Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Firebrand to Shut Down

Advertising as entertainment, that describes Firebrand. According to the New York Times, "Firebrand, a television and online service that since October has been presenting commercials as content, is being shut down as its major investors decided to stop providing more money."

Firebrand had a show on Ion Television at 11 p.m. and of course the website.

Too bad. It's kinda cool. I just watched four spots from American Airlines. They were entertaining. I guess if you believe in your commercials enough to post them as stand alone videos, then they better be entertaining. At least a little bit.

Holy smokes, I just found all the ESPN commercials, even a few I'd never seen. They CAN'T shut down this site!



Edit: After watching for a few more minutes, this might actually be one of the most entertaining sites on the Internet. Even though brands pay Firebrand to run their spots, Firebrand maintains a pretty high standard. These are basically the best commercials you can see, anywhere. Just go to spots, then most viewed, and see for yourself. In order, I just watched:

  • Fruits - a French commercial with copious amounts of nudity and, you guessed it, fruit
  • Gorilla - as in: playing the drums to a Phil Collins song, ad for Cadbury chocolate
  • Metric System - "Jackin Moon" putting in a plug for Old Spice, with some fuzzy math
  • Magnetic Attraction - Pepsi commercial currently playing on network TV
  • Swear Jar - an ABSOLUTELY INSANELY FUNNY commercial from Bud Light, why this wasn't a Super Bowl ad I don't know ... I haven't laughed this hard in a long time!



Finally figured out how to embed the video, rather than download and re-upload to Blogger. Use the "Post This" button.

So there you have it. Wish there was a way to "Save Firebrand."

Via NewTeeVee.

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