Category — Celebrity Advertising

Let me refresh your memory:

Agent Provocateur constantly pushes the envelope when it comes to sexy advertising. This Kylie Minogue ad came out in December of 2001 and caused a huge hullabaloo. It was banned by UK TV networks (all 1 of them, the BBC), and it ended up only able to be shown in movie theaters.

Luckily it made it’s way to the internet and became one of the most viewed videos ever. Some estimates say this particular video has been viewed over 360 million times. Sex sells.

Finished watching? Ok, stand up…

Hey ladies, do you want your kids to grow up big and strong like David Beckham? How about your husbands? Well, there’s now a food product heartily endorsed by the superstar, and it’s supposedly healthy and delicious.

David Beckham Brand fishsticks. Yes, fishsticks… actually they’re called “fish fingers” by the weirdos in the UK. Delicious and healthy fish fingers fortified with extra omega-3s, with Beckham on the cover.

Beckham has said: “As a Dad I know how hard it is to get kids to eat the right things. I also know as a footballer, how important it is to eat the right things to perform well, so I think the GO3 range is a great way to help families take some small steps to be fit and healthy at affordable prices.”
If you eat Beckfood Fishstickz, you’ll grow up and look like this:
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Barack Obama has become the first presidential candidate to advertise in a video game. The Obama campaign purchased ad space in the Xbox live versions of 18 different video games. The ads will run up until Nov. 3, and only be displayed in 10 major swing states.

The ads show that Obama is willing to embrace new technology, and that may be the most important aspect of this whole video game campaign.

Obama’s face and name will be on billboards and signs in “NBA Live ’08″, “Burnout Paradise”, “Nascar 09″, “Need For Speed Carbon”, “Need For Speed Pro Street”, “NFL on Tour”, “NHL ’09″, “Skate”, and “Guitar Hero”, among some others. And the 10 states that are targeted include some major battleground states: Ohio, Iowa, Indiana, Montana, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Nevada, New Mexico, Florida, and Colorado.
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McCain’s recent ad, Man In The Arena, is surprisingly good looking considering his other recent ads. Now, I’m talking from a purely aesthetic point of view. As far as substance goes, this ad offers nothing more than Obama’s American Promise, and everything I said about that ad can be said about this one. But still, it’s very effective advertising; more so, I think, than anything Obama has offered so far.

McCain’s ads to date have been almost entirely negative, usually with a disgusted sounding voice-over talking about things Obama has either done or not done. They were particularly acerbic and difficult to watch. This ad is different though, it optimistic, focused on McCain, and I think it portrays him in a better light to those who don’t really care about issues anyway.
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Harley-Davidson has a pretty hardcore fanbase of older American motorcyclists, but the way things are going, that’s not going to last. Harley realizes there’s a whole generation of younger riders embracing foreign brands; Honda, Kawasaki, Suzuki, Aprilia, and Ducati all make high performance, high quality bikes that generally cost less than a Harley. So they need to make a bike that appeals to that crowd, and find a way to make them take notice of it.

That’s why they paired up the V-Rod Muscle and Marisa Miller. I’ll admit, I’m one of those young upstarts who trash talks the last great American icon, Harley-Davidson. I like Ducatis and cafe racers and European names on my bikes. I like to go fast in a straight line, but also be able to go through corners. Call me a snob, what can I say? Still, the V-Rod Muscle, even though I hate the name, is a Harley I might consider riding. And the fact that Marisa Miller is bent over athletically on one got me to take notice too. So the ad worked on me.
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For years, heroin dealers have used “brand stamps” as a way to inform customers of their quality. Even before Frank Lucas’s “Blue Magic” in the 1960s, “good” dealers have found ways to make their product stand out among the poorer quality majority. Once the high quality dealers started doing this, everyone else started as well since it was a low cost way of increasing the apparent quality of the bags. For only the cost of a stamp and ink, a dealer could copy the stamp from the highest quality heroin on the street.

This lack of copyright laws made the high quality dealers constantly have to shift their brand names and stay topical, since the best brands were copied within days. Illustrating this: just recently, 52 glassine bags of heroin stamped both with “OBAMA” and an image of Sen. Barack Obama were confiscated following a routine car stop on Interstate 95 in Upper Chichester, according to Pennsylvania State Police. That’s an interesting way to support your candidate.

Examples of heroin brand stamps:
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So the Hannah Montana people wanted to sell some sort of Hannah Montana-related candy, great idea. She appeals to kids, kids love candy, it all works. But they should have at least looked in to the manufacturer of the generic “guitar” shaped candy before they got involved. At the very least, they could have mixed the colors up a bit. I mean, flesh pink?

via Popcrunch – Guitar Shaped Hannah Montana Candy

So it turns out John McCain and his family own 13 cars. The Dems are focusing intently on that partucular nugget for 2 major reasons. Firstly, because McCain previously said he “bought American literally all [his] life.” That highlights a disconnect, even if the cars really don’t belong to John McCain himself. Even if it’s not true, it’s a powerful image. For Example: “Not only does he buy Non-American…he has 12 non-American cars”

But all of those cars except the American-made 2004 Cadillac CTS are registered in his wife’s name. His wife is a wealthy car enthusiast/amateur race car driver and heiress to some of that deliciously thirst-quenching Anheuser-Busch money. So most likely, John has nothing to do with those other 12 cars (besides his Caddy).
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Goodness Gracious

Heat is a mainstay in marketing. Heat as in hotness as in sexy. The better looking the person, the more likely the consumer is to stare. That’s what its all about, manipulating the animal brain, and Olivia Wilde certainly manipulates my animal brain. Look at that picture for Pete’s sake.
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You know how on YouTube you can post a video then someone else can do their own video in response?

Here is a great way that EA Games and Tiger Woods used this to great effect with their ad.

First, take a look at the video that started it …

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