Is Liberty Mutual Doing The Right Thing?

Liberty Mutual has a new campaign running about doing the 'right thing.' The campaign follows a family faced with a number of difficult decisions. Should Grandpa go in a nursing home or move in with the family? Should the parents spy on their teenage daughter's online activity? How do you handle lay off in the family? Typical difficult decisions faced by a regular family. The first spot sets up the following two by outline the tough decisions the family has to make.

The trouble is, the following spots don't make much sense if you haven't seen the first one. I saw the parents spying on their daughter spot (below) first and was completely confused. As a stand alone it makes little sense, especially on how it relates to insurance. The text at the end is the only connection.

If you visit the corresponding site, ResponsibilityProject.com, you can see all five videos that follow the family through a variety of situations. They're almost like little mini homemade films shot by the hand held video camera of the youngest sibling and at the end you are asked to join the discussion. It doesn't seem like they have too many people discussing, although it's interesting to note they also have a section with articles of other controversial topics, from Rent as a high school musical to cloning puppies, and those articles are actually sparking some decent discussion on the site. More than the spots themselves it seems.

It's entirely possible that I saw the set up commercial before the daughter one, but glossed over it since it's pretty forgettable, and I remembered the daughter one only because it confused me. Overall, the campaign has a nice idea but it just seems to be trying to hard. I enjoyed Liberty Mutual's last campaign, which gave the same idea, but simplified it and managed to show you good deeds and responsible actions rather than tell you about them. Plus the execution of it was fantastic and I soon became a fan of the band from that soundtrack.

What do you think? Are these Liberty Mutual ads effective? Have you even noticed them?

Tropicana Sales Drop With Redesign?

According to AdAge, Tropicana sales plummeted 20% between Jan. 1 and Feb. 22 after they launched the botched redesign (left). Late February, Tropicana decided to revert back to their old packaging after large amounts of criticism from consumers and the design community.

We blogged and tweeted about the redesign and it sparked quite a bit of discussion. Some of the many responses we received centered around people being unable to find Tropicana juice since they scanned over it in the grocery store thinking it was a generic brand. While we can't necessarily claim cause and effect here, it makes sense. Hopefully for Tropicana this is a temporary, though costly, mistake and they won't lose any market share to competitors once people are able to find Tropicana again, but we'll see. Tropicana did open the door to competitors with this blunder after all...

Honda Gets Groovy

So this apparently went down back in October, but I just saw this commercial last night. Honda took a section of road in Lancaster, California and paved it with grooves so that when you drive over it, the William Tell Overture plays. The overall effect is quite cool. It reminds me a bit of the fantastic Machine and Acapella spots W+K London did for Honda a couple years ago. Though the project got some bad press with neighbors sick of hearing the noise from passing cars, most people driving over the piece of road thoroughly enjoy it. I almost think of it as environmental art in a way. Check out the commercial to see how they did it and hear the final product.

Differentiate Yourself

A really good product has a way of differentiating itself from the rest of the competition. A very creative cab driver in Charlotte, NC has done so very effectively by installing a karaoke screen in his cab. Check out the video below!

Have The Travel Bug? Cure It Here.

A friend posted this interesting promotional site, I Have The Bug, for the Travel Channel on Facebook. All I have to say is it's brilliant. Sure it's a little superfluous, but it's entertaining. The site moves you along a variety of amusing travel scenarios and choices with a soothing female narrator commenting on each decision. All of this is to decide your travel personality in order to recommend the proper shows on the travel channel to treat you. The animated game quiz is entertaining and fun and leads directly to a payoff involving the client. I love to travel, but I confess I've never really watched the Travel Channel. That may change now though as I'm seriously considering checking out some of the recommended shows.

The site is integrated with Facebook Connect too, which allows you to share your travel personality assessment with any Facebook friends who have taken the quiz.

I'm a Navigator, what are you? Find out at www.ihavethebug.com.

The CEO's Guide To Jetting

Jet Blue has a fantastic little series of commercials called The CEO's Guide to Jetting. This series of three spots walks CEO's through the transition of flying on their own corporate jets to flying on the next best thing: Jet Blue. The spots are very funny and well executed. Just slightly unpolished enough in spots to pass for a real instructional video.

Have a laugh and check out the series below:






(via AdPulp)

Shaming You To The Gym

A bus stop in Amsterdam has one of the most creative bus shelters I've seen in awhile. The shelter's bench serves as a scale, so when you sit it displays your weight for you, and everyone else on the street, to see. Ouch. I could see that making me reroute my journey home to include a stop at the gym...

(Via AdFreak. Photo from Direct Daily.)

Chef Boyardee Spot is Obviously Delicious

While my blog partner continues her thoughtful discussions and critiques, I'll do my best to add lighthearted posts like this:

Love the new Chef Boyardee commercial. Parents everywhere can relate to this scenario. Watch closely--the mother's facial expressions are perfectly executed. When I first saw this spot a few days ago, I literally LOL-ed.


While I love the spot, it doesn't make me want to buy the product. And just because it contains a full serving of vegetables, I don't feel it's necessarily "nutritious" as the tagline would have you think. Next time I'm at the store, maybe I'll have a look to let you know just how nutritious it is.

P.S. Happy St. Patrick's Day! 'Boyardee' could be Irish, no? :)

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?

Hey everyone! This guy needs a job!

Most of us using wildly popular social media tools such as Twitter and LinkedIn have been trying to figure out how to "brand" ourselves so that our abilities and experience speak for us if, say, a potential client or employer is out there searching for us. Mark Heuer, however, has taken personal advertising to a new level.

This news blurb from Digital Signage has us reading the full article about Heuer and his plan to land a job by putting his face on a billboard in busy Milwaukee. The billboard directs to Heuer's resume, posted on his Web site: the easily remembered Mark4hire.com.

I haven't read his entire resume, but I hope someone proofed that thing! That'd be a colossal error at a potential 60,000 visitors a day! Best of luck to Mark.