Rock on

+ "Trojan condoms has paid £100,000 for a 20-second advertising slot during the first episode of 'Big Brother' this Friday, promising viewers to bring the first orgasm to British television.
The spot has been created by Media Therapy as part of the "Faces" campaign, which promotes Trojan's "shared pleasure" condoms. In a move that would have the late Mary Whitehouse up in arms, the ad will show a couple having sex, focusing on a woman having an orgasm.
The ad was created by Neale Hunt, creative director at Media Therapy, and art director Andy Tye. It was directed by Ed Robinson through the Viral Factory.
Coaxing the actors to give realistic performances proved to be a challenge for the creative team. Hunt said: "Can you imagine sitting opposite 20 guys and asking to see their most intimate orgasm face? But I have to say, Ed Robinson was the man, he was a complete genius."" Shame the campaign is very similar to another campaign by Coco De Mer.

+ Sarah Jessica Parker falls into the Gap as their new spokesperson. "She will make her Gap debut in a fall marketing campaign that will break this August, via Laird + Partners in New York, on TV and in print...TV spots will air on all major networks, spot markets and cable beginning in late August, as well as on networks in Canada and Japan. Print work will appear in September magazines on sale in mid-August. The effort will tie in with Gap's 35th anniversary umbrella campaign, with Parker as the featured player, both alone and in conjunction with other artists."

+ Adweek reports on the D&AD festival. Only two black pencils were awarded...and they went to Johnson Banks,UK for its "Fruit and Veg" stamps for client Royal Mail in the graphic design category and Tourismus and Congress GmbH of Germany with its "Ship of Ideas" execution for Atelier Markgraph in the category of environmental design and architecture. ""There's no doubt agencies have done better work in the past," said Leagas Delaney's Tim Delaney, who was a judge in the writing for advertising category. A lot of craft has gone away. Print's gone to a whole visual thing. Headlines are virtually non-existent."" A good number of silver pencils were handed out.
Check out the winners here.

+ Will Kiwis beat out the Aussies at Cannes? "During the early 1990s Australia was rated highly for its witty, intelligent and well crafted TV campaigns and print work but in recent years its creative reputation has fallen away.
South Africa, Scandinavia, Holland and New Zealand meanwhile have emerged as the new upstarts to challenge the dominant Cannes winners: North America, Britain and to some extent, Brazil.
"New Zealand will clean up," predicts Michael Lynch, the publisher of the Australian advertising bible for creatives, Campaign Brief. "There's only a couple of agencies really bothering about creative here. They're the usual suspects: DDB, BMF, Saatchi & Saatchi, The Glue Society and Host. There's a possible late charge from Clemenger in Melbourne.""

+ Product placement in Shrek and in movies in general- "The product placement in Shrek 2 is simply hideous. The brand names are smuggled in via olde fairytale jokes (Barneys Old York, Versachery, Pork Illustrated, Tower of London Records) and one or two of these gags would be fine, but the film is larded with in-jokes, mouldy movie spoofs (that From Here to Eternity beach scene yet again), cover versions of hit songs, and a glut of pop-culture references. (the DreamWorks boss Spielberg gets two homages.)"