their clips are short and sweet, but you can create award winning creative stuff with that, right? Even the wee rubber ducky that jimmy has? Yeah, the rubber ducky is an easy punchline. Leave the rubber ducky alone.

The prize? Paid 30 days of placement at top shops (there's five gigs going!), industry accolades, and the contents of a mystery pink box. iPad? Hitachi Rabbit? Gold bar? Bag of Anthrax? Who knows.

As if that's not enough - at 10 AM on September 30th in the New York Times building, each finalist will be given 4 minutes to present their solution to the Ad Council assignment in front of our panel of judges and a live audience. Scary? You betcha, it'll be like american idol, mate. Hopefully, with less singing.

So get cranking, because by 11:59 PM on August 23rd (that's in eighteen days guys), you'll need to submit the work to qualify for the initial round of the competition.

Despite the smoky skies in Moscow, some kids are having fun dashing around on a cross between a QR classic scavenger hunt and a Russian night race. (That's drag-racing to you guys).

So while the QR codes give clues as where to find the next one, and the fastest one to get to the end destination wins, it's really just a fun promotion for as a promotion of MTS's data plan.

There's a new game every week, and redcode.mts.ru is where you solve the puzzle to claim your prize. The campaign continues until September.

The game and website was created by grape.ru

Here's a brilliant idea from Corvette. Knowing full well what draws people to their car - hint, it's the roar - they offer buyers the opportunity to build their own roar. That's right, shell out money for a ZR1 or Z06, and you can go to the factory and help build the 638 horsepower 6.2L super-charged LS9 engine for your own car. Wait, it gets better - Corvette will even charge you an extra $5800 for it.

Brilliant.

Ugh, the advertising laden cityscape of Bladerunner will soon be found in sunny Miami as they approve skyscraper sized billboards. Of course words & pictures have the perfect comeback.
Like Luke wrote in Hey Whipple - size doesn't matter.

Where is it written that large logos increase sales? When introducing yourself, do you say your name in a booming voice? "Hi, my name is Bob Johnson!" Do the large bottles of Coke with bigger logos sell faster than the cans? Are your business cards the size of welcome mats? If cattlemen heated immense brands and seared the entire sides of cows, would fewer be rustled?

Seems that the fruit by the foot "I replaced your..." campaign has set the surreal standard for candy these days. Skittles have reigned supreme in the US with ads like tree and Midas. In the UK, the oddest we got was Gorilla and eyebrow dance.

It's only natural that a well-established oddness thing in the candy-category should birth a new generation of animated advertising icons to go with it. Meet Maynard the Moose. He hypnotizes people into chewing wine gums. Okaaay..... Sing along now; chew, chew, chew - as you do with a giant wine-gum stuck between your teeth. For a up close and personal hypno-experience, head over to http://www.maynardsayschew.com/

Last week when I first saw the V energy ad I got dizzy and fell of my chair. Now Stop Press has a bit on the ladder crazy ex-Cirque de Soleil stuntmen who actually do this stuff. A lot of the web chatter about the new sport depicted in the ad centers on wether its real or not, even the wikipedia page on "pomparkour" is recommended for speedy deletion and the talk pages say: "please don't add Hoaxes to the wikipedia". I was fully expecting reportings on Kiwi-kids trying this at home and decapitating themselves by now, as the ad doesn't warn "don't try this at home".
Colenso are fully aware that they usually are skirting make-believe territory with V, but insist that this sport is not a hoax. Colenso’s past work for V has, as group account director Angela Watson says, “blurred the lines between the real world and the fake world”.

Watson says the agency heard about a few local guys who have worked with Cirque de Soleil in the past and, most recently, were employed as stuntmen on the Power Rangers show that was being filmed in Auckland and were pursuing a rather strange and seemingly fairly dangerous leisure activity that’s been labelled ‘Pomparkour’, which is basically a combination of using hooked ladders to climb buildings (the French art of Pompier) and urban exploration (the French art of Parkour), with a few special tricks thrown in there.

To go with the Pomparkour video, which has gone world-wide viral quite fast, there's a " fully-kitted out with Facetweetubebo capacity" community site at V Republic / Isokinetic ladders. Coming soon, adshels and print.

The Old Spice campaign smells like success - I knew that, which is why I want to marry it - as brandweek reports their numbers are going up.

According to Nielsen, sales of Old Spice Body Wash—the line touted in the Wieden + Kennedy-created campaign—rose 11 percent over the past 12 months and since the effort broke in February, sales seem to be gaining momentum.
Over the past three months, sales jumped 55 percent and in the past month, they rose 107 percent, also per Nielsen.

Not bad! The Old spice campaign stinks no more.

“Since the ‘Smell Like A Man, Man’ campaign broke in February, Old Spice has month-over-month strengthened its market position,” said Norton in an e-mail. He added that Old Spice is now the No. 1 brand of body wash and anti-perspirant/deodorant in both sales and volume with growth in the high single/double digits.

Recently Studio Total have been in the news for the donation of 100,000 SEK to the Feminist Party which the party leader promptly burned up on a BBQ. There was a bit of a backlash to the stunt, with prominent PR people, journalists, politicians and man/woman on the street declaring it wasteful, and that the money should have been used to help women instead. Tomas Mazetti from studio total responded in an open letter suggesting that the whiners use their money to help women, while he saves up for a giraffe. Zing!
Dagens Media wrote that the PR-worth earned by the money-BBQ was worth 5,3 million SEK in media attention gained. The number comes from research done by Mediapilot, and forgets to sort out "negative publicity" from "reach", but whatever - it was talked about, on that we all agree.

Now Studio Total are in the news again, for a different reason. Remember the Arvika Festival masturbation ad they made? The one that was banned by the advertising ombudsman and never allowed to air? The one where the Arvika- festival arrangers kept insisting that they would do an ad featuring a masturbating man as well, for equalities sake (but that never happened).

As it turns out the Arvika festival hasn't paid in full for the ad campaign yet. The Arvika festival lost money this year, and have frozen their assets. "We're still waiting for 1/4 of the payment" says Studio Totals creative director Tomas Mazetti.

Ouch. Perhaps you shouldn't have burned your money, then. But that lead me to re-read some of the press around the Arvika-festival ad, and in particular what the model, Caroline Magnerholt, got paid for her masturbation. In Dagens Media Jonas Linné from the Arvika festival says:

"Caroline Magnerholt received some compensation but she did it for the festival, rather than for money."

Hey, I think I know where we can begin in solving this gender-gap salary-issue that is so close to your hearts, Studio Total.... You could start by paying the women you work with. Just a thought.

Marketplace points to the news that Old Spice sales have dropped 7% since, well, it's not clear when. But it apparently covers the time that our favorite man has been urging men to smell like men.

Both articles link to thoughts about this, including questions about who, exactly, is being targeted. I'm with a few of the commenters — it's too soon to see what the results are. Yes, I'm sure that Old Spice will never be as popular among the public as the ads are among the adoblogosphere, but here's hoping the campaign gets a chance to prove itself. The concept's adaptable, so it can evolve while keeping the same spirt.

I remember once being told that, "by the time you're sick of a campaign, everyone else is just starting to notice it." And then, I figure, it takes even longer for them to act on it.

When female stars in films try to get over a breakup or suddenly harness superpowers, they'll drastically change their hair. When brands go abroad, they'll change their market position.

So too does Pabst Blue Ribbon, or PBR as those hipster kids call it. Coveted by the ironic crowd for being the cheapest beer available, it has gained cult status in the states. In China however, it's marketed with the line "Heritage classic breakthrough" as seen on a banner on their site, and Danwei says that the bottle will sell for 300 RMB - that's a whopping 44 US dollars, guys.

"China's beer market has an annual sales volume of 40 million tons. So why is the price of beer always around 5 or 10 yuan?"
...
Ni Chunlin said that the release of Blue Ribbon 1844 is aimed at changing consumers' ideas about beer. "The high-end market is occupied by baijiu and wine. Chinese people can afford to drink baijiu that costs tens of thousands, and I believe that a 300-yuan beer won't be a problem either."

Adage writes about the Huggies jean-diaper effort in "Are Those Designer Diapers You're Wearing?" - and note : But for all that, what may really be driving the category is fashion.

You discovered this now? The Huggies print and commercial were released in May, the jean diapers are a summer item only and available June-July at Amazon and participating stores - but Libero has with Forsman and Bodenfors help been doing toddler summer fashions in Sweden since 2007 when unstable toddlers walked down a runway wearing the bling-bling diapers.

Since then they've had fashion diaper photo shoots in the desert (2008), hired designers to make Tiger-Diapers (2009) .....and of course, this year the fashion collection was all about football. What else?

Fashionable summer diapers are here to stay, and what's funnier - the "low jeans and high riding diaper" visual fashion pun has been badlanded by Joelapompe as well. At least 4 different brands have done this around the world, three are available on Joelapompes site. With the one on the far right from Mol Concepts, the image is not an ad but a way to show the design concept of having the diaper-name-brand line the upper part of the diaper just like those Calvin-Klein underwear are designed.

I find it rather amusing that while the Swedish Libero changes the designs each season, from hip-hop to Tigers to football, the US version went straight to making blue-jean diapers. The American fashion icon, indeed. Next year: white trainers to dark pants!

It's July and the seasonal Facebook hate is on full-force. Mediapost says that Facebook is becoming irrelevant, a boring chore. Even Computerworld chimes in with the five stages of Facebook grief, though none of the stages mention are grief related, the author is confused.

The real problem with facebook (if we forget about the whole privacy issue and the inane navigation) is that while you might belong in several social groups, not all of the people in each group belongs with all of yours. When social worlds collide, funny things happen.

The best facebook fail example of this phenomena we've seen today is the 2 girls one cup story at Make the Logo Bigger.

The background: Initially, mom found out about the whole Dr Pepper promotion the hard way. She discovered her 14-year old daughter’s status update was changed to something a little more than the usual teen chatter. (See the screen grab below of someone who had the same status update. Peckish is British slang for ‘hungry.’) As the rules of the contest state, signing up gives Dr Pepper permission to list one of the three possible levels of embarrassment for your chosen status.

Bill has a Q&A with the mom who first began the backlash in his post, go read it.

RKCR/Y&R has launched a series of idents for LG Electronics on Channel 4 and E4 to showcase to 16-24 year olds how LG’s innovative range of smartphones can enhance their lives, by constantly connecting them. They' created a backstory for the idents as well, the campaign is "salvaged footage" from a failed LG Californian Soap Opera, called "The Young and the Connected."

This press release has been making leaked out:

“In the spring of 2010 filming began on a brand new US network day-time soap opera: The Young and the Connected.
Partner-funded by LG Electronics, renowned for its market leading smart phones, ‘The Young and the Connected’ was trailed as being the first ever US day-time series to be based on the realities of how young people really live their lives today.
Storylines were to focus on the real source of drama behind the way young people lead their lives in our modern connected world: mobile social networking.
The series had all of the ingredients needed to be a ratings winner - beautiful people, drama, revenge and skimpy swimwear.
However, two days after filming began, without any reason being given, the network pulled the plug on the production, leaving only a fraction of the series footage in the can.
Following speedy media negotiations and considerable re-editing the footage then became the backbone of LG’s existing sponsorship deal with Channel 4 in the UK.”

It's now 3 days, 00 hours and 28 minutes until Humongo Nation goes on tour again. They will 4square, tweet, photograph, film, blog and even food blog their way around the USA as they stop to meet brands they admire, suprise visit creative people, marketing wizards, ad agencies and generally do my dream vacation in a faboo Ford. I'm so jealous, honestly, I think I'll have to get hired by Humongo one of these days, the closest I get to that now is helping tend to brandflakesforbreakfast* while the Humongo crew are busy sharing every step of their creative road trip with us all. Don't forget to tune in! If you want them to visit you, give RJ or Darryl a shout, details under link.

Humongo Nation pre-tour video 2010 from Humongo Nation on Vimeo.

* Yes, DarrylOhrt has done the same for Adland back in Feb this year, bless.

Max Wittrock has shot and edited a German/Austrian commercial only using his trusty new iPhone 4.

"the idea behind this little project was to use the iPhone's great capabilities to full effect and to create an actual TV-commercial - to be aired on Television for a large audience."

He also notes that there could not be any color corrections, and in the "making of" they added the photos at the end of the clip via iMovie. As for the rest of it, yep, all iPhone. Even the skydiver films himself holding one as he jumps. Good thing he didn't drop it! The cmmercial aired on German TV last Friday, and was aired on Red BULL TV (Austria) on Saturday.

mymuesli2go, a tv commercial - filmed and edited on an iPhone 4 from Max Wittrock on Vimeo.