“The Fast Lane” by Volkswagen

Sounds like it could be a pretty cool summer job. Who’s in?

I’m not sure what to say about these ads by McDonald’s apparently released in Japan In 2005. They’re pretty compelling in that they feature attractive people wearing Ronald McDonald like clothing making one say to oneself “what”? I also wonder why the image bends when they present the burger. Am I supposed to be hallucinating? Does the burger actually move like that? And will I look like these people if I eat these (tomato?) burgers? Or should I just sit in a room with a pretty serious draft waiting for the right moment to reveal that I’m not just sitting here, I’m sitting here holding a burger behind my back?

Are these supposed to be Ronald McDonald’s kids? Or maybe they were just trying to start a trend of dressing up like Ronald in Japan.

“Step by step, a group of painters brought the perfect Stella Artois to life as a 20 x 50 foot stop-frame animation high over the New York City streets. And in the process, they revealed an untold story of tradition, sacrifice, and an industry dangling preciously on the brink of extinction.”

This first video is the project from start to finish, shot in time-lapse.

The Ritual Project – final timelapse from The Ritual Project on Vimeo.

This second video is the documentary about the painters and the dying art of huge mural advertising as vinyl becomes cheaper in rough economic times.

UP THERE from Jon on Vimeo.

The effort put into this campaign should not be overlooked. I don’t live in NYC, so there is no way I would have seen this project taking form other than the documentation of it via “The Ritual Project”. I suppose Stella wanted the project to documented and thus sponsored “Up There”.

While we’re here talking about Stella you may as well check their homepage, where you can win a trip to Cannes. This is the first time I’ve seen a webpage like this ask you to connect to Facebook upon entry. Normally this is something I wouldn’t do before really understanding what I was connecting to, but because I’ve been looking at all these Stella ads I thought I would take a chance. When you get into the site after connecting with Facebook, a video starts showing a bunch of rich people looking for the person who is going to attend Cannes. The cool part is when they start going through photos of people, you see images of your friends, and then they finally end up on a picture of you. They got me at first. I wondered how my friends had been put onto the webpage, then remembered the Facebook connect.

Well played Stella, I’ll cheers to that.

You can watch the video yourself but the basic premise is Darth Vader is in an audio studio recording his voice for the TOMTOM GPS. He just can’t seem to get his lines right. Silly Darth Vader, I’ll never understand how you became Supreme Commander, Dark Lord of the Sith. After a bit more digging I found their campaign page over at TOMTOM DOT COM (which is even cooler to say then read). The only problem is I had to use my own will (or maybe they used the force on me? You see that’s the crazy thing about the force, you don’t know when it’s being used on you) to go check the site to see what else they had going on – and of course, they have a game. Everyone has a game. And of course in the game you can Tweet and Facebook your scores. Hooray!

So I love the video, and I’m glad they’re jumping on the social media train, but the person who deserves the big paycheck is the person who came up with the idea to be able to buy new voices for your TOMTOM. Are you kidding me? That is just to genius. For $12.99 I can download some voice that is hilarious and entertain my friends while I drive around lost because I never memorized the names of the streets in my neighborhood. I love it!

In conclusion. TOMTOM needs to give that employee a raise. Pool Worldwide: brilliant, well-executed ad campaign, I hope it’s paying off.

Though the idea is simple, it seems the technology is a bit complicated. A consumer comes to a video and is able to click on various objects which then causes a link or some sort of display change within the video. This is exactly what Diesel has done. The photo shown below is a screen capture of what happens when you roll your mouse over their ad. The video stops and arrows start to point at everything that is available to be purchased through Diesel. As you move the cursor around, you discover different items that you can buy (as seen below). You can then click on any item and a little box will appear within the player asking if you’d like to buy, or get more info.

I wouldn’t argue that this is the best way to shop, but I would say that it’s an interesting way to discover clothes that maybe you wouldn’t have seen by just browsing their web page. It’s also interesting to see how the clothes fit moving people rather than just sitting on models. Again, I’m not sure that will convince you to buy something, but it might. The reason this is so spectacular though is the fact that you can shop while you’re watching a commercial. It seems that this is any brands dream. Imagine if you were at home watching television and you could pause a commercial, or even a show, click on a item, and buy it right there. That would eliminate several steps including pulling out your computer, searching for the item all over the web, then buying it.

The technology for this on television may be pretty far away, but I see no reason for a show not to start making some serious money off labeling everything in their show, contacting the brands and taking a cut of all items sold through the show. It would definitely change the viewing experience, but it would be totally controlled by the consumer, stopping the show when they wanted to know more about a product. Online you may even be able to take away the repetitive commercials this way. I think this is the wave of the television and consumerism future and whoever gets on it first wins.

To watch Diesel’s video, click here.

What I was looking for when I headed over to 37 Signals’ homepage was the format of their web pages. I’m working on a new project at work that will bring a new perspective to our company – the idea is to create an atmosphere that brings people back to our site for other reasons than to see what our products are about. Basically we don’t want our webpage to be totally static, so we’re looking to create more content – like we used to do with “Seesmic du Jour“. 37 Signals does this quite well – even stepping outside of their digital presence into the print world.

They have a book! It’s called “REWORK“. I’d like to make a few points here:

37 Signals is a company that makes easy-to-use web apps for businesses. They say on their site “Every day the world’s most respected brands, small businesses, non-profits, and entrepreneurs depend on our products to make their businesses run smoothly. Safe, secure, and reliable. Since 2004.”
So you could go to their site to download software, or to see what people who use their products think about it, but you can also keep up with their “daily thoughts and opinions” on their Signal vs Noise blog. Or, you could get their book “REWORK” which they have made a very clever video advertisement for and posted on YouTube.

So let’s look at this business construct that they’ve designed – it’s awesome. First they’ve made a several products that people love. Second, they’ve designed a web page that is welcoming and informative. When you show up to it you can find figure out what they do – without information overload. They’ve made a blog that they regularly update and therefore bring people back on a constant basis. They’ve written a book. If you read the book, it may lead you to the company – as it did for me. If you go to the blog, it may lead you to the YouTube video, which will lead you to the book. The web page advertises the book. Everything links back to them, their brand, their company. I’m not sure if they’d prefer you use their products, read their book, or follow their blog – but I’m sure they’d be happy if you did any of those. The point is – their reach is massive, now spreading beyond their own web page and into pages that you physically flip in your hand – a book that our boss wants his employees to read.

This is a salute to 37 Signals and their awesome brand presence.

Not only does this video make GEICO look like a “good” (in the “not evil” sense) company filled with “good” people, it makes it look like a fun place to work. I’m telling you, if your company has the money to hire someone to make videos about how awesome you are, you should. If done right, the video will grab viewer’s attention and remind them about how cool you are. Could you imagine if Coke suddenly started posting videos about the crazy hi-jinks that happen at Coke Corporate? I’m telling you – people would watch it, love it, and think that Coke was the best company on earth. Well played GEICO.

I’m not sure if this ad passes the “Is My Ad A Cliche?” test. I mean, it is an ad for dog treats so it seems like it should pass. Either way, it’s so damn amazing. Advertisers, you’ll get me with slow motion every time – but slow motion dogs?? Give me a break that’s just too good. They love those treats, you can tell. I’m thinking about getting a bag of Pedigree just to give to dogs I see on the street.

This ad comes with a Facebook page (good on you), and a “Denture Your Dog” page where you can put up a photo of your dog and add dentures to it. That’ll be sure to get you to the site where you’ll then send a photo of your dentured dog to your friends, who will then dentures their dogs. Then they can send the photo of Rusty to their family who will laugh all night long at how funny Rusty looks with dentures. They’ll talk about how they should denture their dog Charlie who would look SO FUNNY with dentures cause he’s old and greying. Then they can e-mail a photo of Charlie back. You see how the campaign goes…

I made this of my mom’s dog so she wouldn’t have to ask me how to do it later.

I found this ad via laughing squid.