Because the site is just really weird and the whole brown finger thing, along with all it connotes, sort of grossed us out, we were all set to dislike this Butterfinger Follow The Finger promotion a poster and Bucky Turco pointed us to until we saw jammin' geriatric Manny G. Who cares if the site's trying to sell Butterfinger candy bars, this shit is kickin'. Oops, sorry. Just trying to be down with it all here but as you all know we're only almost sorta hip, not genuinely hip so pardon that outburst. Anyway, the site's got a lot of funny stuff but we wonder why they do the "pick on the Indian call center" thing. It's still better than a boring TV spot though. Way better.
Oh, it's been what, a few days since we lobbed a piece of pointless editorial fluffery at you simply to put an image of a hot girl on the site? We don't want to break our track record so we'll give you this little piece about how nobodies rise from the muck of MySpace to celebrity status. Yes, MySpace member Tila (Nguyen) Tequila, who says she has the world's most popular MySpace page has graduated to the April cover of StuffMySpace Makes magazine. This at the same time Ad Age's Simon Dumenco says obsession with celebrity is dying and Gawker has asked readers to stop sending in C and D list celebs for its Gawker Stalker feature. As long as your hot and you have a camera on you, you are a celebrity.
Writing on his Coffee & Manipulation blog, Victor tells us about a promotion he saw on his way to work in San Francisco today. As he emerged from a transit terminal, he saw a collection of oranges atop a trash can with the stickers affixed to them which read "Godfather321.com." The URL turns out to be an Electronic Arts site promoting its new Godfather-themed game featuring Marlon Brando. Victor notes the significance of the orange lies in its representation of death in the Godfather movies.
There are many ways to promote a city's neighborhoods, burroughs or quarters in the case of London. For a place called Paddington Walk, newly renovate into one of those combined business, residential and shopping districts, there' s an odd little video floating around that uses the oldest strategy in the book. Yes, sex. You'll never see a bridge so excited again.
To promote its new GMC Yukon SUV, GM has launched an interesting campaign that uses graffiti-like imagery that's really engineering equations along with a URL pointing people to a microsite called Beyond the Drawing Board. On the site, there is endless information about the vehicle presented within the grafitti-like motif (OMG, did we just use the word "motif?" Please, forgive us. That's like saying "synergy" after the 80's ended.) Upon hearing the audio intro to the site, "What happens when passion becomes obsession? When the need to innovate is unquenchable? When the desire to create is all consuming?", we resisted the urge to respond, "Gee, um, create a piece of Flashtastic orgasmimage that makes our tired old laptop's fan spin up to top velocity in an attempt to cool the burden placed on the processor by all this Flashtastic exuberance."
more »
In one of the most idiotic, unnecessarily sensationalistic pieces of crap, The Weather Channel has launched a promotion based entirely on creating fear of highly unlikely catastrophic weather events. Riffing off the look and feel of the weather-themed The Day After Tomorrow movie, the promotion, which combines actual past weather events with sensationalistic scenarios, promotes the network's new show called "It Could Happen Tomorrow." Well, yea, the Earth could crack in two under the weight of a clan of obese, fast food-eating kids all sitting down on their fat asses simultaneously to play some stupid video game too.
more »
Fallon London has created a microsite for its U.K. insurance client More Th>n (that's not a typo, you wing nuts, it's how they "spell" the company name) that focuses on the normal aspects of life in contrast to the usual sensations of unease when having to call upon an insurance company following some bump in the road of life. The site highlights the campaign but, more importantly, asked British citizens to contribute to the site their version of a normal life. While we're not sure this is all that normal, we've gotta be happy for this guy who defines his version of normal as, "Playing badminton with my 19 year old girlfriend knowing that i may not be quicker than her, but my experience wins in the end!
While we like articles that quickly come to the point, one letter Page Six stories, well, even Page Six needs at least a couple sentences to maintain interest. Take a look at this Page Sixe page Bucky Turcosent us. Relieve us from what book? Oh, and that contextual ad placement? Priceless.
Adding a change up to the American Dairy Association's Got Milk? campaign, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners has created a new campaign focusing on a race of aliens from Brittlelactica who suffer from a "series of horrible health ailments" until they visit earth and discover a special elixer called Da Iry. A TV ad points to a content-rich website that riffs on the supposed problems a diet without milk can cause. Brittelactica is broken into four regions, Insomniastan, PMStonia, Papua Hairthinny and Cavitopi, each suffering from ailments caused from the lack of milk. Each region contains a history and a message from the region's chancellor. each of whom suffers from his region's ailment.
more »
CBS SportsLine and the NCAA yesterday announced that NCAA March Madness on Demand, the online video player that provided streaming live video of the first 56 games of the 2006 NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Championship set a record, according to what, we don't know, for scheduled live entertainment or sports event with over 268,000 simultaneous streams. In total, NCAA March Madness on Demand has already surpassed 1.2 million video streams served. I guess we were wrong thinking people would prefer the couch potato method of viewing.
|
|
