This Too Shall Pass — but you’ll want to watch it a few times

Thanks to @DaveWaite for passing this along. All the ingredients for a viral video: unpredictability, humor, authenticity… and senselessness. Wow.

And the winner is… (best car Super Bowl spots)

I missed most of the Super Bowl, and had to watch the spots afterward to get my annual taste-test of advertising trends. There’s Adweek’s great coverage, USA Today’s ad meter, Ad Age’s Bob Garfield rundown, and many other opinions if you want to compare impact and effectiveness. Most agree that Go-Daddy captured the flag in [...]

The banned Super Bowl spot I really like

Until the punch line, you’ll never guess what this ad is selling…. but it’s a great way to make a case for their product! I’m not sure why it was banned in 2006.

VW Volcano taps volcanic resentment among creatives

Here’s a new spot on YouTube… thanks to the Creative Intensive Network on LinkedIn, for sharing it, and Alexander Bickov for posting it on YouTube. I really love the storytelling that director Marcello Serpa of AlmapBBDO Brazil accomplished in only a minute seventeen seconds… but judging from the comments on LinkedIn, I’m in the minority. [...]

Blast from the Past

Here’s one from the Ztoryteller archives. This is an excerpt from a sales video I did for Glencoe McGraw-Hill. The product is Glencoe Accounting: Real-World Applications & Connections — a complete instructional system for high school business students. In order to humorously dramatize the “connections” to real-world experience, I wrote a script in which the [...]

Papaw rocks with Fox in Socks

Today I uploaded a video of me reading my favorite children’s book to my grandsons or anyone who likes Dr. Seuss.  

Kickback kick-in-the-pants

I’m a joker. But jokes in print are not the same as jokes told in person, eyeball to eyeball. I have learned how to wink in video, but have had mixed results trying to wink in print. (I wish I could bottle some of the lightning of Mark Twain, Garrison Keillor, or Penelope Trunk!) A [...]

Largest July 4 Chinese Fireworks Display Ever

On July 4, 1054, Chinese and Arab observers saw a star appear in Taurus that was 4 times brighter than Venus, and could be seen day and night for 23 days. Eventually this supernova turned into … You can read about the facts behind this visual phenomenon at http://bit.ly/XFeyD You can see other Absolut Ads [...]

Web Site Story

Best viral video I’ve seen in a while: thank you, Leonard Bernstein  and College Humor! Laughingsquid link

My stories 3: Fear the faux friend

One of my more humorous experiences with authenticity came when I was at the Disney studios in Burbank to interview Michael Eisner for Denison University. I had a couple of hours before the interview to kill so naturally I joined Michael’s entourage, as they ponderously moved from setup to setup to film “Voice of Disney” [...]