Category — Marketing

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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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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This is a new feature on AdSavvy, it’s called “Best Ad Ever”. And keeping with our extended overuse of hyperbole, we’ll have a new one every week, or every day. I’m not sure yet. Maybe it won’t be back. Whatever.

Little Mac is back. After fifteen years, he’s ready to reclaim his title as W.V.B.A. champ. Fake documentaries are so ‘in’ right now, and this one is excellent. Well played Nintendo, well played.

Official site

PS- I’ve had the above website in my browser for the past hour and a half. I can’t stop listening to the theme music.

Check out the original Punch Out!! ad:
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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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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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I have somewhat of an obsession with colors and their names or designations. Whenever I can get my hands on color guides or paint sample booklets, I snatch them up. For instance, I have boxes full of those Pantone Guide strips; and having worked in the automotive industry, I have literally piles of automotive production color books with samples of all the exterior colors from various cars. I have samples from nearly every year of nearly every major make and model of car. There is something about the classification of color; I’m fascinated with the taxonomic designations and, more importantly, the aesthetic of all the sample colors lined up in neat rectangles with numbers beneath them.

Anyway… Mimosa. Mimosa is the color of the year, according to the “global authority on color”, Pantone. Read on about 2009′s color:
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During a time of controversy, the best way to win over public opinion is to convince the public that there is no controversy. Sometimes, when an issue is too complicated for the general public to make an informed decision on their own, they rely on the opinions of experts, and politicians stop debating the points of the issue, and start debating the consensus. That’s a consensus war. It’s happening with the global warming issue, and it’s happening with the economy. A reasoned, logical debate of the finer points of the fiscal policy won’t convince the average American. The only way to win the hearts and minds of the American people is to tell them the experts opinion.

Recently, Obama attempted to shut down the controversy surrounding his so-called “stimulus” package by saying “there is no disagreement that we need action by our government, a recovery plan that will help to jumpstart the economy.” Then later saying “economists from across the political spectrum agree” on the need for this massive government spending package. Of course, that is not the case. In actuality, many, if not most, economists disagree with the stimulus package. So in response, the Cato Institute took out a full page ad in the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Washington Times, and Roll Call disputing the president’s claim. Hundreds of top economists, including Nobel laureates and prominent scholars from major universities, signed the statement. There were more than 200 economists signatures on the original ad, and over 100 more have signed on since then. Read on to see the original ad:
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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:
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Nikon has this new series of ads for their S60 model of digital camera. The tagline is “The Nikon S60. Detects up to 12 faces.” It’s really quality marketing: it’s simple and it gets the point across well. Well done.

Ad Info:
Agency: Euro RSCG, Singapore
Photographer: Jeremy Wong
Executive Creative Director: Charlie Blower
Creative Director: Victor Ng
Art Director: Lee Hsueh Ling
Copywriter: Victor Ng, Stephen Kyriakou

Check out full size images of all three ads:
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