Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Levi's and Walt Whitman

Blame Mad Men?
Is a brilliant series about a 60's ad agency actually influencing contemporary ad agencies? I want to see Barney Stinson quoting Ted Berrigan in a bar to pick up some hipster girl, episode titled New York School... last drunken words of the episode, "...my vocabulary did this to me."
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Slate:
In December 2008, Levi's ditched its old ad agency and signed on with Wieden + Kennedy (the talented ad makers responsible
for creating many of Nike's epic, stirring, one-minute anthems). The spots that W+K came up with—this new campaign is labeled "Go Forth"—have been running since the summer in movie theaters and, increasingly, on television. From the moment we see that "America" sign half-sunk in inky water, we know we're watching something new. The campaign inhabits a different universe from the one depicted in "Live Unbuttoned."

For one thing, it's a universe in which the ever-present soundtrack is Walt Whitman poetry. This spot uses a wax cylinder recording believed to be audio of Whitman himself reading from his poem "America." The second spot in the campaign employs a recording of an actor reading Whitman's "Pioneers! O Pioneers!
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