Author: AdweekMedia

If Steve Nash weren’t such a great basketball player, he might have been the Buster Keaton of his generation. Nash struts his deadpan stuff in this latest work for Vitaminwater, a takeoff of Dos Equis’ "Most interesting man in the world" campaign, which itself was a parody of sorts. Nash, the "most ridiculous man in the world," is shown getting fitted for a Canadian tuxedo, which is made of denim. Then, as he’s wheeling through a hotel corridor on a kid’s tricycle, a narrator explains that Nash can speak 22 languages "at a first-grade level." It gets sillier. Nash cavorts in an ’80s aerobics outfit, an Elvis costume and, of course, a clown suit. "I don’t always drink water," Nash says echoing the Dos Equis man’s line, "but when I do, I drink Vitaminwater XXX." (The name is another play off Dos Equis, which is Spanish for "two X’s.") Perhaps a YouTube commenter summed it up best in one word: "Idiot."



—Posted by Todd Wasserman

My cats have been IM-ing me for sometime now (more kibble, please!), so I’m not that impressed with Mattel’s plan to launch a new high-tech toy called Puppy Tweets. Dogs … always late to the party. Anyway, this sound-and-motion-activated gadget attaches to collars and links to home computers so dogs can issue updates to their very own Twitter pages. The tweets are canned, of course, but with 500 to pick from, it’ll take a little while to cycle through them, especially since most pets sleep about 80 percent of the time. Sample tweets: "I bark because I miss you. There, I said it. Now hurry home." "Guess what I’m licking right now?" (Go ahead, guess.) There are a couple of good pop-culture precedents here. The obvious one is Dug, the squirrel-loving dog from Disney/Pixar’s Oscar-nominated Up. The other is the classic Simpsons episode where Homer’s half-brother invents a baby translator that puts words to infants’ gurgles and cries. One of Maggie’s best lines: "I’ve soiled myself. How embarrassing." Puppy Tweets, one of a zillion new products at this week’s Toy Fair in New York, will show up at retailers in the fall for $29.99. Expect a Facebook war with the Zhu Zhu Pets.

—Posted by T.L. Stanley

This Valentine’s Day, get thee to Target, which beginning on Sunday will be exclusively selling a line of five limited-edition General Mills cereals with retro packaging from the ’60s and ’80s. The cereals are Lucky Charms, Cheerios, Honey Nut Cheerios, Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Trix. This is the third year of the promotion. The goal is to tap into consumers’ desire for nostalgia, which is big nowadays, and particularly so in a tough economy. Check out the packaging for the other four cereals after the jump, with the old boxes on the left and the new ones on the right. You’ll notice some interesting differences. On the Lucky Charms box (above), the leprechaun wears a scarf, has rosy cheeks and sits atop a toadstool. (The new box is fungus free.) On the Honey Nut Cheerios box, the bee pours a pot of honey, not a honey wand, over the cereal. (Gotta cut back on the sugar.) And the old Cinnamon Toast Crunch packaging has notebook-paper lines rather than the current swirls. All five retro cereals also contains offers for vintage games and prizes we grew up with in our childhood. How’s that for a trip down memory lane?

—Posted by Elaine Wong

What is it about scary clowns? We’ve seen them pop up in Philips’s famous "Carousel" ad, a recent Walmart  spot and now in this five-minute film for Pentax. To be fair, the Pentax film, "Uncle Jack," has a lot more going on than just the clown. There’s the title character, a fugitive who manages to tell a thinly veiled version of his own story to his apple-cheeked niece over a Bluetooth headset as he’s on the run. And let’s not forget the photography. Like "The Rider," another recent Pentax short film, this was shot with a Pentax K-7 and, like the Philips spot, was designed to show off the visual crispness and of course, the colors. But next time, how about a peacock or something instead?

—Posted by Todd Wasserman

They’re better looking, more fashionably dressed and infinitely cooler than me and you. And their jobs? Well, how does writer/surfer/entrepreneur, music industry photographer/guitarist and music-video director grab you? (Maybe they hang out with Barbie?) These folks are the real-life but not-at-all-ordinary stars of a new Cole Haan ad campaign, dubbed "The Inspired Life." In other words, if you don’t have one, don’t count on being lovingly photographed by Todd Selby in your natural cosmopolitan habitat. Maria Sharapova is still the face of this brand, but now she’s joined by the likes of a gallery curator named Nicola Vassell (shown here), who’s as glam as any million-dollar tennis pro/model. Swingy coat? Check. Legs for days? Yes. Sky-high stilettos that won’t get caught in craggy Manhattan streets? If you say so. How real is real, anyway, and how can such runway-ready creatures walk among us? The ads will show up in March issues of top men’s and women’s fashion pubs, online, out of home, in direct mail and in-store. Just look for the tastemakers. You’ll know them because they’re different from the rest of us.

—Posted by T.L. Stanley

I’d long since stopped playing with Barbie by the time she uttered the infamous phrase "Math class is tough!" in the early ’90s. I agreed with her, though, and realized that with that attitude, neither of us would ever be a scientist. Barbie did go on to have illustrious, short-term careers as an astronaut, a dentist, a paratrooper and, on the other end of the spectrum, a secretary, a "stewardess," a pop singer and a pet stylist, among scores of others. It’s time now to pick her 125th job, and Mattel has turned to the public to decide if she’ll be an architect, computer engineer, environmentalist, news anchor or surgeon. She’s highly marketable, I know, but those are heavy-hitting professions in this economy. (And the blonde bombshell won’t even have to pound the pavement or earn any degrees to land the gig.) The program, which coincides with next week’s annual Toy Fair in New York, will be promoted with bus and subway ads, billboards at the Jacob Javits convention site, wild postings and de rigeur Twitter and Facebook campaigns. I’m voting to make her an environmentalist, since that’s vague enough to be benign and probably doesn’t call for the mastery of fractions. Say, Barbie’s just given me an idea …

—Posted by T.L. Stanley

These three spots for Hormel Foods from BBDO Minneapolis had us falling off our chair. In the first ad, a man explains to his curious neighbor why his house and yard are overgrown with weeds, a goat is eating grass off the roof and his wife is standing naked behind some gardening equipment. (With Hormel, you don’t have to "go all out to go all natural.") In the second spot, a father decides it’s a brilliant idea to have remote-control toys serve his family dinner. (It’s not such a great idea after all.) And in the third ad, a time-starved office worker races down street to buy lunch, only to slam into and roll over a car on way back. (His female colleague much more calmly microwaves some Hormel Compleats.) The campaign is part of the client’s "Life better served" effort, which aims to get consumers thinking of the company’s entire Hormel-branded portfolio.

—Posted by Elaine Wong

Procter & Gamble’s Pampers has taken on a difficult challenge: How do you market diapers to men? The answer: Get a football player to star in your ad. In this case, it’s Drew Brees, quarterback for the Super Bowl champion New Orleans Saints. Here, Brees is presented in a two-minute video from StrawberryFrog as an expert with all kinds of equipment, even the kind that babies poop into. To show how tough Pampers Swaddlers and Cruisers with Dry Max are, Brees hurls a football at one of the diapers and then throws one at the other leading brand, Huggies Little Movers. Brees’ shot, from 30 yards away, is impressive, but doesn’t prove much, so another test is introduced with a blue liquid (for maximum visibility, an announcer explains), which the Pampers diaper absorbs more thoroughly than the competition. Getting Brees for the ad was quite a coup, though one fan wonders why Brees chose Pampers of all brands. "You are Drew Freaking Brees, you can do better than that," rails a blogger called Backseat Fan. But YouTube commenters see the endorsement solidifying Brees’ aw-shucks appeal: "Did you see him holding his son with the giant headphones on right after they won? Adorable!"

—Posted by Todd Wasserman

When it comes to comfort, there’s no shortage of ridiculous products that take the concept to the next level. You know and love the Snuggie sleeved blanket, which at first seemed like a practical joke. Well, here’s an even better one for you: Pajama Jeans. This revolutionary product combines the style of designer jeans with the comfort of pajamas. At least, that’s the claim made in the Pajama Jeans infomercial, which reminds me of a Saturday Night Live skit. "They look like they were made by some European designer," the voiceover says, as women model the product in various scenarios. Seriously? The jeans look exactly like the name implies: Stretch jeans that you would find at a discount store, not on the runway. The women in the infomercial don’t look like they would ever wear Pajama Jeans or complete a "whole outfit" with a gray T-shirt that comes free with the purchase. It’s pretty funny when someone simplifies already casual (and comfortable) apparel like jeans. And if I had to choose, I’d rather throw on a pair of sweats.

—Posted by Elena Malykhina

The people in this ad are not crazy. Nor have they been possessed by Michael Jackson. They’re demonstrating that "moving is the best medicine," in a campaign created pro bono by Young & Rubicam, New York, for the Ad Council and the Arthritis Foundation. America, you see, needs to get itself off the couch and start groovin’, lest osteoarthritis (yikes!) sets in. The effort includes TV, radio, print, outdoor and online media, including a dedicated Web site, FightArthritisPain.org. In case that’s not enough to get you moving, here are some stats: One in five U.S. adults, or 46 million people, have arthritis. An estimated 67 million will probably have it by 2030. And arthritis is the nation’s No. 1 cause of disability. BrandFreak, for one, is grateful for those early-morning runs and cartwheel and backflip sessions. Let’s do a split right now!

—Posted by Elaine Wong

Two days later, the Super Bowl ads have been analyzed to death. We all know which ad was the most popular, most recalled and most reviled. But some of you might be wondering, "Yeah, but what does PETA think?" Actually, the animal-rights group was nice enough to list its top-five Super Bowl ads, a ranking that’s based less on creative than on the non-use of real animals during filming. Thus, the winner this year is the Bridgestone spot shown here, which features three buddies unloading a whale into the ocean. In this case, Bridgestone got kudos for not using a real whale but an animatronic one. Others on the list include Cars.com’s "Timothy Richman," which included a CGI tiger, and, or course, that Doritos commercial that showed a jerky guy teasing a dog and then getting his comeuppance. PETA didn’t have a bottom five, but as one commenter pointed out, the Denny’s ad pronouncing it was "a good day for Dennys, a bad day for chickens" would likely top that list.

—Posted by Todd Wasserman

The Texas Department of Transportation is redefining gender roles in this new ad, which aired in major Texas cities before the Super Bowl on Sunday. The ad shows a bunch of guys watching a game in a sports bar. There’s a touchdown, and they jump up in celebration. That’s when things get weird. The men break into a cheer that you would expect from a group of blonde cheerleaders in short skirts (sorry for the stereotype!). I’m not saying men can’t, or shouldn’t, cheer. But when one guy wiggles his behind and another gestures in a feminine manner, you know the makers of this ad weren’t trying to make it manly. The message, however, is far from comical, and has to do with drinking and driving. The male cheerleaders tell sports fans to take a cab or ask a sober friend for a lift home. "It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you get home," says the voiceover. Drunk-driving ads tend to be grim and even disturbingly graphic at times, so it’s refreshing to see the Texas DOT try something new. Whether viewers will take the message seriously is a different story.

—Posted by Elena Malykhina

Even Hollywood’s marketing machine can’t compete with Betty White. Combine Betty White with Abe Vigoda? Forget it! The reviews are in for the commercials that aired during Super Bowl XLIV, and the Snickers spot with the above-named octogenarians tops many lists for the most memorable, most entertaining and most body-snatching. What didn’t fare so well? Big-studio ads for would-be blockbuster movies. Entertainment Weekly doesn’t have a movie ad in its Best 5 (though there’s not one in the Worst 5 either), and viewers who vote in the annual USA Today poll didn’t get around to a film trailer until No. 31 (Disney’s Alice in Wonderland). Other ads fared even worse, with Disney’s Prince of Persia coming in at No. 44, and Universal’s The Wolfman at No. 53. (And that’s out of 60 ads). Our brother blog, Heat Vision, called the studio spots "standard issue" and "indistinguishable" from each other. That’s no way to spend $3 million, especially when it turned out that the game broke a 27-year viewing record. Yes, 106.5 million people watched the New Orleans Saints beat the Indianapolis Colts. We can’t always expect an iconic ad like the Independence Day teaser back in ’96 (aliens blew up the White House!), but we deserve better than CBS Films’ The Back-Up Plan, which featured J. Lo and a lot of screaming. Some of that was mine.

—Posted by T.L. Stanley

Wow, that was fast! A day after Google’s "Parisian Love" search-stories ad ran on the Super Bowl, there’s already a parody out there about Tiger Woods’s search story. In the faux ad, Tiger searches "How to hide facial lacerations" and then "Escalade grille work" and then goes on to search his various mistresses and their possible STD histories, culminating with "Florida divorce attorneys." If the topic seems a bit shopworn, that’s because the video was actually made in December and was a response to "Parisian Love" and other search-stories ads that were actually released on YouTube last fall. But since most people weren’t aware of these ads until last night, now’s the time to update. Satirists, it’s time to whip up something with Obama searching "Tea party" or "Iran nukes" and then "Headache relief" or something along those lines.

—Posted by Todd Wasserman

The last time I watched an M. Night Shyamalan movie was when The Happening was nominated for multiple Razzie Awards. (I voted for it!) We’ll all get a peek at his next effort on Sunday during the Super Bowl (see the trailer above for The Last Airbender). But only three studios decided to pony up as much as $3 million for 30-second spots this year. Every year, Hollywood’s marketers debate the merits of advertising during the Big Game. It’s too expensive, they say, and inefficient for movies launching months down the road. And yet, they usually buy, because they’re afraid not to. This year’s different, though, with few actually wading in. We can expect to see Disney’s Alice in Wonderland, Prince of Persia and maybe Toy Story 3. Universal plans to tout The Wolfman, Robin Hood and potentially the 3-D comedy Despicable Me. Paramount, in addition to Airbender, will pump the long-awaited Shutter Island. Its third spot could go to Iron Man 2, which seems like overkill. Isn’t everybody dying to see that anyway?

—Posted by T.L. Stanley

Just as surely as the diet and exercise ads hit with full force, the new year brings out droves of online dating service commercials starring a bunch of adorable faux fairy-tale couples. They’re Soul Mates, get it? And if it hadn’t been for eHarmony, Match.com or Chemistry, et al, they never would’ve found The One. The period between Christmas, New Year and Valentine’s Day is especially packed with these smarmy testimonials, making this Miller Lite ad as fresh as an early spring breeze. Not only is it an eHarmony döppelganger in look and tone (I did a double-take when I realized it wasn’t peddling a monthly membership), it’s perfectly executed. Instead of being hopelessly devoted to his brunette beauty, it turns out the guy loves his beer above all else. The look on his face says he can’t understand why that’s a problem. Girlfriend sees it differently, storming off and leaving him with just his bottle of brew. Happy ending for her? She got rid of the lunkhead. For him? He’s stuck with Miller Lite. Oh well, there’s always the Internet.

—Posted by T.L. Stanley

There are lots of awards for the best social-media campaigns, but what about the worst? Henry Copeland, CEO and founder of BlogAds, has jumped into that void with SUXORZ, an award show now in its third year that celebrates bad social-media advertising. Copeland met with Ian Schafer, Steve Hall, B.L. Ochman and Caroline McCarthy last night in New York to vote on a "winner." (The name SUXORZ, by the way, is teen slang for "this sucks," according to Copeland.) This year’s champ? A billboard for a "Local 15" Alabama news program that included a Twitter feed, resulting in the awkward tweet "3 accused of gang rape in Monroeville," juxtaposed with a pic of the program’s three anchors. Meanwhile, winners of individual rounds included "Crusty Armpit," a truly revolting campaign from a surprising source, Procter & Gamble’s Old Spice, and Ryanair, which rewarded a helpful consumer by calling him an idiot. They joined past winners like Hewlett-Packard’s PayPerPost campaign of 2007, in which the company subsidized bloggers for good buzz; and a 2008 campaign for PC peripherals maker Belkin, in which the company paid for good reviews. Congrats to the Local 15 crew. Maybe you could tweet news of this award?

—Posted by Todd Wasserman