Category Archive

When the Marlin crew found out our quarterly meeting was going to be at the Springfield Nature Center, we were pretty excited. The chance to venture out of our offices and see this thing called daylight? Yes, please.

When the big day arrived, after a couple of minutes of disorientation (that sunlight stuff is bright), we made our way to the beautiful Nature Center and learned all about what was going on with all the different facets of the Marlin Network. It was, as always, a blast to see everyone and all of the great work they’re doing.

Of course, it just wouldn’t be a Marlin meeting without a little surprise. And what’s more surprising than a auditorium full of snakes?!

Okay, we may be exaggerating when we say “an auditorium full” (it was more like one or two) and the exclamation point was totally uncalled for, but come on—there were snakes! And in answer to the question we know is on the tip of your tongue, we’re not sure why it had to be snakes.

It was actually a lot of fun though. We learned a lot, got a delicious sack lunch—provided by Food IQ—and at the end, everyone got to pet the snake.

You heard us.

There are only a few products that should use a crazy person as a spokesman. Straight jackets, padded rooms and maybe government loans.

That’s why we’re a little worried about the new GotVMail viral campaign going on right now. It features the one and (please God) only Gary Busey doing what he does best. Being really, really crazy.

The first time we watched this video we enjoyed it thoroughly. Internet+Crazy=Automatic Win in our book. But shortly afterward we realized they were actually trying to sell something. After each hilarious/frightening rant by Busey the GotVMail logo appears. Attempting to convince us to buy into this new entrepreneur’s phone system. Crazy people don’t make us want to buy phone systems. They make us want to buy a stun gun.

We think the ads should go a little more like this:

Busey does his spiel. Then, instead of GotVMail a logo for Mace® Pepper Spray appears. Maybe throw in the tagline “Because Gary Busey could be anywhere.”

Mace®, we expect a cut.

Say the words “save water” to somebody in Missouri right now, and they’re likely to (a) laugh cynically, (b) look pityingly at you as though knowing you’d recently been struck, quite hard, in the head, or (c) skip straight to punching you in the face, which would then lead right back to (b).

Missouri’s record rainfall has flooded basements, breached levees, inundated entire towns and promoted a summer chock full of mold and mosquitoes (the Summer of Ugh?). One recent report we heard was that the water table around Springfield had risen seventy feet. That’s two-thirds of a giant man!

But things are considerably different (say, drier) out Colorado way. Water conservation is, of course, a massive issue for the Western States, and over the years Denver ad shop extraordinaire Sukle has done some stellar work for Denver Water. Their latest effort (via the Denver Egotist) is no exception. We love the simplicity of the idea, the ingenious mix of media and message, and the fact that now our tomatoes can feel the thrill of running the rapids before they hit the shopping bag.

So the question is, if advertising can help save water where it’s really needed, can advertising get rid of water where it’s not? Some sort of pipeline to the West made entirely out of snappy headlines and big ideas?

Update:  Even more great water-saving stuff from Sukle.

It’s not the destination, those wise souls say; it’s the journey. But in the case of Travelocity’s Australian offshoot Zuji, it’s not even the journey. The really important thing is that which leads you to said journey. In short, it’s the beans. The incredibly cheap beans.

Zuji has taken a fantastic approach to building their brand in the land where beer does flow and men chunder. Forget the siren song of exotic destinations. Forget ease of use or convenience or travel guarantees. Zuji and their agencies The Hallway/Happy Soldiers figured out that what people could really use is a little help saving up to get away. Which, come to think of it, is kind of the same strategy Teri Garr came up with in “Mr. Mom” for the tuna fish client. And if it’s good enough for Teri, it’s good enough for us.

The basic idea is this. Zuji actually made a line of canned beans and offered them for sale at just ten cents a can. On the label (and in supporting advertising) you got the story that Zuji is helping you save cash to fund your holiday. More details here, if you’re interested. Or there’s the supporting video Zuji put out that says it all quite nicely, including their plan to offer up other cheap basics like toothpaste and toilet paper. It’s all wrapped up with a simple, smart line: Helping holidays happen.

Nicely done.

We proudly announce the promotion of Chris Rock to Associate Creative Director here at Marlin. He has since gone through the four documented stages of promotional acceptance. First, anger (for some reason). Second, shock. Third, glee and a general sense of wellbeing. Fourth, contemplative of the rapidly expanding future. Congratulations, Chris.

For absolutely no reason, here are two wholly different visions of McDonald’s through the mystical looking glass of The TV Commercial.

First, what somebody on YouTube claims (and we’re too lazy to verify) to be the first McDonald’s commercial. (Maybe it’s the first featuring Ronald McDonald?)

This thing had me crapping my pants in terror at about the 15-second mark. The scene pulls back from what I thought was the familiar safety of a tv commercial into a dark, disorienting space. And there’s a horribly misshapen silhouette watching what I was watching. (The world’s first meta-commercial?) This…thing…turns around and stands up and it’s huge. And you hear this goofy voice that is obviously a put-on goofy voice (which makes it all the more terrifying, the attempt and failure at innocent comedy) and it sounds kind of like what the middle-aged, slovenly son of Michael Keaton and Dick Van Dyke would sound like, and it says, “Here I am, kids!” AAAAAAAAHHH…AAAAAAHHH!

The rest is forgettable, even the magic tray of hamburgers and the skip-away/skip-toward ending that is, ok, pretty damn funny. None of it even comes close to the vertiginous horror of seconds 15 through 20.

Flash forward and around the world to 2006. The next two clips are a hip, high-fashion Japanese take on the urtext of nightmare clowns.

This one works pretty well. Here you have a sassy supermodel with anime hair, but she’s wearing one of the world’s most recognizable costumes (right behind stormtroopers (Nazi and Death Star) and Catholic schoolgirls), which makes the visual instantly recognizable and new. Actually pretty cool. This next one, not so much.

Maybe it’s the final pouty shot. Maybe it’s the three-quarter tilt to his belt/lower torso. Maybe it’s that Captain Perfect Jaw seems more toolnnoying than cool. Maybe I just need a pretty lady to sell me my hamburgers.

Thus concludes our tour from scary clown to toolville. Hope you enjoyed the ride.

We can’t tell you how happy we are at Marlin that someone has finally captured the essence of what it is to be a part of today’s fast-paced, no-nonsense, dog-eat-dog, hyphen-filled world of design. A world where up is down, down is left, and getting directions can be pretty tricky.

It’s a world where success isn’t about producing amazing work. It’s not even about being the best there is. It’s about doing all of that and going so far above and beyond your clients’ expectations that they give you their first-born child (plaques are okay, but people are really impressed when they catch a glimpse of a kid in your trophy case).

In all (some) seriousness though, check out the good folks at Digital Kitchen’s humorous take on the goings-on within a design studio.

Are we all this vain? Of course not. Are we this beautiful? Yes.

We’re looking to hire an art director. If you’re interested, take a crack at the questions below. Offer up your answers to us in the contact form that follows. We’ll get back to you with a response as soon as humanly possible. (Which tells you a little something about us here at Marlin — we are, in fact, humans.)

The 7 Questions!
Meticulously researched and painstakingly vetted over half of a lunch hour! Yazoo!

1.) Describe yourself in exactly six syllables.

2.) Have you ever been arrested? If so, for what client(s)?

3.) Do you own a pencil?

4.) Is this cybernet thing just a fad, or will it one day enslave us all?

5.) How do you make big ideas bigger?

6.) Do you like awards? Do they like you?

7.) Take us somewhere, linkwise.

In yet another thundering blow to Bad Furniture everywhere, IKEA has decked out an entire train in Kobe in wonderfully modern style (though we do wonder if commuters were required to assemble all this stuff every morning). Granted, IKEA was also promoting a local store’s grand opening, and pretty darn smartly, but we like to think IKEA is simply another loyal foot soldier in the War On Bad Furniture. Threat Level: La-Z-Boy!

More importantly, did you even know we had a sister agency? It’s true. Though the fine folks at deep are maybe less like family and more like great co-workers who, I don’t know, work in a building about a mile south of Marlin. Yep, that’s what they’re like.

So they’ve got a blog, these fine deep people. And it’s funny. There are Cosby sweaters and Garfields and more Cosby sweaters and various abuses of John Rutkowski’s head.

So go. Enjoy. And while you’re there, ask them what the hell thetangibleintangible means. But you should probably wear a hat or something, because it might just blow your mind!

It seems we were a bit premature in mocking a news story about padded lampposts in London. Apparently it was just a stunt pulled by the company 118m8 to promote some sort of padded lamppost selling company (that’s what we got out of the stunt anyway).

We want our readers to know that we strive to mock only the most accurate news stories and apologize to anyone who wrote letters to Queen Elizabeth II in regards to our post.

Thankfully, there is a silver lining to all of this in the form of a lesson. If you need lamppost pads, get them from 118m8. If you need lamppost news, don’t get it from Foxnews.com.

Our new tv campaign for Brashears Furniture is finally on the air, and in an orgy of self-adulation, we’d like to invite you to watch our commercials right here online.

Many thanks to Jay Baker (of Ferguson + Katzman) for his ability to make bad furniture look so good you want to buy it drink after drink and just, you know, talk all night long.

Also to Craig Kauffman for directing the showroom shots and Jeff Hagerman for the edit (both from AVP, right here in town).

Also to Soundscapes for the great VO characters. And finally to our client, without whom our checks would bounce like some kind of super bouncing ball type thing (you might call it a “super ball”).

Welch’s has decided to tap into one more sense with their newest advertisement. The new ‘TASTY fact’ ads will feature a huge bottle of the juice and contain a strip that peels off the back with text that reads: “For a TASTY fact, remove & LICK.”

Sure, if it’s published in a magazine it’s fine, but when we say it in an alley we’re perverts.

We’re all for innovative ways of getting customers interested in a product and we’ve been trying to corner the market on consumers who are willing to lick the inside of a magazine for years, but what if this trend catches on? It’s only a matter of time until we open a magazine to find a tasty ad for engine oil. Or maybe paint. Or kitty litter.

Those are probably enough examples.

Some say that in stimulating this untapped sense, this ad may be trying too hard. We say it’s not trying hard enough. We at Marlin have begun development on an ad that will stimulate all five senses. It will look beautiful, smell like flowers and have the sounds of nature to relax the consumer; then–BAM!–it slaps them in the head with our branded product. Of course, you’ll be able to taste the page as well. It will taste like ink and paper but we’ll just make sure it’s an ad for Office Depot or something. And the best part is that consumers have the product’s name embedded in their foreheads for days. Ad victims will be walking around town and everyone they meet will be reminded that they need paper, pens or toner.

The ads are definitely going to stick out in the minds of consumers. You’ll get your chance in February’s issue of People Magazine to decide whether that’s a good or bad thing.

We’ve been too freakin’ busy to post a decent download on last week’s Marlin/deep road trip to the AAAA Creative Symposium in St. Louis. The short version is this: we were treated to a full day of synapse-igniting input from Mike Malone of The Richards Group, Cliff Sorah de la Martin Agency, Dave Schiff ne Crispin, Porter + Bogusky, Hal Curtis from Wieden + Kennedy, and god’s gift to curmudgeons, Mark Fenske, formerly of The Bomb Factory, currently prodding VCU hopefuls with a sharp, expletive-laden stick. Witness the results for yourself below.

Before

After

Note: If you look closely, you’ll see that not only did we instantly land a boatload of gold pencils, we also developed the ability to go back in time to 2006. And that, my friend, is creativity.

Where everything is a car wreck. Chipotle outdoor board + tv news crew + busy intersection = almost interesting video. Bonus — reporter’s crass first thought: “Did you get that?!”

Interbrand has released its top global brands of 2007. We love their focus on brand value, defined by Interbrand as “the dollar value of a brand, calculated as Net Present Value (NPV) or today’s value of the earnings the brand is expected to generate in the future.”

We also love the fact that four Marlin Network clients (either through Marlin or our sister agency Deep) made this prestigious list of the top brands on the planet.

We’re very proud to announce that Marlin has not one but two finalists in this year’s CEBA Awards. Awarded for Creative Excellence in Business Advertising (thus the fun-to-pronounce acronym…think BathSheeeeba!), the CEBAs showcase the year’s best B2B advertising, as deemed by America Business Media and a host of worthy judges (including, this year, top creative minds from BBDO, McCann-Erickson, The Ashway Group and DiMassimo). And the finalists are:

Pickle Productivity ad for Vlasic® Prep Pack Pickles and Pinnacle Foods Corp. This ad has also been featured in Communication Arts magazine. We think it’s because of the pickle pie charts. Congratulations to Marlinites Gale Venosdel, Chris Rock, Brian Collins and Lucy Howell, as well as our clients Joe Saporito and Keith Kandt.

Flowers 2007 ad campaign for Mission Foodservice. Mission and Marlin have been CEBA finalists before (along with Precision Foods, Foodhandler and ConAgra Poultry), and it’s nice to be here with this great client again. Congratulations to Marlinites Matt Rose, Chris Rock, Chris Heil, Dan Schultz and Chef Rob Corliss for the tasty culinary creations, the good folks at Bruton Stroube Studios and our exuberant clients Robin Tobor and Kathryn Brensinger.

The winners of each category will be announced at the awards ceremony — October 3, in New York in the Allen Room at Frederick P. Rose Hall, Home of Jazz at Lincoln Center Broadway…and yes, we will be going — as well as the Grand CEBA winner, who will receive $25,000 and some fairly large bragging rights for the remainder of the year.

Congratulations again to everyone who made this great work possible.

The Marlin Network Charitable Fund sponsored the Price Cutter Charity Championship Sweepstakes this past week, and it was a big hit. For a mere $25, you got passes to the Price Cutter Charity Championship and your name thrown in the hat for a 2007 Pontiac Solstice (very nice), $10,000 dollars or some other prizes that fall somewhere below a sweet free car and oodles of cash. Every cent of the ticket price went to an Ozarks charity of your choice, ultimately benefiting about 35 local charities.

This year, an all-time high of 3800 tickets were sold, raising $95,000 for Ozarks charities. Our thanks to everyone who purchased tickets, as well as to Steve Krone and Phil Daniels over at our sister agency deep for pulling together the brochure and advertising at the last minute.

On a completely unrelated and ad-wonk note: during a recent trip out to Seattle we came across one of the coveted Kwik-E-Mart 7-Eleven’s. And we geeked out big time. Taking pictures. Pointing and laughing at all the great product placements (including actual hot pink donuts with sprinkles for sale and, apparently, consumption). The good news is, everyone in the store was doing the same thing.