My friends Kenny Hammond and Brandon Crockett, an art director and copywriter at DDB Chicago, worked on this YouTube video titled “Something’s Missing” for State Farm Insurance. They used hidden cameras to get candid reactions from their unsuspecting…eh, victims. I think it turned out great. Have a look.

Ice Cream Truck

I can just imagine how my wife would flip if someone tried to pull a stunt like that with one of our kids. I’ve included the rest of this series as well. The car wash one was pretty funny too because the chubby guy nails his role so well.

Car Wash

Shoe Shine

Hot Dog

Foot Massage

Bike Rental

What do you think?

In another post, I already essentially endorsed BJ Lawson, North Carolina’s 4th District republican candidate for congress. Now I’d like to call out a grassroots effort to get him into office. There will be a Money Bomb for him this Sunday, June 29th. Already over 137 people have pledged to donate! And with the help he’s getting from Lew Rockwell and Campaign for Liberty (among others), that number could easily quadruple by the deadline.  They’re not asking for any specific amount—although I’m sure they wouldn’t object to you plunking down $2,300 (the legal limit) if you had it.

I can’t do much, but I’m going to make a small contribution just out of principle. Call it the widow’s mite—except that I’m married…and I’m male…and it’s not going to my church…and it won’t be the last money to my name. So on second thought, just call it a small sacrifice in the name of liberty and constitutional federal government.

Will you join me on Sunday and donate to BJ Lawson’s Campaign? This isn’t a rhetorical question. You can actually answer by leaving a comment below. Thanks.

See if you get this ad.

It took me sec, but I finally made the connection: don’t let down the stork (he fought off wolves for you after all). We all come into the world with unlimited potential; yet so many don’t feel like they live up to it. Instead, they end up pushing papers, scrubbing bathrooms, or flipping burgers.

I think we can all relate to some degree with the bored-out-of-his-wits office drone, yawning away his shift as he mindlessly performs his monotonous duties. And the tagline, “Your calling is calling,” particularly resonates with me.

Good job, Monster.com and BBDO (the ad agency that pulled it off). By showing us a looser, you’ve made a winner. Now good luck making back in site traffic what you spent in extravagant CGI.

One of my favorite athletes is Tiger Woods. He’s arguably more dominant in golf than Michael Jordan ever was in basketball. I don’t follow golf as a sport, but I follow Tiger as an athlete. He has an uncanny ability to perform under extreme pressure that I find entrancing. His play in the US Open last weekend bore all the marks of an ageless classic. Almost our entire office was in the kitchen glued to the TV during the final holes of Monday’s playoff against Rocco Mediate—even the bosses were watching.

This Nike ad, titled “Never,” aired during the tournament.

I love this one because it doesn’t stoop to clichés or schmaltz, even when it has every opportunity to. Somehow they managed to pick just the right footage and music to turn what could have been a disrespectful commercialization of Tiger and his late father into an inspiring piece of art. Perhaps the most amazing thing is that his father’s bold statement, “Tiger, I promise you that you’ll never meet another person as mentally tough as you…in your entire life. And he hasn’t. And he never will.” turned out to be prophecy—at least on the golf course.

Here’s some highlights from the US Open, in case you missed it.

Here I go, blogging about beer ads again. This time it’s Bud Light Lime, a new beer from Anheuser Busch. DDB Chicago (where I interned) made these spots. Apparently, they were intended as much for an online audience as broadcast TV, so the director tried to give them a YouTube-ish feel.

The Mascot thing isn’t a new concept. However the drastically shortened, headless CG torso on “Limey” is. One look and you’ll be saying, “that ain’t natural!”

Limey getting crazy with coasters

Limey Skateboarding

It’s almost like someone gave one of the little M&M guys a set of nasty bare legs and forced him through citrus purgatory. Then bah-duh-bing-bah-duh-boom!—the resulting freak-of-nature instinctively knows all sorts of tricks with a skateboard and coaster. And why not! I for one have always wanted to know what would happen if a lime sprouted appendages and came to life possessed by the combined spirits of Tony Hawk and a ninja bartender. Thankfully, my mind now rests in ease.

With the tag line, “It’s amazing what a little lime can do”, they get their message (beer with lime) across effectively, and the videos are funny/bizarre enough that you might even want to show them to a friend or two. So they probably work. But since I don’t drink, I really have no idea.

Thoughts?

These St. Patrick’s Day radio ads for Finnegans Irish Amber are gut-busting, laugh-to-tears hilarious. A wee bit irreverent? Yes, absolutely. They start out “blessed are those who drink Finnegans,” and then it’s all down hill from there. But if you can make it through the sacrilege and the thick Irish brogue, you’re in for a fun 60 seconds.

Now I’d like to point out that I’m not endorsing this product in anyway. To tell the truth, I don’t even drink. As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (more known as the Mormon Church), I live by the Word of Wisdom: a law of health that prohibits consumption of alcohol, coffee, tea and illicit drugs.

But I also recognize as well as anyone that beer (or in this case, ale) commercials are some of the funniest out there. So for me, this is all about the brilliance of the ad’s writing, music and voice talent—not the beverage. In fact, I have a brother that served a mission for our Church in Ireland and he can attest to how true these are to the Irish culture.

That said, onto the ads.

“House”

“Karate”

I’d like to emphasize an interesting strategy behind this concept (besides the fact that “Finnegan’s donates all its profits to charity”). Finnegan’s is actually calling attention to the obvious inebriating effects of their brew; something I’ve never seen in any alcoholic drink’s ads. It’s not glamorous, but it’s honest—and in this case, hysterical.

For once, an alcoholic beverage company is willing to own up to what everyone knows in the first place: if you drink enough of the stuff, you’re going to get sloshed. You have to hand it to them for being willing to tackle the issue at all—even if they’re just trying to sell more of it, not warn against its adverse consequences.

And besides, you have to give credit to any ad that can get away with saying “karate potion” or “domicile”—no matter what the context.

By the way, I found these on the 2008 Radio-Mercury Awards Finalists list (the highest award in radio advertising).

Congrats to BJ Lawson for defeating his mudslinging primary opponent, Augustus Cho! The final tally? A landslide: 71 percent to 29 percent.

And while I’m basking in the splendor of this victory, I’d like to mention a creative (and brilliant) marketing move that Lawson employed during his primary contest. He and his supporters gave away 10,000 copies of the U.S. Constitution. Think about that for a moment. Rather than his supporters just spitting out the obligatory “vote for Lawson” and offering some tired, seen-it-a-thousand-times-before flyer, imagine them asking you, “would you like a free copy of the Constitution?” What a fresh, emotionally-gripping proposition! No matter what party you belong to, such a unique gesture would at least make you think twice before giving your normal, preprogrammed rejection—unless you’re a red-blooded communist, of course.

Another benefit: He’s creating a great brand for himself. Now, when people hear Lawson, they think Constitution. Not a bad association.

And on top of that, this focuses his efforts on educating the people, not pandering to the beauty-contest politics that we’re all so used to. I’m guessing that out of the 10,000 people who accepted a copy, at least 90% of them had never read our nation’s founding document front to back in their lives. And even if they still haven’t, I think it’s campaign money well spent.

So as the Republican Party’s nominee, Lawson is now poised to take on Rep. David Price—the stale, spend-o-matic, 22-years-in-office-too-many embodiment of federal government gone wrong.

For the general election in November, he’s shooting to give out 100,000 Constitutions! It’s time that we the people learn exactly what it is that comes after…“We the people…”

Here’s a nice video his supporters put together for him.

This ad aired during the NCAA National Championship Game—just one of a slew of great ads during the event. My buddy said he was actually more impressed with the NCAA’s commercials than this year’s Super Bowl offerings

What makes this ad so funny is the performance by the out-of-touch business exec that wants to “go viral” and “get on the Net” to “blog it out.”

Interestingly, Directv depicts the guy who cares about the blogosphere as a total self-centered dingbat. For a company trying to show off their technologically-advanced prowess, it’s ironic that they’re also subtlety poking fun at the new media—apparently “tweens” are the only ones that care about blogs—that now makes and brakes products and brands. However, considering the fact that I’m writing about their ad and posting it on my blog (free advertising for them), they probably know exactly what they’re doing. Still, they don’t have this posted on YouTube yet. So they’re not totally with it.

There’s a few more ads to this campaign here—though not as funny as this one, in my opinion.

I found this poster series on the Communication Arts website.  In collaboration with the Arbor Day Foundation, the in-house design team at Nebraska Book Company made these to promote the purchase of used text books.

I love the balance of color, the paradoxical concept, and the way the illustrations use negative space, allowing your eye to instinctively complete the image forms. And notice the clever use of the inverted recycle logo to create the v in save—a nice little touch of visual wit.

Ironically, the tag line, “Buy a Book, Build a Forest,” reminds me of an anything-but-politically-correct bumper sticker I saw as a teenager in Idaho. Its message aimed to achieve the same end, just through different means. It read, “Save a Tree, Eat a Beaver.”

Skittles has put out some pretty wacky commercials lately. This one’s no exception.

The piñata man is funny and memorable; however, will it sell? As entertaining as this concept is, I also found it rather unappetizing—not exactly the emotion you want to elicit when convincing people to buy candy. On top of that, the thought of Skittles combined with chocolate wigs me out. Sounds like a bunch of small, over-hardened Tootsie Rolls. But then again, I’ve never met a Skittle I didn’t like.