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This is the trailer for Logorama – “17 minutes of Hollywood blockbuster action, rife with car chases, natural disasters, and hostage-taking, but created entirely out of real world logotypes and brand characters. In it, you’ll see the Michelin Man, the Haribo kid, Bob’s Big Boy, Mr. Pringle and Ronald McDonald, but in some very unfamiliar roles playing the classic movie archetypes of good guys, bad guys and foils.”

We certainly do assign personalities to brands – it should be interesting to see the filmmakers’ interpretations of each one. For example – we can see Ronald McDonald being evil, if only because he’s a clown. But the Michelin Man is the good guy? We would’ve gone with Mr. Peanut.

Naturally, this – like all great ideas – has been done before by The Simpsons.
 
Via Creativity.

We've been talking a lot about beverages these past couple of days. And we're always talking a lot about brand image and the evolution of brands. So this seemed rather fitting:

Someone told us today that "Coca Cola" is the second most recognized word in the world. I wonder why…

via the Consumerist

When agencies sell digital creative to clients, they just love to go on and on about how “measurable” it is.

It’s a great thing to say in a meeting. But it begs the question – is anyone really reading those numbers? And if so, what are they doing with them? 

Our pals at Eyeblaster just completed a study on exactly that question. And what did they find? They’re too polite to say so, but we will: if the digital advertisers of the world were a kid, they’d be one of those kids you see in the mall on a leash.

It’s bad enough that a lot of these knuckleheads never even bother to track how their display ads are performing versus how their keyword ads are. (How does that work? It’s like leaving money beneath a magical tree and hoping it brings you business! Who does this? And where can we get us one of those trees?)

But what really drives us crazy is the ugly realization that the dreaded “Brand Offline, Drive Response Online” meme is still alive. People! Please! This jibba-jabba should be deader than disco.

But it keeps coming back. Like disco.

It would be great if people would collectively agree to pretend not to notice the difference between what you say you stand for (“We are just like you. And we would never, ever pressure you.” ) and what you really stand for, (“Give us money! Now!”)  but that ain’t reality. 

In reality, everything you do affects your brand. Which means you’re not allowed to inflict crap upon your audience some of the time, even if it’s “only online.” Those “hardworking” ads sound great in meetings. But they make you seem dishonest, and they create the clutter you work so hard to break through. That’s nuts.

Check out these stories:

The first is from that Eyeblaster report, in which they very politely point out the industry’s general dumbassery when it comes to cross-channel marketing.

The second is from Advertising Age, and it asks the simple question: Why Hasn’t Online Advertising Had a Creative Revolution?   Beats us.  But we’ll tell you this – breakthrough creative delivers greater sales, more economically achieved. And that’s something everyone wants – not just some of the time.

The good people at the Reno-Sparks Convention and Visitors Authority recently gave us the task of developing a new marketing initiative for the Reno Tahoe region.

And we are smitten.

It's the sublimely unspoiled, supremely authentic, ridiculously cool getaway we always wanted but thought we could never have, much like the unicorn we never got for our birthday.

Part of us (a big part) wants to keep this goodness to ourselves, but where is the fun in that?

Been there done that? No way, hombre. Take the next fun train, bi-plane, or *hitchhike and see what you've been missing.

*Mortar does not condone hitchhiking. Usually.