Crowley Webb Blog

Great acting and an absolutely ridiculous premise can make for a great commercial.

by matt low

Sorry I didn’t write about this sooner, but our blog didn’t exist two years ago when this little gem came out. Tell me you’ve seen the Snickers commercial where the guy wears a wig made of Snickers candy bars. Tell me you’re only clicking here to experience its genius yet again.

What I find so wonderful about this spot is two-fold. First of all, the main character is wearing a wig made of Snickers candy bars. So we’re witnessing “everyone knows what we offer, let’s just get attention by doing something off the wall” at its best. They not only had the smarts to realize this, but to run with it. That’s right, the commercial features a man covering up his baldness with a wig made of Snickers candy bars.

Secondly, and what brings it all home, is impeccable acting. The guy crying in his car, the woman making accusations, the guy shrugging them off – all spot-on performances. And then there’s the pinnacle moment of the entire spot. The bald guy practically admitting his guilt with the high-pitched “What?”

It’s near perfect. Just thought you should be reminded.

ahh, spring!

by david buck

geez, it's been warm lately. unseasonably so. green grass revealed, delusional birds flying every which way, a rememberance of the sensation we call warmth, and...drum roll...litter! trash everywhere you look. blowing against fences, dancing in front of my windshield, decorating the front lawns of our neighborhoods. come on people, what is wrong with you? have a little pride. i love my adopted city. i extoll its virtues with conviction. only, why do we have to be such pigs? as you travel west in this country, you will see a marked decrease of the litter problem. so, i implore you, good citizens. let's clean up our act!

And the Global Goes To...

Crowley Webb has won a Global Award for creative excellence in healthcare marketing communications for the fourth year in a row. The award-winning direct mail campaign – a series of four record albums from a fictitious rock group – was chosen from creative work submitted by agencies in 36 countries. The work was done for our client, Praxis, who specializes in patient recruitment for clinical research studies.

The stars of the direct mail campaign were “The Researchers”– a fictitious group of four clinical research professionals who hired Praxis to find patients for their clinical trials. The results of this speculative partnership were so good that The Researchers were catapulted to “Clinical Research Rock Star” status. The story of their meteoric rise was told through a series of direct mail pieces that took the form of actual, full-size, old school album covers.

Each piece evoked a different era of pop music history. The first, Meet the Researchers, introduced the concept and recalled the early days of the British Invasion. It was followed by Good Site Relation Vibrations, a colorful psychedelic depiction of the superior study coordination services offered by Praxis.

These were followed by Visions of the Recruited, a Zeppelin-esque portrayal of Praxis’ almost mystic targeted recruitment services, and, finally, the double “album” Study Data Live, which celebrated the capabilities of Praxis’ proprietary real-time reporting software.

“We tried to make a campaign that had a simple, immediate message but that also rewarded close attention,” explained Pete Reiling, who art-directed the campaign. “We wanted people to spend time with these and went to great lengths to get the details right. It was also a chance for me to fulfill my lifelong ambition of designing an iron-on decal for a 1970s concert t-shirt.”

Heap has it. And now so do lots of other people in Baltimore.

M&T Bank is the official bank of the Baltimore Ravens and has the naming rights to M&T Bank Stadium, home of the Ravens. At the start of this year’s NFL season, M&T rolled out a new ad campaign – “Checking Built for Baltimore” – that leveraged its solid relationship with the Ravens and positioned it as the go-to bank for checking in Baltimore. Ravens tight end and all-time leading receiver, Todd Heap, was one of the faces of the campaign. It was the first time M&T Bank had featured a professional athlete in its advertising.

Ads showing Heap holding the exclusive M&T Bank Ravens Check Card appeared on buses, bus shelters, truck-mounted mobile billboards, the campaign website – even on pizza boxes. A second version of the ads featured Ravens season ticket holder and “superfan”, Sports Steve, who leads cheers at home games with 48 pounds of beads around his neck. Another well-known fan, Captain Dee-Fense, and one of the Ravens’ three mascots, Poe (not to be confused with Edgar and Allen), were the campaign’s other cameos. Radio spots, special branch signage and ATM screens, and rich media online ads on the Ravens official website as well as baltimoresun.com were part of the campaign, too. At the “Built for Baltimore” website, Ravens fans could download and print out game day signs bearing a catchy headline and the M&T logo (we must admit, it was tough to do the layout for “Beat the Bills”). Specially printed Ravens/M&T footballs and pom-poms were given away at radio remotes and at branch and community events, and were tossed from the mobile billboard trucks. Finally, individuals who signed up for a Ravens Checking Package received a free order of checks with the Ravens logo, along with the M&T Ravens Check Card, a cash bonus, rewards points, and a free Ravens tailgating chair.

“Checking Built for Baltimore” launched in September and ran until mid-November, surpassing campaign goals. “Baltimore is a football-crazy town, and tapping into that emotion has been very successful for the campaign,” said Jeff Pappalardo, creative director on the M&T account.