Research In Motion released the first set of commercials from its new “Be Bold” advertising campaign on Thursday and while the ads feature new faces, they are nearly identical to the campaign RIM has been running for months. The Waterloo, Ontario-based smartphone vendor was quick to point out that the team of four awkward superheroes that starred in an infographic RIM recently posted were not part of its upcoming advertising blitz, but perhaps they should have been. RIM’s new ads feature B...

Samsung’s new run of television commercials is the start of a wider effort to make the company’s products the apple of the U.S. consumer’s eye. The ads, which mock iPhone users for their obsession with Apple products, attempt to present Samsung as the smarter, cooler alternative. On a larger scale however, Samsung is hoping to create a fundamental shift in the way its products are viewed by consumers. ”Especially in U.S., people are obsessed with Apple,” head of Samsung marketin...

A company called Cellrderm has taken Microsoft to court over its Windows Phone “Really” advertisements, according to Adweek. Cellrderm, a gag company that creates commercials for a fake Cellrderm “cell abuse aid” product, argues that it owns the copyrights to the creative content used in Microsoft’s ads and that Microsoft copied its work in its “Bedroom” and “Bathroom” commercials. You’ve probably seen the ads on TV: in one, a man is too busy on his ...

As we prepare to finally get our first taste of Sony Ericsson’s Xperia PLAY here in the U.S., we can’t help but think back and remember Sony Ericsson’s hilarious Web-only spots starring Kristen Schaal. We laughed, we cried, and we even readdressed them in a feature covering gaming as a differentiating factor for Sony Ericsson moving forward. It has been a couple of months since the spots first ran but they’re still racking up hits on YouTube, and we’re happy to report that BGR ha...

Dear ad firm that put together Sony Ericsson’s latest round of Xperia PLAY promos: thank you. In its latest effort to garner some attention for its upcoming gaming Goliath, Sony Ericsson brought actress and comedian Kristen Schaal on board to go over some of the Xperia PLAY’s finer points. In the spots, Schaal uses the Xperia PLAY to shoot herself in the face, watch furry kittens, score a triple-kill, check herself out on YouTube and even… edit some spreadsheets. If you haven’t seen t...

At this point, it’s looking like few people actually care about T-Mobile’s “4G” network, real or fake. The carrier continues to push its HSPA+ network online and in television commercials as the main selling point versus the competition. Despite its 4G ad campaign, however, T-Mobile shed 318,000 contract customers last quarter while iPhone sales were through the roof. But “the iPhone 4 is a 3G phone,” T-Mobile proclaims in its State of the Smartphone report. “True st...

Finally, Congress passes a piece of legislation that citizens on both the right and left side of the political spectrum can get behind. Late yesterday, Congress approved the CALM (Commercial Advertising Loudness Mitigation) Act, which “requires TV advertisers to ensure their ads don’t play at a volume louder than regular TV programming.” The new bill requires ad makers to use “industry technology” to prevent the volume annoyance from occurring.“Consumers will no longer have to ex...

The deed is done…Apple has finally killed off the “Get a Mac” ad campaign. Nowhere to be found on its website, all of the roads that once led to the ads featuring Justin Long and John Hodgman redirect visitors to a page entitled “Why You’ll Love a Mac.” Curiously enough, the “Why You’ll Love a Mac” pages feature basically the same talking points that the TV spots went over ad nauseum. What Apple has planned next is unclear, but let’s hope it actually...

Apple’s “Get a Mac” TV spots featuring Justin Long and John Hodgman may soon be a thing of the past if the suspicions of its two stars are correct. During an interview with AV Club, Long was asked about the future of the now iconic commercials that have been on the air since 2006. His response? “You know, I think they might be done. In fact, I heard from John, I think they’re going to move on. I can’t say definitively, which is sad, because not only am I going to miss doing them, b...

You know those God awful Palm Pre ads you haven’t been able to escape from for the past year? Well it looks like they’re going to go away for good because it has been revealed that Palm has cut all ties with Modernista, the advertising agency that created the terrible spots. No word yet who or what Palm with be going with for its next ad push, but we can’t imagine it could get any worse.Thanks, Christopher! (more…)

Avril Lavigne. Luke Wilson. Whoopi Goldberg. Those three names don’t exactly jump out and immediately connect with us when we see them. And isn’t that the point of advertising? The point of branding? To connect to something, identify with it, and relate to it. Sure jazzy music and clean visuals (or dark, ominous tones with scary eyes) will help liven up your advertisement, but if you’re bringing a celebrity in to help, why don’t you make sure the celebrity is someone that people actual...

Apple’s “I’m a Mac” ads were awesome when they first came out; witty, fun, amusing and effective. Now they’re just plain boring. Cupertino’s creative crew is seemingly running on fumes at this point, and in what we would think is a pretty major spot for the team — Apple’s response to Microsoft’s successful Laptop Hunters ads — it swung and missed big time. The new Apple spot beats the same old virus drum and then in the final movement of this tour de...

Behold, ladies and gentlemen: Bell’s new iPhone! No wait, it’s a pPhone. No… The Palm PrePhone? At this point, we’re wondering if there’s a worldwide (or at least North America-wide) conspiracy amongst creative agencies to ensure that each and every Palm Pre commercial to hit the airwaves is absolute garbage. The good news is that Bell’s commercial at least shows off the phone and its features rather than a painfully odd woman mumbling about walking in the park. The bad new...

We were pretty clear in sharing our feelings where Palm’s Pre commercials are concerned but just in case our headline wasn’t clear enough for you, we don’t like them. In a nutshell, they make us want to curl up in a corner and cry, not run out and buy a Pre. Gary Koepke is the co-founder of Modernista, the agency behind the ads, and he recently defended his work in an interview with AdAge: (more…)