Pizza Boxes Carry Newspaper's Classified Section Promotion

As part of a promotion to tout its classified advertising sections, the Charleston Post and Courier launched a television and print campaign accompanied by a third, very interesting element: pizza box advertising. Yes, there's been ads on pizza boxes before but the paper's agency, RawleMurdy, worked directly with local Charleston pizza shops providing them with a total of 50,000 pizza boxes branded entirely with the paper's message and an offer for free classified listings for items under $100.

The campaign ran between August 27 and September 26. The paper reports phone inquiries and online listing are up. Not half bad in an age where many paper's are seeing a decline in classified ad revenue. You can view the print work here and one of the spots here.

This Doctor's Office Makes You Hard

Hey, there's ads on toilet paper. Why not on the tissue paper that covers the table in the doctor's exam room? After all, there's nothing to do in those rooms but read six month old issues of Good Housekeeping and Redbook. Why not take in a Cialis ad that just screams, "Dude, you ain't got dick!" Maybe Cialis should just install pill dispensers too. After all, the best advertisement for Cialis would be a guy walikng proudly through the waiting room sporting a pants-ripping hard on.

Farting Farmer and Nice Cans Sell Microbrewery

If you like farms with pigs, cows, fish, farting farmers, aliens and atomic bombs that launch out of grain silos, you're gonna love this new site for Butternuts Beer & Ale from Woods Witt Dealy & Sons. just click around and have fun. Don't forget to click on the tractor in the back.

Along with the website, the campaign also includes print ads, table tents, packaging, posters and a MySpace page, all of which can be seen here. In one of the print ads, the cans are celebrated with the write-itself headline, Nice Cans. The ad is also carries a blue ribbon honoring the breweries position as best brewery in Garrattsville, New York. Not that there's any other brewers there which , of course, is the entire point of the ribbon.

Dubbed "farmhouse ale" (whatever that is) the beer's got great names like Porkslap, Heinnieweisse and Moo Thunder. If a microbrewer has to set itself apart from the pack, aligning the brand with farm nomenclature is certainly one way to do it.

Chanel Goes Interactive With Window Dressing

Who wants boring retail window dressing complete with lifeless mannequins overdressed as if the catwalk is the sidewalk when you can have an interactive window front at which you can brush about the Chanel logo? Oh, an apparently, you get to see Keira Knightley too. Well, a mannequin of her at least.

Bay 'Booms' Toronto With Fashion Protest

"We're here. We're Hot. Get used to it." That's the battle cry kicking off a new spot for Toronto-based fashion retailer Bay. Boom is the name of the campaign and it's all about baby boomers reclaiming their fashionista status by staging a fashion protest which looks like some sort of colorized sixties protest.

The campaign's got everything: TV, radio, a contest to win a car, interactive retail windows, transit, guerrilla, fashion shows, in store event and even a "bra burning" promotion.

German Engineers Wish They'd Built the Subaru Imprezza

Subaru makes good cars. At least that's what Consumer Reports says year after year. But why do most their cars look, well, so pedestrian. While that's one person's opinion, it seems, according to a recently launched campaign for the Impreza (which does actually look better than past models) created by DB Canada, German engineers are jealous of Subaru's performance.

The campaign consists of an onslaught of television, out-of-home, online, print, direct and cinema. The cinema ad broke late July and the rest is coming soon to Canadians country-wide.

The cinema ad, which you can view here, features four German engineers out for a joy ride in the Imprezza. They cruise the test track to the tune of Falco's Amadeus until they are met with the disapproving eyes of their senior engineer who mutters disgust in German.

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Double Standard Alive And Well With Les Shoppeneboys

Wouldn't it be nice if, when you walked in to Victoria's Secret (as a guy) and hot, lingerie-clad models where there to help you choose the perfect thing and cleavage-revealing bra for the women in your life? Of course, that's never going to happen because some cause group would get all pissy accusing Victoria's Secret of treating women like sex objects. Oh, and the fact shopping would be the last thing a man would be thinking about in a situation like that.

But, it's perfectly OK for (sort of) hot looking men to dress up in red boxers to help women shop for the man in their life as French clothing store Celio does. No double standard here, right? Oh wait, their French. They have an entirely different set of rules when it comes to the perfectly normal attraction each sex has for the other. In fact, rather than hiding, they celebrate it.

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Bleeding Coasters Deliver Drunk Driving Message

The Mumbai Traffic Police, with help from Mumbai agency Contract, have placed coasters with images of faces on tables and bars in the city that start to bleed when they get wet from the condensation of the glass placed on it. A message on the coaster reads, "Just a reminder. Drunken driving kills."

GMC Offers Free Valet Parking to Southern Shoppers, Forgets North

With help from Dalla-based AdverTickets, GMC is offering free valet parking to shoppers in eight cities as part of a promotion for the car maker's new Acadia SUVation wagon crossover vehicle. shoppers in LA. Miami, Orlando, Phoenix, Sacramento, San Diego, San Francisco and Tampa will be given tickets good for free valet parking. Also part of the promotion are Boom-Ads, wraps that cover the gates drivers who choose not to valet park must pass through to get into parking structures.

We think it's all well and good to help a struggling shopper out but hello? It's winter up here in the Northern half! We could certainly use the luxury of valet parking far more than all those warm staters who should enjoy walking from their car to the mall whereas those of us up here have to endure frostbite weather and the pummeling of winter winds. Something's wrong here.

Hooters: Breasts? Owls? Soda?

The next time you're in the grocery store walking down the soda aisle and your six year old daughters asks, loudly, "Daddy, what are hooters" for all nearby shoppers to hear, you had better quickly blame Hooters, the restaurant chain, lest you be stared down by fellow shoppers who wonder exactly what sort of language you teach your child at home. As you turn to your daughter and tell her quietly so other shoppers can't hear, "Well, honey, you don't have to worry about that for about six years. We'll talk about it then," an internal debate suddenly overwhelms you. Oddly, you can't seem to reconcile why hooters are on the shelf in the grocery store when they're usually attached to females and supported by a bra. Or, wait, are hooters just owls?

Suddenly, you forget why you're in the store in the first place. You take your daughter out of the cart, leave the store, walk to your car in which your wife is waiting and blurt, "Honey, your daughter wants to know what hooters are." Your wife stares at you and wonders how in the world a conversation about hooters would begin in the middle of a grocery store. Oh wait. The whole point of this story? Hooters is now selling Hooters-branded soda. And creating embarrassing moments for all.