I keep seeing these spots on TV and I just can’t quite bring myself to like ‘em or hate ‘em. I was adamantly against the first new round of Old Spice spots because of their bizarreness and lack of any real message, but this newest series from W+K I’m actually warming up to.
Something about the way Urlacher rips off the cap and tosses it against the wall just makes me laugh. Definitely some interesting spots, even though I’m still not an Old Spice fan.
And the other spot with LL Cool J after the jump, just for kicks.
One of the coolest ideas I’ve seen in a while. And definitely the best use of the power of the internet, truly implementing the “world-wideness” of the web. Jay Hilgert of BittBox decided last week to attempt a collaborative font project. Open to anyone who felt like submitting a hand-drawn character, he’s going to create a typeface comprised of all the submitted characters. From the site:
This is a project I’ve started here at BittBox as a community effort to create a free font so that everyone who’s willing can have a hand in the creation process. It will be a 100% free typeface, and anyone who wants to help can design a character/letter of their choosing. Let’s make history !!!!!
Pretty brilliant idea, as far as I’m concerned. And the results thus far are pretty cool. Check out all of it at the Bittbox Conglomerfont page. There may even be a few characters left so you can add your touch.
I stumbled across this one via the always interesting eternallycool.net, “keep you up on everything that makes Rome eternally cool.” It’s as self explanatory as it is slightly odd. But beautiful none the less.
I’ve seen this story on the news several times in the last 24 hours, which may ultimately provide Honda and RPA with more marketing buzz than the road itself. RPA has done some amazing work for Honda over the years, and this one was no different. They basically had a stretch of road re-paved just outside of Lancaster, CA and grooved with specific groove patterns designed to produce certain tones and pitches to recreate the well-known William Tell Overture (a.k.a. The Lone Ranger theme). The key – it was all tuned perfectly for a Honda Civic. “Honda is an advanced engineering company, and we thought it would be fun to connect that to the Civic marketing campaign,” said Gary Paticoff, RPA’s senior vice president and executive producer. Makes sense to me. And I like the use of “fun.”
The noise became too much for some, with neighbors being kept up at night by the noise, resulting in complaints to Lancaster. As of last night, the entire stretch of musical road has been repaved, silencing the overture.
The “Civic Musical Road,” as signs state, is slated to be used in an upcoming RPA Honda Civic ad. I hope the ad ends up as impressive as the road itself.
I was checkin’ street view at Google Maps for something today, and was pleasantly surprised to see the usual street view yellow peg guy with a party hat and balloons. It seems to be one of the first hints at Google’s 10th birthday celebration this week. Techcrunch has an interesting article detailing the “official” birthday of Google – or rather, a lack of one. It’s kind of odd that there’s no mention anywhere from Google of the street view guy in party attire. Google is usually pretty quick to mention what it’s up to, even if it’s a mini easter egg.
A lot of my photographic work has dealt with shadows, so I’m a bit biased, but this piece, entitled “seeder” by Lithuanian artist Morfai is just incredible.
So the Seinfeld/Gates dynamic duo teasers for the new windows campaign [which i mentioned here] have disappeared, and left us with this:
It definitely starts to get at the mac vs. pc spots. And it even has a few humorous moments. On the whole, I like it – at least a good deal more than the teaser spots. But at the same time, I have to wonder what it does for windows (i.e. pc users). It seems like Microsoft is trying to play catch up to Apple, and this spot doesn’t really promote Microsoft or Windows, nor does it really highlight any features. It basically says “pc users are the same as Mac users.” Is that a strategy? I hope there’s more to come (and it gets better).
I know the chicken idea isn’t new, and it’s probably been done before. Possibly even the same idea. The copy (” The 280-hp Nissan Altima SE-R. Make way.”) doesn’t really capture me. but the combination of the art direction and the simplistic idea, executed by TBWA\chit\day Los Angeles, really grabs me. That, and it’s not a product shot of the car. There’s plenty of those floating around. It’s nice to see relatively mainstreams like TBWA and Nissan take a bit of a different path – even if just for a moment.
!!!!!
