IT'S A BIG AD! Aussi travels...

Hello travelers,

This time around we are travelling to the land down under, i give you Australia!

This video is a commercial for Carlton draught beers. The ad was premiered on the Australian television on  july 2005.  Before the ad was released, viral marketing techniques were used to assure massive viewing. Thanks to the internet release, the commercial was widely covered by the media even before it was released on TV.

On the commercial, we can see two choirs racing on an open field, singing new lyrics to the classic melody "O fortuna" by Orff's. As they are running, the participant starts to form a clearer and clearer pattern of a human body, drinking Carlton draught of course. Each choir member holds a real life beer glass as they are running to form the shape.

At the end of the commercial we can see a large body drinking beer, and we can even see the beer running down he's throat.

The new lyrics to "O fortuna" are very funny :
It's a big ad. Very big ad. It's a big ad we're in. It's a big ad. My God it's big! Can't believe how big it is! It's a big ad! For Carlton Draught! It's just so freaking HUGE! It's a big ad! Expensive ad! This ad better sell some bloo-oo-oo-oody beer!

"This ad better sell some bloody beer"? You can make up this stuff, its that funny!  

I really enjoyed watching the ad, its shows some real creativity by Gorges Patterson and partners, a Melbourne agency. 

The contrast between the dramatic  aspect  of the song, the race through the huge field and between the comic aspect of the lyrics, is pretty spectacular. The fact that this huge ad is for a beer company is also really special and bring something new to the audience. Finally, the ad does not take itself seriously, despite the look of it and thats what appeals to me the most.

What do you thing about the 'its a big ad" commercial? Please comment.

'Till next time. 

Evian- live young spidy!

Hello commercial lovers,

Today is about the great "Live young" campaign by the french mineral water company Evian.

The first commercial made in this campaign goes back to 1998, with the  beloved campaign "water babies", a decade later, we were introduced to the "roller babies" (one of the most watched ad ever on youtube).  The third commercial was "baby and me" in 2013. In this commercial adults got reunited with their inner children, through a looking glass.

This commercials are very popular, they are "feel good" commercials, and bring smiles to every audience viewer.

Some less known fact, is that babies are not just a gimmick for Evian, they are true to Evian's heritage. The love affair between the water brand and babies goes back to 1935 when Evian was first recommended as a perfect water for babies.

The music in the recent commercial are by a french electro artist named Yusek and is kind of amazing. For future references, the song's title is "here comes the hot stepper".

This time, Evian went even further with the "babyfy me" concept and actually "babyfied" ones of Marvel greatest hero: Spiderman.

In this commercial we see an adult spidy playing with he's inner spiderkid. Technically we know that as a child, Peter Parker was not yet the Spiderman (geek alert!!) but it does not ruin the greatness of this ad. The 3D images realization is perfect and we really feel that the Spider mini me is larger than life.

In this ad, the song "here comes the hot stepper" was remixed, again by the same artist Yusek.

What do you thing about the new Evian commercial. Yay or nay?

'Till later,

AXE, Ich liebe dich!

Hello blog readers :)

Today we are travelling to Germany (although this commercial was diffused all over the world). 

Axe made (another) great campaign to promote their AXE Love new shower gel. 

In the first ad of the campaign we could see what appears to be dictators (Iranian, North Korean etc...) but really are loving care bears.

In this second commercial, we see a dictator in the training, who retired before he could try to take over the world. Why? Well because something as old as time as happened to he'm: He fell in love. 

AWWWWWWWWW. 

How cute (and unrealistic, but hey, i dont want to be the one who killed the idea that a monster could turn into prince charming, have faith!).

At the first sequence of the commercial we see our young kim Jong Il on paintings showing he's feisty side. 

But than, something odd happens, we see different paintings of our young lover : With a beautiful woman next to a chalet in the mountains, in Paris, the city of love, feeding he's beautiful bride ice cream. 

In the end of the commercial we see our same young man singing a backstreet boys (are they considered vintage already?) in the shower while lathering on Axe love shower gel. 

Do soap have this kind of power? Do you believe that love conquers all? Do you think that the dictators of our world just really needed somebody to love?

Please comment on this existential questions :)

'Till then, 

On Political correctness...

Hello,

In my search for entertaining commercials around the world, I find out (not surprisingly) that a lot of really great commercials comes from the USA. So i know this is an international commercials blogs, but what can i do? The americans are good at controversial/ funny/ stupid ads.

This one is about cable TV and diplomacy. Political correctness had become so bad in Western that you could almost expect someone to tell you you’re prejudiced if you thought it was weird that someone had wires like a marionette. This commercial both informs (an ad’s primary purpose) and entertains by surprising the audience with a full grown person with wires, like a marionette. 

I think it's smart to talk about political correctness with humor, but i also think its kind of wasted on a free wire TV ad, it would have made much more sense, to use this kind of jokes on a more appropriate product. But when in the USA... 

What do you think about this cute ad on political correctness?

'Till next time, 

This is hell?

Hello everyone, 

Today i want to introduce you to my home country humor through a very successful commercial.

Mcdonald like Coca Cola is a very successful (rich) company. They have campaigns in a large amount of countries and in each country the campaigns are not necessarily the same. 

In France for example, the commercials are about the special french burgers that the international brand creates, in Israel, well its the same, except that that the star burger here is the McRoyal.  

Israeli people are full of humor, they live to wait for the next joke and they (we) are a happy country, despite what the media want you to know.

We have a healthy sense of humor who is culturally based on religion, like in a lot of other countries around the world. 

In this particular commercial, we see a young men arriving to hell. Hell seems like a lot of fun, with gorgeous ladys dancing around and munching on delicious burgers.  

The song, you never gonna have it ,touch it.. by Curt Karr is especially appropriate to the story, because when the young man asks one of the dancers if this is really "hell", she responds, 'No, this is hell" and a harness appears on the young man mouth.

The balance between goof and evil, right or wrong, nice or evil, black or white, heaven or hell is shown again through this commercial, a balance that every viewer knows and knows how to understand. 

This is a commercial from my home country, one that makes me laugh by it's audacious simplicity. 

'Till next time,

Bangkok style commercial

After a long stop in America (Old spice commercial and coca cola commercials posts), we are back in Asia. This time Ad a country lands in Bangkok, Thailand.

This insurance commercial is really cool, we see a young man riding a really nice car and handling it to a valet.
Next thing we see, the car ballet loses the car's control and it crashes.
Our really calm young men looks at the scene and doesn't seem impressed.
He just hi to an acquaintance on the street.

Why is this young man so careless? because he has a great insurance company. LOL.

Bangkok Insurance for this matter.

As i search the internet for special international commercials, i stumble upon really cute ones, cheesy ones, scary ones, but the commercials that i love the most are the ones showing us we all have a good sense of humor (for a reminder, click here)

So this is todays post, hope you all have a great Easter Week- end.

'Till next time,

The man your men could smell like- the Old Spice ad Campaign

Hello ladies, look at your men, now back to me, now back to your men, now back to me...

The old spice parfume ad is one of the most popular in the world, it had millions of shows on youtube and a great deal of talking about too.

This commercial is special to the 21th  century viewer because he is able to recognize the enormous amount of clichés commercial always served us.

"Look at this, it's an oyster full with two tickets to that thing you love...."

How incredibly cliché (and sexist) is that phrase?

But the old spice marketers are smart, they have made the commercial to look like another genre that a regular viewer can recognize: a parodie.

Also, hey used a naked man for once, and not the ugly kind either (and also, he's black , so bye bye clichés).

Really smart people at old spice, they played on all the right strings and brought us a really funny, catchy, smart commercial.

What do you think about this commercial?

'Till next time,

Cultural differences

Today's commercial is a Chinese one. The marketed  product is a (really weird) board game.

Have you noticed the REALLY WEIRD? Of course you did, but only if you are not a citizen of China.

That what this post is about, cultural differences.

 If you leave in Europe or the USA or in another "western" country, you will find this commercial a bit crazy, somewhat scary and downright funny.

Funny, i think that was the Chinese marketing agency went with too. So you see, we are not so different after all.

One's man sushi is another man's pizza, driving is not only on the right side of the road,  Women cover their head in some places, and cultivates the art of sexy in others.

We are all different, our cultures and way of living are different, but imagine if we were all the same? Wouldn't it be boring?

Think about that next time you are feeling different or when you are feeling better than others, just based on the country they came from.

'Till then,

Coke’s Wildly Controversial – America The Beautiful – Super Bowl Spot

Hello,

Today i am going to discuss a giant brand : Coca Cola.

With the name comes the title, and of course, Coca had always provided us with great quality videos, with great creativity, and of course a never ending budget.

This particular commercial didn't please everybody as usual, and is is a shame (my blog, my opinions, lol).

A lot of Us citizens criticized the ad, telling that it is absurd (and i use an euphemism) that the song "America the beautiful" wasn't sung in english.

Apparently singing a song about America in any language other than English is totally unacceptable to a whole lot of americans.

For my opinion, that is wrong. You need to know, that i also finds wrong that Europeans dont speck better english, or spanish (for example in France, where i live, the english level is drastically low) or that a big majority of people think there is only one type of arabic (theres quite a few actually).

Language is important, very important, the ability to communicate one with another is possible because of it. That whats making us different from other animal species, the ability to describe the world with words.

But languages,as different type of country, well, it has the importance that we give to it. We should be able to accept others way of living as well.

With this super-ball commercial, a good deal of Americans shown they couldn't.

I hope that coca cola won't stop making cheesy, over optimistic commercials, they remind me that dreams still exists.

'Till then,

PANZANI ad : "Rhetoric of the Image", Roland Barthes

Today i will talk to you about a famous class book case in advertising: The french pasta brand panzani ad's.

I was thinking that if were already analyzing advertisement from around the world, we might as well learn from true professionals about it.

This particular ad was analyzed by Roland Barthes (French literary theorist, philosopher, linguist critic and semiotician, basically a superstar advertising analysts that made communication student over the word suffer to learn he's methods) 

Acoording to Barthes they are three levels of analysis to each advertisement: 

The linguistic message

The symbolic message

The literal message. 

What does Barthes mean by this 3 levels?

The linguistic message is what is written on the advertisement: Pate (Pasta), sauce (sauce), parmesan, A l'Italienne de luxe (Italian luxury style). So whats the deal with the french brand? Why does it look so Italian?

Well thats the thing about Barthes explanation, if it looks Italian, smell (almost) Italian and has parmesan on it, it's obviously Italian.

According to Barthes, the market bag, the ripe tomatoes, the red color dominating, all of this are part of the symbolic message: We are a french brand, but boy you are going to feel Italian by eating our pasta. 

Thats what i wanted to share with you guys, in advertising, perception is the most important thing, without it, even the most pretty ad will not work.

So keep it in mind aspiring ad men (and woman). 

'Till next time…