Spoof viral scoops top digital Cannes prize for droga5

A spoof viral ad created by Dave Droga's agency droga5 for clothing company Ecko, in which a graffiti artist tags President Bush's Air Force One, has shared the Cyber Lions Grand Prix prize with Crispin Porter & Bogusky.

The controversial three-minute film "still free", which is Ecko's mantra, uses an old aircraft painted in similar colours to Air Force One and a mock-up of Andrews Air Force base.

It shows two man sneaking up to the fence around the base and climbing over to get to the plane and tag the words "still free" onto the side of the 747.

The ad was created by New York-based droga5, the agency launched by Australian Droga, the former executive creative director at Saatchi & Saatchi and worldwide creative director for Publicis network.

Crispin Porter & Bogusky in Miami took its share of the Cyber Lions Grand Prix prize for its Golf GTI campaign for Volkswagen.

Director on the spot was Randy Krallman, art director was Duncan Marshall and copywriter was Jeski Takaharo.

Watch the video

Source: Brand Republic

Tags: viral cannes droga5 spoof air+force+one award ecko ad advertising

Cannes Lions 2006: The Fireflies Bicycle Ride for Leuka

The Fireflies Bicycle Ride for Leuka is taking place for the 6th year, running from the 12th to the 21st of June and riding into the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival.

If you were in Cannes last year, you may have noticed a peloton of cyclists clad in shiny red tops and black lycra, sweeping down the Croisette, late Thursday afternoon.

These cyclists are known as the Fireflies riders and each year they traverse 1000 km across the French Alps from Geneva to Cannes raising money for Leuka.

Read more about this epic journey here

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Tags: fireflies bike ride cannes cannes+lions leuka leukaemia charity advertising

MTV Blows Whistle On People Trafficking

In the midst of World Cup fever, MTV Europe Foundation and JWT London have created a sobering reminder of the spectre of people trafficking.

The spot is backed up by a website www.mtvstreaker.com where web users can watch the harrowing film again and find out how to report suspected cases of trafficking or prostitution to the German authorities.

The spot was shot by Partizan's Dominic Murphy, "The idea was an attempt to create an analogy within the football environment. To know that a streaker was forced to streak against their will was a comparison which we felt would be thought provoking," copywriter Laurence Quinn tells shots.net. "MTV wanted something to make people realise that if you pay for sex during the World Cup you could be sleeping with someone who was doing it against their will. At the same time MTV are not against prostitution, just sex slavery.

Nick Bell, creative director at JWT, comments: "Once in a while this business offers the opportunity to do something significant for a worthwhile cause. This is such an opportunity and I would like to publicly credit Dominic Murphy and everyone involved in this project for movingly capturing the horrific nature of this issue."

Source: Shots

Tags: world+cup football film website mtv sex partizan jwt

Full-length Film shot on Mobile Phone

Two Italian directors who wanted to follow in the footsteps of their legendary countryman Pier Paolo Pasolini have reportedly scored a first - shooting a feature-length documentary using a mobile phone.

The 93-minute film, called Nuovi Comizi D'amore (New Love Meetings), is a modern version of Pasolini's 1965 documentary, Comizi D'amore (Love Meetings), in which Pasolini interviewed Italians to find out their views about sex in postwar Italy. Attitudes across the country showed people had taboos and self-censorship was widespread.

The new version, shot by Marcello Mencarini and Barbara Seghezzi, was filmed in MPEG4 format with a mobile phone. For two months last year, the directors interviewed some 700 people across Italy, at bars, open markets, on the beach. About 100 of them ended up in the movie.

Source: Guardian unlimited

Official Film Website at http://www.nuovicomizidamore.com/

Tags: movie film video camera+phone mobile phone documentary nuovicomizidamore

The Extreme Diet Coke & Mentos Experiments

What happens when you combine 200 liters of Diet Coke and over 500 Mentos mints? It's amazing and completely insane.

The first part of this video demonstrates a simple geyser, and the second part shows just how extreme it can get.

Over one hundred jets of soda fly into the air in less than three minutes.It's a hysterical and spectacular mint-powered version of the Bellagio Fountains in Las Vegas, brought to you by the mad scientists at EepyBird.com.



More Info at http://eepybird.com/

Stephen Voltz, co-producer of "The Extreme Diet Coke & Mentos Experiments", talks with CNET News.com's Michelle Meyers

Tags: eepybird extreme diet+coke mentos bellagio fountains las+vegas video

Viacom plans £72m Upgrade on Tube Ad Sites

Viacom Outdoor is to spend £72m on upgrading advertising formats on the London Underground.

Oxford Circus, Bond Street, Victoria, Kings Cross, Piccadilly Circus and Tottenham Court Road will be amongst the first stations to be transformed, as part of the new eight and a half year contract Viacom has been awarded.

Within 18 months, Viacom plans to install more than 2000 new digital sites at 30 stations, including digital escalator panels, LCD screens in ticket halls and an average of two cross track projection screens per platform.

The moving images on platforms and in ticket halls will be silent, because sound cannot be introduced for health and safety reasons.The remaining 31,000 advertising sites on the 275 station network will be replaced with a ‘dry-posting’ format which uses post-it note technology to do away with glue and paste.

Source: Media Week

Tags: viacom outdoor digital screens film advertising tube london

Micro-site's Agogo - Snickers, BMW & Burger King

Snickers has launched Instant Def, a branded entertainment campaign featuring 5 short films about a fictional "hip-hop" crew called Instant Def. This crew is actually played by the Black Eyed Peas.

BMW has also launched a great microsite for the 2006 BMW 3 Series. The site looks great, utilizing lots of 3D renderings of the car, and also has a ton of video content.

Burger King has rolled out yet another site, Huckin' Chicken Extreme Air is the latest. It features videos of someone in a chicken suit doing tricks on a motorcycle. As more people visit the site, more videos will be revealed.

Source: Random Culture

Tags: micro-site video film advert website snickers bmw burger+king

Vpod Shines in the Evolving Video Sharing Space

vpod is a “best of class” service, in the rapidly evolving and increasingly crowded video sharing space. vpod is doing things that no one else is with transcoding, editing/display and monetization.

vpod will allow advertisers to easily create advertisements, and play them on their own websites and/or insert them into users’ videos. Ads will be inserted at the beginning, middle or end of videos and will range from 10-60 seconds long. Users can opt out of ads by paying a fee. By opting in, they’ll receive a revenue split from vpod - something in the 50% range. This is further than what competitor Revver has announced to date.

But vpod also shines in other areas. They take video from almost any source and, more importantly, transcode for almost any device. Want Mpeg-4 for the PSP? vpod will let you download that format. Mpeg for the iPod? You can have that too. Just tell vpod your device and it will give you the correct format.

And finally, the tools for creating your own “channel” on vPod are stunning. The only Flash is around the player. Everything else is javascript and dhtml. They allow, for example, resizing of boxes by dragging the mouse, something I’ve only seen in Flash previously.

More at TechCrunch

vpod.tv Blog

Tags: vpod tv ipod video advertising create

Nokia's Viral Dancing Pjotro on Russian TV

Pjotro, Nokia's tongue-in-cheek viral dancing character and web site, made the rounds of the blogosophere pretty fast.

Pjotro shows off his musical suit during a blipped-out appearance on Russian TV.




Visit his official site.

Tags: nokia viral pjotro musical+suite russian tv

Startup Watch: TurnHere (Your Local, Neighborhood, Video Site)

TurnHere is that rarest of video sites on the Web: it actually pays filmmakers for the mini-documentaries that it shows on its site. "I could not imagine not paying creators," says founder Brads Inman.

The site, which soft-launched last December and has recently unveiled a vastly superior redesign last month, currently features about 300 videos showcasing neighborhoods in different cities.

There is the one about NYC's Canal Street narrated by a private detective who works on product counterfeit cases; an homage to the Lower East Side's famed smoked fish shop Russ & Daughters; a history of San Francisco's Palace Hotel; a tour of Burlington, Vermont; and a look at the real Tijuana. They tend to be hit or miss, but pleasantly there are more hits than misses.

Inman wants to film the world, one neighborhood at a time. The online videos are all made by freelance filmmakers, journalists, and other semi-pros (although there is one 17-year old who contributes as well). Inman pays $500 and up for each video, and he is very selective about what he accepts This is no YouTube free-for-all. "We want professionally created video," says Inman. "You don't need to be a Hollywood studio to do this stuff." He is taking advantage of cheap video and editing technology, even cheaper Web distribution, and a highly-skilled, highly-distributed freelance workforce.

More details at B2Day

Tags: video films filmmakers online turnhere

Yahoo Battles YouTube

The new Yahoo Video product launched last night (Wednesday). The big change? Yahoo Video is targeting YouTube by allowing user-generated videos on the site. The biggest disappointment? The product is not being integrated (yet) into Flickr.

Yahoo Video will continue to allow major video publishers direct API access to the site, as well as crawling the web for relevant videos as well. But now, regular Internet users will have an easy way to upload videos and create their own video blog channel on Yahoo Video.

Source: TechCrunch

Tags: yahoo video publish youtube flickr