MonKeyArtAwards

Wondering Where The Yellow Went

Well, perhaps those images in our last post were more yellow than orange, but we’ll be damned if we’re going to refer to our fair city as the Big Yellow. However, it does bring to mind the old TV Is Good campaign - that classic misfire on the part of ABC and Chiat/Day back in 1998 - that proved once and for all that you simply cannot count on those civilian ad agencies to understand the arcane machinations of entertainment advertising. Click on image to enlarge. 

What The Font?!

 Oops! Looks like a major typo on the part of NBC's advertising and promo department. Apparently they forgot to get the rights to use Font Bureau Inc's trademarked typefaces for their fall marketing campaign. Now FBI is asking for "no less than $2 million in damages."

Read all the gory details along with the actual lawsuit here.

Gimme An F!

The Live Feed's Best & Worst Fall TV ads are HERE!

We Have Seen The Future Of Print Advertising… And It's On Computers

According to Variety, ABC is “hoping to attract a few more fanboys and gals” to its new show FlashForward by running print ads with codes that, when held up to a webcam, turn the picture on the computer screen into a 3-D ad.

"It appears to play right out of the ad," says ABC’s advertising and marketing veep Darren Schillace. "Once you watch all the videos, it's a 10-minute experience. In the normal world, you'd never spend 10 minutes with a print ad." 

Obviously Mr. Schillace is unaware of the 20 minutes we in the normal world devote to reading all those warnings listed in fine print in a Celebrex ad.

We picked up the October issue of GamePro to see this for ourselves and, as much as we appreciate the innovation, it remains, for all intents and purposes, a tune-in print ad: complete with a headline, visual, title art, date and time sign off and network logo. Given ABC's claim that their ad is savvy enough for the audience it is aimed at, it comes across as somewhat timid compared to the teaser for 9.

Advertising In The Great Outdoors

If you’re like us, you can’t help but notice how much network and cable TV has come to dominate outdoor advertising in LA.

Even on the most casual cross-town drive -- and what better word than “casual” to describe our blasé blend of texting and driving -- we are seeing ads for CBS’s new fall shows and the CW’s Melrose Place and Vampire Diaries on countless billboards, bus sides and bus shelters. (However, we're not seeing as much from ABC, NBC and FOX. Come on, you other websters. Tick, tock!)

This brings us back to our complaint re: the Key Art Awards' exclusion of a category for network and cable TV advertising. Even our beloved IMPawards pays scant attention to this branch of entertainment advertising. Besides, as far as we know, IMPawards is based in Halifax, Nova Scotia. So what do they know about network fall launches? Haligonians probably aren't even aware that Tuesday is the new hump day.

Click on images to enlarge.

We Have Seen The Future Of Print Advertising… And It Is Video

The latest Ad Age reports that CBS is planning to insert an interactive video in the September 18 issue Entertainment Weekly as a means of getting their “samples into the hands of more entertainment enthusiasts.”

There's more info on the technology here and here.

 Click on image to enlarge.

On The Other Hand...

One of our readers sent us this reminder that Fox's healthcare provider likes to give the finger, too. Another example of the fine art of visual double entendre from the folks who brought you this.

Mike Vick In Talks With The Whores Of Babylon

If you're like us, you cannot wait to see which agency pimps itself out to work on the print and outdoor campaign for this proposed reality show starring the NFL's most lovable player since OJ Simpson.

NBC Agency Makes Headlines

Oh, dear! It looks like NBC's West Coast Off-Air Advertising agency has flung peacock poo all over the front page of the L.A. Times.

Beating A Dead Peacock

NBC Universal's mouth-breathing titan Jeff Zucker admitted that any chance of NBC ever again being No. 1 in prime time were thrown out the window when they made the insane decision to put Jay Leno on every weeknight at 10 PM. Mixing a cocktail of metaphors, Mother Zucker said the Leno move is not a white flag-- just a reaction to new dynamics. "Sometimes, you see the world more clearly when you're flat on your back. We can bury our heads in the sand, and then I'll know we'll be defeated." 

Blah, blah, blah. All we want to know is where does this leave all those passionate communicators over at the west coast off-air advertising agency?

Waaah! Me Want Pointy Thingy!

If you’re like us, you grew up hearing mommy and daddy talk about the old days, back when TV advertising meant a half-page, black & white tune-in ad in TV Guide. But now, even a casual drive down to Taco Bell reveals how much television has come to dominate outdoor advertising in our fair city. 

So, join us if you will, in flinging a heaping pile of steaming poo at the Key Art Advisory Board for failing to create an awards category for network and cable TV outdoor and print advertising.

 

Type Settings

Here’s a handy tip from the creatives over at Fox In House,* if you’re stuck for a place to put your title art, try laying it down in that big fleshy part of the actor’s face located just below the eyeball. 

* Not, under any circumstances, to be confused with Fox outhouse creatives. 

Click on big fleshy part of actor's face to enlarge.

Look! Me Won Pointy Thingy!

If you’re like us, you’re always on the lookout for subliminal images and libidinal symbols that those egghead art directors like to sneak into their print ads.

For instance, in this ad for The Bachelor, the Seattle skyline suggests the rampant sexual heat just below the surface of this prime time meat auction, while in the foreground we can see the promise of a Freudian psychodrama unfolding as the little boy realizes he’s the only thing standing between daddy’s manparts and 25 Space Needle-crazed women.

Click on Space Needle to enlarge.

Back To The Future

If you’re like us, when you think of forward-looking brands on the leading edge of technological and artistic progress, you think Microsoft, Publicis Groupe and NBC. So when we read that Publicis' VivaKi unit, which has a digital wing that has the nerve to call itself The Nerve Center, was in the kitchen with Microsoft, CBS and NBC & Fox’s Hulu cooking up a new video advertising format we weren't surprised.

We’re not sure what this exciting new ad thingamabobby will ultimately be, but Curt Hecht, the head nerve at the Nerve Center assured Online Daily Media it won’t be shiny or blinky.

And, after “a series of consumer focus group studies around the country,” we’re betting it will be the dumbest of all possible contenders.

WTF?

Couch Potatoes: The Next Generation

CBS Interactive is launching an online feature that lets us collectively interact with one another while watching their shows online at CBS.com. 

Aimed to keep viewers awake, or at least semi-comatose during the umpteenth season of Survivor: So Over, or the madcap hijinks that ensue on Gary, Unmarried, these "social viewing rooms," combine the wholesome fellowship of a chat room with the warm and fuzzy experience of video conferencing to create a virtual community of eyelift network devotees. 

"We're going to be using this technology on many of our future products," says Anthony Soohoo, senior vice president and general manager of CBS Interactive. "We believe this is groundbreaking." 

Oh! And to think if CBS would’ve launched this 15 years ago, Murder, She Wrote would still be topping their ratings. 

Meanwhile, NBC and Fox-backed Hulu has added a social media aspect to its site in the form of - hold on to your propeller beanies - Discussion Boards!