Koo’s Corner

I had a handful of commercials pegged for commercial of the week, but none seem to be on youtube. Following up on my ode to Apple yesterday I thought I would go with the new ad for the new 3g Iphone.

Nothing special but its great that they position it as twice as fast and half as cheap. The positioning will lead to a lot of upsells.

Typically I find myself unmoved by most automobile commercials. However the below Subaru ad caught my attention. In an era, where car commercials are cliche and ineffective, this Subara commercial sticks out as cool and worth watching. It looks fun to do, but I wonder if I would have the cahones to try any of these stunts.

Man o man I have been busy of late. Really wanted to give some love to a new San Francisco Giants commercial featuring Matt Cain, but alas I could not find it.

Luckily this is a pretty decent silver medal winner. I think this maybe the first apparel commercial to take the crown and deservingly so

The below Dockers ad has a great soundtrack and showcases not just their clothes, but a upscale exciting San Francisco lifestyle to go along with it. I am biased as my recent 1/2 move puts me within eye sight of the great city, but I still found myself impressed with the work, weekend, dress, and golf multi use concept. Plus that babe looks amazing in the party clip.

Today I am not going to pick a commercial of the week. Despite extra time watching the tube during my week of vacation, nothing stuck out what so ever in the world of commercials.

So rather than crowning a false winner, I am going to vent my anguish at the continuously annoying nostalgic basketball commercials. You know the Haynes Michael Jordan and Cuba Gooding Jr ads as well as the more prominent T Mobile Dwayne Wade and Charley Barkley commercials.

Both campaigns are not funny, never were, don’t sell the product well, and have been annoying overkills of advertising over the past 6 months.

But the question begs, which tandem is more annoying?

In one corner we have advertising and basketball royalty in Jordan. The man made me buy cologne, when I was in like 4th grade.

Its hard to make Jordan look bad, somehow Cuba Gooding Jr finds a way to make you roll your eyes at the greatest athlete in the last 30 years. The commercials usually consist of Cuba looking stupid, doing something stupid, and then Jordan being emberassed by how ridiculous Cuba acts.

Personally I would be more embarrassed that a great actor like Cuba has starred in films like…

In the other corner is the sometimes mildly funny, but mostly ambiguously gay (not that there is anything wrong with that!) T Mobile commercials with Wade and Barkley. The first rounds of these advertisements had Wade pursuing Barkley only to find later on that Barkley is a needy, not cool, whiner.

With Barkley’s past and recent gambling debts well documented , its looking probable that we may have to endear years to come of Wade trying be cool, and Barkley attempting to be funny.

The verdict: Wade and the Heat suck, and I already have too much Charles Barkley on my television. Its also good to see Cuba Gooding Jr working, and not chasing dogs, money, little kids, or girls on a Gay Cruise?

With that being said, I give the nod only slightly to Jordan and Gooding Jr for being the less annoying commercial tandem. Potential dream matchups for future marketing campaigns below

Magic Johnson and MC Hammer

Christian Laettner and Christian Slaeter

Scottie Pippen and Wesley Snipes

Before I get into this weeks commercial of the week I want to tell you an interesting story. I saw this commercial on Monday night and loved it. Its ingrained in my head and will be hard to top in 2008.

I found it in youtube, and was excited to post it on the blog. The one problem, AMP Energy didn’t allow it to be embedded. So I complained in the video comments, sent them some angry messages. I mean its a commercial, you want people to see it!

Other people soon joined in making fun of them for their odd stance on not allowing this great commercial to circulate on social networking sites and blogs. It took a day or two, but they relented. Props to them to seeing the value in having commercials circulated in new media channels.

This maybe my favorite commercial of the year. Its risque, catchy, and flat out hilarious. I already have a lot of the lyrics memorized such as “Cannot find your shoe, and hair smells like the bar” and “Then this morning when I saw her kankles, I had to think again”.

All of the actors/singers come off as genuine and likable characters embracing showcasing the promiscuity and hilarity that is a staple of single 20’s living. I like the somewhat open ended happy ending as well. Enjoy, this one will be hard to beat!

You can stop freaking out that benkoo.com has not been updated. Travel and some other issues have cut into blogging time, but I am back and back with a vengeance (and a big announcement soon)

But before we jump into bigger and better things, thought I would give a shout out to my latest commercial of the week.

Below is a series of promos for the NBA playoffs entitled “There Can only be One” The NBA is back after a slow couple of years after Jordan’s retirement. These new ads are interesting, cool, and visually stimulating. The pairings of the split screens are also interesting as the two talking players may bump into each other in the playoffs although most of those scenarios are unlikely. Overall a good ad campaign that is adding some buzz to an already interesting NBA playoff picture.

Kobe and Shaq

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=xAhhw9a0kzE]

Lebron and Garnett

Nash and Kidd

Dwight Howard and Chris Paul

The rest of the videos can be found here.

http://youtube.com/user/NBA

I saw a handful of good commercials (I really liked the Diet Mountain Dew yo yo commercial), but in the end opted for this slapstick advertisement promoting Stride Gum.

Simply put, its random and hilarious. It doesn’t really make sense, but what’s not to like.

Usually I stay away from commercials that are this simple, but the pure impact and unexpectedness from the initial collision is worthy enough to win commercial of the week

Didn’t see much I liked in the way of new commercials this weeks but was impressed with the new Iphone Bet Commercial. Apple’s marketing across all their product lines are targeted, recognizaeblle, and consistent.

Although its overkill, their market shares for all their products have been trending up as more and more consumers begin to think Apple for phones, mp3 players, computers, etc.

The consistent messaging and simplicity of their ads are converting hoards of consumers into Apple users (my company now allows Macs, and we constantly give away Apple products as prizes at events).

The below ad is another great Apple ad, as it showcases a common use case for the Iphone. This ad campaign is approaching one year, but still remains effective as viewers are continuously seeing the robust functionality and ease of use via hypothetical use cases.

This ad was received very positively by my friends as we disagree, bet, and look stuff up via computer or Iphone on almost a daily basis. Unfortunately I recently lost a $25 bet surrounding what year Mike Miller was drafted.

Before i go into this week’s commercial of the week, I wanted to call attention to the unbelievable amount of ad spending by brokerage houses during this NCAA tourney. It’s so excessive that their frequency almost warrants its own drinking game.

I guess it makes sense as the audience skews to college grads who are more likely to be doing some financial planning in addition to the recent market voliality. However it seems to be a little overkill with numerous ads by AG Edwards, Etrade, Charles Schwab, Fidelity, Hartford, Pacific Life, Principal Financial Group, ING, AIG, Wachovia, Edward Jones, T Rowe Price, and UBS.

Although I was a little turned off by the abundance of financial ads, I did like below New Balance advertisement.

New Balance is not a sexy brand, but makes high quality durable shoes. They have a high level of customer satisfaction and brand loyalty, but tend to avoid glitzy ad campaigns and celebrity endorsers.

The below ad resonates with runners and is engaging enough to keep you watching despite its length.

Update: I have attached a couple more of these smart ads that extend the concept that running is a tumultuous relationship. Glad to see New Balance executing on a well though out ad campaign that embraces the sentiments of so many runners.

Lots of cool commercial have been debuting this week, but I got to show love for this nostalgic Pontiac ad.

Spy hunter was a very popular arcade and Nintendo game in the 80’s. If you are a guy between the ages of 25-40, chances are you probably are at least semi familiar with it.

Looking to hit that same age market, Pontiac has crafted the below commercial. It’s a great concept capitlizing on 80’s nostalgia that is executed really well. My first inclination was to play Spy Hunter and not buy a Pontiac, but in this day and age any commercial that makes a positive impression and is memorable is affective compared to the rest of the advertising riff raff out there.