Why Advertising Doesn’t Matter to Burger King

Don’t rely on borrowed interest.
This is one of the very first rules I learned about in ad school. Don’t use popular culture to sell your stuff. This is just one of many rules I’ve seen broken by a major company with their advertising.

McDonalds is full of puns, all Pepsi ever does is use celebrities and Burger King just does whatever they want to do. Which as a creative stuck in a job where I have to follow the rules, pisses me off to high heavens! If I were to have presented this in Portfolio School I'd have been chastised and chased off with a pair of burning torches, yet here it is. And I bet it'll get all sorts of buzz and praise. Look I'm already sharing it myself.

This latest batch of BK creative does have a concept. Burger King is open late, but relies so much on Ad rule no-no #1. Still this is way better than their Seth Macfarlane cartoons or their overtly sexual BKwich ads.

Check out these four ads using the new batch of classic horror movie monsters.

Goodness Tron is Nerdy

I consider myself somewhat of geeky, but jeeze, original Tron, is pretty nerdtastic. I watched it for the second time last night, and between falling in and out of boredom I realized how high concept and computer geeky it is. Case in point.

Notice Pac-Man?

And for once I really truly believe that this is a movie deserving of a remake. It should have been made when the effects could keep up with it, and now that being a nerd is hip, what a perfect time.
Take a look at the updated lightcycles


And the ships

And the suits

Plus the viral promotion for it has been off the hook. Check out this game and see if you can find the video game references.

Everyone I’ve talked has had this movie bumped up straight to the top of their most anticipated movies of the year. It’s got cool effects, 3-D (which I guess is the most awesome thing ever lately), and a score by Daft Punk. Sign me up, I’m on the bandwagon. If you haven’t seen it yet, check out the trailer here. /tronlegacy/

Disasters sell things

So on yahoo's homepage I saw a few things that I thought were kinda strange kinda cool. Two of the top stories were "disaster" related and right next to the story was a page takeover banner ad featuring 2012, the disaster movie starring the dude that used to be cool and hold a boombox.


While I thought the actual ad was cool. The banner shook because of the earthquake and volcanic debris came crashing down.
However is it a bit wrong to use the horrible tragedies of the Chilean earthquake and global warming to pitch a disaster movie. Or is it genius marketing? You decide.