Each year, when Blogads hosts #SUXORZ at Social Media Week NY, we think its the last. We naively believe that corporations, politicians and celebrities will finally learn how to do The Social Media right. Lucky for the mob of 150 social media fanatics that joined us at the Gershwin Hotel on Wednesday night, 2011 defied and our optimism and was full of spectacular social media screw-ups. (more…)

Product placement. It used to be a fairly subtle art. Snapple bottles in Jerry’s kitchen, Marty McFly’s futuristic Nikes, E.T.’s trail of Reese’s Pieces… But now that we’ve gotten used to seeing brand names in the bakgrounds of our favorite movies, shows and video games, marketers have to find new, heavier-handed ways to inject brands into our entertainment.

Case in point: Jennifer Lopez’s live Fiat plug during Sunday night’s American Music Awards. In the middle of JLO’s medley performance, a Fiat 500 appeared on stage, and the singer/actress hopped in to reenact her strange new commercial, complete with pseudo green screen for full fake-driving effect.

And then the backlash began. (more…)

screengrab via iRewind user "Valley"

Did you catch the JCPenney commercial with the bikini-clad teenager? It had been blogged about here and there a few months ago, but Copyranter’s coverage seems to have open the gate to the recent flood of opinions. And boy did the opinions flow. So much so that JCPenney has apparently pulled the ad.

Behold, the power of the blogosphere! (more…)

Wonderful Pistachios have added Kloe and Lamar and The Winklevoss Twins to a series of commercials staring an already-strange assortment of pop culture personalities,  such as Snooki, Angry Birds, Wee Man and more puns than you can stomach.

Here’s what 7 journalists and bloggers have to say about the latest “Wonderful pistachio ads.”

AdFreak: “Let’s call an advertising moratorium on any campaign that stars a Kardashian. Please?” – T.L. Stanley

copyranter: “Now: also note that with a cheap short spot like this, there had to be many, many takes to choose from. And THIS was the best one.”

All Things D: “You think that if you just shove a couple Web-friendly characters into your ads for pistachios (pistachios?) that time-strapped bloggers will dutifully click over to YouTube, grab the embed codes and slap up a post, don’t you? Geniuses!” – Peter Kafka

Mogulite: “In one of the campaign’s ads, the two brothers, who once claimed Facebook was their idea, sit, in suits (of course), and well…crack a pistachio. It’s nothing too exciting, but the whole country’s about to see it.” – Hillary Reinsberg

The San Francisco Egotist: “While these aren’t the worst things on TV, they just don’t excite us very much. Kind of like pistachios.”

New York Observer: “A million pistachio nuts is cool. You know what’s really cool? A billion pistachio nuts. Which they now clearly have access to.” – Foster Kamer

Sodahead: “Either the Winklevoss twins really like pistachios, or they need money bad.”

On a interesting side note, 6 of the 21 videos listed by WonderfulPistachios are currently private. According to Market Watch, those might feature: Kermit the Frog, The Honey Badger, and everyone’s favorite members of the popular zeitgeist, a priest, a rabbi and a minister at a bar.

photo by Al Muya

Here’s what’s making industry opinion-makers cringe this week:

Photoshop Irony

Remember the L’Oreal ad that was banned in the UK for over-Photoshopping Julia Roberts? Adverblog’s Martina Zavagno points out the great irony with the L’Oreal Men’s new video:

The video is rather amusing, and it shows the wonders of Photoshop retouch, an art we all know L’Oreal masters, especially after the Advertising Standards Authority banned their Julia Roberts print campaign for creating a “false impression of beauty.”

– Adverblog

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The Portuguese artist Vhils is known for his “destructive” approach to art, carving murals into public walls, transforming abandoned billboards, and often blowing things up.

So when Levi’s (with W+K Amsterdam) hired Vhils to create murals on Berlin walls for its Go Forth campaign, it shouldn’t have been a surprise that he would also blow them up. And that Levi’s would make a video of it.

This morning, ad journalists who have seen the video are wondering, So what?

AdFreak’s Gabriel Beltrone says Levi’s “attempt to look cool” is in contention with Beck’s Green Door to Nowhere for “Artsy Advertiser of the week:”

Exploding murals is apparently a signature medium for Vhils, who have a whole abstract theoretical line as to why it’s like archaeology. We’re not sure about all that, and the whole slow-motion thing ends up feeling being a bit melodramatic, and the boom a bit anemic.

Steve Hall at AdRants says exposions are a tired way of being (wannabe) cool:

Every last tactic used to appear cool and hip and all connected and shit has been used. And used. And used. Over and over. And over again. And again. But, apparently, a good explosion is always worth a minute or two of your time. Or at least that what Wieden + Kennedy Amsterdamn thinks.

Alice Arsham, of the French marketing blog MinuteBuzz, calls the video, roughly translated, “least impressive” and says it’s reminiscent of Levi’s own ads from 2006.

So, have slow-motion explosions had their time in the sun? What about really, really slow slow-motion explosions?