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Category — Experimental Ads

McDonald’s New Commercial Appeals to the Coveted “Gay French Teenager” Demographic

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.
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October 14, 2010   Comments Off

The Mind-Blowingly Vast Scale of Honda’s New Insight Commercial – “Let It Shine”

Honda’s new commercial for the 2010 Insight has a deceptively simple appearance. A series of shapes and patterns flash across what looks like an old Lite-Brite set, or maybe an LED panel, or perhaps even just a series of computer generated dots on the screen. It’s nice to look at and nice to listen to, due to the pretty music playing along. Simple and nice. The interesting part is that the flashing dots are actually the flashing headlights of 1,000 actual Honda Insights. One thousand full sized automobiles, arranged in a gigantic grid in such a way so they appear to be a perfect rectangle from the camera’s vantage point.

Check out the “Making of…” video near the end of this post:
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June 30, 2009   1 Comment

How They Did It: Samsung’s i8910 Omnia HD Viral Video

When the above video came out last month, Samsung issued a challenge:

GUESS HOW WE DID THIS. This clip was shot on an I8910 HD phone, a new camera phone just released by Samsung with an 8 megapixel camera that can actually record and output video in HD format. It was shot in one take, with no post production or special effects of any kind. Everything you see here was done “in-camera”. Our challenge to you is to figure out how we did it. Hint: it’s worth watching in HD…

Now, there were some people who were all like “Bah, this is just viral bait and I’m not biting”, but you have to admit, it worked well. The video has been viewed almost 800,000 times, and there are thousands of people commenting on it. So kudos to them. Remember the candy bar, Kudos? Remember them? They were good, what ever happened to them? Do they even exist still?

Anyway, here’s how they made the video. Check it:
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May 12, 2009   1 Comment

DIY, Open Source, Programmable LED Signs with the Peggy 2

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So you want an ultra programmable, versatile, high-brightness, RGB LED display that can run animations and scroll text and do all sorts of interesting things. And you want to build it yourself. Well, the internet shall provide.

The Peggy 2 an updated version of the original Peggy LED pegboard display made by EMS Labs. It’s an RGB color version with a bunch of extra updates like easier animation and Arduino capabilities. You can drive up to 625 LEDs covering up to almost a square foot of area with it. And it can be run on 3 D-cell batteries.

So if you’re into the DIY and MAKE stuffs, and you’re handy with a soldering iron, check this one out. Very, very cool stuff; and 100% open-source. Check out a video:
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May 8, 2009   1 Comment

The Beautiful Word: Very Cool French Scrabble Commercials (Is That Ween I Hear?)

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:
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April 27, 2009   Comments Off

KFC and PETA Fight To Fill Potholes

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The free market works.

It’s been less than a week since chicken chain KFC offered to pay for the repair of potholes in some cities so long as they could advertise over the patch, and there’s already a bidding war for the job. PETA has offered to pay double what KFC has, so long as they can stencil in their own, anti-KFC, advertisement, pictured below.

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April 1, 2009   1 Comment

The Star Wars Force Trainer May Be The Toy Of The Year

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I am so looking forward to the Star Wars Force Trainer.

The Force Trainer is basically a simplified type of EEG machine. It comes with a headset that measures a players brain waves and allows them to manipulate a ball inside a clear 10-inch-tall tube. It translates your brain waves into action, just like a biofeedback machine. This is the first time EEG technology is being used in toy, and the potential uses are endless.

Not only can it work as a fairly inexpensive (it’ll be $90-$100) biofeedback machine to help children learn how to achieve a relaxed state of mind quickly… but imagine what can be done with this thing by some enterprising “home engineers”. This machine translates brain waves into electrical signals, that means with minimal effort, a person could perhaps rig a light switch to the headset, or the power on your TV.
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January 14, 2009   Comments Off

Whopper Sacrifice: Prove Your Love For The Burger King

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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:
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January 8, 2009   1 Comment

New Ambient Ads For Kellogg’s Crunchy Nut Cornflakes On London’s Pavement

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Up until this afternoon, I was totally unaware that the cereal eating habits of society change during the colder parts of the year. It makes perfect sense though; apparently, cold cereal sales drop off during the winter months as people switch to hot breakfasts like oatmeal and farina.

In an attempt to keep customers eating their daily bowl of cold corn flakes during the autumn months leading up to winter, ad agency JWT London has created this “ambient” campaign for Kellogg’s Crunchy Nut CornFlakes. They enlisted the pavement artist Jon Hicks to draw large Kellogg’s bowls around London sidewalks, and sweep the autumn leaves into them to emulate the cornflakes. Clever stuff. Check out some pictures of Jon Hicks working:
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December 27, 2008   1 Comment

One Ad Agency’s Way Of Getting Clients To Pay Their Bills: Pick Whom To Fire

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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.
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December 23, 2008   Comments Off