Dodge is showing us “How to Change Cars Forever.” It involves breaking all the rules, and spotlights inspiration and the creative process as the true source of innovative product design.

The division of Chrysler builds on the “Imported from Detroit” campaign, which famously launched with music of Detroit native Eminem, with fast-paced and irreverent visuals backed with a hip, but foreboding, instrumental version of “No Church in the Wild” by Jay-Z and Kanye West.

The spot, from Portland-based Wieden + Kennedy, manages to portray the R&D department at Dodge as the guys who don’t care for the corporate overlords and liberally color outside the lines of the company org chart. “Kick out the committees. Committees lead to compromise. Call in the engineers. Call in the car guys. Call in the nerds. Not those nerds—those nerds. Uh oh…the finance guys. Kick out the finance guys.”

In short, we want to love the rule-breaking, car-loving guys fighting the boring and banal power of tie-wearing, fine-print-loving middle managers who’d rather “shift paradigms” than downshift gears to screech around a sharp turn in a cool car. We love their passion—and then we want their car.

In the next spot, “How to Make the Most Hi-Tech Car,” we see an actor called “Future Guy” who travels back from the future to design the Dart’s configurable 7-inch instrument cluster display. And if you’re a Star Trek fan you’ll recognize Future Guy. It’s Michael Dorn who played Worf—everybody’s favorite Klingon. So +4 on the nerd cred to both agency and client alike for entangling a little Trek in a spot about tech—and generally making a lot of sci-fi guys happy.

The Doctor Who Timeline Infographic

April 22nd, 2012 | Posted by admin in culture | pr0n - (0 Comments)

Winklevoss Twins go Nuts

September 14th, 2011 | Posted by admin in advertising | funny ha ha - (0 Comments)

Like this on Facebook, I dare you.

Japanese milk. Seriously, WTF?

August 24th, 2011 | Posted by admin in advertising | funny ha ha - (0 Comments)

Milk may build strong bones, but you shouldn’t be doing that with them. And milk “does a body good,” but it isn’t good for anybody’s Mom moving in that way. I hate to ask, but is this milk irradiated?

The King is dead. Long live sliced tomatoes. BK to ditch creepy royal and focus on…wait for it…fresh ingredients.

Dennis Hopper’s best TV spot

May 29th, 2010 | Posted by admin in advertising | culture - (1 Comments)

Dennis Hopper is known for his iconic roles in Easy Rider, Apocalypse Now, and Blue Velvet. He was an out-there bad boy on the counter culture edges, and became a new kind of Hollywood rebel.

There are lots of tributes about his unforgettable film rolls. But I want to honor his role a spokesman for broadband company Broadwing. Who else could have made a pitch for hosting and IP connectivity almost metaphysical and spiritual. Here are a few of the commercials I’m talking about:

When Copywriters Kill Dogs

March 17th, 2009 | Posted by admin in advertising | funny ha ha - (0 Comments)

If you’ve seen a recent T-Mobile commercial that features a grumpy old man complaining to his wife about their mobile phone contract, did you catch what they said about the dog?
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Husband: Great, another contract. You know I hate commitment.

Wife: We’ve been married forty years.

Husband: Thirty-eight. What if I want some variety?

Wife: We’ve had eleven bulldogs, all named ‘Steve.’

Okay…think about that for a second. 38 divided by 11 is about 3.5. Bulldogs live about ten years, so what the hell are these people doing to their dogs? Someone call the Humane Society, pronto.

Of course, this old couple isn’t real. They’re actors. And their lines were written by a copywriter who either never grew up with dogs or who’s father ran a dog murdering business. But even if the copywriter was raised by a doggie death-dealer, where were the proofreaders, account managers, and even the client to think about these poor fictional bulldogs being killed. Does nobody in the T-Mobile marketing department own a dog?

Ultimately, it’s the copywriter’s fault. One little slip at the keyboard, and I’m not thinking about T-Mobile phone service—I’m thinking about dead dogs. So, the lesson for copywriters: every word, every idea, everything you do tells a story. Make sure it’s a good story. And dead dogs are never a good story.

We couldn’t help but snap this photo of a Midtown Houston business that looks like it’s closing its doors. That’s right, it looked like Cyborg Tax is powering down its systems and heading toward the biomechanical business junkyard.

So, where did their clients go? I don’t know, but in rummaging through their dumpster I found a partial list of their clients. Here it is in order of revenue:

1. Darth Vader (worth a percentage of the $4.2 billion revenue from Star Wars)

Probably the biggest client was Darth Vader. We know from Twitter he’s still living large off all his movie dough. Does the Death Star count as a home office? Is the Sith religion eligible for non-profit status? That could save him a bundle.

2. The Terminator/CSM-101 (worth a percentage of about a billion and a half dollars)
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He’s ruthless, relentless, and unstoppable. He’s more industrial than a thousand Soviet tank factories. He’s “a hyperalloy combat chassis, micro processor-controlled, fully armored. Very tough.” But you wouldn’t know it on the outside because he’s covered in “living human tissue—flesh, skin, hair, blood…grown for the cyborgs.”

Because his advanced AI allows him to learn, he’s picked up some new tricks. He can pick up new language skills and “not sound so much like a dork.” He can learn not to kill, which is impressive since he’s a Terminator.

And he learned to take advantage of some really cutting-edge tax breaks thanks to Cyborg Tax—like how to depreciate new parts, “own” himself through an offshore shell corporation, and avoid “technology transfer” issues when touring Asia.

All in all, he can expect a very respectable return on his investments. So he can afford a nice lifestyle until his power cells run down in the 2090′s

3. Master Chief (with part of a billion dollars in revenue)
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Master Chief Petty Officer John-117, known simply to all as ‘Master Chief’, is the last hope for the survival of the human species. Mankind faces extinction at the hands of technologically advanced aliens known as the Covenant, whose religious leaders pronounced humanity as infidels and declared a jihad to purge the galaxy of homo sapiens.

Beat back from planet to planet, the Marines of the United Nations Space Command (UNSC) and Master Chief—the only surviving cyberneticaly enhanced SPARTAN super-soldier—are the only thing standing between the Covenant and their final assault on Earth.

Sound as epic as Star Wars? It is, but it’s an interactive, internet-enabled game you can play as a campaign or against other players around the world. Master Chief doesn’t just save humanity, he propelled Microsoft’s XBOX game console to the forefront against industry leader Sony’s PlayStation franchise. The original Halo became the “killer app” that ensured the success of XBOX.

Then came Halo 2. It’s launch broke records for video game sales—with $125 million in sales in the first 24 hours. It rivaled the revenue and media coverage of a major motion picture and cemented the power Master Chief had over his fans. Like Star Wars fans who camped out in front of theaters, teens and adults, fathers and sons, queued up late Monday night for the 12:01 AM November 9, 2004 release.

With Halo 3, the launch wasn’t just a video game release. It was a major story, fueled by huge promotions and viral marketing, covered by the Wall Street Journal and CNBC, as well as live coverage from G4TV and thousands of bloggers. Master Chief took a place of honor on the homepage of Microsoft.com.

And so many people called in to work sick to play Halo 3, researchers measured the productivity loss to the American economy, dubbing it Halo Sickness.

So what is Master Chief doing with his hard earned cash? Probably just collecting interest, he’s not the kind of guy to get a huge TV or pimped out ride. Like the original Spartans he’s named for, Master Chief is the consummate professional soldier who ignores the niceties of life and concentrates on defending the rest of us. Bungie concept artist Eddie Smith said of Master Chief: “He does his job, walks off, doesn’t even get the girl, he’s that cool he doesn’t need her.” Thank you, Master Chief.

4. Seven of Nine
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“I knew exactly what I was in for when I had my first costume fitting,” explains actress Jeri Ryan. “Clearly my character was added to the show for sex appeal, which remains the one way to get attention very quickly.” Say hello to the sexiest cyborg on our list: Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix 01. Also known as Seven of Nine, or just Seven.

Seven’s story in a nutshell: Born a human named Annika Hansen, her parents were exobiologists who took her along for a deep space mission to study the Borg when she was just six years old. Not a great idea as it turns out. After nearly two years of shadowing the Borg, making over 9,000 log entries, and collecting 10 million teraquads of data, the Hansens are discovered and assimilated. About twenty years go by and Annika, now known by her Borg designation Seven of Nine, is a mature Borg drone serving on a Borg vessel in the Delta Quadrant.

This is where we meet Seven, during the Star Trek: Voyager two-part episode Scorpion. The Voyager crew and the Borg face a common enemy called Species 8472, and are forced to work together. Seven is the designated representative from the Borg assigned to the U.S.S. Voyager. After she tries to assimilate the crew, they disable her ability to communicate with the Borg collective consciousness—and she begins a long journey toward reclaiming the individuality lost when she was a child.

It is this struggle to understand individuality and humanity—a role filled in other Star Trek series’ by Spock and Data—that provided a needed element to the series. Although Ryan acknowledges her sexy attire as a way to boost ratings, it was Seven’s outsider perspective, honest probing of human behavior, and even pointed questioning of the Captains decisions that she says “brought conflict to the show, which was sadly lacking.”

Smart, sexy, and cybernetic. When it comes to Seven of Nine’s charms, resistance is indeed futile for most male sci-fi fans. But why was she at Cyborg Tax? Unknown. It’s common knowledge that money is irrelevant in the 24th century.

NBC and Fox cause naming Hulu-baloo

September 1st, 2007 | Posted by admin in brand - (0 Comments)

It’s been in the works for quite a while, but the long awaited YouTube-challenging, online-video joint venture between NBC Universal and News Corp finally has a name. And that name is Hulu.

Missing the original launch date of summer 2007, Hulu is expected to offer clips and even full episodes of NBC and Fox programming such as “Saturday Night Live” and “The Simpsons.” And the new venture already has deals inked with AOL, CNET, Comcast, MSN, MySpace, and Yahoo, with GM, Intel, Cisco, and Cadbury Schweppes signed up as advertisers.

New York brand-design consultancy Sterling Brands was tapped for the naming gig. As Hulu CEO, Jason Kilar, explains: “Objectively, Hulu is short, easy to spell, easy to pronounce, and rhymes with itself. Subjectively, Hulu strikes us as an inherently fun name, one that captures the spirit of the service we’re building.”

Hulu sounds Hawaiian and roughly means “feather” or “plumage” in the island language—a plus from the peacock network’s perspective. But, in Indonesia, it means “butt,” and in Swahili, it means “cease and desist.” I can’t help but wonder if “hula hula hula” could mean “stop putting that feather on my ass.”

As a dowser for neologisms myself, I know the difficulty of finding a short, catchy, memorable name that is still available as a “.com” And that’s why so many names seem silly. “Google” can certainly be called a silly name. It is derived from the mathematical term googol, which lovable geeks like Larry and Sergey saw meaning in. Add in either a typo or the need to find a spelling that wasn’t taken on Network Solutions, and you get Google—which to most people around the world just means “to search.”

Finding a .com domain certainly complicates matters today, but strange names date back to pre-transistor days. “Kodak” is a silly name that doesn’t mean anything. It started with a “K” because George Eastman insisted on it—he felt “K’ is a strong letter. And “Coca-Cola” would never be taken seriously in a boardroom pitch meeting today.

So, even though I’m not the only one to point out that Hulu means “butt” twelve time zones away, Hulu is a name as good as many and better than most. After all, a brand is far more than a name. It’s the amalgam of everything the company does—if services or products are better than competitors, if customer service is helpful or rude, and many other factors.

So the Hulu brand will succeed or fail chiefly on how good their service is. Good luck guys—I’m ready to download some 30 Rock and House episodes.