Truth in Advertising #27

New business projects are often the most demanding.

(Busy with new biz—we'll post something new soon.)

Adweek Gets Political

Adweek asked a number of Creative Directors from agencies around the country and to make fake ads for the 2008 elections. In a time when political ads seem to be pretty creatively dead with nothing more than politicians kissing babies or bashing the other candidate, I was excited to see what some top creatives could come up with.

The result? Some great ideas playing it straight as well as plenty of tongue-and-cheek ads on both candidates. Check out the Adweek article to see the work and be sure to visit the video player in the side bar or you'll miss my two favorites—the satirical McCain and Obama tv spots from Goodby Silverstien and Partners.

Subtlety Is Key

This is a fun little video with a sort of surprising end—at least to me. Watch it, then read below.

Learn how to hack at 5min.com

Did you watch all the way through? Up until the end, did you realize this was a Sprite commercial/video? I sure didn't. After seeing Sprite and their lime green at the end, I did remember flashes of it throughout the video. Until the end, however, I completely didn't realize it was a promotional video at all. Now that I do know it's for Sprite, I'm a bit torn. I love that they were so subtle throughout the video, but now that I know it was a sponsored video, I wonder how much of it was staged. I wondered that while watching it anyway, but knowing it's a commercial makes me assume most of it was staged and it loses a bit of its charm. What do you think? Did you like how Sprite handled branding the video? Did knowledge of Sprite's involvement also make you question the 'real' quality of the video?

EA Sports Walks on Water with New Ad

How's this for Youtube recognition? According to this post at Awful Announcing, EA Sports created an ad for its new Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09 in direct response to a gamer's post on Youtube.

We're thinking the Youtuber who posted the original video never would have guessed Tiger Woods himself would have a hand in responding. How cool.

A Brilliant Piece of Animation

I just couldn't leave our blog sitting on that last horrendous commercial, so I'm sliding in this fantastic little animated piece set to a John Lennon interview. It's really brilliantly done.

No Wonder People Hate Advertising

There are some pretty bad commercials out there, but this has to be one of the most distasteful I've seen in a long time. It really just makes me ill. As stated in the AdFreak post I discovered this in, it's no wonder people hate advertising.

Olympic Commercial Favorites

There are a number of nice commercials circulating during the Olympics this year. Two of my favorites are below:

As a huge fan fan of the Killers debut album, this Nike spot featuring All These Things That I've Done caught and held my attention immediately. While it wasn't the album's major single, it was always a personal favorite and Nike put it to great use in this spot.


My other favorite also circles around the music choice—not because I'm a huge fan of this particular song, but because it just works with the spirit of the Olympics. It put a smile on my face :)

Missing Megan

If you haven't noticed, my counterpart is still MIA. You may also have noticed the typo on the poll to the right (others have). Sadly, my bad proofing skills have come to light without Megan keeping me in check—see how things fall apart when she's not here?

Unfortunately, I can't edit the poll without erasing it completely, thus erasing all the current votes, so the typo will have to stay until the poll is completed. That would drive Megan crazy. Good thing she's too busy with giant moving trucks and setting up her new home to notice—yet.

Hurry back Megan! We miss you! And this blog is starting to feel decidedly one-sided.

Downfall (of Twitter)

This video has been circulating in Twitter circles, and yes, you probably have to be a Twitter user to really appreciate it, but as a Twitter user and someone who just watched Downfall last week, I found this hilarious. Probably won't make too much sense if you happen understand German though...

Wonderbra Takes On Real Women

Wonderbra is taking some cues from Dove, but taking it to a whole different level. Apparently Wonderbra ran a campaign in June (with an amusing little spot by itself) recruiting women to model in their bras for their now running D to G Cup campaign in the UK.

All I can say is I love it. From using real women as models to the mosaic technique, it's a well executed campaign. Using real women may have lost a little bit of it's edge since Dove has been doing it for awhile, but I'm very happy to see another major women's brand adopt the concept. Unfortunately, even though they're different markets they look kind of similar, thanks to Dove's models being shown in their underwear. At least the mosaic treatment helps separate the two. On the website you can zoom in on the billboard and see all the individual women's photos that make up the final picture. I'm actually surprised it took so long for another company to adopt it. Despite what some research may say, I personally respond very well to campaigns that use real looking women.

What do you think?