Happy Holidays

It's vacation time. We're going to be away for a couple of weeks. And because at least one of us will be in New York (and visiting Madison Avenue) we thought we'd post this great clip from Mad Men - Don Draper pitching a campaign for Kodak's new 'wheel'. That's how to do it.

No Meat

Another bizarre piece of work. While this ad features a bowling bull, the other two in the campaign feature a knitting sheep and a trolley pushing pig. The gag (explicit in the line "Let meat live") is that they're all enjoying their old age. Or something.

Coup don't want to tell potential customers all the good things about their vegetarian restaurant (the fantastic food, the wonderful atmosphere, the great prices etc.). No, they prefer instead to push a silly student idea about one of the effects of vegetarianism - that animals will live longer (except, of course, they won't, given that those animals wouldn't have even been born in the first place were it not for the demand for meat). So yet again what we have is a practically useless piece of work that no doubt owes its existence to the agency thinking that funny (even though it's not even that funny) and creative (even though it's not even that creative) overrides anything that might touch on actual communication.

But perhaps more worrying than all of that is the question of: how on earth did that bull get its hooves into the bowling ball's holes?

Stars What Sell. #6: Don La Fontaine & Little Richard

A couple of cracking ads from Geico Car Insurance. Very funny and right on brief.

Can You See What It Is Yet?

There have been some wonderful ads for Lego recently (scroll down to the bottom of this page for a couple of great examples). This, however, isn't one of them.



If you knew what it was, good for you. For those that didn't - it's supposed to be the periodic table of elements. The gag, of course, is in that 'make anything' line.

As a piece of communication, it fails completely. Yes, it may well induce a knowing smile in chemistry students, but your average six-year-old will probably just wonder why they've used Lego bricks to make a boring pattern. And in the end all it does is suggest that the agency 'creatives' were more concerned with talking to each other (or, rather, showing off to each other) than they were with talking to their target audience.

Hansaplast To The Rescue

From TBWA Barcelona, a lovely response to the proposition "plasters that heal".

Stars What Sell. #5: Bo Diddley RIP

The utterly wonderful Bo Diddley died the other day. This is an ad he appeared in for a Dutch recruitment agency in 2005. It features him playing the blues, rather than the unique brand of rhythm-heavy rock 'n' roll he invented in the mid 50s (often described as 'Bo's Beat').



But this is more like it - Bo (and The Duchess on second guitar) knocking 'em dead on US TV in 1966:

Low Price as High Art

Created by O&M Malaysia for Carrefour stores, proof that price-driven retail ads can be things of beauty. It must have made the client very happy too.

Click for the larger view.

No Shame

What's most horrible about this ad? That it's 'kooky'? That it's full of self-consciously hip hipster types? That it thinks, by virtue of its 'Oh my God what did I do last night' premise, that it's somehow daring? That the actors deliberately sing just out of tune in that half-baked, half-closed eyed, slacker way that so many indie singers do these days? That they all seem to live in an idealised New York that makes it look a bit like Trumpton?

Or is it that you not only have to work out what the product is, you also have to guess what the benefit of using the product is?

Mother's Ruin

In the old days it wasn't obese kids they worried about. It was skinny, listless drips like the kid in this Cream of Wheat ad from 1933. Of course, it's his mother's fault he's like that. Maybe if she bought him a PlayStation and took him to McDonald's more often he'd put a few pounds on.

Mopey. Now there's a great word to use in an ad.

Click to view the larger size.