Save the world - Showerpool!

Showerpooling to save water?

I suppose it directly related to my previous post about guys getting clean - now women can get in on the action too.... err.... no pun intended.

Axe Canada launched an environmentally friendly campaign encouraging people to showerpool.... Using a french accented woman, people can save 5 times the amount of water if instead of 5 people showering alone, showered together.

I'm glad to see on their facebook page, they have a call out to the WWF and ways to save water without taking your clothes off.

I like the idea of this campaign - the execution is totally in line with their other recent spot (Clean Your Balls) where the sexual innuendos are trying to be more subtle than girls fighting over a guy down a street, in a bar, in the shower... etc

It is time to clean up Boys!

Recently, there has been a massive push to get men down the grooming isle.

Next time you're in a Shoppers, PharmaPlus, Loblaws, Walmart... etc. Check where the men's bath products are. I'll bet you (a hypothetical) 10 bucks that the men's products are mostly likely at the end of the isle close to the main thoroughfares.

Why? Because men are MEN. They don't buy body wash! They don't smell "pretty" and what the heck is a LOOFA?!

Well.... not so much anymore, maybe.

Take a look at what Axe and Old Spice have done to the men's grooming business... and Dove is taking a shot at it now too.

The emphasis is on still being a man, smelling good and still getting the ladies. Welcome to "Man 2.0" And I think it's working.Men are conscious of how they look and present themselves. They look good, smell good and I like it!

You can clearly see the different age targets at work: Axe: the young blossoming man that is into Sex, Sex, Sex humour; Old Spice the 25 - 40 range guy that likes the more subtle random humour that a bit more sophisticated and Finally the Dove man - the family man. However, the message is always the same BECAUSE YOU ARE A MAN.

I love the Old Spice work (and scent). Talk about taking a old brand and making it relevant and .... awesome.

Old Spice website
The man your man could smell like (my favourite)


I'm a Man


Axe - they've always pushed the boundaries - taking more of a shock value than the kind of humour seen in Old Spice


Balls (this spot makes me awkward)


Dove for Men

Re-branding to BORING.

Taking the fun out of the Internet isn't really all that much fun....

Ebay, the auction giant and PayPal pusher, has decided to re-brand their Kijiji classified site to ebayclassifieds.com

and all I can think of is.... barf, how boring!

The success of Google has sometimes been attributed to its funny, goofy and random name. The name "google", as far as I know was made up as something that was fun and people wouldn't know. Of course now it's a verb and a noun and adjective and.... you get the idea, its fun.

Ebay claims that though Canadians love the Kijiji site, it wasn't catching on in the US - and so they decided to dumb it down to Who made it: ebay and what is it for: classifieds.

Here is the GlobeandMail article.

PS the name Kijiji comes from:
The word "kijiji" (pronounced like key-gee-gee) means "village" in Swahili. This name was chosen because it captures the essence of what we are creating - a site where people can connect with others in their local community.

It's no accident: If you look down at your keyboard you'll noticed that the letters k, i and j are located next to each other. So you see, it's all about local for us.

PPS. apparently Google comes from Googol
1 googol = 10100 = 10, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000
It is equal to ten duotrigintillion and a hundredth of a tretrigintillion.

YIKES!! Check out the explanation here.

you didn't ask if i wanted a REAL one!

"It's a piece of Junk!"

These Ally commercials are well recognized for being creative, inventive and cruel. I have to admit, I laugh a lot especially at the red truck and more recently the Pony one.

Are they using real childrens' reactions or are those reeeeally good actor children? I feel bad for the creators if they are real reactions - imagine telling that little blonde girl she can't take the pony home? Worse yet, imagine being the kid :(

Interesting take on "wrongful advertising", ridiculous conditions and hiding behind fine print .... At least i now know to ask for a REAL pony.

I like it. I now know who Ally is.... success?

Red Truck


Pony


Bike

Teaching Americans through viral and social media networking!

Talk about a promotional piece for Canada!

Tom Brokaw's segment on the Canadian-American relationship made my patriotic heart swell and taught me a few things.

It's also felt a little like a Tourism Canada commercial for Americans. However, for all the flack we give Americans for not knowing anything about their neighbours to the north (think of Rick Mercer's amazing portrayal of "Talk with American") this might've actually helped create a much more constructive way of teaching Americans about Canada - mind you they would have to actually SEE the spot to learn

I think this Tom fellow has a heart-on for Canada, even at the very end he makes an incredibly poignant comment about the economic stability of Canada... that might've stung the American's a little.

In the air of being patriotic, I would suggest that everyone post this youtube link to their facebook and share it around to everyone they know - maybe we can Americans to better understand of Canada through a little viral, social media networking!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYoTJItSPt0

Tourism BC and Tourism California - Battle of the Celebrities

Visit BC, seems a little bit like Visit California....

Beautiful landscape shots and celebrity cameos doing all the voice overs. It's really not surprising that the American ad focuses on the individual and the Canadian ad focuses on the province itself, both claim you have to be there.

Call me biased or riding on an Olympic patriotic high - but I like the BC one better...

BC - You should be Here:



California - When can you Start?
Click Here



......

The snuggie on 'roids?

Ahh, remember when you were a kid and you had the footie pj's? The ones that zipped up the front, had the non slip soles and when you got too big for them you cut the feet off so you could keep wearing it?

Are you sad you had to give them up and nothing keeps you warm the same way? Did you try the snuggie but found the back-draft too chilly?

Well have I got an offer for you! The Hoodie-Footie. This clever little product HAS TO BE A JOKE. However, I don't think it is despite the laughter it caused.

Please enjoy the hilarity - and if you dare to purchase one - invite me over.

Super Bowl 2010 Ads: WIN and FAIL

Ahhhh the Super Bowl. Where diehard football fans and advertisers meet up for chips, beer and big screen entertainment.

I realized, if you have the right mix of people, there should never be a bathroom break line - the people into the game go at ads and the people in to the ads go at the game. Genius.

I would be going during the ads.... if Canada got the super fun US ads. Thank goodness for the interweb, where I can spend the better part of my Monday morning watching all the US ads that we miss north of the 49th parallel (it also means I can take a "break" whenever I want without fear of missing something). Check out all the ads HERE.

On to the ads. I have posted what is, in my opinion, the BEST and the WORST.

The BEST: Google.

Watching this spot incited such an emotional reaction that I felt like I was at the end of a well written romance. Google hit the nail on the head with a simplistic love story. The spot showed the capabilities of Google, a search engine, while telling an increadible tale of a man moving to Paris, learning the language, falling in love, getting married and having a baby with just their search field. They even captured common spelling mistakes and the ability of Google to still understand what you meant. A story in 30secs, without a face, name or verbal dialogue.

This is the kind of spot I dream of making.

The WORST. Watch the spot and you'll understand. They've spent millions of dollars on an ad that is pointless and tries way too hard to be funny. Crappy ad + wannabe funny = FAIL.

The disappearing act

I stumbled across this SunChips ad (creative agency: Juniper Park) and I really liked it! The simplicity is really nice, the music reinforces the emotional feeling really well and though I often scoff at the realistic-ness of the claims - I actually believe SunChips.

Maybe I'm just searching for a warm fuzzy feeling but I do think they've done a great job here. I also think it was a better execution than "T-Shirt" only because it was easier to read and understand the point.

One more - this time they have an interesting use of an Aussie accent when talking about American chips and California....

I hope more brands will start heavily pushing R&D to make sure that what SunChips has started and broken through with becomes "old news" and the norm.... but is that too much of a warm fuzzy feeling again?

SunChips has taken the campaign to really really creative levels that perfectly ladder up to the essence of the brand, check out this super simple billboard ad, talk about using something seemingly mundane and often ignored to do something truly interesting

Be Stupid. .... really?

I struggle with the new diesel campaign: Be Stupid.

Check it out:


It strikes me as trying too hard and not really that original an idea. I understand that they are attempting to push consumers into thinking differently and with a different perspective of what is stupid but I just couldn't agreed with them, though the music is catchy. Perhaps because I'm not the diesel target? Or did they just miss the mark?

Diesel claims that Stupid is brilliant, has the stories, the balls and creates. I struggle mostly with the idea that Stupid is how this gets done and "Don't be stupid is the crusher of possibility". I think being stupid is the crusher of potential and opportunity...

I decided to trot on over to Dictionary.com to look up the meaning of "Stupid" to see if my internal definition was skewed... it wasn't:

stu⋅pid

–adjective

1.	lacking ordinary quickness and keenness of mind; dull.

2.	characterized by or proceeding from mental dullness; foolish; senseless: a stupid question.

3.	tediously dull, esp. due to lack of meaning or sense; inane; pointless: a stupid party.

4.	annoying or irritating; troublesome: Turn off that stupid radio.

I've thought about this campaign for about a week and I still don't like it but perhaps I'm just near sighted or closed minded or..... STUPID? (though I guess in their eyes that would make me brilliant?)

Here is their online landing for Be Stupid: http://www.diesel.com/be-stupid/

To each their own?

My inital thought when i read the article in the globe and mail about the guy who got Ray-Ban glasses tattooed to his face was "what an idiot..." but soon after shrugged and thought "to each their own, it's not my face, doesn't bother me"

The article mentions about how far companies should go to promote their brand - it's unknown if Ray-Ban has any involvement (if you know, fill us in!) but they are for sure reaping some viral attention. In my opinion, if someone is dumb enough to get a tattoo on their face for some fast cash - then go for it. They weren't forced into it, they made the decision.

Here is the viral Ray-Ban video



For us Canadian, did it not make you think of the recent Excel Gum commercial for the 2010 Olympics?

I'll have a Diet Coke and a Men's size small....

Vending machines for clothes?! Sounds bizarre but it's real.

Mark's Work Warehouse has set up a clothing vending machine in Toronto's Union GO station in Toronto. We've all heard of the insane vending machines you can find in Japan that literally sell anything, but you'd be hard pressed to find vending machines in Canada like that. Check out this blog to see some really fun, interesting and weird Japanese vending machines.

Mark Work Warehouse's goal is to be in more places and be more visible. They've paired up with IBM to develop these vending machines and hope to roll out more if they are successful. As the first retailer to really offer this kind of shopping experience in Canada, they have some big hurdles to overcome. Canadians aren't used to this kind of shopping, think about how many people still refuse to shop online. This is a major shift in how people shop, though given a situation where a big stain threatens to become a the only thing people notice about you (see the funny Tide ad below) then maybe having a shirt at the ready is a pretty convenient thing to have!

I'm interested to see what the future of this will be. The vending machines have been out since December and so far this is the first I have heard of them. I haven't seen any advertising or viral buzz floating around, except for this article in The Star.

Would you buy a shirt from here?

Print is not a dead medium

Using the printed page to some advertisers is considered to be archaic. Brand managers are pushing their ad guys to push for more interactive online channels, flashy banners and new social networking site features. However, there is a growing trend for brands to go back to the printed page to draw consumers back online - through their phones.

A little while ago, ecommbyablonde brought you a couple posts about interactive magazine pages: one from Nike and another from an article in the globe and mail.

Now the New York Times is running an article about the progression of using smartphones and magazine pages to drive sales. It is incredibly interesting to read about the technology, how it is being used and even where it started from. Check it out here.

Have you purchased anything online or used your smartphone to access more information from a magazine?