1989 British Airways Commercial - "Face": (also in the commercial archive British Airways - Bringing people together / Face - (1989) :90 (UK)) As far as I remember this was the first ever TVC with +1 miliion dollars budget. One of Maurice & Charles Saatchi masterpieces , before leaving Saatchi & Saatchi.

Today we have this by FIAT .....:

???

When you are about to have a party, you might want to let the neighbors know with a few well placed notes. When you are a brand or night-club desperate to get attention, you might hire an agency to create these hand written "sorry we're having a party" notes.

That's how we ended up with the battle of the apology flyers. Martin Schori at Dagens Media just spotted the flyer on the left the other day - it's an apology from the nightclub Ambassadeur which announces that the Ibiza famous DJ Roger Sanchez will be playing there, and to soothe any hard feelings with the neighbors there's even some earplugs attached to the note. As soon as I saw that I recalled the K-rauta "yard party" flyers from this summer. Aside from using flyers as the medium, the "we're sorry, we will be having a party" message is the same exact idea as well. Back to the drawing board kids, and while you are there thinking, contemplate what ad creep is and how annoying it can get as commercial messages gobble up the free space previously used for people rather than corporations.

vs

What does Coldplay and Juicy Fruit and Doublemint have in common? A serious case of Apple art direction envy? Have a look for yourself.

This is an ad, recently awarded at a festival for new creative ideas. But I thnk I have seen it somewhere before. Can you help me and remind me where ?

Last year I worked at a place where the "creative" was limited to "Model on the left, product to the right" and every single sketch ever made had to be done in photoshop so that the myriad of people who had something to say about the layout in its infancy, could waste everyones time complaining about "the models ears being too square" because all I found was a photograph of a great face with big hair, and my lassoing away of the hair left her ears looking silly. (Yes, I had to go draw fake ears on the model for the next meeting, Seriously.)

Using pre existing photography for presentations not only locks you into working only with what already exists (and that you can find) instead of using that creative brain they hired you for - but also puts you straight into the path of copying work which is called derivative work and can get the company into serious trouble. Y'all do remember that little thing called "copyright", right?

At that job, I did what any sane AD would do, I went back to pen and paper and drew everything I had planned to be in the final layout. That's when some people turn to already perfect photography to present to their clients in meetings instead. And that is when shit like this happens, where Jamie Nelson's bright yellow photo is copied to a T for Dexim.

The Dexim ad copy was spotted at clayton cubitts tumblr account. The Dexim ad is credited to BBDO Athens.

Storåkers in Stockhom were so impressed by Improv Everywhere's fantastic Frozen Grand Central that they repeated the event, except as an ad for Telia's 'new' offering of the ability pause live TV which is like, so futuristic over here in the backwaters of Europe.

Lets have a look shall we? Improv everywhere:

Telia at Stureplan, Stockholm:

The left boot is from H&M, and the skull pattern on it is created by Helena Lindholm och Nini Andersson and has been used on various items during 2006 & 2007. The boot on the right is from Wedins and showed up in their shops this April. H&M thinks that Wedins pattern is a direct copy of their own and sent warning letters to Wedins already back in April. Since they got no response on that, they went ahead and filed suit the 28th of July demanding among other things that all of the boots shall be destroyed.
Wedins response?: "It is not a copy. I think it's a bit stomach turning that H&M are filing suit when they are world famous for plagiarizing." said Mats Björkenfeldt, Wedins lawyer, to Resume.

Above is an ad for Racco Anti-Ageing Cream, created by ByVivas Curitiba, Brazil, and published in Feb 2008.

Then there's the more recent Oil of Olay anti-ageing published in August 2008....

Beware of your simple visual solution as it's invariable too good. ;)

Maaan, just as I thought the Vietnam Saatchi team had done an OK job with their limited stock options for Western Union, I find that Leo Burnett, Colombia, already did it for Davivienda Bank Money Transfer. Last year. Oh poo.

Well, it's still a pretty thrifty solution.

I don't know what brought on the sudden popularity of The Shining - perhaps all work and no play makes ad-Jack a dull boy?

Verizon - Dead Zones / Creepy kids :30 (USA) vs Queen Silvia's children's hospital :60 (Sweden)

You remember the Adidas "vertical football" poster from from TBWA Japan in 2004, right? See BBC news - Japan turns football on its head. It won two Gold Lions at Cannes and picked up a Grand Clio back then and was written up pretty much everywhere. It was an ad that wowed people not just in the street below but pretty much all over the world - the vertical football later became vertical soccer when they played it on a poster in Times Square New York. Yeah, you remember it, I knew you would. To think that Carlsberg in Poland doesn't, as they just did the exact same thing. The balls of these guys aye? (Movies inside folks!)

Miljöpartiet de gröna in Sweden ran a full page ad in Dagens Nyheter (morning newspaper) today highlighting the fact that money with females on it, is worth less than money with males on it - and with this they want to draw attention to the fact that women still make less money than men.

- "The salary level is a symptom on how women are valued and what position they are in at work and in soceity at large. The systematic salary discrimination of women is an explanation to that the structural inequality exists." says Esabelle Dingizian (Miljöpartiet).
"It is unacceptable with gender-based irrelevant salary differences. With our ad the topic can get more exposure."

Large ad inside folks, click on.

New York Times blog finds that Coast Magazine is doing ye old 'sincerest form of flattery' thing regarding their own Spring 2007 cover of T (left). Coast Magazine (right) July 2007 is more tanned and less juicy tomato. Looks like it's missing the bacon too. How dull.

I'm getting sick of these fake stunts posted to youtube that are secret little ads, aren't you? People hopping into jeans, climbing to catch baseballs, and now making impossible dunks for Nike. Perhaps it's because all I can hear in my head when I see it is Larry Bird & Michael Jordan saying "Nothing but net"* and then I get a wild craving for a Big Mac - even though I know that special sauce ain't nothing but thousand island dressing. Must dash and gorge on fatty burger now folks.
(*from McDonald's - Larry Bird / Michael Jordan - The Showdown (1993) - 0:60 (USA))

By now, you've heard:

Google must divulge the viewing habits of every user who has ever watched any video on YouTube, a US court has ruled.

(BBC)

Viacom wants the data to prove that infringing material is more popular than user-created videos, which could be used to increase Google's liability if it is found guilty of contributory infringement.

(Wired)

I wonder how long it will take before some ad agencies ask Google turn over the IP#'s to try and prove that other ad agencies 'stole' their drumming Gorilla ad ideas in order to get even the tiniest whiff of a Grand Prix Lion. ;)

It's not quite the aftermath of Cannes Lions without a lot of "Hey, I saw that in [mention obscure source and year]". So here's the required "Cannes prix is a copy" - TBWA Singapore did a campaign for Nickelodeon back in 2005 with the line "Keep them entertained. Or else." That idea sounds familiar, doesn't it?

Posse from TBWA:
Creative Directors: Marcus Rebeschini, Robert Kleman

Did I get your attention? Good. Lets get ready to gossip!

The silver Lion winning has turned out to be yet another scam ad in the prestigious Cannes award. The same award show that way back in 2001 was saying that scam ads shall not win and that they'd take extra precautions to prevent that (we all know this didn't happen). The suspect is again Ogilvy, Mumbai - and at the risk of never getting another ad from them nor all of India submitted to the commercial archive again - they were doing this as far back as 2001 when four Cannes winners were reported as scam ads. (Yes this here adblog is tres old people.)

The awesome "Tension" film with it's extra tense banging storytelling is a fake ad - says not one, but three little Indian birdies to me. "Fake" by way of never actually airing, that is. I hear gossip like this all the time, but without meat to link to it sadly gets rather weak, since it's all hearsay.

Have no fear, Dabitch is here!

Seems there's an interesting trend in making people super heroes these days. You're a hero for turning off the water, or turning off the power. You're a local hero if you volunteer to help others like in this incredibly cheap (50 quid!) Scottish campaign. You are a hero if you water your lawn at the right times, say the WWF via Ogilvy in South africa (they also did the stickers campaign linked earlier).

And now, via BBDO for United Way of Chicago, you are a hero for volunteering your time again.

The super hero thing is kinda getting too much play these days innit? If you get one of those ideas, consider another route. You're never going to be able to do it cheaper than that Scottish campaign anyway, so don't even try. ;)

Remember the Luxor Highlighters campaign from Leo Burnett Mumbai? Yes, it even won a nice shiny Gold Lion at the Cannes awards in press. Well, there's another campaign out there depicting dictators on newsprint, albeit doing the opposite, blacking out instead of highlighting. I just found the visual similarity amusing.

I'm catching up on my Badlanders. Here's a triple-lazer swords poster collection.