Hanes Goes Tagless, Michael Jordan Approves

Tags are annoying. So are these commercials. But I’m just glad Michael Jordan got rid of the Hitler mustache.

Subaru Catches A Rainbow

Subaru’s advertisements tend to be sentimental. Of course, they’re also really good. Their commercials are the type that find deeper meaning in consumer products, which is a method that can be highly effective. In their incredibly cute and sweet new commercial, a little girl and her dad take an unplanned adventure to catch a rainbow. I’ve always found babies in ads to be more creepy than cute, but little kids in commercials are adorable. The soft song playing is Jenny O’s “Won’t Let You Leave” and it adds a nice, whimsical atmosphere. This one is a winner, for sure.

John Malkovich Muses With iPhone’s Siri

Another two iPhone spots featuring a celebrity in a decidedly unglamorous situation. These are pretty low-key and amusing commercials with John Malkovich, but I bet a lot of the audience doesn’t even know who he is.

DirecTV Sez: Don’t Attend Your Own Funeral As A Guy Named Phil Shifley

The campaign continues. And it’s still really funny. Phil Shifley is on Facebook now too.

Getty Images: From Love To Bingo Is Fantastic

How to tell a story for Getty Images, a stock photo company? You could use 873 images (all from Getty’s archive) in a breathtaking 60 second video. So Brazilian ad agency AlmapBBDO did just that, using all those images to tell the story of a life. It took six months to finish. But it was worth the wait…just brilliant. Here’s the scoop from AdFreak.

Bonus video: I’m reminded of the montage from Up.

That Stupid Pepsi Next Ad With The Baby

In the last post, I wrote about a Pepsi Max commercial/short film starring NBA Rookie of the Year Kyrie Irving. It was good stuff that kept you interested even if the twist wasn’t completely unexpected. But this Pepsi Next ad just sucks. Oh look, the clueless husband and wife are SO BLOWN AWAY by Pepsi Next that they ignore their CGI baby doing crazy things. They even need their camera because they are really dumb…much like the mouth-breathing audience that this spot will probably appeal to. This is a commercial that makes people hate commercials.

Pepsi Max’s Commercial Starring “Uncle Drew” AKA Kyrie Irving

At 5 minutes, this Pepsi Max short film/commercial is one of the longest videos I’ve ever posted on here. But it’s some good stuff. Here’s the description from YouTube: Pepsi MAX went to a pick-up game in Bloomfield, NJ pretending to shoot a documentary on a basketball player named “Kevin.” When his Uncle Drew came into the game, some magical things happened. It’s only been up since Friday, but already has more than 2,000,000 views. Enjoy!

Uncle Drew got game.

Fun With Captain Morgan Black In 1661

Captain Morgan had one of my favorite commercials last year. This is another great one for Captain Morgan Black. So stylish and cool music. Taking a secret passage away from the formal ball to a place decidedly less formal adds such a nice devious element. I guess I’m just a fan of liquor ads featuring partying in years past. The song is Hanni El Khatib’s “You Rascal You” and the beautiful girl is Gal Gadot.

State Farm: LeBron Wants You To Graduate

I know this commercial has been around since the beginning of the NBA season, but it’s one that I never wrote about. It’s got a great message to stay in school and it’s hard to argue with the “life is too short to sleep through it” line. Really…every 26 seconds? That’s gotta be some sort of average, since I don’t think many kids are dropping out at 4 AM. But what always cracks me up is the part with the cheesy music and LeBron just chillin in the back of the classroom with nobody noticing.

Corona Light Misses The Mark

I enjoyed Corona Light’s Stan. But when doing an advertising campaign where all spots have the same formula, the writing has to be spot-on or the whole thing will fizzle. Take the Real American Heroes/Real Men of Genius campaign for Budweiser. There were more than 200 of these radio spots spanning 10 years. They all were basically the same, but the writing was so great that they were incredibly successful. For a more current example, here’s DirecTV’s awesome campaign. But Corona Light’s Mark falls a little flat. We all love Facebook and social media (this is today’s big news story), but it’s just not as accessible as Stan the working man. The song, which was unexpected and hypnotic before, is now pretty predictable. Plus, Stan is a funnier name than Mark. Is Mark based off Mark Zuckerberg? Hmm…