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Driverside Pays Parking Tickets, Cars Go Zen, Actresses Put Brand Icons Out of Work, Gary Busey Becomes GotVMail Mascot

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- Jezebel compiled a list of the top 10 female product advertising icons -- and the actresses that could replace them. That Mrs. Butterworth's/Queen Latifah one is hella funny. Now you: go forth and laugh.

- Driverside.com, which sends reminders for auto maintenance and calculates repair estimates in your area, is paying parking tickets off for 100 San Francisco inhabitants. Register at the above link and check back July 25th to see if you're among the scott-free parking violators.

- Gary Busey's objectively bananas, and here's proof. If you're planning to argue, I've got three words for you: stupid, misfortunate placenta.

- Neat water campaigns: submerged-society ones for Australian brand Insight, quiet dreamscape ones for Diesel.

- BooneOakley is behind State Farm's "Experience Peace of Drive" car wash campaign. (Apparently you also get a free massage.) More from the effort: bathing car, car and yoga, car and cucumber, car and candles, car and acupuncture. (Kinda cool. I had a fat friend whose mom made him visit an acupuncturist to induce weight loss. It didn't work, but he kept telling her it did because he found the needles soothing.)

by Angela Natividad    Jul-17-08   Comments ()    Bookmark and Share     
Topic: Brands, Campaigns, Celebrity, Good, Guerilla, Magazine, Promotions, Spoofs, Strange

Grassvertising at Wimbledon, Green Patriots in Cleveland, SAG Deluges Idaho, Coca-Cola Rents-a-Blog

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- To jazz up its Wimbledon sponsorship, HSBC commissioned two artists to make photographs out of growing grass. Brings a freakish new angle to "watching grass grow."

- Cleveland-based? Go be a patriot. A green patriot.

- Former CEO Carly Fiorina of Hewlett Packard is among the contenders for VP under McCain. George Parker is hella bummed.

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by Angela Natividad    Jul-10-08   Comments ()    Bookmark and Share     
Topic: Cause, Guerilla, Newspaper, Political, Promotions

2 Clever Ways to Drum Up Empathy for Female Genital Mutilation

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- Hit the honeys where it hurts. Effort by the Association of Women Against Genital Mutilation.

- Stitch up a rosebud. Because where our ladyparts are concerned, we just love ourselves a flower pun. Effort by Amnesty International, variant ad at Copyranter.

Now that you've been primed, here's some reading on female circumcision. (Because while the image of a dirty blade in new panties might make my eyelid twitch, it doesn't really tell the whole story.)

by Angela Natividad    Jul- 9-08   Comments (1)    Bookmark and Share     
Topic: Cause, Guerilla, Magazine, Strange

Eddie Heads, Interns Boinked, Monkey's Advertise, Ketel One Hated

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- Eddie Murphy's head traverses the country in search of viewers for his new movie, Meet Dave.

- This...is just gross.

- If you don't want people to make fun of your goofy in-house video, don't send bloggers email attacking them for posting it. That's just dumb.

- Oops. Atlanta agency guy boinks college interns and gets home late for dinner. Accusatory emails ensue.

- Beyond Madison Avenue analyzes the theory of using monkeys in advertising.

- Writing for Animal, Copyranter continues his hatred for the Ketel One campaign and identifies a recent ad as one of the most annoying ads ever created.

by Steve Hall    Jul- 8-08   Comments ()    Bookmark and Share     
Topic: Agencies, Celebrity, Guerilla

You Mean it Builds Buzz AND Kills Plaque?

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Check out the Aquafresh interactive mobile, complete with virtual tooth-brushing games and free teeth cleaning duds.

The only thing that would make it cooler would be if you could step inside a giant mouth and bounce on its big foamy tongue while getting slightly high on a fresh-breath smell.

by Angela Natividad    Jul- 2-08   Comments ()    Bookmark and Share     
Topic: Brands, Campaigns, Guerilla, Outdoor, Promotions

Technology Advances, Draft Dorks Out, Yellow Pages Take Shot in the Dark

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- On her grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary, a Millennial reflects on how the advancement of technology in the last century have made life different.

- To distract from its increasing irrelevance, the Yellow Pages is engaging in a few guerrilla stunts. Nothing we haven't seen before.

- Draft FCB is a new breed agency with great analytics. It's gonna transform this industry in a modern way -- and that means holistic offerings with a strong Return On Ideas, not to mention rad rock music and awesome whitewash camera tricks. And then we choked on our rapidly-escaping brain cells and died. From George "Fuck Louie, that's some 'Analytics' you've got there!" Parker, via MTLB.

- Some mothers want John McCain to keep their babies out of war. Others are begging him to take theirs. (Via.)

by Angela Natividad    Jun-30-08   Comments ()    Bookmark and Share     
Topic: Agencies, Bad, Guerilla, Political, Spoofs, Video, Worst

K-Swiss Drops the Ball on Roland Garros, Paris

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"Dude ... I think the tennis player in that ad just totaled your car with his oversized ball."

"Sucks, man. Wanna play tennis?"

"Sure. But before we go, let's buy proper footwear at K-Swiss."

"High-five!"

Orchestrated by TriBeCa for the Roland Garros French Open in Paris. More photos here and here.

Fun facts: Maybe because it's French, TriBeCa calls it "ambush marketing," not "guerrilla marketing," and the goal was to create a "Wahoo Effect."

I'm not really sure what "Wahoo" is ("Yahoo" without the awkward "Yang" association?), but maybe it has something to do with how people open their mouths and make no noise when they see something like, say, a car smashed by a giant tennis ball.

Via the hip cats at in:fluencia.

by Angela Natividad    Jun-26-08   Comments (1)    Bookmark and Share     
Topic: Brands, Events, Good, Guerilla, Strange, Video

Image Fulgurator Could Slip Ad Messages or Mascots into Picturesque Statues, Portraits, Landscapes

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I knew this webmaster who was out in the forest one night with her digicam, taking shots of the landscape, when suddenly she realized there was something in the picture that wasn't there in real life.

"It was a UFO," she insisted, "just floating in the sky, perfectly still. And I could only see it in the photos I took."

I called bullshit at the time. But since then, Julius von Bismarck -- a seriously Che Guevara-looking dude -- invented the Image Fulgurator. It senses when a flash goes off, then projects an image onto the pictures people took.

See it in action.

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by Angela Natividad    Jun-26-08   Comments ()    Bookmark and Share     
Topic: Good, Guerilla, Strange

Because Why Inhabit Dish When You Can Live in Jolt Central?

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Remember when Half.com and the DISH network got two towns to rename themselves after their brands? It's a terrible move for the high school football teams, but consider the perks! -- free computers, free cable, free money? You might change your name too.

With help from agency Cenergy, Jolt got Barrow, Alaska to change its name to Jolt. The town got neither cash nor technology in exchange. They got cans of Jolt on June 20, the longest day of the year.*

That lowered the standards significantly.

At left is a shot of some Barrow/Jolt townies with their fancy new moniker. The man in blue is the Mayor. Don't they look energized?

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by Angela Natividad    Jun-23-08   Comments ()    Bookmark and Share     
Topic: Brands, Guerilla, Strange

Hallelujah, It's Raining American IOUs!

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To promote its clothing line, fledgling brand NEWYORKESE poured American dollars* onto attendees of Pitti Immagine Uomo, a major fashion event.

The dollars featured the NEWYORKESE logo and the phrase "Tu vuo fa l'americano ma si Made in Italy" -- "you want to be American, but you were Made in Italy" -- the title of a song by Renato Carosone.

CEO Gianfilippo Fontana of NEWYORKESE called the effort part of a "low budget advertising campaign." She added, "Thankfully the dollar exchange was very affordable."

Don't thank us, honey. Thank the Big Man in Office.

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by Angela Natividad    Jun-20-08   Comments (1)    Bookmark and Share     
Topic: Events, Guerilla, Promotions

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