Category: Cool Ad Watch

Copyranter has a retrospective on the man he calls “the greatest American copywriter”:

You won’t find much information about Tom McElligott online. He didn’t give very many interviews. He doesn’t have a Wikipedia page. And his Minneapolis start-up agency, Fallon McElligott Rice, made its mark in the pre-internet years of 1981–1988. This was smack in the middle of the mega-merger phenomenon of big Madison Avenue agencies swallowing other big Madison Avenue agencies—a development that forever destroyed a lot of the creativity and spirit of the advertising industry. …  I plastered the felt-covered cubicle walls at my first ad-agency copywriting job with [McElligott ads], carefully, selfishly X-Acto’d out of the annuals. Another thing on my wall was this quote by McElligott:

“I’d much rather overestimate the intelligence of the consumer than underestimate it.”

On the print ads seen above:

One of McElligott’s early clients was the Episcopal Church. Better ads for a church have never been written. Period.

A little smug but really clever way to get your competitors to advertize for you:

Update from a reader:

DHL actually had nothing to do with that advert that you embedded – the video was a result of an internal creative competition held by German advertising agency Jung von Matt.  There is an original German version, though the English version is the one that has gone viral. DHL is thrilled with the free publicity, and the message is very much in line with what the company believes about itself, but DHL was as surprised as anyone to see these videos when they were first uploaded on YouTube.

(Hat tip: Tastefully Offensive)

From a campaign for the animal welfare non-profit CARA, with the tag-line, “Same Dog, Different Owner”:

More examples here.

I had no idea Daft Punk had Olympic ambitions.

From the Aloor Forestry Association:

(Hat tip: Adeevee)

Pretty schmaltzy, but also pretty great – and any details would ruin it: