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The "smell like me!" landscape is littered with exceptional concepts:
My favorite recent addition, and thankfully just in time for the holidays, comes to us from the pop star (with the big forehead) that every pervy dad claims he loves her music as much as his daughter does...Katy Perry's Purr. The best part about this product launch is her sheer honesty, as expressed in an interview with Women's Wear Daily this week: "I'm a product whore."
Uh, yeah. I think she captured it pretty succinctly.
Diet Coke's limited edition European aluminum bottle design by Karl Lagerfeld to recognize breast cancer awareness is perhaps the best product design I've seen in a long time.
So I'm wandering through a European airport this morning and Vodafone, the world's largest telecom, has covered passage ways with dramatic advertising depicting all the places around the world where you can reliably use their wireless services.
Lovely street images of Piccadilly Circus, the Champs Elysees and then a seemingly innocuous image of Times Square. Just to let the average European know that it's Times Square, who do I see prominently featured?
Pretty amazing that the Naked Cowboy is the cultural icon that Euros associate with the US. Pretty amazing.....and pretty sad, huh?
On 30 Rock, Tracy Morgan talks about winning an EGOT - taking home an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony.
Know who actually has landed EGOTs in their career?
Did you happen to see this story in Adweek?
Gotta make you wonder if the E-Trade kids have been inspiring the folks at UPS.....
I love the Tracy Awards that honor truly sucky advertising. A handful of my fave submissions this year include......
A spirits ad encouraging Bubba to tie one on and play with guns.
A pretty crepy invitation to scarf down some Sizzler.
And another alcohol ad from the UK that actually makes me NOT want to drink....
Here's the thing, though. We can make all the excuses in the world about awful brief, terrible clients, not enough time or budget, etc., and that's what results in crap work. At a conference this week, I was reminded that doing truly spectacular work requires just a handful of things - an insight, determination to connect on an emotional level and the willingness to question the question. "Question the question?" you ask. Taking a step back and seeing the forest for the trees, honing in on what exactly the problem is that CAN be solved. Not blindly producing work that answers a possibly misguided brief. A campaign from JWT did just that in revitalizing the oldest brand in a me-too category - Kotex. Rather than do what every feminine hygiene campaign does, they took the tact of speaking to their audience in their words, on their terms. Novel idea, eh? The result? An absolutely brilliant campaign.
What do these three commercials have in common?
All three jingles were written and composed by the same person.
Know who did them?
One of the greatest jingle writers in the history of advertising.
Yeah, no kidding.
