instantgirl

This is my favorite ad (besides the ones we’ve done) on TV right now. It’s cheap, it’s happy and it’s memorable. The song was done by the Buckwheat Boyz and you can listen to the whole thing here. Check out their MySpace page here. The Baskin Robbins spot is supplemented by a contest where you can win $10,000 and $1,000 in ice cream cake. Enter here. The ad was done by Cliff Freeman & Partners. Kudos to them.

I have no idea if this movie is good or not, but I know the poster is NOT good. The movie “9,” which IMDB describes as “a post-apocalyptic nightmare in which all of humanity is threatened” is being promoted in theaters with the poster at left. Theoretically, you are supposed to scan the barcode with your phone and that takes you somewhere fab. Well, it takes you a lot of places and then you end up where you started. Check out this review of the promo. Visually, the barcode is interesting because these barcodes are just creeping into U.S. use, but why not just make the whole thing look better and make whatever I’m clicking through to be worth it.

Apparently, this poster has won some sort of award but that makes me sad. Award for what? Overuse of the glow feature in Photoshop? Most clicks before getting to a relevant destination?

Yet another example of good concept, bad execution.

Enjoy! Thanks to Jenny Pfister for sending the link to me.

This isn’t the whole headline. Read the whole headline here. As my friend John, who sent the link to me, said, “This is the funniest headline I’ve seen in years.”

It’s true that it’s blue, but it’s really funny.

OK, so we won some awards. My agency (Signal Theory) won a Summit Creative Award and two Telly Awards (one for animation and one for children’s audience) for a Pokémon TV spot we did last year. We didn’t used to care about awards but then we realized clients care about awards. And then we started collecing statues and it became kind of fun. You can check out the TV spot here. Thanks to everyone for their hard work on the spot.

OK, I used to work there so I have a soft spot in my heart for Disney. However, when they make animatronic figures of living people they just don’t turn out very well.

The picture on the right shows Barack Obama as an animatronic figure in the Hall of Presidents at Walt Disney World. The picture on the left shows the Madam Tussauds wax figure of Barack Obama.  I think the guy on the left looks more like the real guy, no?

Kudos to Disney for bringing history to life but work on those facial features!

So I just returned from vacation in Paris and the UK. Yes, I am a lucky gal.

Anyway, I was struck by these weird Orangina ads. Each one has a sexualized animal on them. Some are women, like the big-busted deer at left, and some are men. All are physically fit to the extreme and their bodies are human but they have animal hair and animal heads.

Why?

A sexy deer or manly bear isn’t going to make me rush out to spend 2 Euro on a bubbly orange drink but maybe I’m just too American to get it.

These ads were made by an agency called Fred & Farid in Paris.  Check out some other Orangina work here. The TV ads are funnier than the outdoor. I guess you have to see the TV ads to get the context but I didn’t see any TV ads for Orangina while I was there but I sure did see a lot of outdoor. These guys apparently have a thing for sexy animals.

Wish I could get a client like that. So the idea is that there’s this whale that’s a pregnant woman and she’s worried about her weight…

OK, so normally it’s a freak show down here on Main Street in Santa Monica, but today is freakier than most.  A couple of stilt people showed up to get their picture taken.  Then a clown arrived. Then a gal in a sparkly mini with a hula-hoop showed up.  I can’t wait to see what the afternoon will bring.

The brilliant folks at Bravo think that viewers want to do nothing more than watch sales assistants fight over who can sell the most stuff to people with too much money.  That’s why they are developing a new reality show based on Fred Segal in Santa Monica.  Check out the Hollywood Reporter article here.

Well, I worked in the building next door to Fred Segal in Santa Monica for four years and I went there virtually every day for coffee (the good coffee place AND the good restaurant have since closed). I’d rather watch paint dry.  No, wait, I’d rather get a root canal.  No, wait, I’d rather have surgery with no anesthesia…

Yesterday, while my husband and I were making dinner, he casually started opening the mail. He saw an express letter from his sister and he opened it.  In it was a little card that contained one of those laminated bookmarks that Catholic folks make for the funeral when someone dies.  That’s how my husband found out his father had died a week before.  People suck.

It’s true my husband and his family were estranged but there is no excuse for his sister’s mean behavior.  It turns out the father had been ill since January.  In the card, my husband’s sister wrote that she had tried to call us.  We’re busy people and we don’t have an answering machine on our home phone but it seems like she didn’t make a big effort to contact us.  I am heartbroken at the pain and suffering my husband will have to go through.

The image above is the cover of one of my favorite issues of Granta, issue 37. The title comes from a Larkin poem (asterisks used to protect those who are offended by swear words):

They f*** you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were f***ed up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.