Irvine-Based Toshiba Presents Boring vs. Normal Deathmatch

It took a most unusual campaign for advertising/public-relations/brand-identification firm Young & Rubicam Brands to convince fellow Irvine-based company Toshiba U.S. to jump back into advertising via television commercials after being absent from the airwaves for several years. The above ad from the just-launched Toshiba "Breakthrough" Campaign is trippy enough. But for a real dose of strange, check out another component of the campaign that pits the towns of Boring and Normal against one another. That would be Boring, Oregon (population 12,851 in 2000), and Normal, Illinois (45,386).

Among the contests in this burg vs. burg deathmatch: knuckle cracking . . .

The idea is to have viewers decide which town becomes more exciting thanks to Toshiba laptops, with the winning town receiving $15,000 in technology upgrades for their local school system.

Other campaign ads can be seen here. Voting has not yet begun, but more information about the Boring vs. Normal deathmatch can be found at BoringVsNormal.com. The campaign even has a Twitter account at @YRBrandsSoCal. But then again, who doesn't these days?