Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Unforgivable but is he right?

What do you do when your latest 30- and 60-second spots are ruled to be too raunchy for TV? You bring it online of course! And if you’re rap mogul Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs, you get mad and have the online version un-edited and longer than the ‘made for TV versions’.



You can check out the ‘too sexy for TV’ video here, and the crux of the plot is about a chance meeting with a model (played by real-life model, Jessica Gomez) at a trendy hotel bar. ‘Diddy’ and the model exchange flirtatious stares which signal the beginning for a night of passion. Oh yeah, the ad or ‘movietisment’ as said by Combs, was done to promote his female fragrance product, Unforgivable Women, following the 2006 launch of the men’s fragrance called Unforgivable.

The rap industry has long described Combs as a marketing genius and this latest incident may give us the chance to see how clever this move could be. Of course his hand was forced when US TV executives refused to air an un-edited version of his movietisment, but by him causing enough fuss for mainstream media to pick up on the story, and by defying those TV executives with the online full version (which is in keeping with his Bad Boy Entertainment branding) – I’ll be waiting to see if the video successfully goes viral.

At last night’s Emmy Awards, I recall someone saying that TV is still the most influential medium but marketers by now, all know the power of the Internet and the phenomenal things it can do for your brand. Will there ever be a time when marketers, given only one option, would pick online over TV without hesitation?

Tuesday, September 04, 2007

Battle of the flags

In case you missed it, yesterday we reported on The Flag Project appearing in The D&AD Annual 2007. Basically the project had D&AD flags sent to leading players across the advertising industry, with the challenge to do ‘something - anything' with it. Over 100 photographs were submitted and we have a couple of submissions here for you guys.



By Eike Koenig from HORT, Frankfurt, Germany.


By John Jay, Photographer, Bruce Wolf for Studio J.


By Lisa Smith from Victoria and Albert Museum, London.


By Niko Stumpo from Hanazuki, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

An online exhibition is supposed to be available today at dandad.org/flag but at the time of posting the link is not working.