We're not really sure why, and we wish it weren't that nauseating colour, but French artist Philippe Meste wants to create the biggest boxful of sperm ever.
The Spermcube seeks a fill of no less than one ton of human sperm, so if you can't get your 15 megabytes of fame then at least your little soldiers can when you make a donation. For those financially inclined and less biologically so, Meste also provides the option of becoming a shareholder via PayPal.
No words in English to describe our feelings about this one, so we'll shoot for the French: c'est degoulasse. Is it wrong for us to wonder about the smell?
Adrants reader Marsha suspects marketing dollars behind this new life for sale on Ebay, where flaxen-haired Nicael is selling his identity to the highest bidder. We don't, but we suspect they'll find their way to him soon enough.
The new life includes inheritance of love interests, friends, belongings and nemeses (two). It also includes extensive training for skills (including fire twirling), appearance, and stories from his past, as well as tech support once training's through.
Can you imagine tech support for your own life? "Just ignore the hairy douche who comes to the door periodically. He claims to want the rent but he's not a landlord. And the girl at the cafe? You've been working on nailing her for weeks. Please do in the next two in a half weeks."
30% of profits from the sale go to ARAFMI. You can check out the requisite Myspace here.
If we could sell our lives for every morning we woke up feeling less-than-snarky, and receive upwards of $30,000 for it, we'd probably be ... well, we don't know, because we wouldn't be us. Like Nicael we'd probably just choose somewhere to brood.
- Cynopsis reports, "The retransmission rights payments disagreement between MediaCom Communications and Sinclair Broadcast Group came to a head late Friday and into Saturday with MediaCom being forced to drop 22 Sinclair stations from its cable system in 12 states as of 12:01a January 6."
- Time Magazine is getting into the blog game with a site makeover, a news aggregator and topical blogs.
- Ecommerce hit the 4100 billion mark in 2006 and continues to charge ahead.
- Brands should know by now an angry mob of bloggers is something to steer clear of lest you want amplified what you intended to be hushed.
- Time says you are the Person of the year. Advertising Age says the consumer is the Agency of the Year. Jonah Bloom explains they really didn't copy Time.
- The free 411 services are catching on with advertisers. Aegon Insurance and Absolut are the latest brands to become advertisers on 1-800-FREE411.
- Heavy.com has closed on a second round of financing, $20 million from Polaris Venture Partners. The financing will be used to expand the network internationally.
Steve's Take: Surprise. Well, not really. You, yes you are the Agency of the Year! Mirroring Time's footsteps they promise they thought of it before Time published), Advertising Age has named the consumer the Ad Agency of the Year. Cool but we're sorta feeling sad for all those hard working agencies and any number of social media companies that made this possible in the first place. Of course, that's a pointless chicken and egg analogy but the notion of consumer control in the marketing space is, for sure, a powerful one.
We could list all the fun stuff that led up to this (Mentos, LonelyGirl15, etc.) but we're sure you've heard it all before. Agencies, we feel your pain at getting ripped off this year but take solace in consumer's love for marketing. Or something like that. But also note the slap upside the head you just got and realize you can't keep doing the same old thing lest their won't be any agencies left in the future to consider for this top spot. (Doesn't Jonah look imposingly hip in that pic? :-) )
We're not sure if these are real and have a strong suspicion they're not, but the idea that they could be makes us happy. And even if they aren't, the strength virals have in consumer-generated media makes them just as legit WOM-wise for the respective companies involved. Just look at the arguments they generate.
To wrap up the whole car-wars thing, the super-short synopsis: BMW gets snarky with Audi. Audi bitches them out. Subaru jumps in. Bentley pwns all. In fact we think we've just been sold on it. Why couldn't the Pepsi/Coke wars have ended like this?
I wrote this exactly one year ago and it's as relevant today as it was one year ago so with he usual holiday week laziness in full force, I'm reprinting an edited version of this for your enjoyment with relevent numbers and facts updated:
Not that there's really any news this week nor any real reason to actually be working this week in the advertising industry, typically the time when upper management leaves the grunts behind to play pool and download music...uh...perform minuscule tasks referred to as work, but there are plenty of the usual 2005 wrap ups and 2006 pontification stories you can find floating about, some of which will be here on Adrants.
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- Lost Planet thinks they've made a trailer for their Xbox 360 game that'll shatter cultural norms, change lives and trigger brain aneurisms on-sight. It's a fair trailer but it won't look that great six months from now when some other game has kicked its ass, as these things tend to go.
- Fledgling supermarket Bloom cozy up with agency BooneOakley to make a real-live gingerbread house in South Carolina (of all fucking places)! And yes, we will help them eat it.
- News from our incognito buddy FishNChimps: Coke steals from actual creative people. That always leaves a bad taste in one's mouth. And considering they've been riding the holiday polar bear thing and/or copying Pepsi's campaigns for the last two hundred years to the nth degree, that really came as no major shocker. To witness the fuckage of other creative companies, hit Urban Counterfeiters.
- Join NPR's first-ever holiday craft contest before it is gone. Forever. Perhaps you can beat the cleverly rendered Mel Gibson menorah. Yeah, you heard us. A Mel Gibson menorah. Craftwise, it could be unbeatable.
- SAB Miller's Columbia by Bavaria beer is raffling off the famed "Man Smoking" painting on February 28 as part of a promotion.
- Southwest Airlines...blah, blah, blah...CGM contest...blah, blah, blah...YouTube...blah, blah, blah...win a trip...blah, blah, blah and blah.
- AdJab is as pissed off as we are about people labeling things viral before they actually become viral.
- George Parker is all over Julie Roehm's ass crapping on her supposed avalanche or job offers, delivering the inside story on Draft/FCB's lack of promised analytics skills and poking holes in the Advertising Age Jonah Bloom "in-depth" Julie Roehm interview. - Contributed by Angela Natividad
It's rare we receive a press release that isn't rife with orgasmic marketing blather and seems more concerned with "appearing" intelligent than actually being intelligent so we were pleased to received this straight forward release from Arnold touting their new leather billboard work for Timberland. We're so happy we don't have to sift through this release like so many others simply to find, among the thousands of words, the hundred or so that actually say anything that we're just going to reprint the thing here:
"Today, Timberland started posting billboards made of its iconic (Ed: OK, "iconic" might be a bit over the top) boot leather in three New York City boroughs: Manhattan, Brooklyn and Bronx. Over a two-day period, local artists representing each borough will adorn the billboards with original artwork reflecting what the borough means to them. (Ed: a little squishy but we'll let it pass) The goal of the project, created by Arnold, is to create a platform for artists to express themselves and their passion for community, using the Timberland boot as canvas. (Ed: Easy now. It's just a billboard.)
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The ongoing LA Weekly campaign is dipping its toes into the consumer-generated space with Blank Blankly, a section of their site that allows people to upload an image, add some text and, poof, create an ad similar to the newspaper's campaign that's been running for quite some time. Trouble is, once you've upload your image and make a mistake like we did, it doesn't appear you can edit it after the fact. And adding the copy? Well we gave up in frustration. Of course, it could be that we're just not that smart around here and the promotion is a great one. You decide.
Adrants reader Mike sent us this manifesto on why sex and advertising are two pools that just shouldn't mix. Apparently sex in advertising is an assault on religious freedom, a form of lying and prostitution, and a contributing reason why consumers are covetous. The central authority is the Bible, from which twelve reasons are outlined on why it's totally illogical and immoral to attach a luscious naked body or lascivious thought to ... well, burritos, for example.
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