Catalog Living

Photos from home furnishing catalogs.



Recaptioned.

Oscar Mayer Commercial

via boingboing

Wassup? 2008

Eight years later the original "Wassup?" boys return, in a surprising, brilliant mashup of culture and politics. This is what YouTube was made for.



YouTube link

True dat.

You can watch the original Bud commercial (which itself was an adaptation of a short film).

(via Andrew Sullivan)

Bing! Bang! Boing! Into the boingle bucket

Our trip to the Exploratorium (AKA the Headache Museum) yesterday made me want to post this two-minute commercial from 1972 for a DIY Rube Goldberg machine kit for kids. They don't make toys (or ads) like this any more.

The electronic music by Jean-Jacques Perrey is also, as the kids are saying these days, full of win.



Via Jesse Thorn, via Boing Boing

Link

Engineers of the future

Christa has spoken often of the aging workforce at Chevron, and the challenge the company has in encouraging and attracting young engineers (especially as science continues to lose traction in the American public school curriculum).

Perhaps Chevron could take a cue from Hydro, a Norwegian oil and gas concern, who is using television advertising to inspire the next generation of engineers.

New Mac/PC ad: "Misprint"

The "Get a Mac" series of ads are also by TBWA\Chiat, aka Media Arts Lab. Per my comments to the previous post, I'm not much a fan of the Chiat style of ads that call attention to themselves, rather than to the product or brand. (I've also referred to this as "mascot advertising", elsewhere).

Partly because of the domineering influence of S. Jobs, and partly dumb luck, Chiat has had some amount of success in its Apple advertising. The iPod silhouettes are of course a mascot, but they are 1) iconic in their non-specificity (note that they change with each refresh of the campaign); and 2) representative of the actual product in relationship to the consumer, i.e. you + iPod = this dancer.

The dumb luck of course was in the original casting of obscure* author John Hodgman in the role of "PC" in the now long-running series of "PC vs. Mac" commercials. (The ads themselves also work both in that the mascots are stand-ins for products, and that they are engaged in an actual discussion about the value proposition for the consumer.)

The series would likely not have continued much past its original run without Hodgman (and, in my opinion, Justin Long, whose straight man has become increasingly understated almost to the point of motionlessness), who has leapt through hoop after comedy hoop without faltering. (The last round did begin to strain the limits--as writers attempted to communicate in 30 seconds the comedic impact of Vista users downgrading to XP.)

In this latest ad (launched last night), Hodgman nails the peeved eyeglass adjustment like a 1950s television comedy veteran.

Nails it.



*Remember that at the time he had contributed perhaps a handful of pieces to "This American Life", had written for McSweeney's and Men's Health magazine, and not a whole heck of a lot else. His casting came on the heels of his insanely successful book tour appearance on The Daily Show--before he was selling many actual books.

Cutwater: "Pouring In"

Saturday.
Army/Navy game.
Commerical break.
Jeep commercial. Laugh out loud funny.
Checked YouTube: yup, it's a popular (146,000 views and counting). Getting buzz on AdWeek.

The commercial features Andy Kim's 1973 pop single "Rock Me Gently," a crop of CGI animals, and spot on comic timing.

I laugh every time I see it.

R has asked me not to laugh.

L keeps asking me why it's funny. And thanks to YouTube, I can pause, and go cut by cut to point out the visuals that take what could have been a cheese fest into brilliant comedy.

Spot produced by Cutwater, a brand new boutique creative firm in San Francisco (started by Chuck McBride (former Executive Creative Director at TBWA/Chiat/Day) which, thanks to McBride's credentials, stole the Jeep account away from some Detroit firm).

High res version available at Cutwater's website, if you can navigate through its ubercool interface. (Why do design firms always want to hide their work behind pages of flash animation?)

We now have (to Deirdre's dismay) added "Rock Me Gently" to the iPod to the kids' favorites playlist.

Vending Machine Red!

Coca-Cola has a Japanese viral video hit on its hands with "Vending Machine Red!", a surrealist pastiche of 1960s giant robot television shows.

Here, in Episode Three, Vending Machine Red takes a break from saving the world.



More episodes available here.

Faded Building Advertisements

A treasure trove of photos cataloguing the ghosts of advertisements past from the sides of buildings in and around New York City.


From Forgotten NY, a site dedicated to the lost and decaying.