Campbell's Soup in Product Placement Deal With NBC's 'American Dreams'

Campbell's Soup has entered a deal with NBC to weave its products into the network's "American Dreams" series Luckily, the product was around in the 60's when the show takes place so the placement won't looked forced. Oh wait, the placement will incorporate a teen essay contest about the brand which begs the question, who would ever write an essay about soup unless a paying advertiser asked them to?

Copy Room Sex Promotes Recruitment Agency

Don't worry, it' not porn and there's no nudity but this video of a guy delivering his package to an over-eager office worker is one of the strangest methods we've ever seen to promote the a recruitment agency. But hey, sex sells, right?

UPDATE: There's more.

Donny Deutsch and CNBC Launch 'The Big Idea'

For an ad guy that likes to pontificate, Donny Deutsch now has an even bigger platform than he has running an ad agency. Airing Sundays at 9 PM and extending to a full 13 episode run, Deutsch will host a CNBC show called "The Big Idea" in which he will get celebrities to discuss cultural issues, trends and the celebrity's own dirty laundry. Now maybe we'll find out what Paris Hilton was thinking about in those Guess ads.

TTR2 Launches New Viral Campaign Tracking Tool

TTR2, a UK based viral seeding site has launched a new set of tools to enable brands and agencies to promote and track their campaigns. TTR2 is offering brands and clients "player-less video" using its new Flashcom rich media format. The new Flashcom product can be fully branded and can be deployed as a stand alone single or multi clip version with "send-2-a-friend" functionality. Using a flash front-end this new tool delivers multiple video files to dialup as well as broadband users. The player can also customised to sit on a user�s desk-top and alert them when the content is updated.

No One Knows the Definition of Marketing ROI

The Association of National Advertisers (ANA) and Forrester Research today released the top-line results of an exclusive survey on the marketing accountability and ROI. Jim Nail, Principal Analyst, Forrester Research, Inc., discussed the results at ANA's Marketing Accountability Forum, which took place today at The Grand Hyatt in New York.

The survey of 54 ANA members revealed a lack of consensus among marketers on how to measure/define their return on investment (ROI) in marketing. Some 78% cited measuring the sales impact of marketing as somewhat/very difficult. In addition 70% said gaining agreement on the definition of ROI as somewhat/very difficult

When asked for the definition of definition of "marketing ROI," answers where all over the place:

• Incremental sales revenue generated by marketing activities - 66%
• Changes in brand awareness - 57%
• Total sales revenue generated by marketing activities - 55%
• Changes in purchase intention - 55%
• Changes in attitudes toward the brand - 51%
• Changes in market share - 49%
• Number of leads generated - 40%
• Ratio of advertising costs to sales revenue - 34%
• Cost per lead generated - 34%
• Reach/frequency achieved - 30%
• Gross rating points delivered - 25%
• Cost per sale generated - 23%
• Post buy analysis comparing media plan to actual media delivery - 21%
• Changes in the financial value of brand equity - 19%
• Increase in customer lifetime value - 17%
• Other - 4%
• None of the above - 2%