Keystone vs. Progressive

+ Brothers? Lovers? Or just plain friends? Kick back a few brewskis and talk about insurance and road trips. Yeah. Cross promo...you hear that Arnold? ;)

The Progressive Messenger for Progressive

Keith Stone for Keystone Light

The "new" testimonial ad: enough already

+ Maybe it's just me, but I'm getting a bit tired of the new "look we swapped shit on you" reality/webcam/focus group-type ads. Crispin Porter + Bogusky seem to be the kings of this kind of ad, especially for clients like The Truth, Coca Cola, Burger King, Microsoft and Dominos.

Coke Zero "punks" lawyers - 2006


The Truth campaign (with Arnold Worldwide) - this continues to be a staple of the their TV and web videos.


Whopper Freakout - 2007

Burger King - Whopper Freakout - 6 (2007) :30 (USA)

Microsoft - IE8 - 2010


Microsoft Windows - Personal PC Store - 2011


Dominos Pizza - 2010 & 2011



Most recent is from Grey NY for Fabreez. Based on the style of the ad, I did think it was a CP+B spot at first. I guess that's a sign that they have become a bit formulaic.

'

I suppose this is now the new "testimonial" ad. < scarcasm >yay< /sarcasm >

Ad: The Job Challenge

+ Mosaicoon out of Palermo, Italy recently created this energetic video for the US launch of Jobrapido.com, a new job search engine. The ad shows 14 jobs in 24 days. The shooting was done on 15 different locations and it's all made in stop motion. They took we more than 8000 photos from which we used around 800.



Credits:

Advertising Agency: Mosaicoon, Palermo, Italy
Creative Director: Juan Serrano Ortiz
Copywriter: Nicolas Bartleby
Agency Producer: Spela Marincic
Head of Seeding: Marco Imperato
Stylist: Roberto Pagnotta & Daniela Colajanni
Photography director: Manuela Di Pisa & Igor Scalisi Palminteri
Editor and Post Production: Manuela Di Pisa
Music: Waines- Let me be

Pimp your Google+ with extensions

+ It's been just over a week since Google+ launched. And already there are extensions to modify, tweak, enhance and more. And not from Google, but from 3rd party developers.

Here's some of what I've found (note: these are all for Chrome and I haven't tried them, just listing what's out there):

- Add your Facebook stream to Google+ with this browser extension. It allows you to view your wall and post to FB so you can do so from one location.(read more) Get it here. There is also another similar extension from another dev here.

- Add your Twitter stream to Google+. There are a couple of these already. One is made by the same folks who did the Facebook extension (mentioned above), called . Get it here.

- There is also Helper for Google+ which adds a twitter link to every Google Plus post and a link to translate posts with Google Translate. Get it here.

- Extended Share for Google+. This extension allows you to share spots in your Google+ stream to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. I think it was the first (if not one of the first) extensions out there. Get it here.

- +Comment Toggle. This extension hides any comments to posts within your Stream and makes them available if and when you actually want to see them. Get it here.

- Surplus. If you want to access your G+ notifications at any time from your browser bar, this lets you share or respond from within the popup. Get it here. There's another similar extension here in Italian.

- Replies and more for Google+. Using this extension adds a "Reply" and "Reply to Author" to your stream for easy +mentions of other users. Get it here.

- Google+1 allows you to +1 any page as it sits in the top of your Chrome browser bar. Get it here.

- The extension "++" extracts the Google+ profiles of the people whose names appear on the page you visit. Get it here.

- QuickView for Google+. This adds QuickView style keyboard shortcuts for Google Plus. Get it here.

- Color Plus extension lets you change the color of the main bar of Google+. Get it here.

- There's even an extension to skin your G+ to look like Facebook. Why? I have no idea. But if you want to get it, go here.

Google+

+Last week, Google jumped back into the social network fray with the beta launch of the Google+ project, which describes it as “...makes sharing online more like sharing in real life.” Beta invites started going out last Tuesday and were shut down late Wednesday night after “insane demand”. It has yet to be restored. I've got a few people asking me to invite them still. (Supposedly there is a work around now).

It’s interesting to watch this unfold for Google. One would hope it fares better than their Orkut network, which was launched in 2004--about 2 years before Facebook opened to the public--and after a failed bid to buy Friendster a year earlier. Orkut’s popularity faded in the US rather quickly and currently is dominated by users from Brazil (48.0%) and India (39.2%). It will be interesting to see if Google+ adopts any features or functionality that they’ve already built for Orkut.

From circles to group your friends and family (for more targeted broadcasting of information) to huddle (which allows for group video chats), there are some pieces of functionality which seem to be the genesis complaints and dreams of users of other social networks. In addition there’s the tried and true: ability to check-in, share pictures (via Picasa), and chat. Down the road, it’s likely that Google will integrate other products such as Reader, Documents and Calendar.

One of the big questions for marketers is what will Google+ offer for brands? The current layout is clean and ad free, but the design is so simplistic that they could easily fit in advertising without altering much. There have been some rumors about brand pages in its future as well (it took a long time for Facebook to open up to brands after going “public”). It will be interesting to see how Google+ plans to lay these out, and whether or not there will be improvements from the way in which Facebook currently handles them. Will brand “apps” be built in HTML5? Will there be clearer navigation to extra pages and content? How often will Google+ update its policies and change its layout?

Nothing but time will tell.

Trendy: Cinemagraphs - Bring back the gifs

+ Maybe it's just me that is noticing more posts and tweets around cinemagraphs, but they are pretty cool and beautiful (in a lot of instances). Cinemagraphs are gif files made from videos, that look like static images with subtle animation.
Here are a few for inspiration:
cinemagraphs
lovegifs
I am not an artist
from me to you
Mr Whaite's animated posters
freeman's sporting gifs
Of course there's a flickr group

Here's a tutorial to make your own.

I'm curious to see if we see a trend in advertising using this technique to do cool things with Flash banner ads.