Coat company riding the back hair of GEICO ads.
(click ad to read copy)At first glance, I thought this might be a viral ad for Cavemen, the new, and apparently awful, ABC sitcom. No—Weatherproof Garment, a division of David Peyser Sportswear, is a real company, though their website is currently dead. Maybe it's a sneaky tie-in? Available evidence says unh-unh.
So, there's no cleverness here. It's just bald, blatant, shameless appropriation. Bravo?
Geico attorneys get busy!
(scanned from yesterday's New York Times Style magazine.)
previously in unoriginal ideas:
1. Dressing up Lady Liberty.
2. The way $tarbuck$ $ee$ it.
4. The Bank of Opportunistic Stock Photo Use.
5. law firms look to animal kingdom for ad help.
posted by copyranter @ 11:15 AM
6 Comments:
I saw this last night Copyranter and I'm thinking there's got to be some sort of tie-in to either Geico or the new TV show.
Weatherproof is a pretty well-established mid-to-higher end coat manufacturer (despite the lack of website) so I'd be surprised if this was random.
I'm thinking you're more than likely right, toad. Otherwise, it's just too damn stupid.
Hope that thing has a hoodie. If the sitcom's no good, he'll need one to hide his face.
I used to work for Weatherproof, and I can say with some assurance that this is one in a long line of ridiculously unoriginal ad ideas. No big surprise, considering that all of print ads are conceived and 'art directed' by the 70 year old company president, who is completely out of touch. I could never understand why they were willing to spend loads on ad space (their stuff is all over times square, etc), but nothing on art direction for their ads.
What a missed opportunity. The ad got our attention...even if only because it was so inane...and then gave us no relevant information, and nothing to do other than tsk-tsk at it. What's 'branded' here? Nothing. It could have been a parody, hidden inside of a satire, and wrapped with a punchline. It's not even crass. Just stupid. I wrote a bit about it at DIM BULB if you want to check it out (http://dimbulb.typepad.com).
I believe all of you who posted here are completely wrong. When you flip tthrough these books of ads--every ad is the same--beautiful models in rediculous poses--now weatherproof is making fun of this and getting all of our attention at the same time, while piggy backing off of the new tv show--I think it is fucking brilliant and completely legal.
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