The Bullshit Observer

Cadbury Eyebrows TV Ad

Cadbury Eyebrows from Nils-Petter Lovgren on Vimeo.

Take a look at the Cadbury video from Fallon London. A really nice, clean, and simple idea. Kids playing a song with their eyebrows (and a bit with a balloon). Great casting choices, simple art direction, and a good choice of song. The page where I got it has nothing but positive comments on it about this spot.

But I'm sorry.

Without even a thin thread of logic tying back to the product, you don't got shit. The creatives for this spot should be in a different industry. This isn't something that will sell the client's product. And if it doesn't sell the client's product, then you're just wasting their money and their time on a personal art project. And that is advertising malpractice. You should be sued.

It's A Great Time To Invest

A Unique Sales Pitch For Palm Devices

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From the creator of The Bullshit Observer...a new blog

Together with some friends, I have a new blog creation called The Conceptualist. The topic will be completely fresh ideas and it will feature the same whimsical analysis that you've come to expect from The Bullshit Observer. The idea of The Conceptualist is not just to notice new things, but to celebrate brave thinkers and to marvel at their creations.

How is this different, you ask?

Well, I think it's probably the only blog I've seen that lives entirely in the world of ideas. It's not just about highlighting bizarre new inventions like Geekology. It's not about displaying new products like bazillions of blogs out there. It's about taking the new ideas and turning them over in our minds and seeing how they got that way and what they could become. It's as much about the why as it is about the what. In short, it's about conceptualism - the act of seeing past what is there to what could be and talking about it.

Incidentally, the header image is my friend's daughter, Sophie swimming underwater.

This means, of course, that The Bullshit Observer will need to take a back seat for the time being. That means that my posts will be more sporatic. To any regular reader out there, I am sorry to interrupt your BSO experience.

Svedka Vodka Gets Into Politics

Svedka Vodka thanks Hillary for an exciting primary season in this full page NYT ad, and offers her free vodka through November 4th. Also redeemable, but inadvisable, by  John and Barak.

The Svedka fembot is on a first name basis with the candidates, apparently.

Putting the party back into party politics is, I think, a very wise and humorous advertising direction for a Swedish Vodka. What better way to thrust your brand into the limelight and draft off of the category five media storm that is the American presidential race? I can't think of one. 

Probably one of the cleanest (distilled 5x) vodkas out there, I wonder if they're going to break out a hate-free, anti-negative political stance later on during the election process. That would be interesting. And smart.

Check out the Svedka Vortex widget with content from The Onion and Perez Hilton.

Dear Jetblue, what is this jetting you speak of?

Trotting down Market Street on my way to Walgreens, an advertisement caught my eye. It said, "Flying. It's why we created Jetting." and it was signed by Jet Blue. To which I have to ask, what's the difference? They do seem to be synonyms. It would be a bit like Coca-Cola saying, "Drinking. It's why we created guzzling." or Hilton Hotels saying, "Relaxing. It's why we created kicking back." And by created, we do mean that we went to our thesaurus and laid claim to our favorite synonym. 

On closer inspection, flying is indeed a more generic term meaning to go through the air untethered to the planet despite the gravitational effect pulling you to the planet. Jetting does imply the more specific form of doing this untethered travel in a jet. A jet is also a little bit sexier sounding than a plane. Maybe it's all those times we heard about so-and-so bazillionaire criss-crossing the world in their new private jet. Oooh fancy fancy. A jet, huh? Or maybe it's the phrase jet setting, that means to travel all the time to interesting locales. It starts to make me think of first class a little. And that's probably why they laid claim to that particular synonym.

So is jetting a fancier way of flying? This Jet Blue ad certainly does imply that.

But is jetting actually different? JetBlue business was built on delivering a better customer experience ... one that is worthy of talking about. So better customer service, in Jet Blue's case equals a more "jetting-like" experience. According to this professional air-travel commentator, they do appear to earn their use of the word jetting. They also apparently have their own customer bill of rights and they've created this neato microstie to explain jetting to people.

Above all else, JetBlue Airways is dedicated to bringing humanity back
to air travel. We strive to make every part of your experience as simple
and as pleasant as possible. Unfortunately, there are times when things
do not go as planned. If you’re inconvenienced as a result, we think it is
important that you know exactly what you can expect from us. That’s
why we created our Customer Bill of Rights. These Rights will always
be subject to the highest level of safety and security for our customers
and crewmembers.

I commend them for all of this and feel like that through their actions, they were able to avoid this being a little cheap linguistic gag and more of a mantra. Other companies try to do this, but they don't put their actions behind it. That said, they can't really think people are going to adopt it. "You know, I was thinking of flying to Denver, but then I said, hell, I think I'll go ahead and jet there instead."

One last thing, I can get jet lag, but I don't think I've ever had fly lag.

Ready...aim....SPLAT!

General Mills has launched a site called The Good Food Fight to promote eating better in America. Kinda funny coming from the company that owns the Pillsbury Dough Boy, Lucky Charms, Haagen-Dazs, and Hamburger Helper. But we give them a little break because they're being clever for once.

You can choose your healthy recipe of destruction (I like Spaghetti and meatballs, but how healthy is that really?), then you choose your opponent (I like the hot dog vendor), and begin.

Your opponent then pops up in the content section of a web page with the healthy recipe on it and taunts you for about 60 seconds while you guys throw food at each other. Sometimes the taunts are educational ("Here's your recommended daily dose of Vitamin E, buddy boy"). The gobs of food he/she throws wind up hitting the other side of your screen - obscuring your view a bit. The one's you throw hit the web page and start to break parts of the design as your opponent scampers out of the way.

It also allows you to "Ambush a Friend" (send a friend technology).

Incidentally, this site was created by Hello Design out of Culver City, CA and was up for a Webby earlier this year. Nice design. Clear IA. Excellent animation. I loved the way the site pretends to break when you hit it with a meatball or something.

Ads For Penny Arcade Game So Fan-Centric They're Mind Boggling

The name of the game is "On The Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness" and it's based on the popular, thrice-weekly webcomic named Penny Arcade. It's an interesting sub-culture, this Penny Arcade, where ...apparently.... saying the opposite of what you really think is considered funny and/or poignant. That's why these ads are talking about how horrible their new game is. Because they really think the game is awesome. It's an inside joke.

It makes sense to market the game to your base. But to the exclusion of everyone else?

Here's a little snippet of the game review from Jason O. at GameSpot:

Fans of the popular Web comic Penny Arcade know it to be many things: smart, vulgar, irreverent, vulgar, witty, vulgar, and so on. Those elements are certainly on display in Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness Episode One, a graphical adventure game that features Gabe and Tycho from the comic strip, along with other characters. What’s not so familiar, though, is the setting, an alternate 1920s universe where suburbia, pre-Great Depression America, a lot of weirdness comes together. With the game due out in the second quarter of this year, we got a chance recently to watch an extensive play session that showed everything from character creation to combat to the first boss fight. What we saw will appeal to Penny Arcade fans, however its colorful style and even more colorful humor may strike a chord with those who haven’t read the strip.

Sounds like maybe a good game for anyone with a sense of humor.

If you're going to make an ad for a bidet

...this would be the one to make.

I think, as an advertising creative on the LooLoo, you'd have a hard time getting around the fact that water from the product is supposed to shoot into your privates and that it would have to feel good. The good feeling would have to be quasi-sexual and hence your product gives orgasms. That's just how advertising works. LooLoo automatically equals oooh yeah.