Barkely Makes Ad Age's Spots of the Week

The Kansas City advertising agency who brought you the Sonic Guys is getting more press for its work.

Those rocket men from Barkley cracked Advertising Age's spots of the week last week with a spot for Cellular One. The spot is called "Elf Ears for Phone Talk" and features some non-traditional plastic surgery.

Barkley Blows Sonic's Throwdown

The local Kansas City agency that earned mad love for its cool rocket and car on cup promotion just gave it all back.

Barkley, the agency of record for Sonic Drive-Ins, saw spoofs of Sonic's silly in-car ads popping up on YouTube. They cleverly responded by posting a video of Pete and TJ challenging people to create their own ads. So far so good.

But it all goes wrong when Barkley violated major Web 2.0 etiquette and disabled users from embedding the video on Web sites or blogs. A little research from Teresa Valdez Klein over at the Blog Business Summit reveals that Barkley doesn't distribute the Sonic commercials online because they didn't pay the talent accordingly. What a waste of a seemingly good throwdown.

So in return, I'm throwing down the gauntlet. That's right Barkley; I'm talking to you and your cohorts over at Citizen Brand, Risley Ranch and Woolard Speak. You guys need to give the content to the people, and that means making all your Sonic ads available online or everyone who reads this blog will come after you.

So as your commercials state, you'd better watch out for my mom and her neighbor.

Sonic: From Drive-In to Driving Around

Sonic Drive-In is promoting themselves with the classic "I left my drink on top of the car" bit. There was a little piece in the KC Star about it last week, but I was unable to find a picture until today. I snapped this picture with my camera phone on the way to lunch, so the quality is a little more Blair Witch and a little less LonelyGirl15.

Sonic also has radio spots that mention the tactic and offer a special on its Route 44 drinks. Local Kansas City agency Barkley is behind the idea and while I've seen this one online many times, I've never actually seen it executed in real life.

Barkley Blasts Off

The largest independent employee-owned agency in the country, Barkley Evergreen & Partners is doing an extreme makeover: advertising edition. Yesterday, they officially changed their name to Barkley and introduced their new rocket logo, a tribute to the three-story rocket which will top their new location.

The rocket is a throwback to the Disney-"Imagineered" Moonliner, which sat atop the former TransWorld Airlines headquarters for years. Barkley renovated the building, which is located in the Crossroads district of Kansas City, MO, and will officially move in on Halloween. The rocket will be unveiled this Friday during the Crossroad District's First Fridays.

Via BE&P employee, Jeremy Fuksa at The Martini Shaker.

Barkley Evergreen Podcasts from NAB Convention

I was goofing yesterday around in the itunes store today and I found out that Barkley Evergreen & Partners , from nearby Kansas City, is doing a video podcast from the NAB conference in Las Vegas. I just watched the first one, and it's not super branded content. In fact, they don't really promote BE&P that much.

I'm not really sure who their target audience is. They might be trying to give a little conference recap for the rest of their agency and getting a little video podcasting experience at the same time. Anyway, kudos to BE&P for testing the waters with the video podcast. It's nowhere near the quality of American Copywriter, but John and Tug had better watch their backs, because they've got some competition.