The 6 most excruciating interviews

The Guardian has featured on their blog a list of 6 of the most excruciating interviews, after one of their journalists had a bit of an awkward encounter with Ginger Baker.

The list features some you may remember and some you may not, including some deathly silences, awkward moments and scathing attacks, all sourced from YouTube.

Featured in the list is Bruce Willis on the One Show, wrestler the Ultimate Warrior being interviewed by Arsenio Hall, Clive Anderson interviewing The Bee Gees and David Blaine being interview by Eamone Holmes.

Take a look at the full ist here and see them for yourself.

VW advert aims to catch the fast-forwarders

In a world of DVR recorders, Sky+ and TiVo it's becoming harder for advertisers to reach their audience as many record their shows just so that they can skip the adverts.

In an attempt to tackle this issue head-on DDB Brussels has produced a special TV ad for Volkswagen that when fast forwarded still works as an advert.

Given the moniker 'slowmercial', this new format features the VW beetle convertible in action, mainly closing the roof. At normal speed this could almost be painful to watch were it not for the relaxing birdsong in the background, but at a fast forward speed the ad works well.

The advert is only presently only being shown in Belgium but you can see it below.

It is a clever concept but does it impact upon the effectiveness of the normal speed ad, after all you cannot bore people into buying a product1

Long live paper

In a clever add by French toilet paper company Le Trèfle, the fight between paper and digital reaches a pivotal point.

In the spot a married couple are depicted with the husband constantly trying to prove that his tablet is better than traditional paper, for drawing, doing sudoku and reading books. However his wife gains the upper hand at the end of the segment when the poor man is left on the loo without any paper.

Clever and funny from Leo Burnett Paris, have a watch below.

Fancy a free range loaf?

Australian bread company Abbott's Village Bakery has released a new TV advert that is a bit on the unusual side. The advert sounds like it should be for lamb or some other meat product, not bread, Quite frighteningly it  shows giant loaves frolicking in fields and being fed grain.

It is all very surreal, the voice over stating "It may seem a little strange to some, but for us free range is the only way to raise bread,"

Even on their Facebook page they state, "We like to shower our loaves with love, let them roam free and grow up in their own unique little way. It's what makes every loaf special."

It would seem that they want to come across as a speciality or artisan style baker, producing 'farmhouse' style breads, all the while taking time and care to produce a better tasting product, even if it does bleat at you and jump around the room!

Take a look at the advert below.

VW ad is daylight robbery

Volkswagen's latest advert by Deutsch, is a brilliant bit of suspense, slightly reminiscent of an action movie but with a humorous twist at the end.

The premise for the ad, titled Mask, is simple; a guy walks into a local shop wearing a ski mask, starts stalking down the aisles collecting food and such like, whilst looking menacing. All the while the customers start to hide and the counter staff begin to look scared. The camera angles and accompanying music all add to the suspense and creates a commercial that seems to promise cars chases and gun fights.

Hopefully we have built this up enough without spoiling the end, so take a look at it here.

B&Q rolls out new brand strategy

B&Q has released a new brand strategy, courtesy of Karmarama, to help drive sales.

Called "Handy Prices", the campaign will see the DIY business lower the prices of hundreds of products, predominately those used on a more regular basis, and keep them at this new lower price, permanently. 

The campaign is the first piece of work completed for them by Karmarama since their appointment last year, and may come as a surprise to some as they are without a Marketing Director since the departure of Katherine Paterson in October, the spot being covered in the iterim by brand director David Hutchinson.


The campaign will run on TV, radio and print. The TV ad is shown below, the most notable thing is the lack of products in this ad, so it will be interesting to see how this approach works for them. Take a look for yourself and let us know what you think.

Counting with fingers takes a new meaning

In a new publicity campaign, Leo Burnett Toronto has created a count down for the start of the new series of popular zombie TV series "The Walking Dead".  

They have installed a hoarding in Toronto Union Station, featuring two zombie hands, that countdown to the start of the new series. To add to the gore, when a day passes a finger is physically removed from one of the hands and left there to "rot". The company also arranged for some actors to dress up as "walkers", the name the show gives to the zombies, and wander around the station on the Wednesday whilst chained to cement blocks. They also gave away t-shirts and set up a competition via Twitter to win one of the digits from the hands.


This is a great bit of fun and will have an impact but alas it could put a few commuters off their breakfast.

The show starts again in Canada and the US Sunday 10th February, and in the UK on Friday 15th February.

Gangnam style baby

In it's first venture into TV advertising, electronic cigarette company E-Lites has beaten everyone to the punch by combining a dancing baby with last years viral video hit - Gangnam Style.

The advert features a dad going out for a cigarette and missing his baby's first steps and more. 

Their tagline for the campaign is "What will you miss?".

An amusing bit of CGI, watch it below.

Does a bear wash it's pelt in the woods?

Washing machines these days are one of the bare-necessities of life, or at least that's what Samsung would like you to think with its new ad.

The fantastic ad features their Eco-bubble washing machines, with a filming crew in a frozen landscape, proving that the machine washes "brilliantly", even with the coldest of water, until they are approached by a huge bear.

The bear, after scaring off the crew, begins to disrobe and take advantage of the machine.
The ending is very clever, so definitely worth a watch

Kit Kat crowd-sourcing a new bar.

In a move to determine a new flavour, Kit Kat has turned to social media to find out which flavour "chunky" bar is most popular between mint, coconut, fudge and hazelnut.

The campaign is similar to one they ran last year, where consumers were asked to vote for their favourite chunky from a selection, via text message. This time round the company is using Facebook as the voting medium.

To vote, you need to go to the Kit Kat page, where there's an app which is 'like-gated', meaning you must like the page before you can vote, then finally you can choose your favourite of the four flavours.

The Facebook campaign runs alongside a television advert, with the flavours given the persona's of superheroes albeit cumbersome ones.

This is a clever use of social media and crowd-sourcing by the company, one that saw peanut butter chunky being voted winner last time around.

Motherhood meets gangster rap in new Fiat ad

In a campaign far removed from the norm, Fiat has released "The Motherhood", a mock rap video featuring a stressed mum with her three children.

The ad covers the trials and tribulations of the daily life of a mum, and, whilst avoiding the coarse language normally associated with the genre, the main character acts in very much the same way. Especially in posing next to her Fiat 500L, the real 'star' of the video.

The tagline for the video also mocks the genre: "Word to all the mothers out there. This one goes out to you..." ' The Motherhood' feat. Fiat 500L is dedicated to all those women who have to be all things to all people and live it large on a daily basis."

Very funny but a bit long - worth watching until the end though.

Meerkats out-do Vinnie Jones for Most-liked TV ad of 2012

According to a recent Nielsen report, Compare the Market's TV ad featuring  “compare the meerkat” founder Sergei handing a free meerkat toy to a window cleaner, was more "liked" than The British Heart Foundation's ad featuring footballer-turned-actor Vinnie Jones, demonstrating CPR to the tune of Staying Alive.

Nielson has compiled a top ten most-liked and most memorable TV ads of 2012, with the Compare the Market ad clinching the top spot ahead of The British Heart Foundation and Kerrygold Butter in third. It is the third year that Compare the Market has featured, and their second time at the top, whilst it is the second time for retailer John Lewis, who managed fourth place this year.

The report has lead to the thought that animals have replaced celebrities as the must-have to make ads more memorable, with four of the top ten featuring animals, whilst only 1 features a celebrity, this is a trend that has seen the number of celebrities being in the top ten drop from 2 in 2011 and 4 in 2010, whilst the number of memorable ads involving animals was 2 for both years. The other conclusion marketers can take from this is that a strong emotional situation in adverts can help people connect to them more, such as the children returning home in the Kerrygold ad, where-as comedy is not as important as it once was.

Darren Moor, Nielsen’s VP of advertising effectiveness, says: “Animals have replaced celebrities as the new stars of many of the nation’s favourite TV ads in 2012, and we expect their effectiveness as brand icons and storytellers to continue as a theme next year.”
Moor adds: "The glaring, and surprising, omission is that not a single Olympic or sport-related ad features amongst the most liked in what has been the most successful year in the history of British sport. Advertisers may need to work harder to find out why sports ads are not connecting as well with a nation that loves its sport if their ads are to appear on the winners’ podium in 2013.”

Nielsen ranked the TV ads on ‘likeability’ and ‘memorability’ each day with the list based on over 1.25 million survey results from viewers watching evening TV in the UK. The likeability index is a measure of the number of TV viewers who like an ad they saw, and whose brand they can remember, during the normal course of their TV viewing. Scores for likeability and memorability have been tracked every day for each of this year’s nearly 7,000 new ads, shortly after each has been broadcast.

Dangerous times at the office party

The office Christmas party gets nasty in this new ad for Harvey Nichols.

This is the sequel to an ad we featured on our blog last year, 'The Walk of Shame' and was created by Adam & Eve/DDB.

It is very funny and suggests 'How to avoid a same dress disaster this season'.

Enjoy!

Scary ad for air conditioning

This has got to be one of the oddest ads for an air conditioning company ever.

South American home electronics brand BGH has created this very atmospheric ad that features a variety of frightening sunbathers and other sun worshipers sweating away in high temperatures watched by a psychopath that wants to put them out of their 'misery'.

But its OK as he has air conditioning from BGH so he won't be heading out into the heat.

Not for the faint hearted but worth a watch just to see how they do it in South America. Apologies for the picture but it sets the scene.




Shot by Fallon London.

Surreal ads from Drambuie

A very surreal advertising campaign from Drambuie, following on from their 'A Taste of the Extraordinary' press campaign. Did Dali have a hand in this?

Not the monsters you would want to meet on a night out!

See the ad below:



Drambuie's 'Extraordinary Bar' cinema commercial, written by Sell! Sell!, directed by Chino Moya and produced through HSI.

Surprising ad for Samsung

This is a rather surprising ad for Samsung. Not one for those scared of spiders.

Enjoy!