Is Audi Copying Chrysler?

It seems a tad hard to believe, but a new video (no advertisement, according to Audi spokespeople) airing in Europe has a pretty distinct inspirational vibe from the recent 'Imported From Detroit' Chrysler Super Bowl commercial.



I came across this European ad because Eminem is actually suing Audi for illegal use of his copyrighted music (if you notice, a minimally revised version of 8 Mile guitar tracks play in the background of the Audi commercial), not because it's being accused as a rip off (though it kind of is). Honestly, if they'd not used Eminem's guitar track it would feel less like a rip off and they wouldn't be in legal hot water right now.

On that note, I have to ask both Audi and their agency, 'What were you thinking?' Audi's response has been that this is not an advertisement and it's not running in the US (and that this doesn't involve Audi of America). Other than the target audience perhaps not realizing it's the rip off that it is, how is that helping your case? You used a well known music track illegally, and semi-copied rival car company's Super Bowl commercial. Shame on Audi and shame on their agency (I'm not actually sure who produced this).

On the flip side, major kudos to Chrysler for producing such a kick ass spot that a luxury German brand is imitating it.

Here's the Chrysler ad if you want to compare:

Emotionally Intelligent Signage

Big blue monsters holding stop signs are the new wave of traffic signage? In an intriguing new campaign to urge drivers to slow down, a few municipalities are trying a different tactic—traffic signs designed by children.

The signs are intended to emotionally reach drivers to remind them that their speed affects child safety and to break up the monotony of the signs drivers typically see. The idea is to encourage empathy on the part of the viewer, make them feel a little uneasy about going fast and hopefully get them to slow down and drive safer.

The idea was pioneered in Newton, Massachusetts back in 2008, where it was a hit, and has now expanded into Bayside, Wisconsin. It's an interesting approach and much better than the other 'slow down' campaign we blogged about last year. We'll have to see how well it works.

 

Volvo's Strategy Eclipses Last Twilight Contest

So Volvo running another contest to win a Volvo surrounding this summer's release of latest Twilight movie, Eclipse. They ran a similar contest last year with a series of puzzles, released systematically over time, that you needed to complete in order to win the Volvo. It was a fun idea and Volvo definitely made the puzzles sufficiently challenging. (Of course the internet gave you the answers to the earlier puzzles eventually.) You had to complete all of the earlier puzzles in order to have access to the final puzzle. The final puzzle was then a timed competition. The first person in each country (or continent, I don't remember which) won a new Volvo. The only problem was this high intensity Flash puzzle had technical issues like crazy (even when the server wasn't overwhelmed) and there wasn't nearly enough bandwidth for everyone trying to compete when the final puzzle went live. I don't think that 'first to complete' tactic worked well and cyberspace was filled with car-winning hopefuls verbalizing their annoyance with staring at a loading sign while someone else won the car.

Volvo is running a similar contest this year, though it seems they've changed up the logistics a bit (hopefully). So far, there is only one puzzle which you need to complete to be eligible to compete in the final puzzle for the car. However, instead of having a puzzle with a clear answer and a message telling you that you passed, this puzzle could have many different options. Essentially it's a maze through Forks and you need to find the shortest route from the maze start to the Cullen's house.Obviously the first step is to find the Cullen's house in the maze, but after that, you need to make sure that you have the shortest route. You submit your entry when you reach the Cullen's house, but they don't tell you if you got it right. Nope. I'm guessing due to the amount of cyber-cheating going on that they won't confirm correct answers until after the puzzle has closed. I'm sure that won't stop answer sharing, but it'll probably curb it, or produce a number of incorrect answers being circulated. We'll see.

Hopefully, Volvo also learned the 'first to finish' thing doesn't often work all that well on the web. We'll see when the next step occurs.

If you want to give the maze a shot, check out www.volvocars.com/us/campaigns/lostinforks. It's a fun little game, but quite the challenge if you really want to find the shortest route.

Adobe vs. Apple

If you have an iPhone or iPad, or you're just up on your tech news, you know that they infamously don't support Flash. iPhone users have been hounding Apple since the iPhone debuted to support the program so they could browse Flash based sites on their mobile phones and the iPad's debut just magnified the issue. For the longest time, consumers just assumed it was software issue that Apple would no doubt eventually overcome. They waited and waited in vain. Steve Jobs came out last month with an open letter as to why the iPhone and iPad do not, and never will, support Flash. He's makes a couple of good points and mostly blames Adobe for not adapting. Jobs asserts that HTML 5 will have enough functionality like Flash to appease most of his iPhone and iPad users.

Well Adobe didn't take that very well. Earlier this week they launched a campaign that scolds Apple their exclusion. It's an interesting little rift between two companies who, at least in my little design world, go hand-in-hand in making my job easier. I'm not such a fan of Jobs dismissing the idea of ever supporting Flash. Even if HTML 5 reduces the need for Flash, it will be awhile before the functionality and usefulness of Flash goes away completely. What do you think?

The Real Cost of Drinking and Driving

Ogilvy Brazil has a great new PSA guerilla campaign reminding bar goers of the real cost of drinking and driving by adding those costs to their bar tab. They actually did this in a bar in Brazil. Check out the video below:



(via Direct Daily)

Applebee's Jumps On Calorie Bandwagon

In light of the new national law requiring restaurant chains with 20 or more locations to post the calorie content of their food, Applebee's has an interesting new marketing angle for their menu—the under 550 Calorie menu. While this not a new law for California and New York, or even a new direction for Applebee's, I like what they're doing and they're the first ones I've seen advertising a calorie specific menu.

Applebee's had (and maybe still has) a Weight Watcher's menu that also provided healthier choices, but if you weren't in Weight Watcher's it meant little. You basically assumed you were getting something healthier that what was on the rest of the menu. A calorie specific menu, however, is something everyone can relate to whether you're dieting or not. The menu items look pretty good too, even if the commercials don't.





I'm sure more marketing campaigns like this one will start appearing as we get closer to when the law goes into affect, but Applebee's is a full year ahead of the game. Unfortunately, as much as I like the marketing idea for a calorie specific menu, the actual campaign and creative leaves much to be desired. I expect chain restaurant commercials to have that all-too-familar uber-friendly, cheesy vibe the concepts behind these two commercials were just lame.

Regardless of the mediocre creative, I think Applebee's is on to something.

Eat A Chiquita

Chiquita bananas are playing up their branded and recognizable blue and yellow stickers in a fun new campaign. instead of just blue Chiquita stickers, the new campaign has a whole slew of fun little blue and yellow faces.

One their Eat a Chiquita website, you can design your own sitcker face, watch videos and play games—oh and learn about bananas. It's a fun little site and a great campaign, all based off of those blue and yellow banana stickers that hold so much brand equity all by themselves. Brilliant.

(via Be Inspired Daily)

The Taco Bell Diet?

While it seems a bit like an oxymoron to me, it is, in fact Taco Bell's new ad campaign. I remember seeing one of the ads a few weeks ago and thinking the fast food company was almost making fun of itself and by parading a woman, Christine Dougherty, around as this Subway's Jared-like success case in losing weight on the Taco Bell diet. There's nothing wrong with this, it's awesome that Christine lost the weight, and I can understand why Taco Bell would want to showcase her the way Subway showcased Jared, but it doesn't quite fit.

Initially your intuition and the years of learning that fast food is pretty much bad for you. Yes, Taco Bell has healthier menu options, like all the fast food chains do now, but still, how much healthier are they really? In this article from one of my favorite recipe websites, where the recipes from Cooking Light are housed, they discuss the healthfulness of the items on Taco Bell's Fresco menu and sum up that a consistent diet from them will probably leave you lacking calcium and fiber. Plus all of these items are high in sodium like much processed food, and while that's not necessarily going to keep you from slimming down, it may push your blood pressure up.

My bigger issue with spot is it's tone though. Whether Taco Bell's Fresco menu or not doesn't make a shred of difference in when the creative's bad. The commercial doesn't even seem to take itself seriously. It has a cheesy, goofy, infomercial style which I'm sure was intentional, they even have an infomercial for it. It makes it a little hard to tell if Taco Bell is really pushing this as a diet. Of course they have disclaimers like crazy about how Christine's story is not typical, but the treatment in the ad seems to walk that fine line where most people laugh it off as stupid, while a few gullible others think this might actually work. The issue I see here is Taco Bell has managed to partially lump it's brand in with the questionable diet pill companies of the world. Maybe that's a bit of a stretch, but I see this ad targeting the same kind of customers, especially when they're even marketing it as a Drive-thru diet—no exercise necessary. Sound familiar?

What do you think?

Levi's And Whitman Pair Up For Campaign

A friend suggested that I blog about this commercial a few months ago, and I realize I'm a bit late in the game for commentary on this Walt Whitman Wieden + Kennedy Levi's campaign, but it's a really great commercial.



At first view, I noted the exceptional execution and artistry of the ad, completely aside from content. It's gritty, moving and a bit nostalgic. It becomes that much cooler when you learn that the voice recording is supposedly an actual recording of Walt Whitman reading his poem.

If you visit the commercial on YouTube, however, dozens of comments blast the spot as trying to be too deep for a spot that just sells jeans. If this were a commercial for a new denim brand like 7 for All Mankind I would agree, but this is Levi's. They have an iconic and historical significance to America. Did you know Levi Strauss and his partner, Jacob Davis, patented the use of copper rivets to strengthen stressed seams creating the rivet style that is an essential part of being jeans today? Traditionally, jeans were the working man's attire and eventually became a symbol of rebellion in the 1950s and then an American wardrobe staple. Levi's as a brand was a large part of that progression in American fashion history and culture, so I don't think the tone of this ad is out of place for the Levi's brand.

Actually, I think this new direction for W+K is much more fitting to Levi's than their last campaign, Live Unbuttoned. Slate offers the opinion that the shift in tone is due to the economic downturn and I'm sure that's party true, but I'd also like to think that maybe Levi's realized a generic pop ad, however upbeat it may be, doesn't help differentiate them much. Levi's has a lot more to draw on than many jeans companies and while its desirability in the fashion world may oscillate over the years, it's managed to hold strong long term.

What do you think?

Butt Smoking Kills More

I saw this poster campaign on AdFreak this morning and loved it. I've wanted to do a mosaic illustration like this for some time, but the once or twice it was fitting for a project, one thing or another fell through and it's never happened.

AdFreak mentions how the campaign, by an Indian agency, is maybe too close to a campaign run by the Cancer Society of Finland. While they have the same kind of execution, which is not a unique execution, the look and direction of each is different. Personally, I like this poster campaign better. Yes, I agree with AdFreak that the idea of comparing smoking deaths to other types of deaths is nothing new, when you combine it with this fine execution, it makes a great public service campaign.

(Images via Behance Network)

What is Drinkability?

Bud Light's Drinkability campaign has been out for awhile now and I find it one of the most irksome campaigns around. I know I'm not the only one. It's been around about a year now and I'm just kind of trying to patiently wait it out until an actually interesting campaign replaces it.

Drinkability. What is that? Since it's a made up word, I have to assume that it means 'easy to drink.' Cool. Okay. That'd be a great direction for a new flavor of cough syrup, but for a beer, all it says to me is 'I taste like water.' And I'm reminded that, yes, Bud Light tastes a lot like water. Carbonated alcoholic water, but water nonetheless. Now maybe that's because I'm the type of girl that actually likes beer—real beer—like microbrews, IPAs and belgian whites. Don't get me wrong though, I went to college in Budweiser's hometown and definitely had my fair share of Bud Light during that time, but since those college years, I guess my taste (and budget) have matured a bit.

I can only think of a few of instances where you might prefer a watery beer—when you're drinking it after a physical activity, when you're drinking for quantity or if you really don't like beer very much and you want something pretty bland. Are those the audiences Budweiser is after in this campaign?



The commercials are also pretty bad. Budweiser has a historic reputation for some truly great advertising, but I'm sorry to say everything I've seem come out of this campaign strikes me as trying too hard and not really very entertaining or likable. The commercial posted here—which was one of the spots used to introduce the campaign—seems to be poking fun at a beer drinker who dares to assume all light beers taste the same. Well, um, they kinda do. I mean Miller Light has a bit more flavor than Bud Light and Coors Light and Natural Light have a bit less, but when you really get down to it, they're all pretty similar. Especially if you're comparing them to a non-light beer.

Drinkability? More like Stupidability. Let's move on Budweiser and launch a new campaign already. Please.

Violent Fairytales For A Violent Subject

In contrast to our last post, let's look at a Public Service Announcement (PSA) campaign from South America that's a little shocking, but also good advertising. The two posters here are from Amnesty International (Amnistía Internacional) in Chile.

The art direction on these two posters is fantastic and the concept is solid as well. Most fairytales are pretty violent when you think about it, and tend to get more so the further back in their history you go, so linking fairytales to a campaign against domestic violence and violence against women is an interesting connection. The visuals are very dark, but with enough key fairy tale pop culture visual cues that we easily identify the tales being referenced. The Little Red Riding Hood concept works the best due to the tale's very violent beginnings. Little Red Riding Hood goes back long before the versions most of us know to an oral tale that was told to warn young girls about predator men. I won't go into the gruesome details here—you can get the historical versions synopses on Wikipedia or in a good book of classic fairytales—but essentially, even the modern version has ties to violence against women.Unfortunately, the Snow White poster doesn't have quite the same fairytale connection. Another story, like Bluebeard, might have been a better tie though much less visually recognizable. Either way, it's a great example of some good PSR work that can be shocking but still a good piece of advertising.

(via The Inspiration Room)

Sharpie Art

Sharpie has a new social media campaign site, Sharpie Uncapped, encouraging people to use their Sharpies to create art all over the place, from shoes to soccer balls to Barbies. It seems to be a permanent extension of Sharpie's Write Out Loud campaign from earlier this year. The big idea is great, but I don't think it's really working yet.

For one thing the home page is a little confusing. It seems to be mostly an aggregator for everything referencing Sharpie on YouTube or Flickr. If you venture over to the Uncapped Gallery area of the site, it invites you to submit your Sharpie art and promises the possibility of being featured in the gallery. It took me much longer than it should have to figure out that would be in the gallery's Sharpie Showcase, mostly because 80% of the gallery page is more aggregators like we saw on the home page, just organized slightly differently. If you click on these you get a Flickr page key word searching 'Sharpie' or their YouTube channel.

The Sharpie Communities page really just reiterates what the Sharpie Gallery showed, but tagged a Facebook fan page and Twitter account in there for good measure. This page makes sense. What doesn't is why it's confusingly repeated in the gallery section.

The Sharpie How To section is abysmal. If you're going to even have a how to section and I'm going to take time to watch one of those how to videos, I do expect them to have some information that goes beyond a fourth grade art class. I realize we're dealing with markers here, but come on, Sharpies must do something slightly cooler than just draw on book covers and t-shirts, which I could probably figure out how to do without a video.

The site does have a few merits though. The look and feel of the site is great. It's clean with bold color accents, hand lettered headings and fun Sharpie doodles throughout and it works well. The banner ad inviting you to play around with the Sharpie twin tip marker—which really just translates to a fun little drawing widget—is fun and engaging. On another site, this banner ad would have me hooked—on this site, I really thought it needed it's own page to play and have fun with. And why don't you give me the option to draw on some shoes or other objects while we're at it?

Overall, the idea has some merit. Uploading your Sharpie Art will get Sharpie lovers involved, but for a simple four page website, the organization and user experience is not very good. Sharpie is a great, well-known brand and is such a widely used product it will naturally have a presence on social media sites like YouTube and Flickr, but this site isn't yet working to bring them together. What do you think? Did you get as lost as I did trying to navigate through the site?

Sir Mix-A-Lot Is Mixing Things Up At Burger King

"Oh my God, Becky look at her...phonebook?"

CP+B is in the news again with a new sexualized ad for Burger King that plays off Sir Mix-a-Lot's classic song Baby Got Back. The commercial has spawned a lot of controversy—is it funny or is it inappropriate? Everyone familiar with the song (in other words, my entire generation) knows the song centers around Sir Mix-a-Lot's admiration of large female butts. This isn't the first time Sir Mix-a-Lot's famous one hit wonder has hit the commercial waves, but this particular commercial is aimed at kids.

The BK spot features Sir Mix-a-Lot and Sponge Bob since BK is offering Sponge Bob toys in their kids meals. The controversy comes when the images of Sponge Bob are mixed in with music video like images of Sir Mix-a-Lot and women in tight mini dresses with phonebooks shoved up them. Sir Mix-a-Lot consequently sings about liking square butts.



I was very undecided on where I stood on this commercial. On the one hand, it's funny to an adult audience, but I can definitely understand concerned parents as well. Sponge Bob is one of those cartoons, beloved by children but also capable of being genuinely entertaining to adults as well. Believe it or not, Sponge Bob has some adult fans—I've even met a few that didn't have kids. The problem is that this commercial is clearly aimed at children. It's on at times when kids would be watching tv and advertises Sponge Bob toys.

I'm a bit delayed on this post, I know. There have been many news reports and blogs discussing the issue. I was very undecided on where I stood and felt ill equipped to say anything without being a parent myself, so I solicited opinions from friends and relatives who are young parents. Not completely surprisingly, I got responses on both sides. Mothers who were disgusted by the commercial and others who shrugged their shoulders and laughed at it. There were a few stuck in the middle though too, finding the commercial funny themselves, but not quite appropriate for their children. I suppose the main consensus, however, was that this spot is not really child appropriate.

But where did CP+B cross the line? The concept is funny and oddly appropriate. Who cares that it's about butts? I mean kids talk and laugh about butts all the time. But one of the responses I received nailed the problem I have with this commercial on the head:

... as the father of a young daughter, what I do find to be troubling are the sexual images of young women. (They should have been consistent and had a row of people dressed in SpongeBob mascot outfits, quite frankly.)

Exactly! Would the commercial have lost anything to have both men and women with phone book butts in slightly looser clothing? I really don't think it would. I realize the original song is very sexual, but it could be just as humorous to adults while staying appropriate for kids. After all they are marketing a kids meal. I think the real humor of the concept is playing off Sponge Bob's square butt. He has one. It's funny. They half mention the fact in the title of the show—Sponge Bob Square Pants.

Overall, I think the concept of the spot was brilliant, but the execution was off. A tamer version could have kept the integrity of the concept while quelling the concerns of parents, but then again maybe all the media attention was exactly what CP+B and Burger King were aiming for. What do you think? Would a tamer version be capable of walking the line between funny and child appropriate?

Wisconsin Bombs Rebranding

Large corporations aren't the only ones capable of botching a rebranding job. The state of Wisconsin unveiled their new logo today and there is only one word to describe it: horrendous. I have nothing positive to say about it. The font has nothing particularly appealing about it and that little flag thing in the middle of the W just bothers me. I expect it to be there for a reason and there's no apparent reason to it's existence except to make the W particularly difficult to decipher at a glance. The wavy N is just as distracting. Then the whole word has the distinct shape of unnecessary use of Illustrator's bulge warp tool. At the risk of sounding preachy, Illustrator and photoshop filters can be godsends or train wrecks and it all depends on your discretion in using them. The epic fail is when they're unnecessarily used to try to beef up an otherwise poor design (e.g. the logo above). It never works. Use them with extreme caution.

Beyond the bad font choice, the logo fails again between that tag line and the completely random silhouette handstand that isn't remotely integrated into the design. Both the silhouette and tagline look completely tacked on. The handstand has no real reason to be there, except maybe to illustrate the painfully generic tagline, 'Live like you mean it,' which ironically comes straight from Bacardi. I mean Wisconsinites like their liquor, but if you were going to steal from such an ad, 'Please Drink Responsibly' would have at least been a little more true to some of the distinctive characteristics of the state.

Megan and I are both native Wisconsinites, and having lived out of state I'm very aware of the not-so-exciting reputation Wisconsin has in most of the rest of the country. That's exactly why it pains me to see that this is the 'new' face we're going to show to try to ramp up tourism? Ugh. Wisconsin is much better than that.

As much as I'm sure this botched logo is at least partly due to decision by committee, I can't believe the state paid $50,000 for that slapped together looking logo and a ripped off tagline.

What do you think of the new logo?

Pepsi Strives To 'Refresh' Us

The other night, this entertaining Pepsi commercial caught my attention. I mostly thought it was a fun concept, maybe a little too similar to the recently run Heineken Share the Good spots in direction and tone, but fun nonetheless. The spot ends with a call to action to 'refresh' our generation, fitting with the optimistic sentiment that seems to fill the air these days despite being in the middle of a recession. I thoroughly enjoyed the spot.



But after seeing the spot, I went to the Refresh Everything website to see what else was connected to this campaign and I can't say I'm sold on it. The site appears to be a New Year Campaign for 2009, focusing on 'Refreshing the World.' Pepsi offers the site as a place with 'opportunities to change the world into a fresher, funnier, much better place.' Change, huh? Jumping on the Obama bandwagon are we? Even if you're game with Pepsi trying to change the world, the campaign seems a bit oddly disjointed, combining hopeful videos to our the president to and online Super Bowl Party all under the same loose 'refresh' campaign.

But the different 'refresh' ideas don't seem to jive together. An online Super Bowl party with Will Arnett idea is interesting on its own, but I really don't see what's refreshing or remotely fresher and funnier about it. The page is still tagged with "Every generation refreshes the world. Now it's your turn." but how exactly are we refreshing the world with an online Super Bowl Party?

The video uploads as letters to the president fit a little better with what appears to be an all-embracing 'positive change' tone to the campaign, but again, it's not so refreshing really. How many other companies are doing similar stunts? According to AdRants IKEA has a "Welcome Obama!" guestbook and Facebook and the New York Times have a Presidential Suggestion site, so the upload your video isn't so original.

I guess I wouldn't mind either tactic on their own, but thrown together into one campaign on one site that feels chaotic and disjointed just isn't grabbing me. The concept really should, I'd like it to inspire me, the very spot that took me to the site inspired me, but once I got there, it just fell flat. Check out the site for yourself and let us know what you think!