When you were little, did you ever make a time capsule with your friends and promise to come back to look at it in five years? Ten years? 15 years? No? Neither did I but millionaire, founder of NCSoft and creator of the game Tabula Rasa Richard Garriott is spending $30 million to be the sixth private citizen to fly into space and leave a digital time capsule behind. On his trip to the Space Station, he will take a flash drive full of information submitted by anyone who chooses to enter the Operation Immortality contest.
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Acting quickly following the trade of the Red Sox' Manny Ramirez to the Los Angeles Ddgers, last Thursday, ESPN agency Ground Zero, by noon Friday, had plastered laundromats around LA county with lost socks affixed to a tag which read, "Lose a sock, Boston? ESPN joins Los Angeles in welcoming Manny Ramirez." Quick thinking and wit works just about every time. Nice work.
I recently got to sit down with Rhea Scott, Ridley Scott's daughter-in-law. (A breathy PR guy related that trivia to me about four times, which is why I mention it in the VERY. FIRST. SENTENCE.)
Rhea once headed the music video department at Propaganda. 10 years ago she started Little Minx, a production company focused on turning ad directors into filmmakers. From what I gathered in the film reels, directors are encouraged to treat each ad like a miniature manifesto. (It probably also helps to be a surrealist art fan.)
Little Minx is able to provide the necessary creative resources -- read: king-sized budget, the ideal artist's sponsorship -- through parent company RSA.
Rhea says the company was named for her second daughter, "the ultimate little minx" and the child actress in "Come Wander with Me," part of a promotional project called Exquisite Corpse.
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Hoping to milk the star (?) for all his worth, Nationwide has released behind-the-scenes footage of its ad featuring Sanjaya Malakar. Shot in India, footage depicts the American Idol castaway singing in the face of a firmly shut door (what a metaphor!). You'll be pleased to know Sanjaya's hair is as wack as ever.
Nationwide loves a talented media whore, and Sanjaya certainly fits the bill, so it was just a matter of time before the two found each other eventually.
To learn more about his partnership with Nationwide, read a recent Sanjaya interview.
Sometimes you walk into a bar and you want everyone to pay attention to you. Other times, you want to be left the hell alone. Philadelphia's Center City District, with help from LevLane, is there to help with a promotion from Brazilian run importer Leblon which features two-sided seat savers with varying messages.
Other media include newspaper, radio, bus shelter and direct.The whole thing hopes to promote downtown Philadelphia as an after work entertainment spot with a weekly "Sips Happy Hour" every Wednesday in 60 bars from 5-7PM during the summer.
For the Spitzer in all of us, National Lampoon debuts Whore Diamonds, a Hot or Not-type site that uses the Emperors Club "diamond" rating system to, well, rate whores. Whore Diamonds joins the Drunk University Network.
Most images and videos are strays from Eros-Vegas and Adult Friend Finder. The pressie says the site "will expand into a forum for breaking news and daily biting commentary on the underground world of politics, pop culture, and entertainment."
Two cents from Sam Elhag, head of strategy for Drunk University Network: "We don't feel that only politicians and Emperors Club members should have an exclusive on rating today's generation of working girls. This opens up the process to the masses. Who knows, a 'five diamond' girl to a Spitzer may only be a 'three diamond' to the rest of the world."
How noble.
The most informative session I attended at ad:tech was the Tactical SEO Workshop -- which isn't really saying much.
Panel stars included Bruce Clay, the most talkative moderator I've ever seen, and Aaron D'Souza of Google -- who, Clay anxiously pointed out, was also on this panel last year. There were two other people on board -- but as Aaron Batte snippily Twittered, it was pretty much The Aaron D'Souza Show.
To kick things off, here's something you probably didn't know: Of all sites that commit the icky mistake of using it to point to a URL, Adobe ranks highest for the phrase "Click here."
Do yourself (and whomever else you link to) a favor. When linking, use relevant anchor text instead of the generic sort.
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This ... this is amazing.
SF-based junior art director Bryan Denman and designer Ryan Teuscher built a flickr search bar for the advertising community. "It pulls in a flickr feed at speed (w/ some other tricks) so that an AD can quickly scour the site as a source for reference material," he wrote.
Play with it at Compfight.com. The super-fast search bar filters for images licensed by Creative Commons, among other neat tricks.
We queried "hamburger" just for kicks, and got a delicious-looking page loaded with hamburgers, hamburger restaurant signs, Ronald McDonald looking pensive, Paris Hilton eating a hamburger, and one lion.
Now you might think this up-skirt soap dispenser promoting some candid camera-style show on FX is kind of witty but, dude, do you really want to be sticking your hand up there after thousands of guys have done so before you? We didn't think so. Kind of like how you wouldn't get with the high school slut either. Oh wait, of course you would because she'd be the one that would actually put out for you. Eesh. There's a Hoff version too. Image courtesy of Adland.
Think of it as Purple Internet Marketing's 12-step plan for online marketers. Except with more steps. The big premise: "A website isn't a marketing medium."
Wait, what?
"A website," the founders argue, "is a catalyst to marketing opportunities."
Ohhh.
But don't take our grimace for it; see trusty testimonials from people like you!
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