Captain Morgan For President!

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While everyone's awaiting Obama's Vice Presidential announcement, Captain Morgan is hangin' with the hotties and running for a presidency of his own. His primary platform plank is to put the party back into politics. With the help of four curvaceous cuties, The Captain shares the details of his platform: a two day work week, hot parties and designated drivers.

It might be nice to shove all the world's drama aside for a few days and let this guy take over for a bit. We'd all have a hell of a hangover but we'd all have fun getting it.

by Steve Hall    Aug-22-08    
Topic: Racy, Video



Tutorial Offers Social Media 101

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Jennifer Jones has produced a brief, helpful tutorial, How to Build a Social Media Campaign, to guide markers considering swimming in the social media pond. She offers the names of tools marketers can use to track existing conversations about their brands. She suggests brands identify or create interesting stories surrounding the brand that will be of interest to the target audience and then provide a means for those stories to be shared.

In terms of things to avoid, Jones is adamant that marketers be transparent in their efforts and identify their involvement with any effort. The tutorial doesn't answer every question marketers will have about social media but it will provide an initial frame work from which to begin.

by Steve Hall    Aug-22-08    
Topic: Social, Tools



Brands See 'Social Media Lift' During Olympics

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Social media analytics company Collective Intellect tracked eight Beijing Olympic sponsors between August 2 and August 13 to determine the amount of social media brand lift the sponsors achieved. Tracking blogs, social networks, forums and other "online conversations," Three brands saw significant increases in activity. CI found a 51 percent increase for McDonald's, a 141 percent increase or Visa and a 17 percent increase for Coke. The increases represent in-context association between Olympic-focuses content and the brand.

by Steve Hall    Aug-22-08    
Topic: Research



It's Official: Ad Budgets Will be Reduced

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It's about time.This sort-of-but-not-really recession has had everyone talking for, well, years, it seems. Today, we have some meat on the subject. And it isn't tasty. The Association of National Advertisers has released a study citing 53 percent of surveyed marketing executives expect their ad budgets to be reduced withing the next six months and 87 percent are already identifying cutbacks.

Areas cited for cuts are media (69 percent), travel (63 percent), production (63 percent) and new work (61 percent). Of those already planning cutbacks, 50 percent expect a ten percent reduction, 27 percent expect an 11-20 percent reduction and ten percent expect cuts or more than 30 percent.

more »

by Steve Hall    Aug-22-08    
Topic: Agencies, Brands, Research, Trends and Culture



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Chinese Olympic Volleyball Cheerleaders Transfix Journalist

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It's probably a bit cruel to point this out but it's the sort of thing we're supposed to do here at Adrants. Today, in Advertising Age, Ray Ally, apparently for lack of any other sort of information remotely related to advertising, wrote a piece about the Chinese volleyball cheerleaders which veered off to the apparent culture shock of seeing Beijing women in bikinis, the cheerleader selection process and a mini-dissertation on the merits of dark and light-skinned Chinese women.

But that's not the cruel part. Have a look at the bikini-clad hotties accompanying the article. Then have a look at Ally's picture. Absolutely no disrespect is intended but the man looks like he's in some sort of transfixed state due, perhaps, to having ogled the bountiful gyrations of all those bikini-clad hotties for so long.

You can't really blame the man though. Bikinis will do that to a guy.

by Steve Hall    Aug-22-08    
Topic: Strange