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Adwatch

adwatch

HTC's First Big Ad Push Focuses on Fingering

This is HTC's first big TV ad in the US. Rather than focus on their devices individually, HTC's going for a general "brand" awareness. Seeing as how they've previously marketed their phones under the four big providers' own names (AT&T TilT, T-Mobile MDA, Verizon 6700), it's a smart step in breaking away from their control. This particular ad, one of a few that will hit print and online outlets, is underwhelming. It wants compare the HTC Touch with the iPhone (implicitly), but if you've read any of the many reviews of the device, you'll see that it's nowhere near as usable. If we were HTC, we'd focus more on their slide-out QWERTY devices that are like Sidekicks, but for businessmen.

adwatch

ThunderCats Were Loose On Palace of Westminster

When most DVDs are released, production studios put up some posters and run a few television spots. However, when ThunderCats Season 2 hits store shelves...lets just say Lion-O isn't settling for an afternoon at Kinko's. Instead, he boldly emblazons the ThunderCats signal onto London's Houses of Parliament. While some surely see the stunt as a subversion to a great tradition of government, others will realize that during the global fight against terror, nothing instills fear into our enemies like occasional real world manifestations of 1980s cartoon superheroes. [shinyshiny]

apple

Bad Vista "Reviews" from Apple's Latest Vista Sucks Ad Not Actually Reviews

You'll probably be seeing Apple's newest "Vista Sucks, OS X Rules Your Face" ad, starring hilarious John Hodgman and perpetually besmirked Justin Long all over the web soon. Basically, the banner keeps pulling up bad Vista quotes as Hodgman hammers the emergency banner refresh, but neither of them are from actual reviews of Vista—even though that's what Hodgman calls them. More »

adwatch

Michael Bay, Transformers and Giant Explosions Shill for Verizon FiOS

Verizon's new FiOS ad is a splashy, big-budget popcorn flick compared to Time Warner's cheaper, low-fi satire spot. It even stars the king of big boom summer movies, Michael Bay, blowing a bunch of shit up and hanging out with Transformers, saying the word "awesome" a whole lot. Come to think of it, it's pretty much exactly like his movies, which you can pirate even faster with FiOS. Awesome! [Verizon]

adwatch

European PlayStation 3 Ad Actually Makes Sense

Ditching the whole crazy people in a motel motif that dominated Sony Europe's first year of PS3 marketing, SCEE's gone and made a commercial that shows off what the PS3 can do and entertains at the same time. It wasn't easy, but we think firing off the employees that were shooting up during work hours was a good start. Save that crap for your own time. [Crunchgear] More »

gaming

Mr. T and William Shatner World of Warcraft Ads Make Us Want to Be Level 70 Mohawks

Most of my friends play World of Warcraft. I don't. I suspect that these hilarious new spots featuring cult icons Mr. T and William Shatner are aimed at me—if you're not a geek or know nothing about the game, they have little appeal, like an earlier spot. But they're going to be national TV ads, leading me to two conclusions: WoW's popularity is peaking/has peaked. So they're wrangling the offbeat pop cultural status its South Park episode cemented to try to lure in people of my ilk. Or maybe I'm just reading it wrong. Either way, catch at least the Mr. T ad after the jump. It rules. More »

apple

Apple to Run iPod Touch Ad...Made By a Teen Fanboy

Arn over at Macrumors points out this cool story of an iPod Touch ad being run by Apple. The thing is, it was made by Nick Haley, an 18-year old student, inspired by "Music Is My Hot, Hot Sex" by CSS. Nick was flown in to the LA offices of TBWA/Chiat/Day to do a HD version of the spot. UPDATE: Apparently this was in a Zune ad first. [NYT via Macrumors]

adwatch

Smellivision Ads, Coming to Billboards

The prospect of smellivision has intrigued Man since he was enjoying the earthy scent of dinosaur cooking over an open flame, wishing He could exploit its musk to sell more dinoburgers. At long last, NTT Communications is incorporating smells into their digital signs. Using one billboard (OK, LCD display) as an experiment this month, visitors of the Tokyo JR train line will get to see beer and smell delicious oranges. More »

sony bravia

Sony Bravia Ad Covers Pyramid in String

This Sony Bravia ad that aired in Egypt may or may not "take inspiration" from an uncredited artist (we haven't checked), but it is quite neat. Not to spoil the ending for you (it gets covered in string!) but, well, a pyramid gets covered in string. If actual Sony Bravia refresh rates were this bad, we'd go pick up a book or something. Nah, who are we kidding. [Adsoftheworld]

adwatch

Sony Bastards Ripped Off the Bunny Tsunami Ad

What the Hell. When I saw this morning's post on the awesome Sony Bravia Bunny Ad, featuring multi-hued rabbits climbing through a cityscape transforming into a tidalwave, I assumed it was the work of my favorite artists, the LA-based kozyndan. By my front door, I have a framed print of one of their limited edition NYC bunny panoramics, which I've put below. Aside from this, they're probably best known for reworking of Hokusai's "Great Wave off Kana gawa" with bunnies inserted in the place of the white wash, which was featured on a Giant Robot magazine cover. I was only half right about kozyndan's involvement with this Sony project, unfortunately. They were robbed: For pretty damning proof, watch the video, and read on.

More »

norton

Symantec Advertises Norton 360 Antivirus in Japan With Ultraman-esque Character

We're not passing any judgment on Symantec's Japanese advertising campaign where they take an Ultraman-like character and have it beat up several black "virus" characters on the street to hype their Norton 360 product. Why? Because it's actually pretty awesome. Way more awesome than the crappy anti-virus ads we get here in the US, which lack distinct a "men on the street screwing with people" vibe. Even if it's slightly and subtly touching on Japanese racism to have a yellow-colored man beating up a bunch of black-colored men. We still approve (minus the racism part). [Norton Fighter via Japan Probe]

clips

Michel Gondry's RAZR2 Ad

We last saw Gondry working his craft for HP's money, but now he's taken his weirdly fluid visuals and made a 60-second spot for the Moto RAZR 2 as well. If you're a Gondry fan, you'll be sure to enjoy the fact that he takes a boring spec sheet and turns it into a subtle, but interesting montage of cellphone features. I'd like to see the director work his magic selling Windows Vista Service Pack 1 in a similar manner. [Super Punch via Neatorama]

Microsoft's Rap History Continues Past Windows 386 to MS-DOS 5 I'm glad I never have to watch that Windows 386 video again, but this MS-DOS 5 promo video is just as bad. If not worse. Okay, it's probably worse. [YouTube]

adwatch

Serena Williams and HP Ads


More US Open/gadget combo posts. Here's a new HP ad by Serena Williams. Fact: I recently discovered that these commercials were made on HP workstations at the Goodby Silverstein agency in SF, not Macs as I'd assumed all ad agencies do. This comes by way of an HP exec, but only the people at Goodby know for sure. Great ad, either way, especially when Serena tosses the competition away like a little gnat.

ads

Heineken Beer Robot Oozes Sexuality, Beer

Beer companies have been using regular women to sell their product for a while, but when they get into robotic women, that's when we start to pay attention. Thanks Ray!

cellphones

Sprint Offers The BlackBerry 8830 World Edition, the First $10.5 Million Cellphone

This $10.5 million cellphone from Sprint comes with many nice features we've covered before, but has a delicious bonus that you can't find anywhere else. We're in for five. You win again, advertising. [Sprint]

oh, the horror

Old PS3 Online Banner Ad Now Banned in the UK for Glamorizing Violence


While this clip isn't the ad at issue, it's from the same series of "This Is Living" spots you might remember Sony put out months ago. The banned banner features Kovac (the guy in the tub) simply holding a knife and gun below the lines, "You on my side? Listen up, I've killed for less. The music plays Puccini in my head." More »

adwatch

Paul "Boner Jams" Rudd is a Huge SNES Fan


Anyone else remember this ad for the Super Nintendo from the early '90s? It features Paul Rudd, better known as the "Boner Jams" guy from 40 Year Old Virgin, or the dude they jammed in on the last season of Friends, or the guy from Knocked Up, or the guy you've seen in a bunch of parts all over the place. He jams the cartridge in much harder than the manual indicates is proper, but plays the hell out of a bunch of games as his buddies all watch behind a chain-link fence. Oh, how we envied Paul Rudd. [Game Videos via Joystiq]