I would imagine that after attaching such a strange contraption to your face while on a plane, one would actually find it more difficult to nap, mostly because of the uncomfortable mumblings from your fellow passengers and all the painful taserings from federal air marshals.
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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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The Problem: Budweiser’s sales were down 9% last year and are down another 9% this year. The brand’s been losing customer loyalty consistently over the past 5-10 years, as can be seen in their ranking among national product brands – which slipped from 16th in 2003 to 220th in 2010.

The Reason: The major beer drinking age demographic, 21-34 year olds, consists of ironic hipsters and testosterone-challenged “progressives” who are switching to microbrews, wine, and abominations like Smirnoff Ice in droves. In fact, microbreweries specifically have more than doubled their production since 2004.

What Budweiser is doing about it: Good advertising…
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Based on purely anecdotal evidence, and our professional opinion, there is no question as to this year’s most effective commercial and the overall winner of the Super Bowl ad wars. Not only was this Doritos commercial the best of the bunch, but the overall best group of advertisements goes to Doritos hands down. They were witty and fun and creative and just plain viral.

Check out the other Doritos commercials below.

We’re getting so excited about the 2010 Super Bowl Ads this year that we’ve decided to jump the gun and do a little speculate. Then, as the Super Bowl Ads actually appear online on video sites like YouTube, we’ll post them here with our analysis. For ad junkies, the Super Bowl is like Christmas.

So what’s going to distinguish the 2010 Super Bowl commercials from previous years? You want to know the truth? Nothing. They will still focus on cute little babies, animals and humor. There might be some very subtle sexual innuendo.

Marketers know human nature. They know what moves people. And the 2010 Super Bowl ads will pretty much follow the same formula – hopefully with some added twists. Perhaps the real news will be whether America still approves of Tim Tebow when all is said and done.

Stay posted… Super Bowl Commercial videos to be posted below.

I have just been having yet another debate about Mac versus PC. These debates get tiring and I have been on both sides of the argument. After all, I am a Mac fan but have never hated Microsoft. Heck, in the early part of my career made a living out of supporting Microsoft technologies. Even now I write about Microsoft Excel software tools for one of my clients.

The problem is sometimes it has hard to defend Microsoft when some of their advertising decisions make them look even lamer rather than support their brand.

Take their attack ads aimed at Apple. Turns out they used deceptive advertising. First they used actors to be their “real people”, as you can see in the screen grab below where the “store visit” tool less than a second, including researching all the product in store (the bald man is still walking by as she enters, shops and leaves … fastest shopper ever). Then they had to edit the part where they imply the competing Apple products are more expensive than they really are.

Fastest Shopping Trip Ever

Way to help your argument Microsoft!

“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:
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or WTFuturism?

I love speculation about the future, mostly because it usually goes so wrong. For instance, in 1985, Ebony Magazine published an article called “Portraits of the Stars: What They May Look Like in the Year 2000“. In it, they commissioned an artist named Nathan Wright to depict what he thinks “today’s” (1985′s) artists would look like in the year 2000. The best part… Michael Jackson. Read on for the pictures:
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TAG Heuer recently ran an ad campaign for their Monaco brand watch. It was a contest to guess the winner of the above “Duel” between two important figures in the history of the Monaco series, Steve McQueen and Lewis Hamilton. The contest officially closed on June 10th, 2009. Apparently, it’s been one of TAG Heuer’s most popular online contests ever.

According to TAG Heuer, Lewis Hamilton won the Duel… but I don’t think anyone wins with this ad. They sliced up the original footage from the Steve McQueen 1971 film Le Mans to shoehorn his image into the ad, and then used a poor quality voice actor that sounds nothing like him to dub over his lines. Ironically though, McQueen’s shoehorn/voiced over performance is better than Lewis Hamilton’s actual performance. And McQueen’s been dead for almost 30 years. Overall, the ad is fairly lame on that level. Still, it has racing footage, so I can’t call it all bad. Check out the full version:
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