There's a storm brewing over Virgin Mobile's use of a Creative Commons-covered photographs from Flickr users in a recent Australian print campaign. While Virgin Mobile clearly notes in the ads, created by Glue Society, where the photographs came from, some are concerned the people in the ads should have been given the chance to sign a model release and the Flickr users and photographers should have at least been asked permission to use the photographs.
With everything just a right click away, the issue of fair use, attribution, copyright or whatever name you want to apply, is a slippery slope indeed. Three days ago, one Flickr user who, apparently, has legal connections says he's sent a cease and desist letter to Virgin Mobile but has not yet received any acknowledgment regarding the letter. Flickr users, including the older brother of one of the girls who appears in one of the photos, are debating the issue here.
We've contacted Glue Society for comment and will report any response we receive as soon as we receive it.
UPDATE: Following an avalanche of complaints, Virgin Mobile has canceled this campaign.
Joining the "we don't give a shit whether or not our burgers have three million calories, clog your arteries and turn you in to a lazy couch potato with no interest in accomplishing anything in life other than clicking your Wii" trend, Wendy's has introduced the Baconator, a one half pound, six bacon strip monstrosity possibly bigger than the Paris Hilton Bentley Burger.
To promote the burger's beefy, bacon, cheese, ketchup and mayonnaise-slathered massiveness, Wendy's is "inviting America to create "burger music", musical pieces that incorporate the vibrant sounds associated with preparing and serving a great hamburger" whatever that may be.
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Ever vigilant, Factory sent us more mash-ups of the Jonas Moore thing it's doing. These guys, Humans Out Of Control, created a whole YouTube channel for the effort. And these are The Marvis. Their mash-up involves gratuitous use of some woman named Ananke, who says things like "A woman's work is never done!"
We thought the "Vietnam: The Game" billboards around modern London were a nice effect for illustrating the premise. At this point though, all the mashups-cum-trailers are just kind of coalescing. We feel like we've seen every image at least three times. Just hurry and give us the first episode already.
For Wednesday's Keynote Roundtable, held the second day of ad:tech Miami, Advertising Age's Laurel Wentz gathered together a collection of the finest minds in the Hispanic and Latin American market places to discuss the changing relationship between consumers, content and control. On the panel were MTV Networks VP of Digital Media Luis Goicouria, VOY Group Chairman and CEO Fernando Espuelas, Batanga Chairman and CEO Rafael Urbina-Quintero and NBC Universal, Telemundo Network Group Senior VP Digital Media Peter Blacker.
Among all members of the panels, the overriding acknowledgment that consumers have the keys to content kingdom was agreed to though not to the exclusion of well-produced content. Content is still king as has been said. It's simply being created and consumed very differently than it was just three or five years ago. The panelists agreed the explosion of consumer generated media has forever changed the media landscape and will continue to do so in ways even the best minds can't yet imagine.
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We suppose you can fault a clean energy organization turning to the general public for creativity. After all, non-profits don't a have a lot of money. So with that notion, SmartPower held a video competition on YouTube and recently chose its winner, 19 year old dan Shepard who took home the $10,000 prize for this creation. Be nice.
A new Effie ad asks the industry to cast there vote indicating where they think "next year's most effective idea will come from?" With comic-laden choices such as "Alex Bogusky and the inventive powerhouses of advertising" to "David Verklin and the pioneering media agencies to "A consumer or someone else you've never even heard of," the ad points people to a site on which they can place their vote.
While the votes currently point to the consumer, we voted for Alex because, well, he's just so cool and we're a huge trend whore we couldn't help ourselves. Oh wait, that trend is over, right?
Last month, Samsung launched its Upstage Contest which asked people to submit videos of themselves lip syncing Melody Club's Destiny Calling. The judging will begin next week and the lengths to which peole will go to win a video contest is impressive as indicated by these two submissions. Nice work. See them here and here.
Um, yea right. This YouTube video of an Altoids transformer which claims to have been captured on the cell phone of a dude who visited his brother, employed at the special effects company for the movie Transformers, was clearly planted by the marketers behind the movie or the folks behind Altoids. While the video's description apologizes for the "bad quality," the quality is far from poor. In fact, the second half of the video displays vivid slo-mo action, something a cell phone just isn't capable of producing.
As usual, the person posting the video joined YouTube the day the video was posted. So lame. Yawn.
Quicken Loans and the Cleveland Cavaliers have partnered with George Vlosich who claims to be the "world's greatest etch-a-sketch artist" to produce a video in which Vlosich creates an Etch-A-Sketch portrait of LeBron James. It took Vlosich five hours to create the drawing but don't worry, the video is presented in time-lapse so you can witness the wonder in just three minutes.
We don't know what's worse; having to slog through no less than eight pages just to read one article or having to endure the annoyance of trying to figure out which ad banner was auto-playing audio so we could turn it off the read the article in peace. All of this on a site that should now better: iMediaConnection.
Anyway, distractions aside, marketing consultant BL Ochman has written a concise, illustrative and educational article about social media, the brands that have excelled at it and the brands that have failed miserably. Citing famed failures such as the Edelman-created fake Wal-Mart blogs, Microsoft's supposed "bribing" pf bloggers with free Vista-equipped laptops and Sony's fake PSP blog, Ochman slaps brands upside the head for their idiocy.
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