One person's commercial is another person's entertainment

“Advertising may be described as the science of arresting the human intelligence long enough to get money from it.” ~ Stephen Butler Leacock ~

Television commercials have come a long way both creatively and financially since 1941 when the Bulova Corporation paid four dollars for a ten-second spot, which simply showed a picture of a superimposed watch on a map of the United States.

Interest in the advertising world in general has been popularized over the last few years with the Emmy and Golden Globe-winning television series, Mad Men, which is set in the 1960’s hey day of advertising, at the fictional firm of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, and added to that viewership, each year the advertising community honors the best-of-the-best with their annual CLIO Awards, helping provide a higher level of public awareness for what is being sold to new generations of viewers.

In my humble opinion, a finely created commercial is oftentimes more entertaining than conventional programming – even if they are trying to sell me something.

Although the CLIO Awards honor traditional 30 and 60-second commercials, some of the best advertising is now on the Internet, specifically viral videos, which reach a whole new breed of consumer through spots that are slightly longer than 60-seconds and border on being a hybrid cross between a traditional commercial and a music video, but pack a walloping creative punch.

Here are three of my favorites:

From Kia Motors America (with over two million views in three months) the Kia Soul Hamster, which popularizes the 2010 Kia Soul automobile; I’m not sure I would buy the car, but the rapping hamsters are darn cute.



Evian Roller Babies, weighing in with over 27 million views in one year is absolutely adorable and besides babies always sell, but in all honesty, I was predisposed to the product many years ago.



And last but not least, a faux commercial, which actually sells the genius of PESFilm, the company that created this spot titled, “Western Spaghetti,” which tallies in at five million views in two months, and was a 2009 Sundance Film Festival Winner as well as a 2009 Annecy Animation Audience Award Winner, and voted by Time Magazine # 2 Viral Video of the Year – absolutely brilliant.

An Unforgettable Face

"In every man's heart, there is a secret nerve that answers to the vibrations of beauty." ~ Christopher Morley ~

The female face has long been inspiration for countless number of artists over the centuries. Take for example the hauntingly elegant oil on canvas that accompanies this post. It is a portrait of 19-year old Amalie von Schintling painted in 1831 by Joseph Karl Stieler, an artist who worked primarily in the service of the Bavarian court.

Stieler painted the portrait at Schloss Nymphenburg in Munich, and endearingly captured von Schintling's hopeful visage. At that time, the young girl was betrothed to her cousin Fritz von Schintling, but sadly would never see her wedding day as she died of tuberculosis shortly after the painting was finished.

Three years ago, St. Louis, Missouri digital artist, Philip Scott Johnson further immortalized Amalie's image in a video, along with that of 89 other beautiful women, all of who had stories of their own to speak from the canvas.

The exquisite video tribute to portraitists and their distaff models displays Johnson’s carefully cropped thumbnail images, which are morphed one on top of the other in a fantasy dance of visual beauty that spans 500 years of Western art.

For two minutes and 53 seconds centuries roll by from face-to-face as we see the passionate works of such artists as Rubens, da Vinci, Reynolds, Winterhalter, Renior and more, as each beauty dissolves and melds accompanied by the sensitive cello performance of Yo-Yo Ma playing Bach’s Sarabande from Suite for Solo Cello No. 1 in G Major, BWV 1007.

Johnson’s outstanding work was recognized with a nomination for Most Creative Video by YouTube for their 2nd annual awards ceremony.

For a complete list of artists and their un-cropped paintings, please follow this link.

Viral Videos: The World Delivered to You

According to the U.S. and World Population Clock, as of May 27, 2010, at 20 hours and 15 minutes UTC, also known as Universal Time Coordinated - formerly known as Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) and Zulu Time (Z), the estimated world population figures reached well over 6 billion human inhabitants (6,823,606,120).

On December 31, 2009, Internet World Stats reported “Internet Users Data” to be 1,802,330,457, which upon their reflection is about 26.6 percent of the world population hooked up to and using computers.

Where are all these statistics headed? Read on.

On January 4, 2010, a young fellow, Jamie Bell (aka DispleasedEskimo - that’s his YouTube moniker) posted a video, which was actually a final piece he had created for an Advanced Subsidiary art class in the United Kingdom. (The grade level would be equivalent to 12 here in the United States.)

I consider myself to be a fairly average individual with very mainstream tastes, and over the years, I have had an uncanny ability to pick hits in music and the arts, always using my middle-of-the-road instincts. Well, when I ran across Bell’s video several months ago I was absolutely tickled by what he had created and thought to myself – this is going to go viral – and it did!

As of today, he’s had 2,431,978 hits, which tallies up to 17,006 online visitors per day.

Statistically speaking, if I were an advertiser, I would want to be buying space on his page.

In creating his video Bell used “flipbook” style drawings and gobbled up "50 jotter books in the process, illustrating them by utilizing only “biro pens” (ballpoints) - the entire animation was approximately “something like 2100 pages long,” he says.

According to Bell, the entire video with drawings represented roughly three weeks of “on and off” work.

His video incorporates the music of Jacques Offenbach, sound effects from Team Fortress 2, and a Christmas carol. It is a clever portrayal of “A Brief History of Pretty Much Everything” in three minutes and 12 seconds.

The video has become so popular it spawned an enterprising t-shirt site that will help keep young Bell in Ramen noodles during the new school term.

Bell’s teacher thought his work was pretty nifty too – he received “full marks” (equivalent to 4.0) – Enjoy!

Monday, Monday

“Monday Monday, can't trust that day,
Monday Monday, sometimes it just turns out that way
Oh Monday morning, you gave me no warning of what was to be
Oh Monday Monday, how you could leave and not take me.”

Who hasn’t heard the lyrics to the above song “Monday, Monday” written by American singer/songwriter/guitarist “Papa John” (John Edmund Andrew Phillips) of the legendary music group The Mamas and the Papas?

That soul-searching single went on to chart a number one spot on Billboard’s Top 100 and subsequently garnered the iconic pop/folk/rock ensemble a Grammy in 1967 for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group.

Over the years, “Monday, Monday" has been covered by a variety of entertainers from Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass to the 5th Dimension to name a few.

Phillips certainly did capture the angst that most folks feel on Monday mornings; the start of a workweek; another daily commute and untold obstacles that pop up littering the day, oftentimes carrying over until Tuesday and beyond.

“Every other day, every other day,
Every other day of the week is fine, yeah
But whenever Monday comes, but whenever Monday comes
You can find me cryin' all of the time”

Just in case your e-mail box has been beset with more tasks than you are able to accomplish today, my advice – TAKE A BRAIN BREAK and enjoy the very short video below that is part of a creative YouTube channel offered by sawith65.

It was sent to me by a friend this morning and made me smile. I hope it makes your day less of a "Monday, Monday".

I Don’t Think I Need to Comment – but you do!

Sometimes a picture is definitely worth a thousand words and this is one of those times!

This leaves me speechless!

Would you all like to weigh in on this?