Geico.com Caveman commercials

Geico, a US car insurance company, has been airing TV commercials since 2004 featuring cavemen. Not living in the United States, I had never seen them before. They have a whole bunch of these ads running but quite frankly, not all of them are funny.
I will still include a short compilation of several of these ads below, just for those of you who have never seen them before. This video made my day!

Apparently, these TV commercials had a big success, at first. In 2007, ABC decided to produce and air a short TV sitcom featuring the cavemen but the bad ratings led the channel to discreetly cancel the show. The next series of commercials apparently focused on spoofing the unsuccessful TV series! Interesting way to bounce back after a flop...

Wikipedia article about the Geico Cavemen Read the full post

Pictogram animation videos

Here's a quick post to introduce you to an ad for Entenmann's Little Bites Muffins. I thought the pictogram animation was simple, fun and different from the other TV ads. I find the graphics well designed although not such a new concept. I couldn't help noticing the similarity with several other videos on the internet including this music clip from the Norwegian electronic band Röyksopp.

Remind Me from Röyksopp

Read the full post

Skittles TV Commercials - How Bizarre!

I have always enjoyed television advertising for various reasons. Its creativity, humor and sometimes artistic touch make it a good source of entertainement and very often more enjoyable than the lame shows broadcasted today.

Earlier tonight, the new Skittles ad came up on television and I can't hide the fact that it made me laugh! Yes, I do appreciate ads that stand out of those numerous washing powder commercials. In fact, they remind me of the Cadbury ones (view them here) by their originality and most of all "weirdness". Skittles is reknown for its B-I-Z-A-R-R-E tv ads and I thought I would give you a little compilation.

I understand these won't appeal to most of the TV audience, but they're definitely trying to differentiate themselves and they get my credit for that.

How about you? Is this, in your opinion, a good advertising strategy?
Do you rather hate these ads or love them? Don't hesitate to comment below!

Catch the Rainbow (new)

Share the Rainbow

Touch the rainbow

Chocolate the Rainbow

Treasure the Rainbow

Believe the Rainbow

Sour the Rainbow

Grow the Rainbow

Tame the Rainbow (Russia)

Read the full post

Coca Cola and The Open Happiness factory

Coca Cola has been known for their original ads. Everyone remembers their TV ad ressembling the famous and successful video game GTA (you can view this ad at the very bottom of this article). The soda company had already started advertising on the theme of happiness via this video and has now made it its global code line.

After announcing the Happiness Factory movie coming soon, Coca Cola has launch a series of ads around the world as well as music videos meant to become summer hits in Western Europe and the USA. With the help of several artists such as Cee-lo Green, Brendon Urie (from Panic at the Disco), Patrick Stump (from Fall out boys) among others, this Open Happiness Project is meant to be a hit.

I like some of these ads but not the Open Happiness Project music video.

What do you think?

Coca Cola - Yeah yeah yeah



Some Open Happiness ad



Open Happiness Project (music video)
the one I don't like



GTA-like Coca Cola ad

Read the full post

Some of my favorite TV ads - Part 1

Here's a selection of some of my favorite TV ads, regardless of how old they are. You've probably seen most of these videos before but it's always a pleasure to watch some of them again, especially if you've got some time to kill on your rainy Sunday afternoon...

Charal (French meat brand)



Discovery Channel



Toyota



Cadbury



Cadbury



Bud light



Ariston



Fox Sports



Soesman language training

Zazoo condoms

Read the full post

Scary Ideas - Advertising archive

Scaryideas.com is a website that gathers and archives both videos and prints from the international advertising industry.

As the title suggests it, most of the ads you find there come from "scary" ideas. Well, not really scary but different and out of the ordinary. You will find hilarious ones as well as meaningless ones.

Next to each post is a detailed information brief that usually includes the country and advertising agency name. It's a good website if you want to see how creative some people can be and if you want a daily dose of fun and inspiration. Posts are added on a daily basis and you can stay posted thanks to their RSS feed and/or twitter account.

If you like out of the box thinking, then go have a look at their website! Scary Ideas

Below is a video that I just watched and still don't really understand the whole plot! Try to guess what the ad is for before the advertising message comes up at the end! Anyway, enjoy or not!
Read the full post

The new Olympus PEN - Video

If you haven't heard of the new Olympus Pen series, then it's about time you start reading about it! SLRs give you much more freedom in terms of photography settings than normal compact cameras. The only issue is the size and weight. I know for a fact that I won't constantly carry my SLR around!

The new Olympus series are a little jewel, merging both the qualities of a regular SLR and the compact size of a normal camera. As you can see on the picture, it also gives you the freedom to switch between different lenses just as you would do with a SLR.

Now I won't be talking too much about the camera itself as I don't consider myself an expert in photography, but you can read more on the Olympus website.

What I wanted to share with you is the promotional video Olympus has come up with for this camera. The Olympus Pen series were very popular 40 to 50 years ago and the video retraces in a way the story of this historic camera.

I was very pleased with the video below as I have myself done stopmotion videos in the past and believe me, it's a lot of hard work! (a stopmotion video is actually a series of hundreds and sometimes thousands of pictures which gives a special artistic rendering.)

The description of the video is as follow, Enjoy!!
This is the PEN Story in stop motion. We shot 60.000 pictures, developed 9.600 prints and shot over 1.800 pictures again. No post production! Thanks to all the stop motion artists who inspired us. We hope you enjoy :-)



Read the full post

Offending (?) Microsoft ad

Okay, don't ask me why I'm posting this! I just thought it would be interesting to show you guys one of Microsoft's video ads.

I don't know if Microsoft deliberately tried to silence this video or it was meant to go only online as some sort of viral marketing operation. Perhaps some people found it too offending or simply disturbing! If any of you has more information, please comment, I'd be interested to know.

Enjoy! Microsoft's offending ad Read the full post

Illegal advertising

illegaladvertising.com is a blog on which you will find some of the best "underground" ads, from viral to street marketing, banned ads, spoof ads and so on.
The website does not limit itself to US ads so you will find a good selection of international campaigns. A small description next to the ad will sometimes give you further information about it.

They also have an RSS feed and Twitter for those who want to stay up to date.
Find them here: illegaladvertising.com Read the full post

Joelapompe.net - The advertising twins archive

Bienvenue on Joelapompe!
If you don't know this website, then you should definitely have a look. Joelapompe gathers all ads around the world that have been copied somewhere else by some other advertising agency.

From prints to TV ads, this archive will either make you laugh or cry.
Visit www.joelapompe.net or follow them on Twitter Read the full post

New Evian water TV ads

Drink Evian, it keeps you young!

I love the new TV ad!
Following the famous swimming babies TV ad (http://bit.ly/ct1OL), here are... the skating babies! http://bit.ly/F06o4 Read the full post