Apparently, Minnesota Timberwolves forward Kevin Garnett will appear in a Footlocker commercial during the Super Bowl. But that's not the news. It seems the folks handling Footlocker want to guarantee viewership of the commercial by embedding a "secret website" address promoting a contest in the spot and telling everyone about it by seeding a "hidden camera" video in which the "secret" is revealed. Oooo. Get your TiVos ready everyone. This one's gonna be a doosey! And, like, no one has ever done this before either so that's what makes this so, sooooo cool!
Rip into this farce with the rest of your industry mates on the Adrants forumor in comments here..
Like so many things vying for attention in life, procrastination is right up there on the list of priorities. That's the only explanation we can come up with for why it's taken us two months to tell you (as if you didn't already know) that Adrants has added another writer to its staff. Beginning last December, the very witty Angela Natividad (don't you just love that name?) joined as co-editor and has rejuvenated the site with her command of language and insightful view on the world of advertising.
Along with her co-editor duties, Angela, for the past several years, has served as the marketing executive for DriversEd.com where she oversees a portion of the company's marketing efforts and develops new business nationally and in Germany. Angela also writes for CMSWire as well as a few other online publications.
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Part way through reading George Parker's new book, MadScam: Kick-Ass Advertising Without the Madison Avenue Price Tag, we informed George we had found the perfect coaster for our scotch. Amused, he agreed but told us to get off our ass and read the book. We did. And we can whole heartedly tell you you should too. With or without a glass of scotch. The man has things to say and things you won't hear from your average "I'm a hot shit marketer and everything I say is gold" flatulence. The man has been through it all and he has no problem telling marketers they don't need Madison Avenue for all their marketing needs.
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Get ready for the return of the proverbed naked girl in the ice cubes of liquor drink ads. Or at least single frame brand blips on television shows such as the Food Network's Iron Chef America. YouTube user H20ay32 posted this video capture of a recent broadcast during which a single frame of the broadcast consisted of the Golden Arches and McDonald's tagline, "I'm Lovin' It." While McDonald's did obviously sponsor the show with on screen billboards, this subliminal placement by a major brand is sure to create debate.
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One trend that's been bubbling around in agencies for some time now might, aside from its other important benefits, may result in the elimination of the most dreaded operational activity: filling out time sheets. In recent history, following the shift from old-school 15 percent compensation, agencies have based revenue on the time it takes to complete a project mapped against the cost of hours to accomplish the project. There was then a shift to performance-based marketing that tied campaign performance to agency revenue. Now, the notion of value has been added to the compensation equation with several agencies, including Crispin Porter + Bogusky and Anomoly, setting fees based on the perceived value of the work they do for clients.
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For her MFA thesis in Design/Tech at Parsons, Alexis Lloyd brings us the ad generator.
The ad generator mixes corporate slogans around and pairs the new phrases with related Flickr images. The results come out clean and surprisingly provocative most of the time.
The object is to show how ad language reflects cultural values and desires, and simultaneously demonstrate how meaningless it can be as the message is generally unrelated to the product being sold.
We've seen similar mix-and-match ad generators but this one is impressively seamless. We dig the idea of scavenging to create a new whole because that's how we often create new stories or render old values coherent again. Good job Madame Lloyd.
We're not really sure why, and we wish it weren't that nauseating colour, but French artist Philippe Meste wants to create the biggest boxful of sperm ever.
The Spermcube seeks a fill of no less than one ton of human sperm, so if you can't get your 15 megabytes of fame then at least your little soldiers can when you make a donation. For those financially inclined and less biologically so, Meste also provides the option of becoming a shareholder via PayPal.
No words in English to describe our feelings about this one, so we'll shoot for the French: c'est degoulasse. Is it wrong for us to wonder about the smell?
BLM Flint Creative Director Guy Blaskey took on the Apprentice/Donnie Deutsch role in the UK's Wag Boutique, an ITV1 reality series that pits two teams of UK football player's wives and girlfriends against each other in a clothing shop competition. Each of the teams hired BLM Flint to create their identity and promotional campaigns and Blaske found himself in the middle of a nightmare.
At first, the nightmare wasn't so bad with soccer wife and Page Three model Nicola T offering to bare her breasts for creative inspiration and soccer wife Krystelle Sidwell giving him the full on flirting treatment. Unfortunately, the fun devolved into the usual idiocy with the two teams taking on the role of nightmare clients.
Blaskey said of the experience, "I was initially surprised how switched on, determined and knowledgeable the girls were, but it soon descended into farce. The Bows team were the perfect clients, apart from Nicola wanting to show me her breast. But working with the 'Better Half' team was a living hell, they were worse than the worst clients."
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The Fame Game, an all-online talent show where the talented and not-so-talented vie monthly for money and stars, enlists Cake to create a catchy viral. The result? Kitchen Diaries.
For a good Electro Funk Daddy Superstar Break, a quirky beat-boxing chef throws together a satisfying ingredient list of ripped noises. After creating an awesome break, he recommends nixing the fish (a popular addition) and sticking the mixture in an oven to bake for three years at 700 degrees.
Awesome work and a tasty listen. Take a look at the wannabes who've already jumped on board. We recommend you not skip the Elvis impersonator who beat-boxes on the john. Definitely pimp-throne worthy, yeah?
YouTube gives birth to at least 15 would-be celebs per day. Stars lamenting the loss of private lives seem undeserving of their place in our hearts when so many are willing to sacrifice theirs for virtually nothing.
That includes less prevalent royals like Venetian Princess, who claims to be far from the average Echo Boomer dancing around in her bedroom.
An Italian dauphine over whom Brad Pitt and XBox-loving husband Hector are fighting, the Princess conducts tours of her castle and stoops to plebeian levels to do her own graphics and video editing.
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Wieden+Kennedy/London art director Gwen Yip sets forth a feel-good series of comics about her journey from Hong Kong to London, and her consequent search for ad work. It is cute. It is allegedly also inspiring, as according to AdCritic Yip peddled her work the old-fashioned way before ultimately landing a role at W+K. Everybody loves a good Horatio Algier story.
Y&R just can't seem to get its act together these days. Following the exit of Cheryl Fudge last year for because of - some would say - poor performance, Hamish McLennan was brought in as worldwide CEO. Somewhat of a house cleaner, McLennan made some changes including the hiring of Chris Jacques as CEO of Y&R North America last June and the booting of Worldwide Creative Director Michael Patti. Jacques formerly headed Y&R Asia. Just over six months later, Jacques is leaving for *cough*, *cough* personal reasons. Right. When was the last time an exec had actual personal issues when leaving an agency?
Anyway, McLennan will step into Jacques role for the time being as the dust settles. It seems the agency needs a swift kick in the ass to right itself. We hear a certain Julie Roehm is pretty good at kicking ass. And she's available.
For its Life Comes at You Fast campaign, Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. makes K-Fed its new Super Bowl poster boy, succeeding Fabio in a popular ad that ran last year.
The idea is to have Federline living out a menagerie of rap cliches before he's snapped back into reality - that being his life at a fast food restaurant with his screaming boss.
The National Restaurant Association complains that the ad denigrates restaurant workers. They'd like Nationwide to do away with the K-Fed cliche, but they ain't budging, explaining the ad is about surprise, not the unpleasant conditions of fast food work. In our opinion they ought to be thanking the company as K-Fed's lackluster album is one of those oeuvres that actually might make a disgruntled restaurant worker feel better about being a restaurant worker.
If you're into following the top online viral videos, a new tracking site has launched called Vidmeter. It tracks videos from Atom Films, Break.com, Daily Motion, Google, iFilm, Metacafe, Myspace, Revver, vSocial, Yahoo, and Youtube. It ranks the top 100 daily and keep a running tab on the top videos of all time. While there's other video tracking sites out there, this one seems to be more complete, less infiltrated with paid plants and simpler to use.
If memory serves, after 9/11, wasn't it the French who sort of dragged their feet and made things difficult for the countries trying to tally together against Bin Laden? If so, that might explain this ad for French tree hugger site Defi Pour La Terre which thought it would be witty to transform the image of two trees into the twin towers burning on that fateful day. All to somehow equate the value of a tree to the value of a human life.
We not sure any amount of time passed makes this sort of thing OK. Then again, we're American. We knew people on Flight 93. The French? Well, perhaps they didn't know anyone who died that day or just feel Americans can't keep their hands out of other countries' issues. While the latter may be true, mocking a world event such as 9/11, at least for now, is still in very bad taste. And the French are supposed to know about taste, right?
We know Microsoft wants us all to think its new Zune MP3 player is the MP3's answer to social networking what with its questionably easy method of song sharing and such . What we didn't know was just how social the staid monolith would get in order to convey its apparently very friendly social skills. Look at this banner ad for Zune found on Metacritic and ask yourself exactly what this particular sort of social activity has do to with song sharing. And before all you conservative types jump out of your seat and scream "Adrants goes for cheap salaciousness again!", ask yourself why Microsoft or the art director behind this creation cold not have chosen from 3 million other shots of a woman making love to a microphone before choosing this image which alludes to an entirely different kind of love making. Click the image to increase the size of the love making.
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