In the Always Sunny in Philadelphia episode “Paddy’s Pub: Home of the Original Kitten Mittens”, the gang tries to come up with various marketable products in an attempt to build the Paddy’s Pub brand.

Frank comes up with a gun that shoots alcohol directly into your mouth, Mac comes up with the dick-towel (http://www.dicktowel.com/), and Charlie comes up with the now world-famous ‘Kitten Mittons’. An excellent episode about advertising and marketing. Best episode yet. Check out the complete, uncensored Dick Towel video after the jump:

Also, if you’re interested in making your own pair of kitten “mittons”, check out this post on instructables.com:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Kitten-Mittons/

This is the new McDonald’s commercial that’s generating all the interest online. It’s called “Come As You Are”.

In it, a teenage boy sits in a McDonald’s, wistfully looking at his class picture and caressing it with his finger while talking to the obvious object of his affection on the phone. As his father approaches, he quickly hangs up and then listens to his dad tell him how much of a ladies’ man he was at his son’s age. The eventual reveal is that the son goes to an all boys school, so the object of his affection on the other end of the phone was another boy. That’s a twist ending worthy of M. Night Shyamalan.

It’s pretty bold of McDonald’s to air such an ad. The question is, is it really necessary? Did French homosexuals previously feel uncomfortable in McDonald’s? Either way, score one for MickeyDees for scooping up the huge teenage homosexual market in France.

The French website Yagg.com interviewed the brand director of McDonald’s France, Nathalie Legarlantezec, and got this explanation:

“We wanted to take a look at how French society is today. We’re very comfortable with the topic of homosexuality, there is obviously no problem with homosexuality in France today”. While the statement sounds a bit naive in a country where same sex couples cannot legally marry nor adopt, the idea was to give a positive image of the brand: “The point was not to show someone who is troubled, especially a teenager. We know it can be difficult for some people, but we wouldn’t have dared show someone who is struggling”.

“M.J. was introduced as the greatest player ever and he’s still standing there trying to settle scores,” one Hall of Famer said privately

In the lead-up to and in the wake of Michael Jordan’s big Hall of Fame induction weekend and the (disturbingly petty) speech he gave during it, Nike has been pushing these “Leroy Smith” viral videos. Question is, Who is Leroy Smith?
Check it, Savvyites:

Harvest Leroy Smith is the reason Michael Jordan had to play JV throughout his sophomore year of high school. He’s the man who beat out MJ for the last spot on the Laney High School varsity basketball team, and now he’s an internet meme with Charlie Murphy’s face.

Jordan says getting cut from the varsity high school team was a major turning point in his life, so much so, he even invited the man who got his spot, Leroy Smith, to his Hall of Fame induction. Looks like MJ’s obsessed.

During his speech (which, like I said, is doused with petty whines and weird ramblings) he makes Smith out to be just some goon who played high school ball and only made the team over MJ because some cosmic architect was trying to shape his competitive nature. What he doesn’t mention is that Smith was at least good enough to play ball at UNC-Charlotte, and then overseas in various minor leagues before he decided to quit and settle in with a sales job, get married, and have kids like a regular human being.

However, when Jordan mentioned his version of the Smith story to Nike executives, they created an ad campaign based around a washed up “man who claims to have motivated Michael Jordan”. Granted, it really screws with the image of the real Leroy Smith, but it is effing hilarious. Strangely, I don’t see any plugs for Nike anywhere in these videos. Maybe this is part of Nike’s anti-advertising thang. Whatever it is, they’re really pushing it, there are 15+ videos on the Youtube.com account and there’s even an NBA.com interview with the fake Smith.

So check it, here’s the complete collection:

Leroy Smiths Hall of Fame Petition

News Stories: Leroy Smith Exposed (1/4)

News Stories: In the Recording Studio with Leroy Smith (2/4)

News Stories: Motivation in Action with Leroy Smith (3/4)

News Stories: Behind the Scenes with Leroy Smith (4/4)

Leroy Smith’s ‘My Gift to the Game’ music video

Leroy Smith message for Peter R Casey

Leroy Smith’s 2-on-2 Hall of Fame Challenge

GetYourBasketballOn: Shuffle & Sweat

GetYourBasketballOn: The Mind Maze

GetYourBasketballOn: The Blind Mantis

GetYourBasketballOn: Giant Target Drill

Dragon Attack Drill

ABC Focus Drill

Welcome to Leroy Smith’s Website

via GetYourBasketballOn.com

This German ad for Bontrust Finance is… unexpected, to say the least. This sort of thing would never fly in the US. Well done though. Unfortunately, it looks like the Bontrust girl is a total whore. How dare she cheat on Lincoln… and with Mao of all people.

Credits:
Client: Bontrust Finance
Agency: Grabarz & Partner
Creative Director: Fedja Kehl,
Paul von Mindahl
Production Company: Optix Kreation
Animation Director: Andreas Pohl
Art Director: Petra Delitsch
Lead 3D Artist: Markus Geerts
3D Artist: Michael Gottschalk,
Florian Weyh,
Marc Goecke

M&C Saatchi has created a beautiful ad campaign for Sharp’s new series of high end air purifiers called the Plasmacluster, just in time for the sickness season and the swine flu. The ad shows a parade of bizarre bacteria, with visible organelles, all marching right up a giant nose.

It’s called “Bacteria“, and the illustration was done by a fantastic artist named Ronald Kurniawan, who I’m quickly becoming a big fan of. According to the agency, they specifically wanted to use his kind of surreal imagery:

“We opted for a light-hearted and surreal visuals to raise the awareness of the serious air pollution problem and just how many harmful substances we are exposed to in our daily environment, even at home.” – Queenie Fan, group account director of M&C Saatchi

Check out the complete, full-sized version of the ad below:


“Bacteria”

This really is one of the nicest print ads I’ve seen in a while. It’s aesthetically beautiful and visually complex, but with a straightforward and extremely simple concept. And it’s timely. Win.

Illustrator: Ronald Kurniawan
Ad agency: M&C Saatchi, Hong Kong
Executive creative directors: Sandy Chan, Simon Handford
Creative director: Francis Chung
Art Director: Takho Lau

These are some super fantastic new Scrabble ads designed to liven up the game’s image a bit. Over the past 60′s years that it’s existed, Scrabble has sort taken on a reputation as a favorite of only English majors and elitist word geeks; so it looks like their trying to reach out to a wider audience. They get it, they’re “hip”. Also, is that Ween playing?

The concept of all the words on the board coming alive and interacting is great, but I’m not so sure everyone will “get it” at first. I mean, the people who already like Scrabble probably will, but the more mainstream people they’re trying to recruit, less likely. Still, I love this ad, and the other two in the series:

Ad Info:

Title: THE BEAUTIFUL WORD
Advertiser/Client: MATTEL
Product/Service: SCRABBLE
Agency: OGILVY & MATHER, Paris
Country: FRANCE

Credit Details:
Chris Garbutt Executive: Creative Director Ogilvy and Mather
Arnaud Vanhelle: Copy Writer Ogilvy and Mather
Benjamin Bregeault: Copy Writer Ogilvy and Mather
Mihnea Gheorghiu: Copy Writer
Antoaneta Metchanova: Art Director Ogilvy and Mather
Alex Daff: Art Director
Najin Ha: Art Director Ogilvy and Mather
Benoit de Fleurian: Managing Director Ogilvy and Mather
Marie-Charlotte Lafront: Group Director Ogilvy and Mather
Herve Parizot: President Mattel
Arnaud Roland Gosselin: Marketing Director Mattel

I only wish ads like these would play in the US.
My questions to you: Do people still buy board games in this digi-techno-online-quickness culture? And, seriously… is that Ween playing in the first video? It sounds just like them, and they’ve done commercials in the past. Remember the “Where’d the Cheese Go?” commercial for Pizza Hut? Ween did a version first, and was rejected. Check them out:
Where’d the Cheese Go?
and
Where’d the Cheese Go? (explicit)

Here’s a direct quote from Deaner about those two minisongs:
“Earlier in 2002 we were hired by the largest advertising firm in the country to write music for a Pizza Hut commercial. Pizza Hut had hired them to come up with a whole new image to promote their new Pizza, “The Insider” which had all the cheese inside the crust. In keeping in line with their new cutting edge image, the agency hired Ween to do the music, and we delivered in a big way. Unfortunately, they didn’t like a single piece of the 6 tunes we submitted and they had us rewriting the song every day for a couple of weeks before they hired someone else. In my opinion, it is one of the best tunes we wrote all last year.”

Update:
Here is a very cool (although completely unrelated) stop-motion animation commercial done for Scrabble’s 60th anniversary. This one is from a few months ago:

A few months ago I wrote some words about American Apparel’s style of advertising, and how I think they’ve really tapped in to our collective idea of what’s sexy in the internet-pron age. That porn chic style of advertising has been serving them well so far, and just recently, they turned it up a notch and released a few ads with actual nudity. Now, I’m the first to say that some of AA’s original ads were actually more sexually explicit than an image of a woman’s nipple, but it’s still a line, and they’ve crossed it. Whether this will be a positive or a negative for them is still in question.

However, they’re not the only ones flaunting bewbz these days. The skin is spreading. Urban Outfitters has much less clothing on the models than usual in it’s newest catalog. But they’re still shooting in that hazy, soft-focus sepia that we’re so used to, so they can’t say they’re all that cutting edge just yet. Read on to see some pictures of the naked bodies selling clothes:

Currently, two websites are running AA’s nude ads – Debauchette and Reverse Cowgirl.

But AA and UO aren’t the only flashers in the fashion industry right now. I don’t have many concrete examples, but I swear it’s getting a lot more naked around here. The fashion shows seem much more nippely than usual and the fancy artfreak fashionistas seem to be publishing more skin than I remember seeing before. One example: Gravure Magazine’s black-and-white, 28-page spread of naked hot bodies. I sense a trend.

some of the American Apparel ads:

pics from the Urban Outfitters catalog:

and a few of Gravure Magazine’s noodz:

Burger King is all about the viral kookiness these days, and their latest advertising enterprise is actually pure genius. They’ve created the “Whopper Sacrifice,” Facebook application, which will give you a coupon for a free Whopper if you delete 10 people from your Facebook friends list.

Burger King got me interested with their Whopper Virgins ads, and initially I loved this campaign because of how it seemingly makes fun of all the Facebook obsessed freaks out there. The website says: “Now is the time to put your fair-weather Web friendships to the test. Install Whopper Sacrifice on your Facebook profile, and we’ll reward you with a free flame-broiled Whopper when you sacrifice ten of your friends.” And the app actually makes each “sacrifice” show up in your activity feed for everyone to see. It says something like “Vito sacrificed Jimmy James for a free Whopper.”

But I thought about it, and wondered what BK could possibly gain from this. And then it came to me:

The Kicker: The Foot-in-the-Door

In Social Psychology, there’s a tactic called the Foot-in-the-Door (FITD) technique which involves getting a person to agree to a relatively small request first, after which they’re more likely to agree to a larger request. Basically you ask for a small yes, then you can get a bigger yes, and so on. There have been a number of studies into the effect. For example, back in the 60s, some scientists asked people to either sign a petition or place a small card in a window in their home or car about keeping California beautiful or supporting safe driving. About two weeks later, the same people were asked by a second person to put a large sign advocating safe driving in their front yard. The people who agreed to the first request were far more likely to agree to the second. This tactic works because the human brain wants to be consistent, we always strive to align our opinions with what we know we’ve said in the past. That’s why “flip-flopping” is looked down on, even though, if you think about it… changing your opinion in the face of new evidence is actually a good thing.

So what Burger King is doing here is quite genius. Even though people think it’s no big deal to drop 10 “useless” friends to pick up a 2 dollar coupon, it may actually be having an effect on them. I wouldn’t be surprised if, after this campaign comes and goes, the customers who dropped friends for the coupon were actually more likely to frequent Burger King than those who didn’t engage in the friend dropping. Psychology plays a big part in advertising, now you know.

Brussels advertising agency So Nice sent out an email to its clients saying they need to shrink their staff, and asking the clients to choose which employee should go. The email had a link to youchoosewefire.be, where each of the prospective ex-employees lists their strengths and weaknesses.

The small 10 person agency has apparently been financially squeezed by it’s clients paying their bills later and later. Co-founder of the company, Laurent Duffaut, said the email was a “scandalous and provocative way to get a reaction from our clients”. But the email has generated a ton of interest outside of just its client base. In five days, the site has had 30,000 unique visitors casting 17,500 votes.

So with one simple email and website, they encouraged their existing clients to pay up, and spread their name around to new potential clients. Nice move. Unfortunately, it seems a little like holding a kitten hostage to me, appealing to your customers empathy…OR ELSE. It leaves a bit of a bad taste in my mouth.

According to the Jones’ Big Ass Truck Rental & Storage Facility website, Toby Jones is an aspiring rapper turned “street pharmaceutical sales rep” turned warehouse owner. His current warehouse supposedly cost him 1 dollar, and he’ll store whatever needs storing. Anything from Firebirds to elephants. The thing is, it’s not for real.

I called the number a few times, and nobody ever answered. It has an away message saying it’s Jones’ Big Ass Truck Rental & Storage, but it’s a cell phone, and the mailbox was full. Plus the website directs viewers to this website, belonging to a sketch comedy group called Big Dog Eat Child. So it looks like Jones’ Bis Ass Truck Rental & Storage is a clever viral marketing campaign for a comedy troupe. Well done guys. Unfortunately for them, the Jones Storage commercial is the funniest video on the site. See for yourself:

Breakfast Ninjas

Toby Jones is funnier, amirite?