Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Go Digital of Die

Dear Saatchi,

The future looks grim for advertising agencies not willing to get on board with the future of advertising, according to Saatchi and Saatchi. In a viral video that hit the web less than a week ago, Saatchi gives a history lesson on the last advertising agency on earth. The unwillingness to recognize that times were changing resulted in the last advertising agency going extinct.

I understand the point of the video but feel that this conversation has been going on for a long time and think that Saatchi is a little late with their say on the matter.



I still feel that regardless of the medium it is going to be the ideas versus the execution that determine the success of our industry.

Sincerely,

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Playstation Brings the Future of Gaming...Today

Dear Playstation,

Its been a few years since Nintendo's Wii launched and chose the road less travelled compared to the graphic focused Xbox and Playstation. I was very skeptical of this approach but the Wii definitely proved me wrong. There have been a lot of grumblings from Microsoft's camp (and a very popular viral video) about there move into the world of interactive gaming and now Playstation just launched a new TV spot to promote their attempt in the same realm.

Playstation's spokesperson 'Kevin' comes to us from the future to unveil the latest toy from Sony and even takes a couple jabs at the Wii throughout the spot.

I look forward to Wii's rebuttal on this. Let the games begin.



Sincerely,

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Tropicana Provides the Sunshine

Dear Tropicana,

As much as I like the Old Spice 'Look at your man' spot (as you can see from my blog) I think that the new spot from Tropicana created by BBDO Toronto might be my new favourite ad of the year. While I appreciate humour as much as the next person in the world of advertising this spot does a lot more then make me chuckle.

This spot does a great job of furthering Tropicana's claim of bringing sunshine into peoples lives each and every day. In this new spot we find ourselves in the Canadian Arctic during its dark period that covers the area for nearly half of the year.



In an almost heroic type of effort Tropicana arrives with a massive light infused helium balloon to shed some light (literally) on the people from the Arctic and add some well needed sunshine to this small town.

This is a great example of how you use (instead of create) a real life situation to further an already great positioning for your product. The simplicity of this ad from the way it was shot to the final tag line "Because we believe brighter mornings make for brighter days" is absolutely brilliant.

I can only imagine that this ad will go on to do great things in the award circuit.

Sincerely,

Old Spice Song

Dear Emily and Matt,

Thank you for making that Old Spice commercial into a song and for doing it with two guitars and a whole lot of harmony. Two weeks ago Emily and Matt uploaded an acoustic version of Old Spice's 'Look at your man' spot that aired during this years Super Bowl. All I can say is brilliant. Surprisingly this is a pretty good make out track.



Enjoy!

Sincerely,