Category — Edgy Advertising

The Economist is one of my top five favorite magazines, I read it regularly. I also live in the Philadelphia area and eat pizza quite often. So I’m excited about The Economist’s new advertising plan: they connected with over 20 pizzerias in the Greater Philadelphia area, most of them near college campuses or dorms, and supplied them with Economist-branded pizza boxes. Each box has a pie chart that connects pizza consumption with global economics and politics. They encourage people to “Get A World View”.

This kind of ambient advertising is always interesting. Publipizz, a maker of advertising pizza boxes, estimates that a box of pizza is looked at by 3 people for at least 8 minutes and results in an 80% memory retention rate. Plus, boxes with advertising on them are less expensive for pizzerias, which makes them more likely to join in.
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Episode III: Raising the Stakes

The final episode of the Audi’s Arrested Development inspired advertising campaign, Meet the Beckers, has been released, and I’m excited.

In a world without new episodes of Arrested Development, it doesn’t take much to excite me. Even a commercial that’s vaguely similar to the greatest show of all time can give me a reason to get up in the morning.

Anyway, in the first episode, we meet the whole family. Jason is the regular guy, and the Audi driver of course. He’s bringing his girlfriend to meet his dysfunctional family for the first time. His aggressive brother Billy drives a BWM cuts off a Prius. His drunken, country club-visiting father (The Commander) drives a Mercedes. And his doormat brother (or brother-in-law, maybe) Lewis, drives a Lexus. It’s hilariously accurate and has lots of subtle jokes you may miss if you’re not paying attention.
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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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American Apparel doesn’t do high gloss sexy like Abercrombie or Calvin Klein. There’s no silicone or collagen or Botox. There’s no major Photoshopping or retouching the models. It’s a reflection of our idea of what sexy is as a society.

The perfect blonde on the beach is leaving our collective fantasy; our idea of sexy isn’t defined by film or by print anymore, it’s defined by the internet. Our generation has unprecedented access to smut, and it’s infiltrated our definitions of beauty and our everyday fantasies. Gonzo porn is our sensual fantasy now. Set in some freaks house as a 19 year old meth-addicted girl with low self-esteem knocks on the door. “I’m here for the party.”
Hott.
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Audi’s new ad campaign, Meet the Beckers, is the story of a wealthy, dysfunctional family, each of whom drives a different car. It’s slightly reminiscent of the show Arrested Development, if only because I have that show seared into the hilarity centers of my brain.

Audi driver and regular guy, Jason, is bringing his girlfriend to meet his family for the first time, for Thanksgiving. As he describes each new family member, we see them in their particular vehicle. Obnoxious brother Billy drives a BWM and has a bluetooth headset in his ear while he cuts off a Prius. His drunken, country club-visiting father (The Commander) drives a Mercedes and has a young trophy wife in the passenger seat, browsing a catalog of adoptable little foreign children. He pulls away with the wipers on and turn signal blinking. And, the effeminate, henpecked yuppie Lewis, with his insane twin daughters (who call him “Lewis”), drives a Lexus. It’s spot on.
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Blip Festival 2008: The Promo from Richard Alexander Caraballo on Vimeo.

The BLIP FESTIVAL 2008 is a four-day (Dec 4-7) event showcasing nearly 40 musicians and visual artists in the lo-fi chipscene. It’s presented by the Manhattan art organization THE TANK and NYC artist collective 8BITPEOPLES.

The chipmusic phenomenon is like 8-bit punk. They essentially use old video game equipment and home computer hardware as musical instruments. The NES, Commodore 64, Atari ST, Nintendo Game Boy act as the lo-fit, low-res, high-impact electronic music makers.
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PopCrunch has this odd advertisement for the Love Rug, which was a perfect example of 1970s freakiness. Made of polyester, of course, the advertisement offers it as an inanimate object to complete the threesome you’ve always dreamed of.

Heres the complete text of the ad:
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This is a Hai Karate commercial from the late 1960s. The idea of the ad is that Hai Karate is such a great smell, women will force themselves on you, and you’ll have to protect yourself. The box even came with an actual karate instruction booklet to help you defend yourself against rogue attacking women.

This idea is common in the fragrance market for young men. It’s funny, grabs your attention and appeals to the desire that young men have: to be jumped by women.

Check out the similarities in the Tag body spray commercial:
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Billboards are everywhere, in the city, on the highways, they’re literally everywhere. Consumers block them out, they know where ads will be and they simply ignore them. That is Ad Blindness. So now more than ever, it’s important to change the way you present your product, introduce novelty into your advertising. That’s the goal of guerrilla advertising, using a unconventional tactics on a small budget to make a big impression. But large companies can use these tactics too, with a large budget.
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Nice Watch

Embedded advertising is basically product placement turned up a notch. Product placement just means the product is in the scene somewhere, like a can of Coke on Dr.House’s table. Embedded advertising means the product part of the story a topic of discussion, like the can of Coke being the cure for Dr.House’s patients disease. Some people absolutely hate it and think shows like that might as well be infomercials. I don’t.
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