Diesel: A Stupid or a Smart Campaign?

Diesel, the international jeans brand, has launched “Be Stupid“, a campaign that encourages consumers to take risks and move beyond the smart and sensible track for life. The campaign, developed at Anomaly London, includes online, press and outdoor advertisements featuring “stupid” acts, a digital recruitment campaign for the Diesel music video/2010 catalogue, and viral activity outlining the company’s Stupid philosophy.

Diesel Stupid Philosophy

Like balloons, we are filled with hopes and dreams. But. Over time a single sentence creeps into our lives. Don’t be stupid. It’s the crusher of possibility. It’s the worlds greatest deflator. The world is full of smart people. Doing all kind of smart things… Thats smart.

Well, we’re with stupid. Stupid is the relentless pursuit of a regret free life. Smart may have the brains…
but stupid has the balls. The smart might recognize things for how they are. The stupid see things for how they could be. Smart critiques. Stupid creates. The fact is if we didnt have stupid thoughts wed have no interesting thoughts at all. Smart may have the plans… but stupid has the stories.

Smart may have the authority but stupid has one hell of a hangover. Its not smart to take risks… Its stupid.
To be stupid is to be brave. The stupid isnt afraid to fail. The stupid know there are worse things than failure… like not even trying.

Smart had one good idea, and that idea was stupid. You can’t outsmart stupid. So don’t even try. Remember only stupid can be truly brilliant.

So, BE STUPID

Click on the link below to play the video in YouTube:

The Official Diesel Be Stupid Philosophy

Diesel Campaign Posters

Kisses and Jewels in Sexist Commercials

Kays is a jewellery company that is located all around the world. It is one of the leading jewellery brands in the world. Its slogan is "Every Kiss Begins with Kay". It is the number one jewellery store brand in the United States by sales and number of stores.
Most Kay stores are in malls, but many new stores are being opened outside malls in power strips and lifestyle centers.
Recently, Kay Jewelers Outlet stores have been opened. Kay Outlet stores offer a much broader selection of clearance styles and previously owned jewellery.

Kay Commercials

Kay Jewelers Commercials have been labelled sexist and embarrassing to women. There is one featuring a man and a woman in a log cabin. The commercial deliberately shows the woman as a weak creature: she is frightened by the storm and gasps, turning to her man for protection. The commercial has been criticized for showing an image of a woman as if, instead of being an adult, she were a six-year-old child. Kay commercials often portray women as materialistic creatures who are only interested in jewels or who need a jewel to be motivated to kiss a man.

The motif developed by Kay repeats that of the song sung by Nicole Kidman in the film Moulin Rouge, particularly the line in which she says:

A kiss on the hand may be quite continental,
But diamonds are a girl's best friend.
A kiss may be grand, but it won't pay the rental
On your humble flat, or help you feed your
pussy cat.

This motif had appeared before when Marilyn Monroe sang exactly the same song in the movie All About Eve.

The Chocolate the Lady Loves

Milk Tray is a type of chocolate made by Cadbury’s and sold in a box. In the UK, advertisements for Milk Tray show a man making a dangerous and difficult journey, for example swimming across a lake or climbing a mountain, to bring chocolates to an attractive woman. At the end of his journey, the advertisement says: “And all because the lady loves Milk Tray.”
James Coombes was the actor who played the debonair man of mystery who braved danger to surreptitiously deliver a box of chocolates to his lover. The Milk Tray man was undoubtedly the hero of one of the most famous advertising series of all time.

Cool Links: Origin of Greatest Brand Names

People often wonder where the brand names of the best-selling companies come from. These two links offer some explanations.

World's greatest brand name. Where does it come from?

List of company name etymologies

The Singer Behind The Perfume

Curious is a women's fragrance from Elizabeth Arden, and is the first perfume to be endorsed by Britney Spears, preceding "Fantasy." Spears reportedly earned $52 million from the endorsement.
Curious was released in September 2004, and was very successful internationally. It was the number one fragrance of 2004 in department stores, and in 2005, "Curious" was honoured by the Fragrance Foundation as Best Women's Fragrance. She has sold over 700 million bottles of this fragrance worldwide and it is her most successful perfume. Overall Spears has sold over 1 billion bottles of perfume.
The fragrance is a white floral scent. Its notes are Louisiana magnolia, golden Anjou pear, lotus flower, tuberose, star jasmine, pink cyclamen, vanilla-infused musk, sandalwood and blonde woods.
Elizabeth Arden put a special vanilla infused musk in it and added Louisiana magnolia. Spears said that the magnolia reminds her of home.
"Curious" is an eau de parfum, and is available in 50 and 100 mL bottles (also available in various smaller volume - 5mL, 10mL and 30mL for some giftset). The bottle is light blue in colour, and is accented with two dangling pink hearts. The 100 mL bottle includes a spray atomizer. Apart from these bottles of perfume, there are also:

"Deliciously Whipped!" 200 mL Body Soufflé
"Lather Me Up!" 200 mL Shower Gel
"You're So Smooth!" 200 mL Body Polish
"Totally Ticklish!" 20 g Body Shimmer
"Write On!" 14 g Perfumed Shimmer Stick
"Two Tempting!" 5 mL Fragrance Roller Ball and Lip Gloss Duo

The TV Advertisement

The TV advertisement for Curious was built on a stage set instead of in an actual hotel. Actor Eric Winter plays Spears' love interest in the TV commercial.
It starts off with Winter and Spears noticing each other before they go in their neighboring hotel rooms. Then, they are shown thinking about each other with Spears walking towards the door to Winter's hotel room. Then fantasies of Spears and the latter are shown mixed with things like a cartoon, a flower and a rodeo. It ends with Spears gazing at the camera.

Cool Links: Genderisation of Products

Genderisation of products which in the past used to be neutral is a growing phenomenon. The reason? To increase sales.
There is also a tendency called "pinkification", which has been put into practice by manufacturers of pink toys and children's clothing. Pinkstinks is a campaign against this negative trend. You can read about these in the links below.

Cool Links:

* About Genderisation of neutral products:
Sexism Sells

* About Pinkification and Pinkstinks:
Pink: the colour of sexism?

Advertising: The Dog Behind the Paint

Dulux is a type of paint used for painting the inside and outside of houses made by the British company ICI. Dulux is an internationally available brand of paint. It is known for the large sheepdog (= a large dog with long grey and white hair) that appears in its advertisements, and this type of dog is sometimes called a Dulux dog.

Did you know?

Fernville Lord Digby, was the most famous Dulux dog and also made his owner, Cynthia Harrison, famous. When filming advertisements, Digby was treated like a star, being driven to the studio in a chauffeur driven car. The famous British dog trainer Barbara Woodhouse was employed to train Digby and his three stunt doubles, who were used whenever specific tricks or actions needed to be filmed.

Cool Video:

One of the most memorable Dulux adverts from around 1990:

Advertising: The Composer Behind The Bread

Hovis is a UK brand of flour and bread, now owned by Premier Foods.
The name was coined by London student Herbert Grime in a national competition set by S. Fitton & Sons Ltd to find a trading name for their patent flour which was rich in wheat germ. Grime won £25 when he coined the word from the Latin phrase hominis vis – "the strength of man".
Hovis makes different types of bread but it is best known for its brown bread.
The Hovis advertisements on television show scenes from the past to give the idea that the bread is still made in a simple, old-fashioned way.

Some Hovis advertisements:

* The Music

Hovis advertisements feature romantic music composed by Antonín Dvořák (born on September 8 1841; died on May 1 1904). Dvořák was a Czech composer. The last of his symphonies is known as the New World Symphony because he wrote it in the United States (the “New World”). This symphony was used by the Hovis company to advertise their bread. In fact Hovis has been using the same piece of Dvorak music in television advertisements since the 1970s. This piece is the second movement form Dvorak's Symphony No. 9, Opus 95, "From the New World", that has become popularised as the song "Goin' Home". Hovis used this theme to create nostalgia in their advertisements, by showing the past and using the slogan "Hovis as good for you today as it's always been". These advertisements have consequently won awards with the theme tune becoming "a prominent feature of the Seventies and Eighties."

Three Beers, Three Ads

Carling Black Label

A type of lager (light-coloured beer) sold in the UK, known especially for its humorous advertisments in which a character says ‘I bet he drinks Carling Black Label’ when another character does something very difficult or unusual. Another slogan used by Carling is "People like it".

Carlsberg

A type of lager popular in the UK, and known especially for being advertised as being ‘probably the best lager in the world’. People somtimes use these words humorously, changing them slighlty, when they are talking about other subjects.

Guinness

A type of stout (= a strong, dark beer) which has a creamy white froth on top of it when it is poured into a glass. It is thought as the national drink of Ireland and many people remember the phrase used in old advertisements ‘Guinness is good for you’.

Cool Links: Vintage Sexist Ads

A wonderful selection of advertisements portraying women as weak, gullible and, above all, inferior to men.

Check out this link:
15 Vintage Sexist Ads

The Singer Behind The Worst Advertising Slogan

i'm lovin' it is an international branding campaign by McDonald's Corporation. It was created by Heye & Partner, a McDonald's agency based in Germany. It was the company's first global advertising campaign and was launched in Munich, Germany on September 2, 2003, under the German title ich liebe es. The English part of the campaign was launched in the UK on September 25, 2003 and in the USA on September 29, 2003 with the music of Tom Batoy and Franco Tortora and vocals by Justin Timberlake, in which the slogan appears.
In 2007, after a public casting call which received 15,000 submissions, McDonald's selected 24 people to appear as part of the campaign. Images of those chosen, who had submitted a story and digital photograph which "captured ... themes of inspiration, passion and fun," appeared on McDonald's paper bags and cups worldwide. In Spanish the slogan i'm lovin it is translated as me encanta.



Another bad advertising is “The choice of a new generation” used by Pepsi in 1984. So what happens when they grow up? Pepsi tastes nice, but that was certainly a bad idea.

The Company & The Advertisement

The Company

Heinz is a large international food company whose products include tomato ketchup and many types of food sold in cans such as soup, baby food and baked beans (= beans baked in a liquid made from tomatoes).

The Advertisement

Some people in the UK remember an advertisement for these beans which used the phrase "Beanz meanz Heinz". On their cans it says "Heinz 57 varieties" and people sometimes use this expression to talk about something which exists in many different types or is made up of many different things.

Advertising: Finger-lickin' Chicken

Kentucky Fried Chicken is a type of fast food consisting of pieces of chicken cooked in hot fat and sold in KFC restaurants.
The chicken is advertised as being “finger-lickin’ good”, meaning that is tastes so good that you will lick your fingers after you have finished eating it. Another advertisinjg slogan they use is "We do chicken right".

The Beer & The Advertisement

The Beer

Heineken is a type of beer made by the Dutch company Heineken. Heineken claims that the original Heineken recipe has not changed since the beer was first produced nearly 150 years ago.

The Advertisement

Many people remember the funny Heineken advertisement which used the word "Heineken refreshes the parts other beers cannot reach". People sometimes jokingly use expressions based on these words when they are talking about other subjects.

Vintage Coca Cola Ads

The most complete collection of old Coke advertisements, many of them featuring the vintage Coca Cola slogan "Delicious and refreshing".

Cool Link in English:
Vintage Coca Cola Advertisements

The Animal Behind The Ad

PG Tip is a type of tea made by Unilever UK and sold especially in the UK. Advertisements for PG Tips show chimpanzees to look like humans and talking like humans as they drink cups of tea.
The name Pre-Gest-Tee suggested that the tea could be drunk before food was digested (pre-digestive). Grocers quickly abbreviated it to PG. By 1950/1 the PG name was officially adopted. The company added "Tips" referring to the fact that only the tips (the top two leaves and bud) of the tea plants are used in the blend.