New Ad Campaigns

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

New Ad Campaigns

A day early in case you have Thursday off:

Holiday ads. Think: 12 Days of Squatchmas and 12 Apps of Christmas. Let's launch!

Oregon Lottery launched a TV and interactive campaign for its "Life of the Holiday Party" Scratch-it game. Tickets feature illustrations of quirky party guests like "Uninvited Neighbor," "Ugly Sweater Wearer" and "Tasteless Joke Teller." Two animated TV spots place these, and other peculiar characters, under one roof, taking part in holiday festivities. The first spot features "The 5,000 Watt Sweater Lady," a woman wearing a sweater covered in light bulbs. Eat your heart out, Clark Griswold. I enjoyed the "Cheese Log Michelangelo," a man not afraid to play with his food who sculpts "David" out of a cheese log. Watch the ad here. The "Mistletoe Opportunist" is my favorite character in the second ad, seen here. How can you strike out when you're wearing mistletoe above your head? Both ads conclude with an easier way to become the life of any party: give the host scratch-offs. There's also a microsite where users can read party stories, take a character quiz (I'm the Mistletoe Opportunist) and enter a sweepstakes to win money. Borders Perrin Norrander and Pollinate Media created the campaign.

The UPS Store launched a holiday TV ad that takes a closer look inside a cardboard version of a UPS Store. Everything is eco-friendly, brown and streamlined. The ad also places emphasis on the multiple tasks the UPS Store handles, aside from the obvious, shipping packages. Translated: the store gets consumers in and out painlessly, tracks packages and ensures gifts arrive safely. See the ad here. Doner created the spot, produced by Psyop, New York.

British department store John Lewis launched a very sweet holiday TV spot that uses a tender remake of Guns N' Roses' "Sweet Child O Mine" as background music. Children excitedly unwrap and use Christmas presents all clearly made for adults, like a necklace, laptop, slippers, a coffee maker and Sony E-Reader. The children's faces light up with sheer happiness when unwrapping and using their gifts. "Remember how Christmas used to feel?" asks the ad. "Give someone that feeling" closes the ad, as a young girl playing with a camera morphs into an adult woman. Click here to watch "The Feeling." Adam and Eve created the spot, edited by Cut+Run.

Apple proves there's truly an app for everything in a holiday-themed iPhone ad called "12 Apps of Christmas." There's an app for holiday cookie recipes, for checking ski conditions, booking flights, buying five golden rings and lighting up your Christmas tree. I wonder how that last app works. Extra equipment is needed for that feat, according to the ad, shown here. TBWA/Media Arts Lab created the ad and handled the media buy.

If you want to see a different version of five golden rings, look no further than a microsite for Jack Link's Beef Jerky. The "12 Days of Squatchmas" plays off the brand's ongoing "Messin' With Sasquatch" campaign, and this time around Sasquatch is mocked using a holiday theme. Poor Sasquatch gets a snowball to the face, steps on a shovel, receives a flaming bag of poop, drinks rotten eggnog, teaches users the real definition of five golden rings (hint: they're drawn in the snow), and gets his tongue stuck to a light pole. After one play-through, visitors can open the advent calendar-style doors and create their own version of the 12 Days of Squatchmas. Xylem Digital created the site.

Random iPhone App of the week: Parents Magazine and Parents.com released an app called iPlay n' Learn. The app features quizzes, tracing programs, and flash cards for babies, toddlers and kids. IPlay n' Learn is divided into three levels: flash cards that teach letters, shapes and colors; quizzes that make a game out of identifying letters, shapes and colors; and kids tracing letters and numbers with their fingers. The app, developed by Resolute Digital, sells for 99 cents at the App Store.