47 posts tagged “advertising”

I thought this was awesome news in that the photographer, Giuliano Bekor, shot regularly for Lucire. From the Lucire ‘Insider’ section.

Giuliano Bekor, whose credits include numerous Lucire shoots, photographed Hayden Panettiere for her 2008 Candie’s print campaign.

Hayden Panettiere will star in Candie’s back to school 2008 television, print and online advertising campaign, according to the company. Hayden, who is known as an award-winning actress, activist and star of NBC’s hit television series Heroes can now add recording artist to her résumé.
   Following last year’s marketing campaign with Grammy-award winning artist Fergie, the new fall TV commercial will be a direct lift from Panettiere’s first music video, ‘Wake Up Call’, which was styled using Candie’s apparel, footwear and accessories.
   This is Panettiere’s second season with the brand.
   To coincide with TV, a print campaign will feature Panettiere in a variety of sexy and sweet vignettes as she playfully poses with a piano, behind a beaded curtain and in a club-like setting among others. The ‘Wake Up Call’ video and the Candie’s commercial were shot in Los Angeles by famed music video director Chris Applebaum and the print campaign was shot by fashion photographer Giuliano Bekor, whose credits include Lucire, and created by the Iconix in-house marketing team.
   Fans can listen to ‘Wake Up Call’ exclusively at www.candies.com and www.kohls.com/inspire (streaming only) beginning today. The single will be available for download on iTunes beginning August 5. The single is being released by Hollywood Records.

This was a great find at Take Note in Lower Hutt today. Take Note is a post office and gift shop run by my friend Mandeep but I have never bought a book from there before. I was surprised to find it displayed prominently and being an automobiliac I paid the $40 for it.

   My cover differs slightly: the News Gothic-set headlines have been replaced by the same text in ITC Benguiat, while the lettering around the masthead is now Akzidenz-Grotesk. Inside, there are great Car articles from 1965 to 1974, covering the best of the first decade (I became a reader, thanks to Gary Hayvice, whose daughter was a classmate of mine, in 1981). I grew up with Llewellyn, Bishop, Setright and the rest; I remember Bulgin, and very briefly, wasn’t there a chap called James May? But some of the earlier talents appear in this compilation.
   Some articles are prescient—the warning that Honda could be a big player if it chose to build saloon cars, and the war for oil and how it might run out (from the first fuel crisis in the 1970s)—and others are less so, such as the warning that a Channel Tunnel would be a folly. Others are plain out of place in today’s politically correct world, namely the nude models that adorned cars at motor shows.
   There are even old advertisements, including one for women—flogging copies of Good Housekeeping. It was very sexist and the idea that cars were designed to pull birds was very much in evidence.
   It’s hardcover, so it should be a proud collection of 1960s’ and 1970s’ motoring journalism in my home.

The youngsters at work hadn’t seen this 1979 TVC for Kentucky Fried Chicken before.

   However, the following TVC for Cadbury’s Crunchie is even older (1975) and they remembered it, due to its long run, even after the packaging changed. (There was a CGI version that updated the packaging—which is not worth talking about.)

For a moment I thought this was a real billboard saying someone was missing (see the bad typography), since it was the only one I saw. Turns out now it’s for a TV show.

   OK, this was clever (and we do have a lot of clever ads) and I am very glad TVNZ is at least promoting one of its own shows strongly—but is it also irresponsible? By the way, I do not recall what the show is named.

Since I posted about the use of the word coon on radio in New Zealand, I did get a reply from the plumbing firm which it advertised.
   It was very short:

It is raccoons the ones in the woods. Of course there is no limit to the number of interpretations.

   Fair enough: we now know the intent. I would have written more in response (e.g. signed the thing with my name), but that is another issue. I still wonder if the alternative, racist interpretation was in the back of the copywriter’s mind. I guess we won’t know.
   However, every time I have talked about this radio commercial, most people are shocked. No one seems to come up with the raccoon explanation. It’s a 100 per cent response to the notion that the advertisement is racist.
   Sure, this is nowhere near scientific. I must have mentioned it to about 15 people. That’s hardly representative of the population. And on this blog, opinion was divided among an international audience.
   A check back then did reveal that the word was also a racist term used to describe Aboriginals in Australia by certain Australians, and it came up again when Lucire covered Naomi Campbell’s sentence last Friday.:

Capt Doug Maughan, a pilot of 28 years, had filed a complaint [against British Airways] after the use of the word coon during a training session. He also claimed Saudi Arabians were referred to as ‘rag-heads’ on one flight.

   This was in relation to Campbell allegedly being called a ‘gollywog supermodel’ by airline staff.
   In this context I don’t think I was being too sensitive, since I get the feeling the racist interpretation is more commonplace than the animal one, even in the British Commonwealth.
   It’s hard to believe the ‘gollywog’ comment, too. Campbell’s words could have been dismissed if it had not been for Capt Maughan’s own evidence that British Airways allegedly, and casually, used racist epithets. (The airline denies the allegations.)
   I won’t add more as I think the two points of view were well covered in the earlier post’s comments.

I hope Kiwi Lifers seeing the ninth episode of Life on Mars tonight for the first time enjoyed it. I did watch it again—yes, with the ads—and I didn’t mind the repeat, even if I could have chucked on the DVD. The acting was superb on every count, including that of guest star Marc Warren. Simm and Glenister were brilliant was always. Most of my commentary on the show was on IMDB, so it looks like I didn’t blog as much about the second series as I thought. Those messages, dating back to March 2007, have all disappeared, but I do remember being spooked out by the telephone call at the end from Hyde 2612.
   As to the image at the left, wait till episode five of this series.
   Strangely, the first promo I ever saw for the second series of Life on Mars was around 6.30 p.m.—two hours before the broadcast. If I hadn’t bought the DVD I would have been furious for the late under-promotion. I understand from the VO at the end of the episode that it replaced Without a Trace, and the American show was even advertised in some publications. The decision to air Life on Mars seems to have been a very late one, which explains why there was so little by way of promos.
   If only TV One promoted this prime-time show with the fervour that the BBC had—I even suggested a year ago that the old 1973 NZBC logo should come on before the programme, just as BBC One put on the early-1970s blue globe before its second-series Life on Mars episodes:

   If anyone caught the promo for next week’s episode, Emmy is misspelt by TV One staff as Emme. Let’s hope they catch it before more of this typo airs.

From: Jack Yan
To: Drake

Please encode message before sending.

Drake: given your recent successful assassinations, our organization will pay you to eliminate from New Zealand screens the Beaurepaires spokesman, Vince Martin. Since 1982 we have had to put up with his ads for Dunlop and Beaurepaires, listening to him whine about blunt axes and singing Christmas carols. You are free to choose what method of killing you like, but the old hallucination and dive out of a high-rise gag is a good standby. Try not to run afoul of Jim Phelps and his Mission: Impossible team if you can.—JY

When I go on YouTube, there are a lot of commercials that the posters claim are ‘banned’. I’ve spotted quite a few that weren’t banned, which is rather annoying. It’s like going to Wikipedia and finding the car pages are wrong (about 90 per cent, by my reckoning, have factual errors that no “expert” writing about them would make).
   Well, here’s a commercial for Toyota that was actually banned in New Zealand by the political correctness movement. Probably the excuse was anyone seeing this TVC would surely then commit domestic violence. I would have banned it for a lack of originality and viewing it the second and third time, it is plain stupid. The message: buy a Toyota, destroy your marriage.
   However, not everyone has my tastes, so here is a real banned TVC for the Toyota RAV4 for your viewing pleasure(?).

   Un pub interdit pour la Toyota RAV4 en Nouvelle-Zélande.

I was chatting to Nick Tomlinson au blog, and this ad for the 1988–9 Vauxhall Cavalier came to mind. Yes, the car of the future is the Opel Vectra A!

   No mention of a nuclear power cell, which GM actually did promise us in the Futurama shows of the 1950s.

Un pub britannique de 1988 pour l’Opel Vectra A, s’appelle Vauxhall Cavalier en Grande-Bretagne.

New Zealanders, remember these? Bring back the great Kiwi jingle!

The latter first ran in 1982 or 1983, I believe, and it continued into the late 1990s. I hope my friend Chloë, whom I met in 2002 but was actually at law school with prior to that, made heaps from the repeat fees.