Former forehead guy and trend-a-holic Andrew Fischer who sold his forehead as ad space for $37,375 and spawned endless copy-cat efforts is now latching on to the recent million dollar home page trendlet but is taking it further. Fischer plans to award a million dollars over the course of one year and to raise the money, he is selling :30 ad space on a Times Square Manhattan billboard for as little as $10 per spot. There will be 2,880 available :30's per day. Fischer plans to award $2,000 per day to the person who find the hidden sponsor of the day. It's not clear how that will work but a $100,000 grand prize will be awarded as well at the end of the year. The promotion is set to launch January 2006. Expect to see Golden Palace very soon.
UPDATE: We are informed this promotion has been put on hold indefinitely.
When you launch a business that depends on consumer contributed content, you'd better hope consumers contribute. Al Gore's Current TV is on the hunt for content and is doing so with a robot character called ViC and a big Times Square billboard that says AwaitingInput.com.
Not much to say about this other than it's a pretty cool choice of ad medium. There's not much to do while riding an escalator so you might as well look at ads on the handrail.
We've seen this image of a billboard at Mission and Duboce in San Fransisco floating around for w few days so we figured we' share it. It's a billboard for the Nicholas Cage movie Lord of Ward bur the image has been covered over with a picture of President Bush yielding a cute, little political statement for us all to laugh at.
Hotel Chatter tells us Marriott Hotels has unveiled mSpot, a combined live billboard/musical concert billboard, in New York's Times Square. The board promotes what the hotel chain calls its "hip new room design" and will feature appearances by musical acts Ciara, Marc Broussard, Antigone Rising and Collective Soul along with a wedding held behind a glassed in section of the board. The "board" will be in place for four days.
AdPulp points to a billboard for shopping site Bloom which shows a pan of muffins, out of which, one has fallen and crushed a car beneath. Now that's creative!
Ford Belgium has launched a speaking ad campaign, called Ford Miracles that, well, speaks. And we're not talking about TV or radio. Created by Ogilvy Belgium and consisting of outdoor posters and customizable e-cards, the ads say, well, something. We don't really know what because we don't speak French or whatever language is spoken in Belgium. The campaign site even has a live webcam that is mounted to one of the posters to monitor viewers reactions. It's a bit spooky.
There seems to be rampant idiocy running through the outdoor industry these days as indicated by this image sent to us by our blunder-busting brand bluecoat, Bucky Turco. Following Viacom's placement of a McDonald's billboard directly below that of a childhood obesity board (though one person says it could be a PhotoShop job), Van Wagner Outdoor, in New York City, has placed a poster, at 1st and 19th, backwards on a phone kiosk. Perhaps intending to reach passing drivers as they look in their rear view mirror, the poster is an ad for Tim Burton's new Corpse Bride movie.
UPDATE: Van Wagner says, in Comments, it was an act of vandalism, writing, "we know it was vandalism because when OUR guys (yes, a Van Wagner employee) went to rectify the problem, they came to find all the bolts and the diffuser had been stolen from the unit. It's a ridiculous act of vandalism, as most are, but it was vandalism nonetheless." That said, debate continues to rage in Comments as to the validity of this explanation.
American-based LeTigre, makers of those preppy Tiger-emblazoned shirts is having fun with a street poster campaign which shows a tiger ripping into the back on an alligator (crocodile for detail freaks), icon of French-based LaCoste, another pretty shirt brand. It seems both these brands are making a comeback but neither will ever achieve the popularity both had back in the 80's which you can now marvel at by watching FOX's Reunion - at leasts for a few episodes as each episode moves ahead one year.
OK, then. So that's how those tennis balls got embedded in the brick wall we saw a few days ago. The tennis star is driving around on a mobile billboard, ready to attack the next, unadorned wall with a rapid fire collection of tennis balls.
