Great pic, but I guess it ain't art

AdFreak reports that this billboard for Bulgari, featuring a nude but strategically-covered Julianne Moore, has been denied posting in Venice for being too risqué.

Venice, people. Home to Titian:

Tintoretto:

And Veronese:

I don't know about you, but Julianne Moore seems pretty tame by comparison. Even... artistic?

It is part of a series, all of which pay homage to classic painting:

Colour advertising

Skin colour is one of the most variable external traits in the human race. But it says very little about who you are, except to reveal whether your ancestors needed protection from tropical sun damage or whether they needed to synthesize more vitamin D in the dark north.

So why are we still obsessed with it? And more importantly, why are our ads?

This first one, via Copyranter, is from Spain:

The headline (translated for international awards show judges, I presume) is "Don't let your colours mix". And the outdated joke about sleeping with the gardener (who is, of course, "ethnic") is played out for laughs. I'm not amused.

This next one, also from Copyranter, is an instalment from Johannesburg:

The bench says "non-whites" and is a throwback to the days of Apartheid. Underneath is a guerilla ad for Tropitone sunless bronzing cream. That's right — 46 years of massive human degradation and suffering harnessed to make a joke about fake 'n' baking. Not cool.

Meanwhile, as white south Africans are bronzing, Vaseline is helping men in India lighten their skin colour on Facebook:

I realize that there is a lot of complicated sociology behind cultural interpretations of skin colour, but in my opinion we just need to get the hell over it. This is the 21st Century, a diverse, connected global community. And we don't ever want to go back to the racist world of our great-grandparents:

(via boredpanda)

Burundi Monday 4: T.I.A.

According to Acart Videographer Christopher Redmond, this TLA* means "This Is Africa". It's an expression the foreigners at the Burundi Film Center use when confronted by extreme culture shock.

And that's what they're getting, now that the new crop of Burundian home-grown films is in production.

The BFC was established to develop media and filmmaking skills in post-conflict Burundi, so that the people of this nation few in the west have heard of can show their stories to the world.

Those stories can get a little brutal.

For example, in a film about a man who is down on his luck and ends up working at a slaughterhouse, the most practical thing to do was use a real set and bloody ex-cow props, even though it attracted scavengers:

Then, while filming in a marketplace, a vodka company representative decided to give out free samples, an action that in a place like Kigali can end up in bloodshed. Christopher tried to distract the crowds from the shoot by telling them they were extras in some fake second unit work. This gave them time to finish the shot and GTFO.

TIA indeed!

You can follow Christopher's international development work at BFC in his blog on Citizenshift.


(*old tech. industry joke: "TLA" is a three letter acronym for "Three Letter Acronym")

Fantastic Plastic Mockumentary

Fellow Osocio blogger Armando posted this epic "mockumentary" by DDB LA, about the secret life of discarded plastic bags:



It's long, but worth watching all the way through. That's because it has the three things that make a smart parody great:

1) Love of the subject matter — Just as Spinal Tap reveals the writers' and actors' obsession with rock music, this video betrays the Creatives behind it as nature documentary geeks like me. For every four minutes of hilarity, imagine a lifetime of Wild Kingdom, Lorne Greene's New Wilderness, and especially BBC's David Attenborough.

2) Attention to detail — This follows naturally from #1. To make it work, you're got to remain true to form throughout. The voiceover's British accent and over-dramatic delivery, the lovingly-filmed beauty shots, and especially the night vision are absolutely bang-on.

3) Playing it straight — This seems like the hardest thing for many advertisers and comedians to do. There's always the temptation to either let the audience know you're in on the joke, or to laugh at your own wit. But as soon as you break that fourth wall, all is lost. This video keeps a straight face to the bitter end.

Flickering Flappers in Full (well, not quite!) Colour

Apologies to those of you with whom I have already shared this video on Facebook and Twitter, but I'm still in awe:



Yep, that's COLOUR movies from 1922. The next time you grab some digital video on your iPhone and send it straight to YouTube, consider what a monumental accomplishment colour moving pictures were 88 years ago.

According to Kodak's blog, 1000 Words:

Shot with a dual-lens camera, the process recorded filtered images on black/white negative stock, then made black/white separation positives. The final prints were actually produced by bleaching and tanning a double-coated duplicate negative (made from the positive separations), then dyeing the emulsion green/blue on one side and red on the other. Combined they created a rather ethereal palette of hues.

Yeah, so it's not quite lifelike. But still a haunting set of visuals. Particularly when you consider that — with the possible exception of the little girl — all of these women are dead.

The identities of these women were almost lost to history — like the 1972 Playboy model whose face was used for early JPEG research* — until a film geek from a silent film fan site wrote Kodak with the following cast list: Mae Murray, Hope Hampton, and Mary Eaton (of the Ziegfeld Follies). The last woman, and the little girl (or is it a boy?) remain anonymous.

* This is another cool new thing I learned from Sex, Bombs and Burgers by Peter Nowak. If you're a pop culture anecdote junkie like me, I really can't recommend this book enough.

An open letter to the Can, on its 200th birthday

Dear Can,

Has it already been two centuries? You're still so full of beans!

I can't tell you how much you have changed my world. For marketers, you are the great-grand-daddy of packaged goods. But you are much more than that.

Your father, French inventor Nicolas Appert, must be so proud. That is, if he weren't long dead. And if his idea hadn't been patented instead by an Englishman.

But you, my friend, opened up a huge can of whup-ass on history. Before you, armies and explorers were limited by their ability to source fresh food. According to CBC's Peter Nowak, author of Sex, Bombs and Burgers, the Emperor Napoleon himself started the can rolling by offering a prize to anyone who could come up with shelf-stable food for his troops. By the second decade of the 19th Century, European armies were marching all over the world fuelled by tinned meat.

Oh, wait a sec. Does that mean you're responsible for Victorian colonialism? Ouch. That's got to keep you up at night.

That, and the murder of the Franklin Expedition. Well, I suppose I can't blame you for experimenting with lead solder in your youth. We've all had our toxic moments.

But you've had your successes, too! Consider SPAM. (No, scratch that.) OK, how about creamed corn? Oh,wait, I've got it. Your finest achievement was preserved for all time in art:

Those iconic images, and the comfort foods they represent, more than make up for some of your more embarrassing moments:

And yet here you are, 200 years later, rocking food preservation from soup to nuts. But I have some bad news for you, my old friend. Today you still form the staple of my pantry and my emergency preparedness kit. But the end may be near.

You see, the space age brought some changes to food packaging. It's taken 40-odd years, but now tetra packs and soft foil "retort pouches", pioneered by NASA, are really starting to take off. You may be recyclable these days, Can, but you're heavy and awkward (aren't we all, when we're older?) and you cost a lot to move around. I'm afraid we'll be seeing much less of each other in the future.

But this is not a goodbye, Can. Not yet. Whether or not you embrace my tomatoes a few years from now, we'll always have beer.

Cause marketing and the mother of all media

Caught this picture yesterday on Copyranter:

My immediate thought was, "important message, bad media placements".

Yessir, I'm jaded. But that's because, as an adman, I take the power of boobs very seriously. In the commercial world, as part of the lazy creative's holy trinity of "boobs babies and bowsers", they are used indiscriminately to sell clothing, food, cars, perfumes—you name it. Back in the '60s, one psychiatrist even saw "Mother McDonald's ample bosom" in the famous golden arches.

Reading my blog posts here and on Osocio, you may have the impression I have boobies on the brain. I do. But — man or woman, gay or straight — you do too. It's called being a mammal.

What I really want to talk about here, though, is the use of breasts in social and cause marketing. There are basically two ways to harness their power for good...

You can either cynically use them as borrowed interest, as PeTA does:

Or you can try to be relevant, by raising awareness of an issue that is actually involved with the body parts:

(That second one reminds women to get a breast exam)


Mammaries as media are too important and powerful to be overused or abused in marketing, even for a good cause. And that's my issue with the shirt/walking ad at the top of this post.

First of all, if you're going to come to a job interview wearing a novelty t-shirt, you had better be looking for a digital marketing position, and the only acceptable theme is old-school science fiction. Second, like a "my eyes are up here" shirt, it actually defeats its purpose by attracting attention to the areas that aren't supposed to matter. It's like sexual harassment entrapment.

I realize that the shirt proves an important point. I just don't think it's the right one.

What do you think?

Burundi Monday 4: Moving Pictures

Well, I'm back from a week in the wilds of Northern Ontario, and eager to re-enter the blogosphere.

This being the first day of the working week, and Acart Videographer Christopher Redmond still teaching film in Africa, it's time for another Burundi Monday.

Today, I'd like to share some still images from the field, captured by Artistic Director Bridget Redmond. (She and Christopher are married.) The pictures are lifted directly from the BFC blog, and give us a foretaste of some of the cool stories we're sure to hear on Christoper's return.

That's Mr. Redmond, eating local.

This is lunch.

This is inside.

This is outside.

And this is a wall.

Pretty wild stuff. You can see more pics, and follow Christopher and company as they begin shooting a new series of Burundian stories, at the BFC site.

A new breed of branding

I caught this nifty little toon about the evolution of advertising and branding on Talent imitates, genius steals



Created by British agency Cake, it's a nice summary of where the whole ad business is going.

For traditional advertisers, though, this brave new world can be quite intimidating. Just the other day, someone was asking me what the best practices were for creating a social media presence for a cause: should the image and voice be "official" or "personal"?

I, obviously, prefer the latter, but this is easier said than lived by people like us. We have spent entire careers in a world where brands were engineered down to the tiniest detail—complete with lengthy rulebooks and "brand cops" who would ensure everyone toed the line.

Today's brands truly evolve. They live or die by the whim of the Internet's vocal hordes—truly a force of nature. "Adapt or die" is no longer a marketing cliche. It is the only way.

So what does that really mean? Let's look at "Big Soda". Pepsi is gambling on its customers being altrusitic with the Pepsi Refresh Project, giving away more than a million bucks in Canada "to help fund Canadians’ ideas for moving the world forward in a positive ways".

Coca-Cola, for its Dr. Pepper brand, tried a different tactic in the UK. To try to position the pop as a more edgy brand, they hired a social media agency to create a campaign in which users would opt in to having their Facebook status hijacked by saucy messages and images referencing porn and things like peeing in the shower. This ended up as an object lesson in the demographics of social media, as outraged helicopter parents used their own social networks to force the campaign down.

I don't really think there are hard and fast "best practices" yet in social branding. Everyone is still feeling their way. But every win or fail by a major brand willing to take risks is building the stock of case studies that will help us all figure this thing out. And that makes this a very exciting time to be an "adman".

Speaking of social media, I'm taking a break from it next week. I'll be back on August 23 with another Burundi Monday.

A perfect advertainment cocktail

Doing a good ad parody is difficult, at best. You've got to play it totally "straight" while being just over-the-top enough to avoid being the very thing you are mocking.

And that's why I have great respect for the Party Like a Pro infomercial viral campaign:







It's funny, it shows an amazing attention to detail, and it the real product pitch at the end doesn't make you feel cheated. Advertainment at its best, brought to you by Malibu Rum.

Fighting Cancer: The Next Generation

Here's an age test for you. Watch this new cancer awareness PSA, and see how many young, up-and-coming TV and movie stars can you can recognize and name:



According to MTV, they are: Zachary Levi, Kristen Bell, Vanessa Hudgens, Logan Lerman, Andrew Garfield, Naya Rivera, Dakota Fanning, Zac Efron, Donald Faison, Jon Heder, Olivia Munn, Sofia Vassilieva, Clark Duke, William Moseley, Aubrey Plaza and Aaron Yoo. (Don't worry, I only got two by sight. Now get off my lawn!)

The Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C) campaign aims to educate youth about the high likelihood that they will be diagnosed with some type of cancer during their lives, and makes an appeal to raise funds to fight those odds.



This PSA will be broadcast on September 10 during a one-hour broadcast fundraising event that will be simulcast on ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, HBO, Discovery Health, E!, MLB Network, The Style Network, VH1, HBO Latino, Showtime, TV One, and G4.

Too Rich...

Sociological Images yesterday reported on this ad that appeared in various NYC locations:



You don't need to be a feminist academic blogger to see the issue here. In fact, the play on the Duchess of Windsor's famous quote "a woman can't be too rich or too thin" outraged one anonymous (male) culture-jammer enough to do his own "remix" of the ad:



Is it really so bad? The client insists (via Twitter) "We're a thin pretzel cracker... ‘Thin’ just happens to be a good word to describe the shape of our product."

And of course the old cliche never entered their minds. In fact, these folks are so unaware of any comparison of their product to people's desire to lose weight, that they took the first ad down and replaced it with this one:



Whatever you think about the social responsibility of this campaign in the era of eating disorders, there's absolutely no excuse for such hackneyed copywriting.

Burundi Monday 3: Love in the Time of Cholera Shots

In this third installment of my followup on Acart Viedographer Christopher Redmond's African journeys, I'd like to get a little mushy.

You see, Christoper has recently been joined abroad by his Burundi Film Center partner, Bridget. And by "partner" I mean "PARTNER". And also partner.

The story goes back a few years, to when BFC was first getting started. As Christopher blogs:

"I asked Bridget to come to Burundi in 2007, first and foremost, to document the pilot-project through pictures. As a professionally trained and award-winning photographer, I knew she could find a beauty in the chaos over here that might help us get the attention we needed to continue. It was no small bonus that she’d also been making films for 10 years and has design talents that we continue to exploit in all our promotional materials. She deserves far more credit than she gets for her BFC work, for sure, but I also preface her many talents to save face a little. A love affair was indeed born, but luring her deep into Sub-Saharan Africa to do so certainly wasn’t the calculated ploy many of my friends joke it must have been. At least I don’t think it was…"

Bridget, whose last name is now also Redmond, married Christopher last year in a ceremony at the Mayfair Theatre that was true to their film geek roots.



Bridget is also a committed media nut, but in her case the passion has led to a career in photography and film. In addition to her "regular" job, Bridget runs a wedding film business called First Kiss Films. Now, Bridget is back in Africa fulfilling her role as BFC photographer, documenting the group's work teaching video media skills to Burundi's next generation of documentarians and filmmakers so that they can share their stories with the world.

It's nice to see those film-crossed lovers reunited doing the work they love. And, as always, you can follow their story through regular updates in Christopher's blog.

The Unforgettable Fire

Walking to work today, I passed through most of central Ottawa, and I was disappointed not to see one chalk human silhouette on the pavement.

Today is Hiroshima Day, the 65th anniversary of one of the most brutal military attacks on civilians ever perpetrated. Whatever your feelings about whether it made a quick end to World War II, the fact remains that it was a sad day for our species when one group of people decided to literally nuke 140,000 (or more) other human lives out of existence.



Back in the '80s, we could never not notice the passing of another August 6th. Or, for that matter, could we ever forget about the threat of nuclear annihilation. As the United States and the Soviet Union played their high-stakes version of "chicken" during the endgame of the Cold War, those of us who were young and impressionable were hammered with reminders of our doom, like The Day After and When the Wind Blows.



No "duck and cover" for Generation X kids. More like "put your head between your knees and kiss your ass goodbye".

So for us, I guess Hiroshima and Nagasaki seemed like more than historical events. They were a very possible future. It was a reality that people around the world hammered home, on August 6, by drawing chalk outlines of themselves on pavement as a reflection of the "human shadows" burnt into the Japanese streets from the heat of the blasts.



Hopefully someone chalked up a memorial somewhere in the capital. I wish I had. But however we choose to note the date, there is one message we need to share:



Never again.

Perso nella traduzione

I recently stumbled upon this strongly-worded, if somewhat insensitive, ad from Italy on Ads of the World:



Why is it in English? Because agencies around the world long ago realized that to be understood (and blogged about) internationally, you need to put English versions online.

However, that is no guarantee that the ads will be reproduced in good English.

The body copy of this ad reads:

"According to many scientific researches people who smoke have an higher chance to die young

On the 31st of May, the World No Tobacco Day, the Mayor of Nettuno invites all the smokers to stop before it's too late"

But at least we can all "get" the ad. The real problem creeps in when the concept itself does not translate:




Well... okay then. I would have though pension and care would be considered good things when you get old.

The ads are by an agency called Link in Rome, for the nearby City of Nettuno.

If anyone can locate the original ads in Italian, I would be most grateful...

Angela from The Office gets catty

Angela Kinsey, who plays insane Angela Martin on the office, is the latest celebrity poster child for Alley Cat Allies. It's an American not-for-profit that advocates catch, fix and release — as opposed to euthanasia — as a response to the problem of stray and feral cats.

Angela joins previous celebs such as Portia de Rossi, Rue McClanahan and Paula Poundstone in supporting the program.

According to their campaign press release:

A national survey by the respected research organization Harris Interactive found that over 40 percent of Americans have fed a stray cat in their lives, and one out of five has done so in the past year.

Feral cats are the same species as domestic cats, but they are not socialized to people and prefer to live in family groups called colonies. Because they are not adoptable, they are almost always killed in animal shelters.

At the risk of being catty myself, I just wish they had released a larger jpeg of the ad, so I could read the damned copy.

Source: Ecorazzi

Bad Karma

CharitySA is a South African online listing service where not-for-profit organizations can solicit funds, advertise jobs, and generally make an appeal to the public.

But as Copyranter points out on ANIMAL NY, their ads aren't appealing at all.

(Once you're done dry-heaving over the images, click to expand to legible size)





Sure, these ads have been noticed, and are being talked about. But is this really going to motivate you to "do something good in this life"?

Me, I'm just left wondering what vainglorious admen come back as in the next life.

Burundi Monday, part deux

As promised, I am bringing the second instalment of Burundi Monday, following Acart Videographer Christopher Redmond's international educational outreach through the Burundi Film Center. But since it's a holiday here at home in Canada, I'm going to do the laziest thing possible and just excerpt his latest blog entry about teaching hopeful young filmakers how to tell their own stories to the world through video media:

"Today was the first day of class and everything seems to have gotten off on the right foot. The room was full, my lesson plan was tight and everyone was engaged throughout. We have a new hand-painted BFC banner, T-shirts (courtesy the Sam Group in Ottawa), and a number of volunteers who were helping me with attendance and presentation notes. Things were, dare I say, professional. Or at least that’s what I’m told.

...

The students this year, however, seem to have a lot more experience than in 2007. Once again, we went around the room asking everyone to tell us about themselves and give us a sense of their skill-level. Almost two thirds identified as a “cameraman”, which I should have expected based on the type of people who have contacted me over the years asking to participate. But there are also a number of novices, actors and a few journalists again, which should make for a nice mix.

...

All the preparation I had done in collecting French books and lesson plans has also been a huge relief. I was honestly learning half of the technical film terms the day before I’d teach them the first time. Now, with the benefit of not only having taught everything once, but also having worked on at least half a dozen bilingual TV commercials in Montreal, I’m fairly confident in sharing the basics. So today, we started from the start – the different types of films (fiction, documentary, animation, experimental), the major steps of creating a film, film genres, and a number of other general overview points to get everyone on the same page. Even the volunteers were often scribbling down notes, enjoying both the refresher and probably the new clarity I brought to the material.

...

When class was done, a volunteer came up to me saying he overheard a few people calling their friends telling them the class is really good, they should try to get in. Too much interest is a problem from 2007 I won’t mind having again."

You can follow the rest of Christopher's BFC blogposts at CitizenShift's Media for Social Change, including a recent brush with the police. But other than that, his trip is going well — especially since his BFC partner and wife, Bridget — has joined him on their journey.

Next week on Burundi Monday: A love story.