In the past few years, the world has taken great pleasure in ridiculing Bush blunders. Countless montages have been created of Bush looking like a dummy. An honorable mention goes to talk show host David Letterman’s Great Moments in Presidential Speeches. This recurring segment managed to continuously find a verbal blunder, and remind the country that they indeed, elected this person.

Phillips continuously introduces new products and new ways to make our technological dependent life malfunction free. Using a current topic seems well fitting.

However while the topic is current, I do not see it as a groundbreaking advertisement. By using George Bush’s loss of presidency, they’re just throwing another punch in bush-bashing brawl. It looks like MS&L took the easy way to creative thinking.

While I am a big fan of utilizing visuals in advertising, I’m bored. The inauguration has not only seen the end of the Bush administration but also the end of what went with it: Bush-whacking.

Despite using an overworked topic, MS&L also struggled to effectively communicate their message. Didn’t many of use greatly dislike George Bush? Didn’t we want his presidency to cease? Why would we want his power to remain?

Now if Phillips whished to advertise new ways to “redesign” “update” or even “undo” then surely this would be the visual.

Advertising Agency: MS&L, London, UK

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Always target your ad at your audience. And when Facebook users make up a broad portion of users anywhere in the world, they can easily be targeted. They can be old or young or somewhere in between and many of them all share the same addiction to this online networking giant.

Insidiously, Facebook has become something a hobby. Instead of coming home from a long day of work and doing a spot of gardening, or studying ancient coins or even giving the dog a wash or what not, now it’s acceptable (although not really accepted) to login Facebook and catch up with the virtual world. Here you can waste hours talking to an acquietence who you secretly hate or look at group invitations from a person you met at work, 6 years ago. Or you can simply get your “creep on.” That is randomly clicking on old school friend’s profiles, or mundanely persusing your ex boyfriend’s friend’s photos from a recent trip. Joy.

And yet Facebook is outrageously, perhaps malevolently popular. I should know, I’ve tried to leave a couple of times only to get sucked back in.

Tzomet Sfarim, an Israeli bookstore have got the right idea: ‘Disconnect for a while. Read a book.’

Their pun on ‘Faceabook,’ stealing Facebook’s font and format, is simple and effective.

Infact, I couldn’t agree more and direct this advice at myself, a bookworm who occasionally forgets how nice is it to curl up and read a marvellous book because she’s online on Facebook.

This ad is a gentle reminder to all Facebook users, but particularly Israeli ones, to put aside virtual networking and engage in something tangible and productive. It puts everything in perspective and one remembers that Facebook is just a silly online game and doesn’t and will never, compare to the unchanging pleasure of reading.

Advertising Agency: Brickman, Ramat Gan, Israel
Creative Director / Art Director: Yotam Sharon
Copywriter: Ronni Azulay
Studio Manager: Shay Rimon
Account Manager: Lee Tishler

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What drunken German urologist came up with this? There is a joke that has a very vague relation to this, vague but we all love dirty jokes right?

My internist referred me to a female urologist. I saw her yesterday and she is gorgeous. She told me that I have to stop masturbating. I asked her why and she said, ‘Because I’m trying to examine you…’

Anyway sorry about that but do you think Lego is really spending money on negative ads for adults? There was this not long ago.

No, it’s more likely another cool editorial idea, a little darker then the previous one. It is quite well shot and edited to have these light but somewhat dry tones. From photography point of view these are quite well produced and shot.

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In a world where disc jockeys, as their formal geeky occupation reads, are springing up more and more as it is becoming globally recognised that DJs may infact have an excellent chance of dating models, Sony is advertising for their DJ quality headphones. And they’ve got stiff competition with more muso orientated brands, like BOSE and the likes.

This ad is actually pretty clever, espicially up close. Then you realise that the bottom of the note resembles a padded ear phone and the shrapnel that is coming out of that is not just debris but tiny little note explosions. These minature notes are very cute and remarkably detailed.

All in all, it’s a nice ad. It’s simple but the stark background only draws attention to the treble clef.

The music note explosion is a great concept but would the ad be improved by continuing this theme all around the note, in a circular, consistent ring? On initial observance I would thought so. But then I realise that would detract from the quality of the notes, and having just a little sample of it highlights it more.

Good little ad- clear, concise and innovative.

Advertising Agency: Saatchi & Saatchi, Sydney, Australia
Executive Creative Director: Steve Back
Creative Director: Dave Bowman
Art Director: Nic Buckingham
Copywriter: Paul Bootlis
Illustrator: Electric Art

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The air that cools your home, heats up the world.

This air conditioning ad from Prolam Y&R, Santiago is quite nice even if it is another “me too” Inconvenient Truth campaign. I think by now we all know the water is rising and we all need to learn to swim well. So invest in a jet ski or a surfboard, it’s the future after all, right?

There I go on a tangent again, I think this is a good version of the climate crisis sort of thing, at lease its one of the better ones. It is quite good to tackle a small portion of the issue, somehow we feel a little more empowered this way.

It’s a good piece of work that needs to be configured for a set location. Sure this will create a lot of overhead to place these things but on a limited budget and (perhaps this is a) Pro Bono project can’t pepper the billboards all over the country.

So my question is when will public advertising do something to actually educate on how to REDUCE the global warming, instead of always say no matter what you do you are contributing and will go to “environmental hell” for this?

Advertising Agency: Prolam Y&R, Santiago, Chile
Executive Creative Director: Tony Sarroca
Creative Director / Copywriter: Alvaro Becker
Photographer: Felipe Hernandez
Art Directors: Fabrizio Capraro, Renzo Vaccaro

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Just like the anti-smoking ads, Worksafe ads are seeming more shocking with ad creators intent on leaving an imprint.

These ads are not easy on the eye, or even neutral. They are very hard to focus on, to look at. Particularly, the first one grabs you, as one pictures the right eye socket that was probably once with a dangling eyeball stitched up by modern surgery.

The second picture is still hard hitting but somewhat softer, perhaps a buffer in-between two other incredibly aesthetically unappealing ads.

Yet its text shouts out a familiar cry, “I thought I’d look stupid if I asked AGAIN.” Key word there again in bold.  This rings bells with those of us who weren’t afraid to ask the first time (see third picture) but too scared to look stupid by repeating a question.

And the third? Gruesome, yet realistic.

WorkCover ads can often use the emotive approach; inducing sympathy as a young family finds out its beloved papa has had a fatal accident at work or something like that but these ads are not inducing a kind of “think of your primary school aged daughter” or “My husband is never going to come home for dinner” approach but a much more personal one.

These ads really induce an adverse reaction, a natural response to look away. That’s a bad thing for this campaign because even though a consumer may not choose to look back, these images are unforgettable, and not in a kind of je ne sais quoi way either.

Advertising Agency: Grey, Melbourne, Australia
Creative Director: Nigel Dawson
Art Director: Peter Becker
Copywriter: Nigel Dawson
Photographer: Hugh Peachey
Prosthetics and Effects: Nic Dorning
Published: October 2008

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Once a social welfare center received a distressed call from a 16-year old girl, saying she was being held against her will. Having gotten hold of a mobile phone, the girl tipped off a ranch where base acts against minors, many younger than her, are being committed. A 49-year old man was physically abusing her, and has impregnated her twice in a span of eight months. She reported she was forced to wed this man, who has six other wives, at age 15.

Hence on April 3, 2008, welfare authorities deployed its largest rescue mission yet in Texas, raiding the Yearning for Zion (YFZ) ranch in Eldorado. It was operated by an outmoded Mormon sect called the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, whose cause was to keep plural marriage alive. The incursion produced 437 minors, mostly girls, who at one point or another were forced to copulate with much older men, to sire children. America recoiled at such insular world, at best a holdover of an era not abreast with present sensibilities.

Cable giant HBO, on the prowl for a hit since The Sopranos signed off in 2007, wants to ride on the hype, albeit belated, and bring back Big Love, its drama series about Mormon polygamists. Before it segued into a hiatus in August 2007, the show had been rated its second-highest among female viewers.

But overall in ratings, it’s no Sex and The City, so HBO grappling with an ad campaign this size is explicable. Such marketing is by itself adherent  to HBO standards. Once, the network sent bloodied missives to scores of people for its vampire show, True Blood.

For Big Love, HBO wants to emphasize “Everyone Has Something to Hide,” a campaign slogan to keep up with the show’s secretive characters. Murals and billboards were installed countrywide picturing banal scenes of Americans going about their businesses.

Everything’s not what they seem though. Each billboard has built-in audio jacks, wherein one could just plug their earphones or those provided by HBO contingents. Only then could one know what’s going on in the thoughts of the character at hand, audio clips of their “secrets,” as it were.

BBDO has just floored everyone else for my big love.

In tandem with the Civic Entertainment Group, HBO also delegated 150 individuals to parade around with comic-like thought bubbles telling their supposed secrets.

Big Love premiered its new season on January 18. Bill Paxton reprises his role as Bill Henrickson, the Mormon patriarch with three wives. Jeanne Tripplehorn plays the first, Barbara; Chloe Sevigny as Nicolette; and Ginnifer Goodwin as Margene.

Chloe Sevigny, gifted thespian as she is, could be my biggest watching actor. Beyond that, the show may get no more than my sympathy vote for the advertising effort. Carrying a torch for Big Love could be such a caustic pastime, its plot too alienating even with the tasty voyeurism parlayed by the murals.

Advertising Agency: BBDO New York< USA
Chief Creative Officers: David Lubars, Bill Bruce
Creative Director: Mike Smith
Creative Director / Art Director: James Clunie
Creative Director / Copywriter: Pierre Lipton
Photographer: Brad Harris

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