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Microsoft Cuckolds the Search Beast with Games of Chicken

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Because Microsoft can't drive users to its search engine by merit (recall the Ms. Dewey effort), it's been dangling bait over internet users with various mind games and search-oriented word puzzles.

One such game is Chicktionary, where you try to build as many words as you can with a given set of scrambled letters. Once you engage an ad banner, you're driven to Live Search Club, where your engagement with the game is counted as ongoing use of Live Search.

This is how: each time you use the scrambled letters to make a word, successful words are counted as queries in the search engine, which then brings you its definition.

This and similar games have brought inordinately good tidings to the Microsoft search camp.

Clever.

by Angela Natividad    Sep-11-07    
Topic: Games, Good, Online



Chris Crocker Says 'Leave Britney Alone!'

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Without containing anything the least bit socially redeeming or having anything at all to do with advertising, we share with you this video of an overwrought Chris Crocker emotionally pleading to everyone to LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE! Asking how dare the media make fun of Britney after all she's been through, Crocker spends a full two minutes and 11 seconds crying about how the media makes tons of money off writing crap about Britney.

Freakishly as this message is delivered, Crocker is completely right. Just witness VH1's rehashing tonight of Britney's woes over the past couple of years. Just witness any Britney-related media thrashing. And, yes, we have crapped on her as well. Mea Culpa on that. Will this ever change? Doubtful.

And if you want even more of this, there's apparently a conspiracy theory that goes along with her VMA performance. Her lack luster dance moves were apparently due to...yes...a faulty heel on one of her shoes. And on and on and on it goes...

by Steve Hall    Sep-11-07    
Topic: Celebrity, Video



Divine Intervention Illustrates Triumph Boat's Toughness

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The Lord Works in Mysterious Ways. It's not often, you have religion so intertwined with a mundane secular activity such as advertising but Triumph Boats has gone all out one this one to show just how tough its boats are and how a simple wish can elicit divine intervention.

We're not sure, though, who's being taught the lesson here. The boy who learns the power of pseudo prayer or the priest who realizes spiritual gifts don't always have to come in the form of hard to interpret intangibles. No matter. The bot gets his boat. The priest realizes materialistic desire might not be wrong. And Triumph gets to show just how tough their boats really are.

The Republik in Durham, NC created the ad.

by Steve Hall    Sep-11-07    
Topic: Commercials, Good



Racy Ads + Free Speech + Conservative Viewpoints = Great Cable Ratings

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Once again, advertising has caused an uproar over nothing. CNN's Mike Galanos covers the new (and really great if we do say so ourselves) Clearasil campaign and is upset over the ads which show a guy trying to pick up his friend's mom and a daughter who says "You should see me now" while her mother shows naked baby pictures of her to her boyfriend. While Galanos prudely prattles on, Melissa Henson from the Parents Television Council talks about how marketers use too much sex to sell and Debbie Wolf from the People Against Censorship says the moral minority shouldn't control what gets seen on TV and everyone should just lighten up and laugh.

more »

by Steve Hall    Sep-11-07    
Topic: Campaigns, Opinion, Policy, Racy, Trends and Culture



Twix Gets Twitchy

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After spending way too much time with that Save the Text Save the Words viral, we're happy to come across another that's well, not too hard to figure out since we were told it was for Twix. It's Spanish and involves a guy approaching people and suddenly yelling at them. From the other videos, one of which shows several twitchy people in a doctor's office, we gather the joke is relating Twix to some kind of uncontrollable twitch. Or something like that. Anyway, see it all here.

by Steve Hall    Sep-11-07    
Topic: Video



Viral Effort Says 'Save The Text Save The Words'

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There's an Italian viral effort floating around called Save the Text Save the Words. Could it be a promotion for Heroes? We have no idea. There's a video on YouTube that features a guy named H725 who claims to be from the year 2059 and says text and all written words have disappeared. He's returned to ask our help in saving the text which he says began to disappear this September 27. He says a person or organization he refers to as Bright.ly started it all and he's returned to hunt the entity down and eliminate it.

H725 returned from the future with a screen-like device that allows him to show the progression of words disappearing. He uses the device in the video to show the missing letters of words. One commenter to the original post on the campaign's (well, what else are we gonna call it?) blog posits its got to do with advertisers usurping language and even mentions the Mike Judge film Idiocracy in which the future has been completely dumbed down by technology and the erosion of culture. Whether or not that has anything to do with this we know not.

more »

by Steve Hall    Sep-11-07    
Topic: Viral



Evian Brand-Builds by Linking Between Purity and Bare Skin

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We're not really sure what purity has to do with wearing your underpants in the Alps, but apparently there's a connection.

Evian is proof that all good marketers own a thesaurus. Note connections between purity and innocence (free-wheeling nakedness); note connections between balance and the the meditation posture. If it helps sell water...

We love ourselves some naked. And if bare flesh says something about luxury drinking water, then by all means, bare all.

by Angela Natividad    Sep-11-07    
Topic: Brands, Online



The LA County Fair Bimbos Are Back!

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The LA County Fair Bimbos are back again to celebrate this year's event. As we wrote last year; normally reserved for upstate New York or any flyover state, county fairs are full of cotton candy, barf-inducing tea cup rides, tractor pulls, all form of pig - both cooked and live, trucker hats, beer guts, "git r done" accents no one can understand and lots of girls who think they look hot with their gut bulging between their belly shirt and their way-too-tight low rider jeans.

This year the sisters are back with their equally bimbo-esque mom to tell all about how much fun riding bumper cars and eating pie can be. Enjoy.

by Steve Hall    Sep-11-07    
Topic: Campaigns, Commercials, Good



Even More Britney, Datran Remembers 9/11

- If you haven't had your fill of Britney yet this week, tonight VH1 is airing All Access: Britney's Most Shocking Year Ever which promises to rehash all the poor girl's dirty laundry from the divorce to the head shaving to her pantyless partying to her feud with mom and much more. We can hardly wait.

- Today, Datran is donating a portion of every transaction to Tuesday's Child, an organization that offers support to the families affected by September 11.

- The Many Worlds of Jonas Moore has been nominated for this year's final competition of the MIPCOM Mobile and Internet TV Awards- Best Short Form Entertainment, Drama category, taking place in Cannes, France.

by Steve Hall    Sep-11-07    
Topic: Cable, Cause, Celebrity



Is Facebook Trying to Seduce Us?

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What the fuck is this, and why is it in our newsfeed?

Oh, it's a sponsored listing for a triage of soap operas.

by Angela Natividad    Sep-11-07    




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