virgin mobile: screw you recession!

I don’t normally talk about my own work on here much, but Virgin Mobile’s new campaign (which I obviously helped worked on) is getting some big buzz. We started it off with a huge billboard installation at the corner of Yonge and Dundas in Toronto. Oddly enough, the balcony from my place looks across a park… right into the corner of Yonge and Dundas Square. So basically I fall asleep staring at my own copywriting on a gigantic billboard. There are worse things…

Last Friday the billboards and the impending campaign got profiled by Jennifer Wells in the Globe and Mail and the billboards got some talk time on Stimulant.  We’re working right now on a very cool website, Screw You Recession!, that’s launching very soon. So stay tuned…

nike: no excuses.

It’s oh so easy to line up all those New Year’s resolutions on Dec. 27th, with egg-nog in one hand and paté knife in the other, readying yourself for the inevitable devouring of another cheeseball. Once all the late-night Toblerone wrappers have been discarded and you’re back in the office wondering where the holidays went… then it’s a whole other story.

It’s that very collision between the good intentions of your resolutions and the reality that mere days before you thought nothing of eating half a tin of shortbread…at midnight…with stuffing on the side, where Nike steps in.

Under it’s iconic and now permanently entrenched Just Do It umbrella (I’m pretty sure if you showed infants in Mongolia a swoosh their first words would be “just do it”), the No Excuses campaign is based on making you feel like shit for giving up so easily.

(Agency: Wieden + Kennedy Portland)

Starring US Paralympian Matt Scott, the spot is simple, honest, and to the point. There really are no excuses. Maybe not the most groundbreaking work Nike’s ever done, but the message is true and the emotion behind it is genuine. The campaign has corresponding outdoor as well. I think the billboard, though pleasingly minimalist, would be sort of dull if you hadn’t seen the TV ad. But maybe that’s because I’m a lazy mofo…

playboy: breasts sell… who knew?

Though definitely not breaking any new ground, at least Germany is liberal enough to be honest about things. They have a (ballsy) female Chancellor, and they also have Playboy billboards with big ‘uns that, in the undying spirit of the wet tee shirt contest, show you some nip when it rains. Ah, well… it is what it is.