Merry Christmas

At first I was too traumatized to post this. Thanks to GBostwick ('06) of Point to Point for the link.

Ode to the holidays

This is hilarious and very catchy. BBH has done a great job at extending the Axe brand in to all forms of media. The media that I have personally seen are direct mail,interactive, commercials, viral, and guerilla advertising.

Directed by Peter Rosch.
Client: Unilever (Axe)

Close to perfect sub-branding

This is brilliant sub-branding.

Found at Brands of the World.

Ads infect PDFs

The virus that is advertising has made its way into the PDF, Adobe's popular file type. Yahoo! reached an agreement with Adobe that will allow the search monster to place dynamic advertising into the sides of PDF files. It's unclear if the ads will be incorporated into Adobe Reader or the ads themselves. The BBC article makes it seem like the ads will be accessbile from any PDF reader. So, say goodbye to the integrity of the PDF, since the whole point of a PDF is to allow the designer to have total control over the content of the document.

Mano-a-mano

Directed by Peter Rosch and John Hobbs for Samsung.

Hopefully PETA hasn't seen this yet.

GSD&M's Idea City to cut 100+

GSD&M might've laid off as much as 30% of its workforce, and over 100 employees have already jumped ship in the past few months. I say "might've" because GSD&M hasn't disclosed an official number. But it's between 100 and 200.

What exactly went wrong, here? Some kind of horrible client-loss domino effect? In one year, they've lost Wal-Mart, Chili's, AT&T, and AT&T's media.

I wonder how Southwest Airlines is feeling right now...

UT does Chipotle

If God wanted a burrito, he'd go to Chipotle.

Well, at least, that's sort of what an ad two students from UT's Portfolio III class think.

Chipotle is holding it's second "30 Seconds of Fame" competition where universities from around the country are asked to submit a 30 second TV commercial promoting the Chipotle brand. The contest boasts a $30,000 grand prize for the winning team. $15,000 goes to the winning team, with the remaining $15,000 going to their university.

Zach Vernon and Suzy Elizondo, as well as Josh Horn and Andrew Goldthwait accepted the challenge and came up with some good work.

Team Stop! Animation (Zach and Suzy) were fortunate enough to make it into the 12 finalists chosen by Chipotle.

It is now up to the web-surfers and procrastinators of America to cast their votes for the best commercial of the 12 by going to youtube and watching their favorite ad (and possibly giving it a good rating and maybe adding it to their favorites...).

In order to support the UT - Austin team, follow the link accompanying this post (click the title of the post) to view their commercial, aptly titled, "Natural Selection."

I'm sure Team Stop! Animation would really appreciate it. I'm quite certain they would, actually.

Hook'em.

-Zach Vernon

New Louisville tourism campaign

I got back from Taipei, Taiwan a couple of weeks ago and one thing I noticed about their advertising scene is it's cluttered, due to lack of space, and it's heavily dependent on that cardinal marketing rule "sex sells." I wish I took some pictures of the ads!

Here's a new tourism and PR campaign for Louisville, KY that openly mocks residents of Dallas, Atlanta, Ohio, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Boston. They say it's made in-house but I wonder if an ad agency is secretly behind this.



See the rest here.

From Coudal Partnersand AdFreak.

Upcoming: Q&A with The Richards Group

Instead of hearing from my boring self all the time, I'd like to invite you to ask questions to successful advertising pros. Just leave your question as a comment in this post and I'll post their answers in a future post.

The Richards Group is the largest ad agency in Dallas with scores of regional and national clients (Chick-fil-a, Home Depot and others). UT alums Mike Renfro, Group Creative Director, and Tina Johnson, Creative Director, are willing and ready to answer any type of question you may have.

Paper cutting to the max

We never did this kind of paper cutting in elementary school.

The work of Peter Callesen.

via Good Magazine.