Shots’ ten best vids of 2010
Shots is a bit like the Face magazine to Marketing Week's Financial Times of the advertising industry, though it's not exclusively on ads. Assorted virals, music vids and trailers also feature in what is mainly a look at cool stuff and creativity within the industry.
It's a bit wanky (they've got their own embeddable vid players for crying out loud - these people are serious multimedia nodes) but it does appeal to the part of me that admires adverts and the like as unique, intense art forms that can be absolutely superb. Shots compiled a top ten, well, things of 2010 - some of which are adverts.
No Go Compare, Halifax or Iceland here - though some old favourites and old enemies do rear their heads at some point.
Old Spice: The Man Your Man Should Smell Like
AdTurds approves. Brilliant campaign, executed superbly.
OK Go: This Too Shall Pass
The latest iteration of Honda's Cog advert. Impressive, but they didn't exactly get there first.
Puma: Hard Chorus
Mmmmm. Juxtaposition. Well done.
Philips: DarkRoom
Stunning, but what the hell is going on? Little Blade Runner riff, more than a tad on the edge. Cool. But is that enough?
John Lewis: Always A Woman
No, no, no, no, no.
Nike: Write The Future
Soccergasm #1.
Dulux: Let's Colour
I like stuff like this. Don't care what anyone says.
Adidas: Cantina
A stilted, awkward cashgasm that's not original in the least.
Nokia: Dot
Lovely little piece that combines nice visuals with showing off the product. Wonderful.
Levi's: Ready To Work
Mmmmmmmmmmm. Not sure. Nice idea, now convinced by the execution. Next up: Phileas Fogg tries to turn Consett into something other than a shithole, using mignons morceaux.
Top ten AdTurds of 2010
Here are the top ten AdTurds of 2010, by traffic. They don't really reveal how searched-for the ads were - the VanCompare advert is only so high because several outraged Sweet fan forums linked to the site, urging other Sweet fans to attack me - but as a good rule of thumb, these ads must have stood out from the crowd.
That may be because people loved them, hated them or just wanted the chance to see them again. Either way, with certain caveats, these ads made an impression. Make of that what you will.
2. Bing adverts
5. BT - Adam and Jane 'What Happened Next' results
6. WeBuyAnyCar
7. Carlsberg's World Cup advert
Campaign blows wad on top ten ads features
The Campaign website - the title that focuses on advertising at the sprawling Brand Republic empire - has gone top ten ads of 2010 crazy, with a veritable smorgasbord of best, worst, most surreal and celebrity-themed listy link-bait stuff.
Since it's presumably staffed by people who presumably have their ears to the ground in the world of ads, rather than venting spleen on a blog, and features a hefty industry-based community it's interesting to see what those in the industry think of last year's offerings.
Nike's vaguely hysterical Write the Future spot for the World Cup absolutely reeks of cash but I couldn't get particularly excited about it (though I did like the smaller Rooney spot, which had much more charm and wit). Whoever's writing the ad copy for Campaign virtually spunks over it in two different lists. Ho hum.
Big hitters such as M&S, John Lewis, John Smiths and Virgin seem to go down very well in Campaignland, while the lower ends of the market - the Go Compares, Icelands and ComparetheMarkets of this world - get nary a look in.
I don't really agree with many of the choices of the supposed best ads as they mainly seem to comprise cash-heavy, celeb-heavy tie-in ads - Christmas and the World Cup most obviously - that are heavy on spectacle and clearly cost an absolute bomb.
The John Lewis ad is again described as an advert that made adults cry; a claim that seems, to me, to be totally without foundation that has passed in to some sort of folklore.
Where things do get interesting is the worst celebrities list, which doesn't flinch at sticking the boot in, heavily. Jedward, the Redknapps, John Cleese, Barbra Windsor, Peter Mandelson's ghastly Third Man spot and the genuinely baffling Derek Jacobi Xmas Sony ads feature in the list, among quite a few that are new to me.
Among the ones I haven't seen before is this one featuring charmless footy-and-lager goon Tim Lovejoy wooing a Mediterranean beauty with some pasta. It's a bit creepy and very rubbish, because Lovejoy shows himself to be perhaps the worst actor to ever grace a loft apartment.
Finally, AdTurds has a spot of advice for whoever compiled the top ten surreal adverts - without including this slice of fried gold by ad/film/doco genius Tony Kaye, made for Dunlop in 1993.
If this isn't surreal - and bear in mind it's advertising tyres - we don't know what is.
Campaign's advert top-ten-athon
Campaign's top ten worst celeb ads of 2010
Best ever ad taglines?
Stuff like this is gold dust on marketing, advertising and PR blogs because it's good link-bait-y copy. Top tens always go down well, but if you can match something that tugs at the nostalgia strings of readers, string it out over 20-odd pages and churn out some generic keyword-heavy intros and you're away.
It's ironic that this one is about advertising taglines, as the title 'best every ad taglines?' - or words to that effect - is almost an advertising tagline in itself.
Anyway, the slogans on this article by Forbes - coincidentally one of the least user-friendly sites in existence - are inevitably US-based, but enough of them should have leaked through to our combined UK and European consciousnesses for them to make sense.
Some are universal. BMW's Ultimate Driving Machine is timeless. Or so you would have thought, as BMW recently ditched it for the appalling Joy.
Just Do It - also a good one, and a slogan coincidentally used by my Dad, in his general attitude to life. Not because of a freaky baseball-cap-wearing US geriatric, but because it worked for him.
Got milk? has alway baffled me. Surely the answer is either 'yes I have go milk' or 'no I haven't got milk'?
Mastercard's There Are Some Things Money Can't Buy tagline is supposedly well-loved. And while it's spawned a thousand spoofs, it doesn't exactly stand out. Does it do anything that other cards don't do? No, it doesn't. So who exactly 'loves' it?
Verizon's Can You Hear Me Now? suggests to me that the line is bad, forcing a redial. It also sounds like something a Tarantino protagonist would shout while pumping someone's head full of bullets.
McDonalds' You Deserve a Break Today has an old-world charm, certainly more than I'm Lovin' It. And We Bring Good Things to Life for GE is quaintly pleasing, far more so than the meaningless, aspirational Imagaination At Work. Then again, these were the days before carbon emissions.
Forbes tells us that the simplicity of The Milk Chocolate Melts in Your Mouth, Not in Your Hand is what makes it so good. But if describing what a product does makes a tagline clever, why isn't the Pampers slogan Keeps Baby Shit From Falling Out All Over The Place?
And Time to Make the Donuts? Surely the donuts have been made already? What?
You've Come a Long Way, Baby - Virginia Slims' tagline for marketing fags at women - is well-loved, Forbes tells us. Is it? Is it really? Who loves it exactly? The best I can say about something that plays on womens' fears of their own body image is that it smacks of a low animal cunning.
Reach Out and Touch Someone from AT&T is obviously problematic, while Be All You Can Be - for the US army - has a lot of obvious unfortunate rejoinders: 'working-class cannon fodder', perhaps?
Anyway, what I think stuff like this says about advertising is that it's indelibly linked with a hazy nostalgia for time's gone by. No-one's immune to it. It's the reason why old ads get a run out from time-to-time; the reason we form affinities with brands; the reason why articles like this exist.
Because we don't love the taglines. We love the bittwerweet melancholy of remembering.
• What are the 'best-loved' UK advertising slogans? Some that seem typically British include Ah, Bisto!; Go To Work On An Egg; Beanz Meanz Heinz; Have A Break. Have A Kit-Kat; For Mash Get Smash; Hello Tosh, Gotta Toshiba...
Wayne Rooney’s caravan – Nike advert
We've had a shit world cup advert already, but Nike has come along with a good one to balance things out a bit.
There's a full three-minute superstargasm version of Write The Future that's a bit hard to swallow, and the 'making of' vid is like a parody of art-advert wank, but this little 30-second spot about a parallel universe version of Wayne Rooney is brilliant.
While the ad's director can think of only 'street-wise' by way of praise for Rooney - and the making-of vid shows Rooney's sole observation on the making of the ad to be that it was so cold he had to wear a coat - the sight of a hugely-bearded, down-at-heel Rooney genuinely amused me.
And the recollections of two trailer-park types on Wayne obsessively practicing the fateful move that resulted in his downfall over and over again, and the day Rooney emerged from his caravan to be faced with a huge picture of Franck Ribery, his nemesis in the ad, are spot-on too.
So, all very good. But rather similar to Reebok's 'Other careers' spots well over a decade ago.
Those ads uncovered the hiterto undetected deadpan talents of Andy Cole, who might have turned out as a chip-shop attendant if he's bought a packet of fireworks instead of a pair of Reebok footy boots.
Talent borrows etc.
NB. If anyone can locate a version of the Andy Cole ad I'd love to see it again. It really was very funny.