Holidays Are Over, Now You Can Get Divorced

Our Canadian correspondent, Sanj, sends us this ad for ezdivorce, a company that specializes in, as the name indicates, divorces. The ad, which appeared in the Toronto Metro paper, carries the ingenious headline, "Holidays Are Over - You Can Stop Pretending Now," giving nod to the perpetual postponement of all thing painful during the Holiday season. Simple. Witty. We like.

New York Transit Union to Strike, Holiday Ad Campaign Continues

Resident rail rider Bucky Turco points out the idiocy and irony of a New York City MTA ad placed in today's New York Times promoting discount Holiday fares by asking what good reduced Holiday fares will do if the transit union carries out its planned strike in two days thereby making fares of any kind irrelevant. Yes, my friends, what good indeed?

Trump Sells Clothes For Macy's

Seems The Donald has a clothing line at Macy's and is advertising it in the Wall Street Journal. It's his "signature collection" which Not Only But Also said is ridiculous because A. Trump nor his personal shoppers even know where a Macy's is; B. Trump is clearly fashionless and C. Success doesn't equal fashion authority which may be true but most people are happy to latch onto the latest celebu-fashion statement. Oh well, we're sure Trump will make money. He always does. Oh wait, he loses a lot too.

Stuck Up NYC Address Uses Stuck Up Advertising to Promote

Copyranter (hey, we knew there were more ranters out there) points to a real estate ad in the New York Times Magazine for One Carnegie Hall that clearly states who is and who is not welcome to live at this address. The copy reads, "Dad's a surgeon at Mt. Sinai. Mom works at Sotheby's. Tyler is at Dalton. Baby sis is on the way." While that paints an airy picture of New York's upper crust, Copyranter translates the ad into reality here.

Google to Stomp On Classified Ad Sellers

Steve Rubel reports Google is gearing up readying a fierce fight for classified ad dollars as evidenced by a job posting the company placed on HotJobs seeking a Classified Vertical Markets Director who would be given responsibility to "develop and execute on a strategy for driving ad sales with all advertisers in the Classifieds category on a national/international level, working with all sales channels and resources (DSO, ISO, Online)." With the launch of Google Base, a tool that allows anyone to add anything to Google's database, the move into the classified space is a no brainer. While it might take a while to ween people from the likes of Craig's List and newspaper classified placements, there's no doubt, a serious dent will be made by Google in this space. Rubel also reports Microsoft isn't going to let Google have all the fun.

Buick Takes Precision Route With New Lucerne Campaign

Today, Buick launched a campaign, called "Beyond Precision," for its new 2006 Lucerne. Television spots focus on the exactitude with which the car is crafted which is not necessarily a new message but seems to work in this case. After all, there's not much else about a Buick that's all that exciting. At least we can be excited about the car's ad campaign.

A series of print ads will launch on Nov. 22 in USA TODAY and Nov. 23 in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal; and will run throughout the year in a variety of magazines and newspapers. Interactive inserts, coined "Buzz Prints," that feature product attributes of the Lucerne will begin running in publications in February. Additional campaign components include online advertising and promotional placements on prime time shows. Two of the spots can be viewed here and here.

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Watermark Ads The New Pop Up

Computer Associates is sponsoring the stock pages of The New York Times with a watermark ad. These ad placements are on the rise as yet another method of getting ads seen by readers. Perhaps we should label these watermark ad "news-pops." After all, just like the dreaded online pop up, these ads appear over edit without user consent. OK, so watermark ads are nowhere near the annoyance level of horrific pop ups but there is a bit of similarity here.

Bank Targets Friends of the Dead

Sometimes Obituaries can be fun to read, especially if you don't know the person then you can either marvel at or snicker at the individual's life achievements crammed into a 250 word summery. With the recent intentional or unfortunate placement of a State Bank of The Lakes ad with the headline, "Dead End," directly next to the obits, reading about strangers life achievements just got, at least for a day, a bit more amusing.

Sex And The City Takes Over Page Six

Using the soon to be ubiquitous new online advertising unit, the New York Post has plastered Sex and the City all over its Page Six section background-style. The page contains logos, banners and a background image all designed to promote the release of the HBO series' DVD release. It's not a bad ad unit if you ask us. In fact, we dreamed up the same idea way back in 1996 but since we never did anything about it all we can do is cry in our puddle of spillt milk.

Vespa Queens Looks For Queens in Vespa Ad

The Bitchless blog has pointed out that, leveraging its Queens, NY location to reach the gay audience, Vespa Queens has placed an ad in gay newspaper New York Blade. This really isn't news other than the the cute word play between the name of the Vespa dealer, Vespa Queens, and the queens who read New York Blade.