Tag Archives: Advertising

Mean Joe Greene & the Old Spice Manly-Man

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Isaiah Mustafa in Old Spice ad Jian Ghomeshi’s Q on CBC is run­ning with guest hosts dur­ing the sum­mer, and the August 3rd show was hosted by Terry O’Reilly of Age of Per­sua­sion fame. (lis­ten online) The first 20 min­utes are Terry’s explo­ration of the Old Spice cam­paign with Isa­iah Mustafa that’s get­ting a lot of press after going viral and run­ning a hugely suc­cess­ful real-time social media dia­logue with their spokesper­son.. Amid the inter­views, Terry talks with the pair respon­si­ble for the cre­ative on this project and con­sid­ers how the cam­paign is out of char­ac­ter for par­ent com­pany P&G — the whole seg­ment is worth a listen.

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Local Commercials can be Pure Gold

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Some­times an ad can be so bad, it’s good — so over-the-top that it just does the trick in spite of itself. And what­ever else it may be, it’s mem­o­rable. I thought about that as I watched an ad for Cull­man Liq­ui­da­tion Cen­ter.

Yes, it’s a real busi­ness, with the T-shirts to prove it. You can check out the back-story on the mak­ing of the com­mer­cial as well. And to cov­ers the basics: “Be there, say something.”

In my locale, every­one knows about and remem­bers Nick Hill and his campy fur­ni­ture com­mer­cials. (He’s a local adver­tis­ing leg­end, who would talk to a sta­tion and say things like, “Remem­ber that spot we did in the fall of ’82?”) And if every­one knows, then you could cer­tainly argue that it’s work­ing, couldn’t you?

It’s the Asterisk, Stupid*

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This sign has irked me for the past few years when­ever I drive past it. Finally I snapped a quick photo with my phone. (Click to enlarge, sorry about the poor image qual­ity, etc.) You may not know from the sign, but it’s a used car dealer. Of course. You expect a used car dealer to use an aster­isk, don’t you? It’s a cliché. This one uses a brack­eted “o.a.c.” for the same pur­pose. Here’s what we say (oh, but here’s what we actu­ally mean).

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Advertising Fail: Coors Light

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coorslightbillboard Ah, the many prob­lems with a Coors Light bill­board. As noted on a brewmaster’s blog, they should per­haps be apol­o­giz­ing for “insipid beer”, but instead have put up a bill­board insult­ing Torontonians.

Sure, maybe we all love a cold beer, but what I want to know is how any­one thought it advis­able to pin an adver­tis­ing cam­paign on a “fea­ture” that is com­pletely out­side their con­trol. And what the heck does “cold cer­ti­fied” mean, any­way? Is an imag­i­nary cer­ti­fi­ca­tion an even bet­ter point of dis­tinc­tion on which to adver­tise the product?

Absolut Anthem

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Beau­ti­ful work for Abso­lut Vodka by Mark Figli­ulo of TBWA in New York. The ad fea­tures work by a group of artists who cre­ated art instal­la­tions in loca­tions around the world. The ad spells out the core phi­los­o­phy of Abso­lut, which I also found inspir­ing in keep­ing with a recur­ring theme around here: “Think Differently.”