Not so fast Old Spice guy.

It's arguably the blockbuster of the early summer, the runaway viral hit that is Old Spice's "The Man Your Man Could Smell Like" campaign.

The litany of success is impressive. A film Grand Prix at Cannes. Mass hysteria on the ad blogosphere following its "184 personal response videos" initiative. And a recent appearance by its telegenic protagonist Isaiah Mustafa on "The Ellen Degeneres Show".

It even prompted a typically astute musing from uber commentator Andrew Sullivan that the Old Spice guy is in fact the second charming black man with a Muslim name to have successfully wooed America of late. Indeed so.

But hold on. Has he really? This is where I step in as the party pooper, reluctantly mind you, and do a number 2 all over Old Spice. For just as President Obama popularity is plummeting in the polls, so Old Spice's sales have been heading south.

According to marketing information service gurus WARC, the campaign for Old Spice Red Zone After Dark body wash, with its twelve million plus views on YouTube alone, has actually coincided with a drop of 7% in sales. Now I'm no financial expert, but that sure looks like a real negative return on investment.

This wouldn't be the first time a highly creative, award-winning campaign failed to move product, of course. In some circles it's actually a badge of honor. And no doubt there's a good reason for it. Writer Lindsay Robertson has a particularly interesting take.

My own personal view is that everyone was on Facebook watching and sharing the ads rather than going out and buying the product. Still it does raise an interesting dilemma for a brand in today's multi-media marketplace. Can virtual success be considered a real return on investment even if it does nothing for the bottom line?


(Sharing credit to Yahoo! and warc.com)

Happy image of the now..

No it's not a Ben & Jerry's stunt. Say hello to the K99, the world’s first ice cream truck for dogs.

It's actually a charitable ice cream truck based in London and all the proceeds go towards funding a volunteer group called the Berkshire Search & Rescue.

So far there are only two flavors for your pooches to choose from. "Dog eat hog world’" is a gammon and chicken sorbet topped with a doggy biscuit and wrapped in a cone, and my favorite, "Canine cookie crunch" is a creamy assortment of various dog biscuits.

I won't hold my breath for the cat version.

Ad song of the now.

There's a Cadillac CTS-V commercial that's been in circulation for a while now. Nothing inspired, unless you like gratuitous shots of a car. But the piece of music behind it sure is tasty.



The song is called "Lovesick" by Lindstrom & Christabelle. Not sure if this is the official video, but it's all I could find on YouTube.

And please do check out their whole album, "Real Life is No Cool", especially the Giorgio Moroder inspired track "Let's Practice". I don't think they're talking about mahjong.

The "Make it Happen" Challenge vs "The Impossible Brief".

When I started the "Make it Happen" Challenge all those weeks ago, I always suspected it might spawn its share of imitators. But with general enthusiasm I warmly greeted "The Impossible Brief", a crowd-sourcing initiative from BBR Saatchi & Saatchi Tel Aviv which asks the crowd to help solve the Israeli Palestinian conflict.

Talk about Chutzpa. Even I haven't dared to venture this big. I mean there's satire and there's absurdity.  But on closer reading and having failed to see the satire, humor or irony in their brief, I've come to the frightening realization that they are actually being serious. Are you fucking bleeping kidding me. I mean where does one begin with the thought starters, never mind the mandatories.

Only advertising people. Who else would have the self-centered gall to assume they can crack what the brightest minds have failed to do for thousands of years. It makes sense of course. I mean if you can solve the problem of selling an anti-hemorrhoid cream to a squeamish public why can't you solve the problems of the Arabs and Jews. My money's on a mobile idea.

Oh yes and then there's the prize. Apparently bringing peace and hope to peoples who for too long have been mired in despair and distrust isn't incentive enough. It needs a free trip to the Cannes Advertising Festival. See that's what the Nobel prize committee never understood. Who wants a one-million dollar peace prize when you can hob nob with the advinistas in the South of France.

Mind you if someone does come up with the solution, it does beg the question, where the fuck have you been all these years. Were you ever going to share? Or were you just waiting for that free trip to Cannes.

Zombie queen of the now.

Queen Mary 1 of England as a zombie. That's the thought behind this digital poster for the London Dungeon. It was part of a promotion for their "Bloody Mary" show about the infamous queen who reigned between 1553 until 1558 and apparently loved drinking Vodka and tomato juice with a dash of Worcester sauce. Okay that's a lie, but she did like burning religious heretics at the stake, which most definitely helped account for her pet name.

Now I say "was" because the poster, which was placed on escalators in various stations on the London Underground, has since been banned by the Advertising Standards Authority. Apparently a few kids were spooked.

Let me get this straight. In an era of countless zombie movies and graphic video games featuring all kinds of flesh eating monsters, kids were frightened by this. Sounds like the ASA got things backwards here. Surely the kids were actually unnerved by the sinister, if passive looking old lady on the left.


(Sharing credit to adfreak)

Brain-teaser Monday.

I was started in 1991 in an apartment in New York City. My first two clients were The Village Voice and The Economist. Over the years I would work with a host of other clients including MovieFone, Yoo Hoo, Nickelodeon, Crunch Fitness and Atkins. 

In 1992 I sold a small part of me to the advertising agency formerly known as Kirshenbaum & Bond. 

By 1995 I was too big for the apartment and moved to bigger digs in the Flatiron district. I liked to share my space with dogs. 

In 2000 I bought back my independence from K&B. 

In 2002 I met Alison Smith.

I officially died in 2005.

Who was I?

Answer to last week's brain-teaser: 3. CSFB Direct

Okay this is the last reference to Paul, I promise.

Pre World Cup this Geico commercial would still be pretty underwhelming, especially for a brand that routinely surprises with stellar work.

But on the tentacles of a real, super-duper octopus whose worldly exploits arguably dominated the later stages of the World Cup it seems even more feeble, not to mention incredibly short-sighted. Wonder if advertisers can take out insurance against bad advertising.

Gin anyone?

I shouldn't be pushing this idea considering the folks behind it, but a good idea deserves its due.

Digital agency LBi may be lousy at responding to solicitations, but they sure know how to blend together an engaging online experience for Hendrick's gin.

The experience is wonderfully queer, in the old, non-gay sense. So a grudging kudos to LBi and a tipsy of the hat to Hendrick's gin.

"Dead Ideaville"

It's not just advertising ideas that die, of course. Television ideas suffer similar deaths, perhaps even more gruesome. Here's one I pitched a while back. The fact that I am here writing a blog rather than living it up in Malibu says it all.

"X-BAY"

It all starts in the office of John Thornton, assistant deputy director for the CIA. He is busy at work when he gets an email message. It reads:

"Greetings. Item #11. George and Barbara. Male and Female Martians in good condition. Bidding will commence 14:30est. www.xbay.com. Username: CIA. Password: Holy Shit."

And so begins X-BAY, a dark comedy/action series that takes the phenomenon of the online auction to an extreme and probably absurd level.

So what is X-BAY?

A very secretive, exclusive online auction site that facilitates the buying and selling of anything of extraordinarily extreme value.

What is “anything of extraordinarily extreme value”?  

Government secrets; multinational corporation secrets; celebrity secrets; patents; international fugitives; government witnesses; weapons of mass destruction; expensive art; historical treasures; first ladies; special services, e.g. assassinations; espionage; terrorist acts.

Who are the participants?
Anyone with an interest to sell or buy, as long as it is of extreme value. These include governments, corporations, private individuals as well as third party bounty raiders. A free market like X-BAY has encouraged savvy, international thieves who can penetrate any facility in the world to steal anything of value. Just to spice up the intrigue, these raiders may or may not be agents for various governments too. Naturally all participants are anonymous.

What is the currency?
Money. National Treasures. Weapons. Anything of extreme value. E.g., Bolivia is looking to buy nuclear weapons from the Chinese. It offers up cocaine, which the Chinese gladly accept.

Why can’t governments shut X-Bay down?
Because governments are their biggest clients.

The first episode will follow the US government as it bids to buy back the Martians from other bidders including world governments and the multinational media organizations that would dearly love to break the story. Who will win? What will be the bidding strategies? And what will be the consequences?

We will also be introduced to one of the bounty raiders, who steals the patent for the cure of cancer. In future episodes we will find out who will bid for the patent and why. Other future scenarios include:

  -  England wakes up to discover that Stonehenge is gone. Stolen by those pesky bounty raiders. When it ends up on X-BAY for auction a major bidding war breaks out. But who will dare buy the stones shrouded in mystery and the occult?
  -  Aztec Lopez, the baron of drug barons is kidnapped and put on X-BAY. Given that there is a multi- million-dollar reward for him in five different countries not to mention rival drug gangs that would like to eliminate him and the stage is set for some interesting and heated bidding.
  -  Nepal needs help in lowering its huge deficit. It puts up the rights to Mt Everest for auction. Why the hell are the Swiss bidding!
  -  Nuclear weapons are stolen in a Russian Republic and are up for bidding on X-BAY, causing major headaches across various capitals. Under no circumstances can they be outbid by a non-government entity.
  -  The first lady is kidnapped and put on X-BAY. But the White House receives unexpected competition to get her back. Who on earth would want to buy the first lady?

Half-flat Perrier.

I'm not really sure what to make of this interactive experience for Perrier.

Sure it's a little unexpected for a bottled water. But sans a discernible concept behind it, could it be dismissed as a tad gratuitous? Quite possibly.

Perhaps the core idea is to get the user all "fizzed" over the teasing by Dita Von Teese. In that case Perrier should have gone much, much further a la the medieval orgy scene in "Eyes Wide Shut". After all, what else is a mansion for.

That said a small kudos to Perrier and Ogilvy/Paris for at least trying to do something a little different. And notice I didn't use the word "refreshing" once.