In a PR coup or just another disgusting manipulation of humanity to further a marketer's end, 5W Public Relations sent baby clothing from Belly Maternity all the way to Africa so Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's baby Shiloh Jolie-Pitt could wear it thus allowing the brand to appear in just about every publication known to man. With price wars in play over images of Shiloh and New York Magazine writing, in a stretch, "Not since Jesus has a baby been so eagerly anticipated," it may just be a pretty good PR coup. That is, if anyone takes a microscope to the images and tries to find the brand name on the shirt. Be sure to read the ego-infested, chest thumping press release from 5w, reprinted in full over at Gawker.
We all thought the whole Chevy Novo "No Go" thing was a bad naming gaffe but that doesn't hold a candle to H&M's naming of their new men's jeans Fit Sliq. A harmless name to those of us who regularly speak English but not so harmless and carrying an entirely different meaning in Swedish. In Swedish, it means - brace yourselves - cunnilingus or "cunt licker" in a more exact translation. Yes, according to Adland's dabitch, a women well versed in Swedish, the jeans just might become a hot item as "Swedish men and the occasional lesbian raid the stores for a pair of these naughty naughty jeans."
The kicker to this whole thing is that H&M is a Swedish company. Perhaps it's not a gaffe at all but an inside joke or perhaps it's an English speaking product manager run amok. Either way, it's funny. I mean, unfortunate.
Silicon Valley Watcher digs into a situation whereby Cox Interactive is throttling its customer's access to Craigslist because, perhaps, Cox Interactive parent company Cox Enterprises feels people should read classified ads in Cox Media newspapers instead of on Craigslist. It appears Cox Interactive has been working with security software from Authentium since April 2005 and on February 23 of 2006 Authentium did acknowledge it was, in fact, blocking Craiglist from Cox Interactive users. Craigslist has asked Authentium several times to stop blocking their site to no avail. It's one thing to get competitive when your business is on the way to the toilet. It's entirely another thing when that competitive spirit turns nasty and wreaks of illegal activity.
Copyranter wants to make sure we appreciate the "pure stupidity" of local car dealership advertising by highlighting this print campaign from Massachusetts car dealer Ernie "Come on Down" Boch. in which Boch mimics the famous Coppertone bare butt kid ad. Yes, having worked on a few car dealer accounts, we can attest the segment is rife with stupidity, fat egos and illogical thinking. However, car dealers, more than any other, care only about what sells. If your campaign doesn't do it for them, you're out on your ass faster than a car salesmen can say, "What can I do to make this deal happen today?" We're not sure this Coppertone ad will sell much so we're going to file it under the ego ad category. And, in the auto dealership business, there's no shortage of those.
Some might consider it a good thing to create a company whose business model aims to help advertisers reach a young, impressionable audience early in life. Others might consider the business model of BusRadio, a company that helps advertisers reach young, impressionable minds early by installing a specialized, ad-supported radio system on school buses, to be a horrific abuse of marketing prowess and an indication of an industry gone wild making its last ditch effort to survive while the advertising world crumbles around it. Commercial Alert, and Adrants for that matter, believe firmly in the latter.
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Copyranter thinks this ad for Heads and Shoulders Dandruff shampoo which uses some sort of scalp-based play book diagram with references to starting at the line of scrimmage when the goal is healthy hair is a perfect example of an ad that tires way too f'ing hard. We'd agree.
OK. We like Deep Focus and we like HBO. We especially like HBO's Entourage so when we were sent a link to a promotional site at which you can get get an interview with Ari Gold for a position in his new agency, we had high hopes for the site. Let's put it this way. Can we, as an industry, right now, right this very second, put a lid on any project even remotely similar to Burger King's Subservient Chicken? And, for the love of GOD, can we please stop trying to latch onto something that was over the day after Crispin Poprter + Bogusky launched that site?
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When the latest Netflix envelope arrived in the mailbox, it contained an ad on the inside sleeve promoting some sort of concert broadcast honoring Kiss, Queen, Def Leppard and Judas Priest. We saw that the broadcast was set to air Wednesday, May 31 at 9PM. Maybe we're just dumb, but we had to stare at the ad for several minutes before we figured out the broadcast was occurring on VH1. The logo was tiny and buried in a way that was very hard to see.
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One really has to wonder what goes through the mind of a designer sometimes as indicated by some recent Tyson packaging. Brenner Thomas points out this bit of odd packaging from the food giant for its Sunset Strips chicken strips on which an image of a chicken appears to be eating itself...well...a chicken strip, that is. One might argue it looks like a french fry but we doubt it. Apparently, cannabalism is alive and well in the chicken business.
FishNChimps has detailed the story of how Nike, apparently, stole the logo from Hackney, a poor London borough for use on its World Cup line of sportswear. Hackney, whose logo has been in place for 40 years has asked Nike to share the profits of the line with the borough to fund its schools. Hopefully, this doesn't turn out to be yet another piece of stunt marketing.
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