Make a Dorito's Super Bowl commercial

Goodby, Silverstein & Partners launched a contest a while back, along with Yahoo!, where everyday people could submit their commercial for a Dorito's super bowl commercial. I didn't really think much of it because I assumed, wrongly, that a lot of the videos would be "youtube-esque" (i.e. someone just gets out their cell phone to record their dog doing a normal task like eating and uploads that).

Well, I just saw the five finalists for the contest. And I am amazed by the quality. They are really cool although some of them were made by people who work for commercial production studios. If you read the finalist's bios, a lot of them just used their home computers and some software to edit the spots; the gap between amateur and professional is rapidly closing.

Another neat thing about it is that people vote on the commercials. What if agencies actually did this with their work? I know there's pre-testing and screening of commercials but that's usually in a formal, structured setting. Are there any agencies that have websites where regular, everyday people can comment on their work?

My personal favorite is Mouse Trap. What's yours?

French "9/11 ad"

Click on image to enlarge.


Wow.

From Houtlust. Go there to read more about the background behind this ad.

Audi TV ad and AdGoodness top ads of 2006

Frederick Samuel runs an amazing advertising/design blog called Advertising Design/Goodness and he had a top work of 2006 section. It's rather inspiring and neat to notice the outstanding work. However, it appears that some of the work is meant for awards shows and not for actual use. What I mean by that is how many times do you see those award-winning ads actually appear in Time, CNN, ABC, and other mainstream media venues? Also, some creative directors don't want to see students with "Lurzer-Archive" type ads in their books but then the "almighty" awards shows reward those type of ads. So what's a jr. creative to do?

Here is a foreign Audi ad I saw from El Mallat shift's blog linked to that post. I found it to be very, let's just say different, than the usual American automobile advertising.

Audi Designed To Thrill
Uploaded by firat

Critique Please: 1-800-flowers

Nancy Jeng, CW/AD
Matt Crump, CW/AD

Flawless GPS

I'm not a big fan of their ads, but this one came out of left field.

Click here to watch spot.

Alumni Showcase: Ben & Jerry's cute TV spots

This is the first post in a new section entitled "Alumni Showcase." Hopefully, this section can inspire the current students to continue to think "outside of the box" and to the power of big ideas. Ernie Schenck thinks you should think "inside the box" however. TX Creative alum names are in bold.



See the other three spots here.

Agency/Location:
Amalgamated/New York
Executive CDs:
Jason Gaboriau, Doug Cameron
Creative Directors:
Kent McCall, Kent Stephens
Art Director:
Shaun Bruce
Copywriters:
Rebecca Renner, David Roth

Read rest of the credits here at Adweek's best spots of October.

How did y'all come up with the ad? Why the animation?

David Roth (CW) said:

"By the time Shaun and I got there, the frame for the spots was already
in place – ten seconds of "theater" and then a flavor to pay off the
action. It was very much the Texas Creative formula of leaving the
circle open a tiny bit. In fifteen seconds, only one thing can happen,
so we listed countless scenarios. Seeing that we were interns and got
the assignment our second week, we got as lucky as you can get.

The idea to do claymation came from our strategist Doug Cameron. Ben
& Jerry's prides itself on homemade folksiness, and Doug pushed for
spots that embodied those qualities. The most inspiring source
material was a paper maché cast of Ben and Jerry sent by a Vermont
grandma to their Burlington office. The folks from their marketing
department showed it to us, and it had an endearing, carefully-crafted
yet naïve feel to it. So we went for imagery generated by grandmas,
not computers."

The Hispanic market is growing but did you expect this?

The Hispanic demographic is growing by leaps and bounds and is no longer going to be a minority population (according to the US Census and Time if I recall correctly). Several Hispanic marcom (marketing communication) agencies, such as Dieste Harmel, LatinWorks and La Comunidad, are helping to lead this new "Hispanic consumer wave." But I never expected something like this to happen. Monica also previously talked about this next big thing in marketing.

edited: Original post said that Hispanic population growth is going to exceed Caucasian population in the next five-ten years. Refer to comments below although anonymous didn't provide a URL. I am flattered that someone would take the time to verify my post though.

Dallas-based food chain to accept Mexican pesos
10:11 AM CST on Saturday, January 6, 2007

By KAREN ROBINSON-JACOBS / The Dallas Morning News
Starting Monday, patrons of the Dallas-based Pizza Patrón chain, which caters heavily to Latinos, will be able to purchase American pizzas with Mexican pesos. Restaurant experts and economists said they knew of no other food chain with locations so far from the Mexican border offering such a service. "We're trying to reach out to our core customer," Antonio Swad, president of Pizza Patrón Inc., said Friday. "We know they come back [from Mexico] and have pesos left over. We want to be a convenient place for them to spend their pesos." While U.S. restaurant chains have stepped up their marketing to Latino consumers and incorporated Latin flavors in the menu, it's unusual to see that outreach extend to the cash register.

"I think it's a very interesting idea," said Ron Paul, president of Technomic Inc., a Chicago-based restaurant market research firm. "They are catering to that audience." But Mr. Paul said he did not see other chains rushing to emulate the program, in part because of bookkeeping headaches...