The NFL Strikes Back

Today in The Times, advertising reporter Stuart Elliot covers the NFL’s latest ad campaign, which is meant to combat the current group of professional football players who have gone a little wild. The campaign, which launches today and was created by BBDO Worldwide shines a a spotlight on the “good guys” of the game. The ads feature wholesome imagery from a player talking to his mother to another reading to his daughters before bed time. Participating players include: Matt Hasselbck, Willie McGinest, Brady Quinn, Braylon Edwards and Vince Young.

In Young’s spot, the Tennessee Titan discusses “how all his rose tattoos are in honor of “the women in my life,” including his mother, sisters, nieces and a grandmother.” The commercial is being used to specifically address the issue of tattoos, which some fans find off-putting. “It’s not one of my favorite things,” said Alfred Merrin, vice chairman and executive creative director at the BBDO New York office, “and culturally, it’s difficult for a lot of people to understand.” We’re kind of surprised by this one. Tattoos? On the body? Hard to understand? Hey, if that’s what their research shows. We’re going to go out on a limb here and say this - tattoos on black men are probably hard to understand. People get that all mixed up with prisons and what not. Right? Merrin is that what you meant? Considering that Americans, young and old, Republicans or Dems, armed forces and not, get tattoos, that’s the only thing that makes sense to explain such a concern.

Anyway… “It is not a campaign to address the Michael Vicks of the world — it’s bigger than that,” Mr. Merrin said. “It’s about getting inside these guys and revealing something of their character, their values, what it takes to be in the N.F.L.”

Good the NFL is getting in there and fighting back.

HPs $300M Campaign With Gwen Stefani, Jake Burton and Paula Scher

Hewlett-Packard is set to roll out its $300 million campaign with the tagline “What Do You Have To Say?” This new effort is billed as part of HP’s Print 2.0 strategy, which skips pushing the hardware of the actual printer and focuses on three major printing areas: “new digital printing platforms that lower costs and increase printing speeds for high-volume commercial markets; making Web-based printing easier; and expanding the company’s digital-content creation technologies across all its customer segments.” [From Marketwatch]

Steve Simpson, creative director at Goodby Silverstein & Partners, which created the new campaign said, “Our job is to change behavior and give customers more ideas on what they can print. It’s a very broad idea of printing.”

H-P is partnering with Gwen Stefani in the consumer segment, and snowboard developer Jake Burton and designer Paula Scher in the small business unit. Stefani apparently is for you. Her HP website gives users the chance to add their photos to her tour book and mess around with other “Gwen” content like CD covers.

That’s not all… HP has created a printing toolbar for Yahoo and is also tying into Microsoft by including HP’s Snapfish online printing service in Windows Live Spaces community. H-Pis also launching NextDayTV services, which allows viewers to make DVDs of local television shortly after those shows are broadcasts.

The 2016 Olympic Games

 

It’s already time to start thinking about the 2016 Olympics. Doha, the capital city of Qatar, has hired the a specialist sport, brand and communications consultancy Vero (who ran London 2012’ bid for the Olympic Games) to promote the city has the next host of the 2016 Olympic Games. Vero, which is part of the Edelman group, will pair up with PR company Burson-Marsteller in Doha’s bid to be the first Middle-eastern city to host the Games.

Hassan Ali Bin Ali has been appointed Chairman of the Doha 2016 Summer Olympic Games and said that the launch of Doha 2016’s Olympic bid will take place in September when the logo and key themes will be revealed. Rival bidders include
Tokyo, Chicago, Rio de Janeiro, Dubai, Madrid and Prague for the 2016 Games. We got a feeling Chicago ain’t going to win this one.

Blackface Is Back In Fashion

What’s with this new trend of advertising agencies having no racial intelligence? Christ. Take us back to PCs 90s, please. Clearly, the advertising world needs more minorities on its roster - women, African-Americans, people with brains.

Unicef Germany ran some recent spots that made us choke on our bagel. Four print PSAs show “four German kids who appeal for solidarity with their contemporaries in Afrika.” The tagline for the one above reads, ““I’m waiting for my last day in school, the children in Africa still for their first one” The ads have rightfully been pulled. They were created pro bono by German agency Jung von Matt/Alste.

Via Radar

More: McCann’s Erickson Is Color Blind (and not in a good way)

Microsoft Hates Black People

Minority Firms Are Getting Shafted

What Happened To Converse?

UPDATE: A tipster sent a link to this video about created by PSFK, which echoes some of our thoughts. Must watch! Also, the current Converse website makes it look like the entire shoe line is made for children.

Converse’s new ad campaign is out. Continuing on last season’s “Get Chucked” concept the new shots are focusing on the women’s selection of the very smart extension to the Converse line - the John Varvatos collection. Produced by Yard, the latest “Get Chucked” print ads documents a young couple’s decadent hotel room weekend, with taglines including “God save Queens.” No. We’re not kidding. Yes, yes… they ads very pretty, very glossy. The models in them look very rich, blah, blah, blah.

Converse is often represented across the blogosphere as being All-American, timeless and then alternatively, rebellious (which is so American) a la Wilt Chamberlain, Kurt Cobain and The Ramones. We’d love to sport our OG Converse with pride again, so we beg you guys - bring back a little of that rough, renegade edge. Get the punk rock teenagers, the underground hip-hoppers and the mid-20 to mid-30 year old adults who just want a darn good sneaker without a lot of fuss, but a lot of sentimental history attached. Sigh.

This Is Living Gets Banned

We love the broadcast/web only adverts that have recently been coming out for video game titles and their associated consoles. Whether or not they use in game footage or are set in the real world, game commercials these days are quite enticing - like mini films. Despite their creative appeal, many spots never make it past the censor board. Games, if you will recall, are dangerous. Check out the latest addition to hit the dustbin above, which is currently running on Yahoo!, BT and a host of video sites. It’s for Sony’s “This Is Living” campaign in support of the PS3, which has been running for a few months in Europe. The adverts show various quirky individuals talking about - you guessed it - what living means to them. Some are better than others with the episode being top notch. The spot features a disturbed gun-wielding man in a bathtub named Kovac. This guy is like the darker, harder version of Christian Slater’s character from Heathers. The spot manages to appeal to a wide swath of age ranges - from those old enough to understand Kovac’s litany on emotional death of working in an office to teens who spend most of their time dabbling in various forms of rebellion.

Interestingly, the Playstation console never makes an appearance in the spot. We’re for it. If you know anything about the console wars, then you’re probably aware that the PS3 has a hard time due to the graphics failing to live up to the hype (the Xbox 360 offers similar quality if not better) and that enormous price tag that hovers around $500. If you can’t sell on its superior game capabilities, then sell it on lifestyle. Yup-yup.

The ASA banned the spot for the underlying tones of violence. Meanwhile, the ad’s creators, TBWA, defended the banned commercial, saying: “The internet ad targeted an adult audience. It was intended to represent, nor describe, socially or aspirational behaviour.” We totally agree.

Not An Olympic Effort

mcgarrybowen, who is responsible for that awful RBK Run Easy campaign, is also in charge of handling the advertising for the 2008 United States Olympics Committee having won the account in March. The tagline the New York agency got saddled with is “Amazing awaits.” Thud. “We feel ‘Amazing awaits’ captures the essence of the Olympic and Paralympic dream,” said Jim Scherr, CEO at USOC. It was chosen after research showed it aligned with consumers’ values. The focus is now on the process, not the Gold medal. The campaign will include TV; print and a web site, which focuses on the journeys being taken by athletes to reach the games. Oh yeah - and the website will allows visitors to see the commercial and download the music.

Honestly… have you ever been more unimpressed in your life?

“‘Amazing awaits’ speaks to the possibility, not the probability, that amazing things await us all,” said Gordon Bowen, Chief Creative Officer for mcgarrybowen. If that’s what you really, really think - then why this boring campaign? Think of all the things mcgarrybowen could of done - a world wide game about the what it takes to become an Olympic athlete, experiential outdoor marketing, etc. Also, that website sounds awfully one dimensional.

We got a feeling that the Visa ads that BBDO is working on for the 2008 games are going to kick the USOC’s spots butts. Check out the Jackie Chan one from a few months ago above.

Football Resurrected

American football’s image has taken some serious body blows lately. There’s Pacman Jones, Odell Thurman, the Cleveland Brown’s Ryan Tucker, and who can forget Michael Vick? In the midst of all this hub-bub, the long awaited follow-up to video game title NFL 2K5 (widely regarded as one of the best football games ever) has finally landed. The game, All-Pro Football 2K8 features some of the best players the NFL has ever had. The usual advertising collateral was created for their campaign called “Football Resurrected,” but the makers of the game 2K and their ad agency, EVB, also seemed to have a moment of genius. EVB created webisodes featuring six legendary rap artists to speak the truth about why “the game is back.” MCs Rakim, M-1, Jurassic 5 and others rapped about individual players or aspects of the gameplay. The amazing Rakim apparently told EVB that, ‘I just want you to know that I’ve been playing 2K Sports since the Dreamcast guys.’

We’re applauding EVB. They did a great job of matching up the right genre (hip hop) to their target demographic (young males, suburban/urban, 12-25) with the right medium (the web). EVB also realized that the game features iconic players like Jerry Rice. Rightly, the campaign focuses on the “glory days” of the NFL  and that of hip-hop, too. Hey - they could of picked Ludacris rather than Rakim for these spot, but Rakim? He’s a totally “glory days” rapper. Where they may have missed the mark is by not employing video sharing sites to their full advantage. Currently, there are only 2 episodes loaded on YouTube. Shame, because the episodes are fun for any hip-hop fan, any football junkie.

Read an interview about the work with Jason Zada, Executive Creative Director and Co Founder of EVB, here.

Ever Stay At A Westin Hotel? Maybe You Should…

Westin Hotels, Deutsch New York and small marketing agency Electric Artists just launched an outdoor campaign that emphasizes the chain’s year old tagline: “This Is How It Should Feel.” The $30MM experiential campaign is turning busy, hectic areas into “places of renewal.” There no shots of the rooms, people checking in or any other hotel amenities. We love that the campaign attempts to pull an emotional response out of the consumer rather than shoving advertising copy down their throats through a pairing of unusual technologies and more traditional expierences. The campaign consists of innovative grab bag including

Applause: Sonic Stops Trying

We’re all over AdAge today. On July 16th, they wrote a piece about the fast food chain Sonic’s YouTube ads, which as they astutely point out, are great. The ads feature two different pairings: two guys or a husband and wife team as they sit in the Sonic drive through lane. The spots are short, clever, highly entertaining and created by the agency Barkely out of Kansas City, MO. See them all here.

What AdAge fails to mention is that while the first two videos were huge hits on YouTube, the latter spots failed to make a real impact. And this - is the problem with YouTube campaigns and the attention span of the past two generations, which have been on Ritalin since they were five. A perfect example of the issues that can take place with “follow-up” viral videos can be seen in the recent Ray Ban spots. So what did Barkely decide to do?