I’ve seen this ad floating around a few times and I’m still not sure how I feel about it. It’s like Tim Burton raided a barber shop and went to town, with a soundtrack vaguely reminiscent of Mighty Mighty Bosstones meets Save Ferris. Which is odd in and of itself, even sans dancing hair. And maybe this divulges a bit much about me, but every time I see the dancing hair creatures, I think of World Industries Flameboy.
Then again, it is refreshing to see an agency like Bleublancrouge do something that breaks from the traditional haircare ad genre with such force. And in the end, regardless of how creepy I think it might be at times, it’s still pretty fun, well-shot, and a nice thing to see for a haircare brand like L’Oreal.
Now I usually tend to veer away from politics, but I found this so interesting that I felt the need to share. Shepard Fairey, of Obey fame, has announced a very impressive poster campaign supporting Obama. Now I’m not necessarily an Obama supporter, nor am I a huge Obey fan, but the execution and the undertaking is impressive, regardless (hence my urge to share). Fairey released a limited edition of the Obama Posters earlier today, and the quickly sold out. I had actually contemplated attempting to pick one up, but as usual, had too many other things on my plate. In addition to the Obama poster, there’s also a “Vote” poster to push a slightly different message. All proceeds from the Obama poster are going to fund a “large statewide poster campaign.” Cool.
And regardless of your take on Obama or Obey, it’s still fascinating to see political support taking different (or re-invented) forms. And for more (including an interesting interview with Fairey, check out the article on Creativity-Online.
I’ve started to get tired of the same old virals that keep showing up, but there’s something about this one that’s just different enough to be cool - and to keep my eyes glued to the screen. The tone, the atmosphere, the music, and the overall feel of it is somehow vastly different from the majority of virals out there, and just comes off refreshingly cool, instead of contrived and forced. Very cool. Done by Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam for EA Sports to promote the release of FIFA Street 3, it certainly echoes other virals but there’s something I just can’t quite pinpoint that I love - and don’t get sick of.
Every now and then, I see a story in the paper or a clip on TV that reaffirms my college decision not to pursue news journalism as a career. Today was one of those days, thanks once again to Cory O’Brien at Didn’t You Hear who called attention to the following example of exceptional reporting with some astounding voice-over work.
There’s really no preface for this clip. And really nothing that can be said after the fact. other than wow.
Impeccable journalism once again from CNN. At least they stayed away from their problematic pressure-sensitive video screens and poor 3D graphics. It’s better that way. Weiner poopie doesn’t need fancy graphics.
Well, the Northwest finally received a heavy dose of freezing rain and snow these past few days, so it seems appropriate that I stumbled across this cool little device today.
As much as I love using my old ID cards as ice scrapers, this wallet-sized steel ice scraper definitely seems like a good idea. Also interesting is the option for customizability, with implied business card potential. While a cool handout, I’m not sure what kind of message a business card on a sharpened-steel ice scraper would send.
I remember back when people were all googly eyed over the Havaianaswall murals. Sure, they were fairly creative, a bit different, spoke to the brand identity already well-established in Brazil, communicated strong messages, blah blah blah etc., but I wasn’t really blown away by them.
I have to say, the newest Havaianas work I’ve seen from BBDO NY intrigues me and definitely brings a smile to my face. The planters pictured above are designed to promote the new Havaianas floral-print sandals, and are just beautiful. Floral sculpture and landscape arrangements have been used many times for advertising purposes, but there’s just something so clean and beautiful about this stuff. I think it might be the contrast between the organic and the inorganic that really changes the message behind Havaianas, which really brings a smile to my face.
Follow the jump for another cool (but very different) Havaianas campaign.
I’ve been meaning to mention this here for a little while now. I wanted to say thank you to all my regular readers for your support, comments, & suggestions, and let everyone know that in addition to my mindless ramblings and youtube clip-sharing here on Questioning Reality, I am also spilling my brain juices out over at Beyond Madison Avenue. Some cool stuff getting posted and some very interesting questions being posed. It’s definitely worth a regular read.
And secondly, I mentioned it over at Beyond Madison Avenue as well, but find it so intoxicatingly bizarre, I felt the burning desire to post it here as well, just to make sure everyone sees it (plus I know there are a good bunch of regular readers who are Apple fans). It’s a trailer for a new documentary in the works, entitled MacHeads. It pretty much speaks for itself. And scares me a little bit.
After driving a Cinquecento years ago, I fell in love, and have been eagerly following the release of the new Fiat 500, the newest revival of the classic under the Fiat badge. After winning countless awards, including European Car of the Year, the launch of the Fiat 500 has been highly anticipated across Europe (and much hope and anticipation here in the US). Well, Fiat didn’t fail to come through with something huge. They threw a huge launch party with 500 celebrities and roughly 1500 guests that officially launched at 8pm GMT, exactly 500 hours after the start of the new year. To top it all off, they tossed a Fiat 500 into one of the pods on the London Eye, where it will rotate for the next two weeks. Impressive placement that really highlights one of the largest (or smallest) aspects of the car. Very cool. Very different. Now we just need to get Fiat back to the US.
People at MIT and NUY have come together with a visualization that I never would have imagined. They’ve created a visualization of all the nouns in the English language arranged by semantic meaning, with a total of 7,527,697 images being used to create the final product. Each tile is an arithmetic amalgamation of roughly 140 images, coming together to create on tile, sometimes resembling an image, and sometimes resembling a blob. Then each tile is arranged based on the semantic hierarchy of words provided by WordNet to create a mosaic that I can barely wrap my mind around. Check it out here to explore and get the rest of the details.
I know some people are sick of the Mac vs. PC ads (and I’m not just talking about those who hated them from the beginning). I’m still on the fence as to whether they should be cut or continue on. Regardless, their continued bantering is somehow completely transformed when it takes place on internet instead of on-screen. There have been several iterations of the Mac vs. PC banner ads taking over the bulk of the homepage on the New York Times website in the past, but the one up today is a bit different. Not only do the two banner animations reference each other, but they actually interact as PC crosses from one field to the other. I know it’s simple, and I know it’s been done before, but somehow, it just seems to work in this context.
Check to see if it’s still up at nytimes.com for the full effect.
