Giant Balloons Company

Venerable coffee brand Eight O’Clock Coffee has been given some new clothing. The 154 year old coffee brand has redesigned its packaging and launched some — yes, it’s true — fashion-related promotions.

One such program, Spot the Red Bag, begins today and encourages people to submit pictures of red bags, whether it’s the newly design Eight O’Clock Coffee packaging or or a swanky red bag spotted on the runway during Fashion Week. Or even a red bag spotted on the street. All for a chance to win a trip to New York Fashion Week in February. Pictures can be uploaded to Instagram and given the #SpotTheRedBag hashtag.

A second program will, no joke, involved designers showcasing Eight O’Clock Coffee-inspired handbag designs during this Fall’s Style360 during New York Fashion Week.

Coffee packaging as high fashion. That’s a new one on us. But an interesting approach none the less.

It’s a well-known fact marketers are obsessed with pretty people when it comes to selecting spokesmodels for their advertising campaigns. But what happens when a product is so good, just about anyone can step in and promote it?

That’s the silly notion behind this BBR Saatchi & Saatchi-created campaign for Elite Cow Chocolate…which is so good it can turn anyone into a windblown hottie.

Established in 2005 by Michael and Xochi Birch, sold to Yahoo! in 2008 for $850 million and recently bought back by its founders for $1 million, Bebo is back. Yesterday, the site relaunched with a “ballsy” video featuring founder Michael Birch.

Rubber Republic helped Birch and Bebo CEO Shaan Puri created a spoof corporate video — shot over a weekend — that touches upon the highs and lows of Bebo over the years.

At its height, Bebo had 40 million users but under Yahoo! the site languished. While the founders aren’t promising an exact date for the relaunch, it is said to be “soon.” People who once used Bebo can enter their email address to be notified when they can access some, not all, of their old files.

If you’re not familiar with American motorcycle history, you may never have heard of Indian Motorcycle. Up through World War II, Indian Motorcycle was a popular motorcycle brand. In 1953 it went out of business leaving the just one American bike maker standing, Harley-Davidson.

In 2011, Polaris Industries purchased the dormant brand in 2011 and introduced its first new bike in 50 years with the 2014 Indian Chief.

The brand hired Colle + McVoy to relaunch the brand and the agency reached out to History Channel to create branded content in the form of Bike Week, a multi-media week that would celebrate the history of motorcycling and highlight the new 2014 Indian Chief.

Along with promotional vignettes featuring History Channel’s American Pickers host Mike Wolfe, the agency created a :60 which debuted during the show this past Monday.

Supporting the branded content play and the commercial, is print and collateral.

The :60 is motorcycle porn and features a small group of Indian Chief riders who encounter a larger group of Harley Davidson riders who, after the required stare down, invite them to cross their path. We’re not quite sure this is exactly how it would play out in real life but for a commercial, it suffices.

It would seem brands are tripping over themselves to launch Vine campaigns despite the fact Instagram video seems to be crushing Vine. Well, brands won’t let that minor detail deter them from having their day with Vine.

Just today, Honda has returned with its Live Vine Day promotion in which the brand responds to people who use particular hashtags. And now we have Jack in the Box unleashing 101 Vine videos that illustrate the brand’s Go Big or Go Hungry approach to dining.

While the brand, working with Struck, is urging people to create their own Go Bog or Go Gome Vines, we’re not sure we really need more than 101 videos illustrating just how insane people are when it comes to consuming — or playing with — food.

By now, you’ve seen that Crocs ad from London production company Compulsory which celebrates teen sex. By now, you’ve also noted the ad is fake and was not endorsed by the brand. Much like JCPenney which distanced itself from a fake ad (which won a Bronze Lion!) that also centered on teen sex, Crocs called the ad offensive and said, “We’re very concerned by it, because it does not reflect our company values as a global lifestyle brand.”

While that statement may be true, had we been running the show at Crocs last week, we would have handled the situation quite differently. While it’s never advisable for a brand to lie, playing along with a publicity bubble for a while doesn’t do much harm and c an have great benefit.

Crocs, an almost-dead brand that has been struggling hopelessly for years to regain any sense of cool it might once have had, should certainly, as it did, state they did not create the ad. But rather than take the pious position it did regarding the ad and the fact it doesn’t reflect the company’s values, the brand should have embraced the work and employed a bit of perspective.

Rather than lash out like a preacher in the pulpit on a Sunday, the brand might have reacted with a bit of tongue and cheek saying, perhaps, “While we don’t condone casual sex, we certainly do condone donning stylish footwear while engaging in social activities like Parcheesi or group Candy Crush.”

It would have been so simple to go along for the ride at least for a short time. At minimum, allow the ad to play out as it did in the media for a bit before taking the wind out of the sails. Yes, it’s a fine line to walk. Brands do have to live up to what they stand for but brands can, and should, also embrace a windfall because they don’t come along very often. Certainly not for a failing brand like Crocs.

The fact the ad was one of the worst ever created is another story entirely.

– This weird little Mentos video with an oddly catchy tune aims to garner support for a proposal that would solve Singapore’s land crisis.

– These McFlurry-loving women need better lipstick.

– IPG Mediabrands has launched a new unit that further blurs the line between media and creative agencies. Called Mediabrands Publishing, it will create videos and other quick-turnaround content for marketers that will live in the physical and digital worlds. The digital content will be distributed on websites and social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Vine.

– That CROCS ad everyone was buzzing about? Oops. Not an official ad created by the brand.

– Hanes is asking women to overshare on social media by telling the world the color of their undies.

– James Franco gets punched in the face in promotion for upcoming Comedy Central roast.

– Check out this video from Mercedes UK in which racing driver David Coulthard goes up against UK magician Dynamo in a Mercedes-Benz SL63 AMG.

– Motorola backpedals on ract ads it used to introduced the Moto X.

Jenny McCarthy, who recently unleashed her breasts for Carl’s Jr. can now be seen pimping Blu e-cigarettes in a television campaign breaking August 5. Making note that while dating “smelling like an ashtray isn’t the ideal aphrodisiac,” McCarthy talks about how smoking e-cigrettes have made her feel better about herself and have eliminated the guilt associated with smoking.

The ads, and associated webisodes introduce a new Blu eCig Starter Pack, packaging that recharges the eCigs.

With tobacco companies getting hit from all aside, the eCig business is projected to grow to $1 billion in 2013. And Blu already has a 40% share of the market.

Reacting quickly to recent revelations the daily consumption of six Anacin tablets and one banana by 112-year-old Grand Island, New York native Salustiano Sanchez-Blazquez are the secret to his longevity, Anacin maker Insight Pharmaceuticals wasted no time newsjacking the report to introduce Bananacin. Sanchez-Blazquez was recently crowned the oldest living man by Guiness World Records following the recent death of 116-year-old Japanese native Jiroemon Kimara.

In a witty press release, Insight Pharmaceuticals VP of Marketing Jennifer Moyer said, “Historically, apples are the fruit most associated with staying healthy and avoiding doctors. Our scientists had never looked into the banana before. But now that the certified oldest man in the world credits bananas and Anacin as his life-extending combo, we’re certainly going to explore whether a new Bananacin product makes sense.”

It’s a pretty smart move considering the brand is one of the oldest pain relievers around and not exactly one that’s top of mind. It will be interesting to see just how many people switch to Anacin and how that affects sales for the brand.

In a collective fit of despair and inability to reach an agreement with WPP or IPG, neither of which could guarantee they would not merge in the future, Coca-Cola and Pepsi, this morning, announced they would merge. The new entity will be known as Poke.

Both Coca-Cola and Pepsi spokespeople reached out to Adrants this morning and collectively said, “Fuck it, this shit is ridiculous. How can each of us expect to compete with one another when there will likely be just one advertising agency to choose from in a few years?”

Both camps went on to say, “When you get right down to it, both our products, much like every single advertising shop in existence, are identical. We all spout the same bullshit about how we are better or different or unique from one another when, in fact, we’re all made of the same shit and spew the same bullshit in our marketing.”

As the media wet their pants over who can write the wittiest and most salacious headline to convey the fact Omnicom and Publicis have combined to become the number one advertising holding company with a reported market cap of $35 million, we here at Adrants prefer to get to the heart of the matter. Coke is the same shit as Pepsi. Just like Omnicon is the same shit as Publicis. It makes perfect sense the two companies dispel any myth they are different from one another and simply mix their shit up.

We look forward to the bureaucratic nightmare that, as with all mergers, will assuredly net some interesting and unexpected new flavors of Poke as the two giants work to iron out their internal differences.