Tag: COMMERCIAL

This gorgeous commercial -- conceived by Morihiro Harano, the award-winning creative director of Drill, Inc. -- features a sort of sloping marimba, down which a wooden ball rolls, producing an unadorned rendition of Bach's Cantata 147. "We did not add any artificial music at all," Harano tells the New York Times. The things people do to sell a wood-encased phone! Are we philistines for kinda ...

Now that Gilbert Gottfried has been axed from his job as the voice of the Aflac duck, the insurance company is scrambling to find a replacement -- and it's looking to Monster for help. Aflac has already pulled all commercials featuring Gottfried, who was fired last week after posting a series of offensive jokes about Japan to his Twitter account. At first, the company considered running the ...

Groupon's infamous Super Bowl commercials caused quite a stir last month, and the company was eventually shamed into issuing an apology. But Robert Thurman, Tibetan Buddhist scholar and father of actress Uma, says he didn't have a problem with the Groupon spot that satirized pro-Tibet activism. "That was great -- I loved that," Thurman told the New York Observer. "Some people in the Tibetan ...

Samsung's new commercial for the Galaxy Indulge smartphone isn't just a commercial. It's a bona fide work of art, built around Snoop Dogg (in various iterations), Warren G, and a dating show from a bygone era. There's an overt emphasis on all the G's, a clever 'Regulate' reference, and narration from Ted Williams -- the formerly homeless man with the Golden Voice. Unfortunately, the spot ...

During last night's Grammys broadcast, HP ran a comprehensively awful commercial for its TouchPad, combining a track from Lou Reed with a script straight from 'Everyone Poops.' The idea behind the ad is simple: with the TouchPad, you can do a lot of different things. It's a message that the company probably could've portrayed in a million ways. For some reason, though, HP decided to build ...

Groupon has pulled a series of commercials that debuted during the Super Bowl, acknowledging that the controversial ad campaign "offended a lot of people." In a post on the company's blog, Groupon founder Andrew Mason announced that some of the satirical spots would still air today, but confirmed that the campaign would end thereafter. "We hate that we offended people, and we're very sorry ...

Meet Max Page, the 6-year-old boy who plays a bite-sized Darth Vader in Volkswagen's latest Super Bowl commercial. Max, who was unmasked on the 'Today Show' this morning, has a congenital heart defect that forced him to get a pacemaker at an early age. But that hasn't stopped him from pursuing his dreams in Hollywood. He's already appeared on 'The Young and the Restless,' starred in a handful of ...

Targeted advertising is all over the Internet. Soon, it might be all over our televisions, too. As the Wall Street Journal reports, DirecTV is planning to launch, next year, a targeted TV ad service, which would feed personalized commercials to nearly 10 million homes. These so-called 'addressable ads' would be tailored to the demographics of each home. Dog owners, for example, would receive ...

Don't adjust your TV sets. Democrats and Republicans really did just find a solution to one of the world's biggest problems: commercial decibel levels. After having already breezed through the Senate in October, the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation (CALM) Act received a final stamp of approval yesterday from the House of Representatives. It's now headed to the White House, where it ...

You may get impatient with those annoying 15-second ads you have to sit through before watching some online TV shows, but according to new research from Turner Broadcasting, most consumers may be willing to endure even more commercial airtime. To test consumer feedback, Turner fed different commercial formats to three randomized groups of visitors to the sites tbs.com and tnt.com. One group ...

While the University of Mississippi students' campaign to elect Admiral Ackbar as the school's new mascot has been squashed, ESPN isn't ready to let the rebellion die. The sports network recently filmed a commercial featuring students lobbying for and against the Star Wars Supreme Commander. "We are in need of a new Rebel leader," one student pleads. However, Lucasfilm claims Ackbar is too busy ...

Share No space is sacred for advertising directors these days. It's bad enough that you're bombarded by advertisements when you're sitting in front of your computer, watching TV or even riding the PATH train tunnels under the Hudson river. Now a company called Automated Media Services (AMS) is testing a new system dubbed 3GTV that will put small screens playing commercial loops on supermarket ...

digg_url ='http://www.switched.com/2010/06/09/snls-top-10-greatest-fake-tech-commercials/'; Share Despite the dozens of iconic characters 'Saturday Night Live' has spawned over its 35 years, the most consistently funny and memorable moments have come from its hallmark spoof ads. After striking comedic gold in its very first season with a sketch about Mel's Char Palace, SNL's writers soon ...

Last week on her talk show, Ellen Degeneres took aim at Apple during a skit about the iPhone. It's marginally funny, in that Ellen way, but it seems to have gotten a decent amount of laughs from the crowd. One person who didn't laugh, though, was Steve Jobs. Turns out, Apple reps contacted Degeneres after the piece ran and voiced their disapproval over her segment, which they claimed had made ...

Share As of this moment, the U.N. recognizes 192 official countries in the entire world. The U.S. State Department is willing to acknowledge 194. If you ask Verizon Wireless, though, there are about 233 countries on Earth. How does Verizon know? Because that's how many countries it claims to cover on its Web site. The company also recently ran an ad featuring its trademark Verizon guy, in ...