OK so yea, a car company has to do crazy things at a show to get attention and attract people to their booth. But this dance routine performed last month at the LA Auto Show is a disaster. The music is awful. The lyrics are corny. And the dance routine looks like it was choreographed by a kindergarten teacher.
This is how you promote a new car? Maybe GM should go out of business just for horrifying us with this stuff. At least the person responsible for this disaster has been "reassigned" according to AutoBlog.
Ever wonder makes a great website? Well, Aquent, with help from Barbarian Group, thinks it has the answer. As you roll over particular elements of the site, The Internet Online Website provides tips on the importance of each element and hos you can use the tips to improve youur own website.
As Ryan mcMaus write on the Barbarian Blog, "InternetOnlineWebsite.com is a website ABOUT websites. It's been specially formulated to educate, enlighten, and delight those who are looking to add to their online presence and marketing initiatives."
We like. Simple. Informative. Helpful. Instructional.
Adding to the growing collection of create-a-hottie promotions, this work from Firebelly for the months old movie Surrogates creates a custom hottie for you after you answer a few questions. Called Surrogate, the site also lets you share your creation on Facebook or send it off to a friend.
We're happy with our creation, Jessica, who likes strawberries and who, apparently, made off with all the breast molding material.
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Kind of a boring ad but if you're into Brett Favre, you might like it. It's from Y&R Chicago and it's for Sears and is pushing TV set sales. It features the football star in a Sears television showroom bantering with a salesman. A little joke is made and that's it. Nothing special. But, as we approach playoff weekend and the Super Bowl, it kinda resonates. More ads will follow this weekend.
Leading up to the game in Miami, consumers can visit Sears Football to vote for their favorite Brett Favre TV ads and enter to win a gift card as part of the TV MatchMaker sweepstakes.
God help us. If you hate political advertising as much as we do, you might want to consider relocating to Mars. Or, if you're not partial to space travel, the North Pole where we hear not too many media outlets call home.
Yesterday, the Supreme Court overturned federal legislation which limits the amount of money corporations can spend to support or oppose a candidate. The decision also made unconstitutional a hefty portion of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform act.
You've been warned. You may hate watching more political ads but you might also make a lot more money creating crappy ads pimping candidates and hyping issues. Of course, more ads featuring Paris Hilton or Obama Girl might not be such a bad thing.
In Spain, certain dieting and beauty ads may be banned from advertising before 10PM. A new law states, "Broadcasters cannot carry advertisements for things that encourage the cult of the body and have a negative impact on self-image - such as slimming products, surgical procedures and beauty treatments - which are based on ideas of social rejection as a result of one's physical image or that success is dependent on factors such as weight or looks."
No word on banning ads that make you fat like, oh, say, McDonald's and Burger King.
Last week, a video billboard in Moscow was hacked for two minutes and the scheduled advertising was interrupted for two minutes with clips from a porn video.
If you simply must see what porn on a giant billboard looks like, there's a short clip here for your viewing pleasure. Yes, it's very NSFW.
Did you know there were over 4,000 attendees at Affiliate Summit West held at the Rio in Las Vegas earlier this week? This conference which addresses what was once a tiny segment of the marketing world has exploded and grown into a business model every brand should be aware of.
If you're a brand you advertise your products, right? Of course you do. That's a no-brainer. You hand a boatload of money over to an ad agency, they make pretty pictures for you and you hand another boatload over to media outlets to run those pretty pictures. Sound familiar? Of course it does. That's becasue everyone else does it and they've been doing it since marketing was invented.
But what if you could get people to market your products for you? That's the gist of affiliate marketing. You set up a program and develop tools which affiliates can use to help sell your products. Very similar to Amazon book ads on a website, affiliate marketing is a revenue share model. If a product is sold through the efforts of an affiliate, that affiliate gets a cut of the sale and so does the brand.
That's the simple explanation. But, like anything, it gets more involved and expansive when you grow it to a level when millions of dollars are being made through this form of marketing. And that's why there's an entire conference devoted to it.
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On Monday night at Affiliate Summit in Las Vegas there were no less than five parties. And one had a live chicken running around but we'll get to that in a minute. While there were many parties the only one worth attending (we hear) was the one we were at (naturally). Epic advertising had an epic party (267 pictures of hotness) in the Hugh Hefner Suite at the Palms which went well into the early morning hours.
The two story suite itself is stunning with a rotating bed, private bathrooms (in which an amazingly beautiful lady requested we shoot her sitting on a toilet), hot tubs, glass elevator, outdoor deck and a pool which hangs 50 stories above Vegas. It was stunning.
But that's not what was epic about the party. Not only were there great people there to connect with, the hotness quotient was off the charts. Granted a fairly high percentage of that hotness was of the hired/imported variety, it didn't detract at all from the business end of the party.
There were playboy bunnies, models, dancers and people who just happened to fall into the beautiful category. While some found the "imported hotness" odd and disconcerting, everyone of these non ad industry people we spoke with were wonderful, fun people out to have a good time just like the rest of us.
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On Sunday night at Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas the Palms was where all the party action was. DoublePlay, AdKnowledge, Karaktr and NeverBlue all had parties. As did Copeac, Under the Stars, and Ads4Dough in other locations.
Of all the parties, the NeverBlue/Sin City party with ppc.bz and Nickycakes was the craziest. But if you're not into the loud, drunken party scene you would have much preferred the Under the Stars party. It was held in the Rio in a meeting room with food, Wii, darts, karaoke and, yes, a bounce house. We ate the pizza and left after a bit to cover all the other parties.
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We've been busy in Las Vegas at Affiliate Summit. Combine conference craziness with Las Vegas antics and it becomes, to say the least, difficult to find time to write. But we'll be back in full force Thursday.
Just consider this a commercial break. This is, after all, advertising, right?
The first night of Affiliate Summit is always an enjoyable one primarily for two reasons. It's the first time you get to re-connect with industry mates you haven't seen in a while and you don't have to get up early the following day because the conference doesn't start until noon.
This year Shawn Collins and Missy Ward, founders of Affiliate Summit, opened registration early at 4PM to those that arrived Saturday could get the whole badge pick up thing out of the way. There will be over 4,000 attendees this year. We took advantage of early registration and scored our badge at 4:05PM. We ran into the wonderful Amy Rodriguez from Affiliate Summit who, along with Shawn and Missy, made our conference visit possible.
After a much-needed nap and registration were out of the way, it was time to visit the iBar in the lobby of the Rio. There, we hung with the buy.at team, Missy Ward and Michelle and Loren Feldman of 1938media fame. Thesis creator Chris Pearson was there as well.
Then it was off to dinner at Buzio's with Michelle and Loren. For most of dinner, we talked about the pros and cons of foursquare. So much so, the two of them, who had been holding out, decided to sign up. Then the fun began. We all engaged in a bit of foursquare fuckery for the fun of it. What, you ask is foursquare fuckery?
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Where in the world would you expect to see Darth Vadar and the Stormtroopers hanging out with Snoop Dogg, David Beckham Calle 13 and Neil Armstrong? In a new Sid Lee-created commercial for adidas, of course. The new spot celebrates the launch of the brand's Star Wars sneakers and apparel. It's culture clash-licious.
Aiming to identify with a certain rodent humans use to describe a world of repetitive monotony, Colle+McVoy has tapped another rodent to show us just how fun playing the lottery can be. And how much of a relief it can be to the rat race of life.
In seven new commercials the agency employed hamsters to live out human-like scenarios we're all familiar with. The office grind. Office drudgery. Overly talkative tea guest. See them here.
It's no secret people use and love their DVRs. And, according to virtual phone company Grasshopper, 70 percent of TV watchers fast forward through commercials. They also claim those who do fast forward through commercial pay more attention to the center of the screen when they do so.
To combat ad skippage, leverage the center screen focus and yet another claimed fact human brains are able to process images and advertisements moving 20 times faster than normal without sound, Grasshopper created a commercial which places its mascot, Gary, in the center of the screen. He doesn't move during the entire commercial so if the ad is being fast forwarded, the viewers will see a constant image.
See the spot, which debuts Monday, here.
Yes, the E*Trade babies are back. Well, it's a different baby this year because, you know, babies grow and last year's baby isn't a baby anymore. Two new ads will debut during two NFL playoff games on Saturday, January 16 -- the first during the NFC divisional playoffs on FOX at 4:30pm ET, and the second during the AFC divisional playoff game on CBS at 8:00pm ET. A third "Talking Baby" advertisement will debut on CBS during Super Bowl at approximately 6:28pm ET.
You can check out the two commercials here. Sadly, there's nothing special about these commercials. The shtick is getting old. Even the babies "shocked face" is lame. The creators could of as leave had a little more fun morphing the little guys face into something that actually resembled shock. Hopefully, the Super Bowl version of this campaign is an improvement.
Furthering the efforts to raise money for Haiti following the recent earthquake the country experienced, First Lady Michelle Obama appears in an America Red Cross PSA asking American to donate.
"I was eager to join the Ad Council and the Red Cross to launch this call to action in the wake of this week's devastating earthquake," said First Lady Michelle Obama. "The people of Haiti are struggling just to survive. And every one of us has the power to help."
The PSAs encourage audiences to go to www.redcross.org or call 1-800-RED-CROSS. On cell phones, viewers can text "HAITI" to 9-0-9-9-9 and $10 will be given automatically to the American Red Cross.
We've done it. Have you?
ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC Television Networks, Clear Channel Communications, Comcast, CNN, Headline News, TBS, TNT, TruTV, Cartoon Network, Sundance Channel, IFC, Tribune Television Stations, Discovery Networks, Hallmark Channel, Lifetime Networks, Fox Networks Group and Sinclair Broadcast Group will all donate airtime for the PSAs.
Today the FBI has launched an electronic billboard in Times Square which will share with the world the FBI's Most Wanted. The effort was originally launched with 100 billboards in 23 cities across the country. Working with Clear Channel Outdoor, the agency now has access to 1,500 billboards in 40 states. The FBI has used billboards to catch criminals since 2007 and reports 30 cases have been solved as a result of publicizing fugitives.
Back in the day, DieHard commercials used to go to great lengths to illustrate how long their batteries lasted. In one such illustration, they left a car frozen on a lake to see if it would start. In a more recent commercial from Y&R Chicago intended to reach a younger audience, we see beat boxer Reggie Watts powered by the Die Hard Platinum battery perform for a bit. The battery powering Watts and all his equipment then starts a car.
Given that the only real power Watts is using here is for a few lights and a small, tabletop amplifier, the spot feels weak and doesn't really illustrate the staying power of the battery very well.
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If you're a Red Sox fan, you might like this three-spot spec campaign. Or, after viewing, you might not want to admit you're a Red Sox fan since all this campaign does is paint you a sore loser. You did beat the curse a few years ago, after all. Lighten up.
Two guys. In cubicles. Giggling. One lights his farts on fire. The two giggle like seven year olds while a woman between them is annoyed. When the boss walks up, she's momentarily gleeful the two will be chastised for their childish behavior. Instead, the boss hands his lighter to fart boy so he can continue shooting flames out of his ass. The woman? Well, she is not pleased.
This has to be harassment of some sort, right? I mean it's two guys, no, three, against a woman. And the guys are being very disrespectful of the woman's olfactory space. This is just wrong. Where's the cause group uprising over this one? Where's the Association of Humorless Hoes? Feminists For A Fart-Free Workplace? Gays Against Gag-Worthy Gaseousness? Bitches Against Boisterous Boys?
Oh the horror of it all!
This travesty is one of a few potential CareerBuilder commercials the company has released for people to vote on for airing during the Super Bowl.
With four new commercial which, as past campaigns have, illustrate the not so pleasant effects of methamphetamine, the Montana Meth Projects asks kids to say something when their friends say they are going to try meth.
Directed by three-time Academy Award-nominated cinematographer Wally Pfister, the ads can be seen here.
Despite the uncertain economy, three out of four Americans are still more likely to research or buy a product after seeing it advertised during the Super Bowl, according to a study of 1,000 Americans fielded by Venables Bell & Partners.
Of respondents polled, 40% were optimistic about the future of the economy in 2010; 24% pessimistic; and 36% unsure. However, the majority of consumers state that advertising in the Super Bowl is responsible vs. irresponsible, and 64% would be disappointed if advertising during the game disappeared.
When asked what they were most likely to discuss the Monday after, Americans are just as likely to discuss ads, as they are plays. In fact, 66% still remember their favorite brand advertiser from last year's Super Bowl while only 39% remember who won the game.
Advertising more memorable than the game? Love that!
Those eyes! That waist! Those hips! Those lips! The Come Hither-ness! Yes, we're talking about Transformers hottie Megan Fox. The actress, replacing Victoria Beckham, is the new underwear model for Emporio Armani's Spring/Summer collection. Admire her beauty here.
Fox will also appear in the designer's Armani Jeans campaign.
- If for no other reason than to stave off boredom, check out Monoclops and turn yourself into a morphlicious monoclop.
- The deadline for entering the D&AD Awards in Wednesday, January 2010. If you're inclined, you can view the call for entry ads here.
- For the second time in the history of the broadcast, Super Bowl ad pricing has dropped. Last year, spots went for $ 3 million. This year, they are going for $2.5 - $2.8 million.
- Mullen-supported The Next Great Generation is a GenY-focused blog which covers crowdsourcing, explores the GenY demo and aims to educate brands and marketers about the segment's thinking and lifestyle.
- The Art Director's Club is looking for entries for its 89th Annual Awards. get them in by January 22.
- How were Legos...uh LEGO bricks...invented? by some strange looking dude with a mustache after he realized people can't fly. And it's all about community. And there's a video. And there's a Twitter profile to follow. And there's an iPhone app!
- Hmm. Branding people with AIDS? Or just making them aware of it?
- When making a billboard buy for alcoholism, it's best not to place the board near a board that promotes an alcoholic beverage.
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