New poster for the Blue Mountain/Black Diamond Heavies Show next Friday at Fred’s Feed & Seed in Loachapoka. This came from a handle of Canadian Club that had been busted in our parking lot at work. There was a spent condom too, about 3 feet from the bottle. Big Ups to Mark Ervin for the photo.

We’ve had a copy of their fantastic book HOOPLA at the agency for ages now. Aaron, my ADC ordered a copy of their other book, HOOPLANETICS at the same time but it never came. Back ordered from amazon. 18 months later and it still hadn’t showed up. Mysteriously out of print.

After a tip-off from the man hisself via twitter today and with x-acto in hand I uncovered the truth. We had our copy of HOOPLANETICS the whole time. IT WAS SEAMLESSLY HIDDEN IN HOOPLA.

The small book was hidden in a tight recess in the back cover (chipboard) under heavy end paper. The only clue: a small scissors icon printed on the end paper. To be honest, I had never noticed it before. We DID severely damage a book that fetched upwards of $75 when out of print, but who would sell this thing?

Easter Eggs in Print are always fun to find, but they are usually hidden to be fairly easily found. You could own HOOPLA your entire life and never find HOOPLANETICS. CP+B, you do the damn thing.

So let’s take a short trip down memory lane and look at a campaign that WORKS. Not only does it work, it’s pitch-perfect in tone, delivery, and promise. I’m talking about Energy BBDO’s “Damn Right” campaign for that ol’ workhorse of a whisky, Canadian Club; a perfect marriage between brand and concept.

THE BRAND: Canadian Club. C.C. is NOT Jack Daniel’s. Canadian Club is a whisky people drank before people began to think about the whisky that they drank. Before it was a considered a potential accessory to your own personal brand. Any seasoned drinker knows C.C. is a whisky best used as a mixer. And being that, Canadian Club has never been a big-shot drink. It’s the Miller High-Life of whisky. It doesn’t have the Old South, rough-hewn and traditional feeling of J.D.’s 1.0 Brand, nor does it have the sexy rock n’ roll in a dive bar image of J.D.’s 2.0 Brand. It’s not an aficionado’s drink like Maker’s Mark, and it’s never had a makeover. It’s the whisky of insurance salesmen and golfers. Like Old Spice and High-Life before it, it was a brand that time, and a whole generation forgot. The target was 21-40 year old males that had no familiarity with the brand.

THE CONCEPT: “DAMN RIGHT YOUR DAD DRANK IT”. A great dad is naturally skilled at telling you just enough about his past to get your imagination going and then stopping short of the details. My father is a good example. Hot-rodder, tunnel rat in ‘Nam, moto-x racing, gun-enthusiast, preacher. (Daddy was a bit of a bad ass.) These keywords have colored in the missing pieces of the dad puzzle so that 25% of what I know about his past is truth and 75% is myth. These print ads (YES. print ads. The Canadian Club of new media – works great as a mixer.) do a great job at taking advantage of that fact. It’s the reverse end of “This is not your father’s Oldsmobile”. If it was good enough for Dad, then it ought to be good enough for your soft, girlie ass cause your dad was one hell of a guy.

You have to admire that in these “please drink responsibly” times, Energy BBDO hasn’t forgotten what whisky is about. At its best, BOOZE LEADS TO SEX. No denying it. No watering it down. The headlines do a great job of bringing up sex without making you think about sex. That’s hard to do.

There is something to learn from the art direction, too. The type reminds you of a whisky label without trying too hard. The photography (The actual fathers of BBDO and C.C. employees) is vintage and authentic, complete with printer’s marks and processing mistakes. It’s all simple and unobtrusive, not the star.

What really makes these ads great is they never make a promise that C.C. can’t keep. They aren’t trying to make C.C. look like the latest hip, small-batch bourbon (though C.C. does boast small-batch and finer vintages), or turn it into a cult brand. It’s not dressed up. It’s wearing the same plaid golfing pants it was wearing 40 years ago. Canadian Club hasn’t changed. You have. And the new You might enjoy a whisky cocktail.

The flip side of my shameless praise is a google away. Several bloggers had a field day deriding this concept and using the “Create Your Own Damn Right Ad” function on the Club website for mockery and unintended amusement. It’s usually the sexual aspect of the ads that distracts them from the point. But children are like that. The point isn’t sex, or even that your dad could of been getting a lot of tail. Just that your dad was a cool guy, he drank C.C. and you should try to be more like your dad. It’s sorta beautiful.

C.C.’s fantastic site to support the campaign.

The trailer for Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar Games’ forthcoming sequel to 2004’s Red Dead Revolver, debuted today on IGN.com. Unlike it’s predecessor Red Dead Redemption will utilize the RAGE engine, previously used to power GTA IV, among others, and will be a sandbox-style game similar to GTA.

Let me put it another way: This will be Grand Theft Auto in the Wild Wild West. Given Rockstars’ excellent handling of GTA IV, the expectations are exceedingly high.

I played the first game, briefly, a few years back and was not impressed. Clunky game mechanics, an awkward “Duel-Mode”; but what really set the game back was the cliched narrative, corny to a fault. It had all the presence of a shooting gallery at the county fair. Billing itself as a “spaghetti western-style” game, Red Dead Revolver never managed to keep that promise, lacking the flair, the story, and the subtleties of the sub-genre. Listen, Western movies are EASY to screw up. Western games are no different. The temptation to go over the top is too strong.

So it’s nice to see that Red Dead Redemption apparently is a sequel in name only. The story is set at the beginning of the 20th century focusing on a man named John Marston, —”a notorious outlaw trying to survive life in the harsh frontier when the newly government-appointed Bureau of Investigation approaches him with a deadly ultimatum”.

I’m rabid in my devotion to Grand Theft Auto. I believe it’s the only video game series to ever successfully exceed the scope of its original conception. The name itself, “Grand Theft Auto” does its latest incarnation little justice, as the game, the world it creates and the story that it tells have grown bigger and better than its name implies and bear little resemblance to the games that came before it. Entertaining the prospect of playing a Western with the same production value, the same painstaking recreation of a time and place, the same lovingly-rendered narrative/dialogue has got me wishing summer was already over (Game releases fall ‘09. Hopefully). The trailer packs a wallop and leaves you with more questions than answers like a good trailer should. I’M PUMPED, PEOPLE.

Don’t like Westerns you say? Well keep it to yourself. I consider it a deep character flaw and I’m silently judging you when I hear those words coming out of your sweet, purtty mouth. Man up this summer with some good movies like The Wild Bunch and Lonesome Dove to get you in the mood and come out with your guns drawn this fall.

http://www.rockstargames.com/reddeadredemption/