Category: Cool Ad Watch

Copyranter spotlights "the best Pictionary ads you'll ever see":

This is my favorite of the three, because, T-REX.

The copy from this JC Penney ad says it all:

You'll often find Wendi, her partner, Maggie, and daughters elbow-deep in paint, clay or mosaics. "Even as babies, the girls toddled around in diapers, covered in paint," said Wendi. They come from a long line of artists, which includes grandma Carolyn. Visiting her art studio in Granbury, Texas is a favorite outing. And like any grandma, this one loves to bake — pottery, that is.

Copyranter calls it "the best organ donor ad you'll ever see":

It ran on the first page of obituary sections in Belgian newspapers back in 2008. It's for the organization Reborn To Be Alive. The ad won a national press award that year. It's not over-the-top visually like most of the ads produced in this category. But it's starkly emotional and effective.

By the way, Copyranter, aka Mark Duffy, hit the blog big-time this week by joining Buzzfeed, in another savvy acquisition by Ben Smith. Mark's double-fisted greeting here. And read how he wants to give a Business Insider blogger a fist to the face.

Mark Wilson is mesmerized by the Samsung Portugal spot:

A model sits in a chair, covered in reflective silver paint. He closes his eyes. And then his skin becomes full color before his body changes from superhero to soldier to polygonal model to cyborg to Google Map, all through the efforts of a projector and one very creative team (oh, and the model himself, who had to sit still for up to three hours at a time). The effect probably would have been easier to create with green paint and post production software, but there’s no way it would have seemed so real. … I don’t know if I’ve come across any art installation that signifies our analog-gone-digital selves any better.

Art history in a flash, thanks to art.com's new iPad app:

Kottke is reminded of a similar morphing of "500 Years of Female Portraits in Art" and this hypnotic GIF.

The soundtrack is pretty schmaltzy, but the best way to solicit donations for animal rescue is to show a story like this:

A reader adds, "It has a happy ending but you'll shed a tear getting to it."

Copyranter calls a new campaign from Canada "the best TV commercials for a porn channel ever!"

Marina Galperina digs the new ad from Good Books, an online bookseller that gives all of its profits to Oxfam:

Check this metamorphosing animation of Hunter S. Thompson scrambling ’round a bursting, peeling, dripping mindscape, tapping away at his typewriter, ranting for Franz Kafka and contemplating having making tea with bong water. Only, you don’t know that it’s bong water unless you watch the other, narrated version…

Heh. Copyranter claps:

I've bought percussion equipment from Sam Ash, a New York institution. Their workers can be dickish, though. Thanks Georgina. This awesome takeover by the Copenhagen Zoo, however, is still my favorite bus ad ever.

These stunning ads for the Berlin Philharmonic have been pinging around the blogosphere. Colossal captions:

This print campaign for the Berlin Philharmonic orchestra uses macro photographs taken inside the cramped spaces of instruments making the inner workings of a violin, cello, flute, and pipe organ appear vast and spacious, almost as if you could walk around inside them.

More images here.