The screen that explodes. The bubble that pops. The egg that bursts (i.e. the chicken that aborts). Blink and you miss everything.

But once equipped with the right tools, those moments of molecular chaos become an unashamed apology of the beauty of destruction.

What eludes our vision suddenly becomes a distorted moment out of time captured on high-speed cameras’ retina, an ephemeral pleasure blown out of proportion to last longer than it should. A short story cut long.

That persistence of memory usually comes with airy music, light piano touches and sweet violin strings to make you realize how delicate slowed down violence can be.

And you can trust our perspective on this since we are very talented at slow-motion blogging.

Choice FM | Kill the gun

MAC VAL | Art attack

Nike Air | Gravity

Dell | Out with the old

Schweppes | Burst

Nike | Swing portrait

Nokia 6265i | Explosion

15 years ago, advertising was a straight man’s world. Now, gays are inescapable.

Although we might be inclined to rush to the consensual conclusion that this is merely a testimony of social integration (after all, advertising is often an ephemeral snapshot of the society it was created in), the reality is overtly more cynical.

Marketers love gays for their welcome differences. Advertisers are often keen on capturing their attention for they boast more buying power and discretionary time than their heterosexual counterparts. They even found a word to describe their ludicrously lucrative potential: “dinks” (dual income, no kids).

Because the very delimitation of this demographic relies on an antagonism (you cannot be defined as gay and straight at the same time - otherwise, you would qualify as bisexual), it’s almost trivial to stress that the prevalent theme infusing almost all the following adverts is one of difference - or lack thereof.

This has for long been private territory of militant organisms that were recurrently hard pressed to assert that gays and straight people were born equal towards love, lust, sins, boring couple routines and, especially, sickness (given the amplitude of the phenomenon within the gay population, AIDS awareness campaigns usually consist of a two-faced tactic: one targeted towards straight people, the other one for gays).

Equal Marriage | Glass

Aides | Live Long Enough to Find The Right One – Gay Version
See the straight version here.

Aides | The Plane
Tagline: “The good news is that Bernard and Patrick had protected sex”.

Mainstream advertising has been much clumsier in its approach of the gay community. And the harsh backlash that surrounds odd-inspired or ill-advised attempts acts as a bitter reminder that gay advertising is still considered more-thorny-than-horny territory.

This is not bad advertising. And most of the times, it isn’t intentionally homophobic advertising either; but advertising that tackles the gay issue from a straight vantage point.

In the same spirit with which adolescent boys might be prone to engage in homophobic verbal attacks to affirm their straight manliness; advertising often refer to gays to emphasize a contrast, an opposition. This is unfortunate but normal, since our culture places such a high value on masculinity-over-femininity ideal; and homosexuality is viewed as the ultimate betrayal of this unspoken rule.

This results in a series of – sometimes genuinely funny – gay-themed commercials that treat homosexuality either as a straight man’s nightmare, a mistake imputed to mismanaged testosterone, an uncomfortable misunderstanding, or just plain insecure fear (which is why the sound of a soap dropping on the floor of a public shower will usually be similar to one of a nuclear explosion). In the end, all of them end up selling a taboo more than the product itself.

Virgin Atlantic | How Deep is Your Love

Kims | No Kims, No Joy

MTV | Gay Kiss

Motorola | Swimming Pool

Burn | The Morning

Stocker | Jail

Tribeca Film Festival | Transvestite

The fact that advertising is a short medium doesn’t help either. Ideas have to be sold in less than 30 seconds (packshot included). Characters drawn in three lines. We don’t have time for subtlety. Advertising thrives in stereotypes. After all, what would be the point of having a gay man if his role is not to be a flamboyant drama queen you can laugh at?

Radio Donna | Coming-Out

Clio | Cop

Delta Llyod Insurance | Booming Car

Conscious of the dual nature of their audience (and the key trendsetting role that gay men can play), fashion and luxury advertising enjoys blurring the lines between straight and gay men, with advertising where ambiguously lascivious boys like to hang around naked in the locker room with their friends (who are also light on cloth). Strikingly enough, the fact that every single gay man is pictured as a six-packed Adonis with low self-esteem introduces a latent ambiguity around every man pictured as such.

Dolce & Gabbana | Watch

Dolce & Gabbana | Jewels

MTV and Levi’s were two of the first brands to subtly embrace both sides of their audience. After all, advertising for gays is not just a question of targeting, but one of representation. In the following commercials, gayness is treated as a non-issue.

This is probably how gay advertising looks like when it’s done properly: not just as a source of jokes, but as part of a larger whole (the difference is in the “w”).

MTV | Boundless Love

Guinness | Mess

Levi’s | Change - Gay Version (see the straight version )

Absolut Cut | Gay

Hyundai | Toy Boy

Vodafone – I’m Gay (also see the rest of the campaign)

MTV | Gay/Straight Test

Banner credits: Beautiful and Aymeric Giraudel

How do you convince someone to drive slower/sober without sounding like that annoying friend who desperately attempts to bring some reason in his party partners’ fancy irrationality (think Pierre and Marcus in Gaspard Noe’s “Irreversible” )?

You don’t. Because you automatically become the one person that they don’t want to listen to.

This is why in most road safety PSA (Public Service Advertising), long gone is the delicacy of political correctness. Gone are the days of the complacency of the suspiciously joyful voiceover trying to sell the latest enzyme as if someone’s life was at stakes (even if, to be fair, her job probably is).

Instead, PSA resort to very explicit, bold examples depicted as realistically as possible. You would be right to state that the explanation is very mercantile: in advertising, the problem is always more eye-catching and attention-grabbing than the solution.

But this educational Shock Doctrine is ultimately designed to trigger behavioural change by activating acute emotional feedback: terror, appal, dismay, horror, etc.

In all these commercials, the driver is never the only one to die or be hurt. Because, as a rhetorical argument, the emotional weight of responsibility and its consequences is far greater than any degree of self-destruction: “I don’t care if I die, but what if I’m the only one to survive?”.

As every Shock Doctrine worthy of its appellation, your initial reaction to these TV spots won’t be to contest or find refugee in disbelief, but to absorb these sensorial stimuli, feel disoriented, relate to (one of) them and – best case scenario – connect them to your own driving behaviour.

Indulge in the power of the Shock Doctrine below.

Transport for London – The Day You Went to Work

Sécurité Routière Francaise – Just A Little Too Fast

Axion by Dexia – Heaven Can Wait

Ministry of Finland - Dummies

Volkswagen – Safe Happens – Like

Volkswagen – Safe Happens – Movie

Volkswagen – Safe Happens – 4 Hours

Transport for London - Blockbuster

Think! - Julie

Think! – My House

Santa sucks.

And proves his lack of style every year by exposing his increasingly overflowing beer pregnancy.

To help every family celebrate Christmas without its recurrent malevolently elaborated good intentions, the enfant terrible advertising agency Mother released a video Christmas card in 2000 (let’s don’t call it viral marketing) inciting people to vote Chris Christmas Rodriguez to replace Santa.

Chris Christmas Rodriguez is the joy of having a moustache-sporting amorist bringing a thick pelt of John Travolta to your boring festivities.

Chris Christmas Rodriguez is the unashamed invitation of pure 70s machismo flavour to the family table.

Chris Christmas Rodriguez is the new don of Yuletide.

Chris Christmas Rodriguez – Undesired Guests

Chris Christmas Rodriguez – Undesired Gifts

Chris Christmas Rodriguez – Undesired News

Chris Christmas Rodriguez – Chris Christmas Tree

See the others teasers here, there, here, here, at this place, this one, this one too, here, here and here.

Advertising Pawn revamped its navigation system to access Brand Tributes, Hall of Pawns and other random articles from a fancy top bar.

Advertising Pawn now has bookmarking icons at the bottom of every post for you to spread the advertising orgy.

Advertising Pawn has been visited by 11,000 pawns since its second birth, feel welcome to drop by again - because most of them won’t.

Advertising Pawn feels very insecure about the size of its third arm and needs to drive a Hummer and brag about everything it does. Hence this article.

Post Scriptum without Scriptum: Advertising Pawn now stores advertising links in its ever-expanding Chess.

It was advertising’s most legendary saga. Or maybe it wasn’t but we love hyperbolism. 25 years of advertising greatness (1981-2006) braced by thousands of ideas revolving around the same enduring, biblical concept : an iconic bottle + a two-words punchline = limitless possibilities - or at least enough to fill in two amazingly insightful retrospective books: Absolut Book and Absolut Sequel and amazingly well documented here.

It ended with quite a dramatic death, being replaced in January 2006 by “The Absolut Vodka“ campaign, likening the vodka to Marilyn Monroe, Steve McQueen, the Statue of Liberty or the rock club CBGB, but falling surprisingly flat and devoid of the fine irony and elegance of thinking that made its legend legendary.

Launched this year, the new new campaign from TBWA\Chiat\Day, New New York tries to retie with the brand’s heyday creative frenzy by introducing the very maleable “Absolut World“ concept, asking what if everything in the world was approached in an Absolut way of thinking.

Let’s hope this juicy strategic playground will be large enough to spark that dialog for the 25 coming years.

Absolut – Swim

Absolut – Protest

Absolut – Cab

Absolut – Moon

Advertising is at its smartest when it’s audacious enough not to be condescendant towards its target. When it tickles the splinters we have in our guilty souls in order to alter our behavior.

Ikea will die the day it fails at convincing shoppers to discard their ageing furniture and replace it with brand new Swedish products. The entire business model of Ikea is built to fight reluctancy to change.

By personifying furniture and giving them a life of their own (This is Living?) in some of their recent commercials, the grey eminences behind the Ikea brand (be they Crispin Porter + Bogusky or CLM BBDO, etc.) tackled our irrational attachment to furniture.

Ikea’s marketing and in-store tactics have been praised enough for their visionary take on consumer experience. It does come with no surprise that the very nature of Ikea advertising is wrapped in witty originality and humorous look on simple-but-clever truths (furnitures are a cure for our sinful love of chaos). For a brand of the many, this combinaison is rare enough to be praised.

From relationship to “relationshop”; the history of Ikea features in moving images below.

Ikea – Lamp

Ikea – Moo Cow

Ikea – Fright

Ikea – Love Story

Ikea – Le Canapé (The Sofa)
Tagline: “Furniture doesn’t die. It just needs to be changed. R#act.”

Ikea – L’Armoire (The Wardrobe)
Tagline: “Furniture doesn’t die. It just needs to be changed. R#act.”

Ikea – La Table en Formica (The Table)
Tagline: “Furniture doesn’t die. It just needs to be changed. R#act.”

Ikea – Home

Ikea – Girlfriend

Ikea – Spaghetti

Ikea – Little Cars

Ikea – Under the Mess

Ikea – Time to Leave Home?

Ikea – Potatoes

Ikea – Winter Sale

Ikea – Unlimited

You’ve already seen his work. His overly futuristic visions of sleek, mutated, hybrid tomorrows. Sometimes flirting with airy, synchronized elegance; sometimes saturated with nihilistic desolation and despair. His propensity for toned down colour palettes and cold textures. His liking for daring, David Fincher-ish, CG-enhanced, perfectly controlled camera movements. His eternal discretion.

Joseph Kosinski belongs to those few undoubtedly talented advertising pawns whose predictable – and imminent - blossoming as a long-feature director will inevitably draw many curious to investigate his previous works, and raise them as precious trophies.

Which is exactly what we did a few clusters of pixels below.

Gears of War - Mad World

Halo 3 – Starry Night

Saab - Blackbird

Hummer - Game On

Mezzo - Race

Nike – Les Jumelles (The Twins)

Nike – Eye(D)

iPod – iSPEC (The Shining)

Far from the triviality of condoms adverts that carefully avoid the cock-blocking nature of the disease - and, in fine, their very raison d’être as a product; HIV-related PSA (Public Service Advertising) usually don’t shy away from embracing the topic in all its gravita.

Some even go explicit over the harsh reality that, if you get/give Aids, you will die/kill. And depict ellipses of lives where sex is deprived of sensuality and crammed with - sometimes intended - manslaughters.

Contrasting with this grim (accusing?) portrait of an irresistibly irresponsible world, but still as affecting as the more dramatic ones; some ads tried to bring some ethereal positivity to the table by focusing on a more noble statement: protect yourself, not out of fear of what can be lost (life), but out of joy for what should be cherished (love).

Out there, there are plenty of better ways to die.

MTV - Pistol (”Mature” content. Click on video/link to see)

Sidaction – The Human Hourglass

MTV – If Your Love is Boundless

Sidaction – Old Man

MTV – Can We Replace Women?

Love Life – No Action Without Protection (”Mature” content. Click on video/link to see)

Aides – The Meeting

Aides – Live Long Enough to Find The Right One (Woman) (”Mature” content. Click on video/link to see)

Aides – Live Long Enough to Find The Right One (Gay)

]]> http://www.advertisingpawn.com/stories-of-aids/feed/ http://www.advertisingpawn.com/global-warning-blog-action-day-2007/ http://www.advertisingpawn.com/global-warning-blog-action-day-2007/#comments Mon, 15 Oct 2007 17:05:50 +0000 Adpawn http://www.advertisingpawn.com/?p=18

For a topic as effervescent as environment (or as cynically hype as global warming), advertising has often had a knack for being trite, joyously bathing in clumsy complacency and suspicious attempts at playing the stifling moralising father figure, sometimes threatening, or sometimes purely desperate.

Rare are the slick acumens that dare to go beyond the simple fact enumeration and execute a tart creative pizzazz. And in an industry often taxed of being pure visual pollution, it’s probably irony in a nutshell that they, somehow, even managed to exist at all.

Greenpeace – Copy Machine