Men are from Mars. Women are from Venus. Ah, the difference in the sexes. This :30 for Mendocino Brewing Company’s Red Tail Ale goes to tongue-in-cheek extremes–which some might regard as disturbing–to show us what happens when these two worlds collide.
We open in an art gallery where a man and a woman are standing in front of a sculpture. The woman pontificates about the piece: “The way the Cambodians display their sculptures as bulbous, coiled and in torture is so haunting,” she relates.
The man is silent. His facial expression seems distant.
The spot continues to follow the couple as they walk together outside. Even though the setting has changed, not much else has. The woman is still talking about the art, while the man doesn’t say a word.
“They seem to be deriding the notion of global beauty yet portraying life’s circle as colorless,” she says.
Next, our “happy” twosome is seated on a living room couch. The woman talks about the sculpture representing “human incompleteness and yearning for wholeness.” The man has a glazed look on his face, as if he’s being subjected to torture.
Suddenly, his head literally explodes, and its innards splatter all over the woman and the furniture. The decapitated man remains seated on the couch, next to his distraught female companion.
A supered explanatory slogan then appears against a dark backdrop: “Men are brewed differently.”
This is followed by a second message, “So are we,” accompanied by a bottle of Red Tail Ale.
“Art” was directed and shot by Timothy Kendall of Effigy Films, Santa Monica, for Colby & Partners, Santa Monica. (The director has since linked with HKM Productions, Hollywood). Kendall also served as editor, visual effects artist and sound designer on the job. Kevin DeSouza served as executive producer and producer for Effigy.
The creative team at Colby & Partners consisted of president/executive creative director Rick Colby, associate creative director Jason Sperling, art director Niraj Zaveri and producer Amburr Dilday.
Online editor was Ernie Smith of Crush, Santa Monica. Rob Sciarratta of Company 3, Santa Monica, was the colorist.
Principal actors were Ben Koldyke and Lana Parilla.Google Opens Its Defense In Antitrust Case Alleging Monopoly Over Online Ad Technology
Google opened its defense against allegations that it holds an illegal monopoly on online advertising technology Friday with witness testimony saying the industry is vastly more complex and competitive than portrayed by the federal government.
"The industry has been exceptionally fluid over the last 18 years," said Scott Sheffer, a vice president for global partnerships at Google, the company's first witness at its antitrust trial in federal court in Alexandria.
The Justice Department and a coalition of states contend that Google built and maintained an illegal monopoly over the technology that facilitates the buying and selling of online ads seen by consumers.
Google counters that the government's case improperly focuses on a narrow type of online ads โ essentially the rectangular ones that appear on the top and on the right-hand side of a webpage. In its opening statement, Google's lawyers said the Supreme Court has warned judges against taking action when dealing with rapidly emerging technology like what Sheffer described because of the risk of error or unintended consequences.
Google says defining the market so narrowly ignores the competition it faces from social media companies, Amazon, streaming TV providers and others who offer advertisers the means to reach online consumers.
Justice Department lawyers called witnesses to testify for two weeks before resting their case Friday afternoon, detailing the ways that automated ad exchanges conduct auctions in a matter of milliseconds to determine which ads are placed in front of which consumers and how much they cost.
The department contends the auctions are finessed in subtle ways that benefit Google to the exclusion of would-be competitors and in ways that prevent... Read More