Heinz Continues 'Talking Label' Campaign With Celebrities

Continuing its long-running "Talking Label" campaign, Heinz has enlisted the "voices" of soccer star Mia Hamm, actor William Shatner, NFL Hall of Fame quarterback Terry Bradshaw and actress Lindsay Lohan. The quotes will appear on limited edition bottles currently in stores. Mia Hamm's label will read, "Worthy of Gold." Shatner's will read "Fixes Burgers at Warp Speed." Bradshaw's will read "Served at the Immaculate Reception" and Lohan's will read "Burger-licious" which is fair comment on her current celebu-pop, "breast of the month" status. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to each celbrity's charity of choice.

22-Sep-04 » File under: (0)

Janet Jackson's Breast to Cost Viacom $550,000

The FCC has bitten the nipple off Viacom fining it $555,000 for what the agency deemed a willful broadcast of indecent material. We are, of course, talking about Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" aided by Justin Timberlake during the February 1, 2004 broad cast of the Super Bowl on CBS.

The fine will be split among the 20 Viacom/CBS television stations that broadcast the event because of their apparent involvement in the planning of the half time show. Other non-Viacom CBS outlets will not be fined.

22-Sep-04 » File under: (0)

Agency Promotes Client With Head Billboards

Following the debut of its assvertising product, New York agency NightAgency is promoting its new client, Spanish language newspaper publisher impreMedia with what is calls Head Billboards. The agency has attached mini-billboards atop helmut-headed humans to promote the publisher's website and an interesting survey testing marketers knowledge of the Hispanic marketplace.

22-Sep-04 » File under: (0)

Filmmaker Claims Nike Stole Ad Idea

Richard Greenlees claims Nike copied his idea for a commercial the sneaker giant is currently running for its Converse "peace" sneaker. Greenless created a commercial last year based on man he saw in 1996 at the Moscow International Peace Marathon who was wearing sacks full of hay as shoes. Greenless recreated the moment in a commercial promoting peace and set it to John Lennon's Imagine. Oddly, Nike is now running a commercial with Lennon imagery to promote its "peace" sneaker. Nike says its all purely coincidence.

22-Sep-04 » File under: (0)

Advertisers May Leave CBS Following 'Rather-gate'

As CBS continues to do a horrible job owning up to its Bush memo error and refusing to give credit where credit is due, Emerald Partners Media Consultant Fraser Seitel predicts the "scandal" will hurt ratings and advertisers will pull out.

While none, to date, have, Katz Media Director of Programming Bill Carroll says they'll do it later, avoiding controversy saying, "Advertisers don't want to inject themselves into the controversy and become part of the story."

22-Sep-04 » File under: (0)

M&M Brand Icons Place First in Advertising Week AUTHOR: Steve Hall

The M&M characters were voted to be the favorite advertising icon of all time. Along with M&M in the top five were Mr. Peanut, the Pillsbury Dough Boy, Tony the Tiger and the AFLAC Duck. The survey was conducted by Yahoo and USA Today as part of this week's Advertising Week conference in New York.

22-Sep-04 » File under: (0)

Adrants Billboards: Maxim Publisher Felix Dennis Pushes Poetry

• Taking a break from semi-nudity and sex, Maxim Publisher Felix Dennis has written a poetry book, "A Glass Half Full," and plans a nationwide promotional tour.
• Florida's tourism group, Visit Florida is spending $2 million on a campaign carrying the tagline, "We're Still Here. Naturally," to get tourists to come back to the state after it was ravaged by hurricanes.
• ABC has contracted with ad-tracking firm Teletrax to track airings of its television show promotions to get a better handle on when and where its promos are airing and to relate that back to programming ratings.
• Hachette Filipacchi has hired Home and Garden Television's Candice Olson as contributing editor on Woman's Day and Home magazine who MediaPost thinks could be the next Martha Stewart.
• UPN's Top Model begins its third season tonight at 8PM and Tyra Banks promises lots of bitchiness.
• About.com has launched the Advertising Trivia Challenge, a collection of surveys in which you can test your knowledge of advertising from which celebrities pitch which brands to famous songs used in ad campaigns to identifying an advertiser just by looking at their logo.
• Fagoogle, a search engine for gays has launched.

22-Sep-04 » File under: (0)

Man Pulls Woman's Top Off, Ad Gets Banned

Well, it's time for the monthly banned beer ad story. You know how if goes by now - company creates ad, ad pushed limits, ad gets conservatives all riled up, ad gets banned. Old news? Yes. But there's something about beer and sex that keeps us covering these sorts of stories. Besides, do you really want to read another, "ACME Launches Revolutionary New Interactive Ad Campaign" story? We didn't think so. So, on with the story.

Australia's James Boag Beer hired the late Helmut Newton to shoot an ad in which a woman holds a beer bottle the way many men like to be held and the man is about to do what most men would love to do when near a woman such as the lovely lady in this ad. Of course we know it's just a fantasy but apparently the Royal Women's Hospital Centre Against Sexual Assault doesn't like to fantasize and has complained to the Advertising Standards Bureau asking the image not be used in the ad. The Centre's spokeswoman said, "The message they're giving is that somehow beer makes women sexually available." Well she's right. Beer makes everyone sexually available. If you've ever had a beer or two too much, you know this. Basically, the ad is getting banned because it's being honest.

Pointing to the likelihood this was a planned strategy from the start, the brewer issued a statement in which it said there are "no plans for media placement." Hmm. Create an ad. Get it vetted by the Standards body. Have "party pooper" groups complain. Get the ad banned. Get tons of media coverage. Call it a day. Of course there are no plans for media placement. It's all free. Right here in this little news item and in news items all over the media. Now that's a media strategy.

22-Sep-04 » File under: (0)

Teen Viral Marketing Questioned

Ypulse's Anatasia Goodstein points to a Chicago Tribune article questioning the ethics of viral marketing targeted to teens. While marketers are grasping at straws to reach today's youth, Goodstein further questions the moral nature of some companies such as Girls Intelligence Agency, a teen influencer network that enables on teen to promote product to another, not disclosing its true marketing attention. She calls for full disclosure and honestly - a trait, unfortunately, rare in some marketing circles.

21-Sep-04 » File under: (0)

Study Claims $50 Billion Ad Dollars Wasted

Well we knew it was difficult to work on a media plan with a hangover following a late night, crunk-filled drinking binge but we didn't know it was costing advertisers $50 billion.

Yup, that's the figure deemed by the Advertising Research Foundation' s recent review of dozens of cross media studies to have been mis-spent on advertising. There's a headline in there somewhere. "Get Wasted.

Waste Your Client's Ad Budget."

That $50 billion figure represent 18.8 percent of the total $266 billion U.S. ad spend as estimated by Universal McCann. The ARF says the two biggest causes of wasted media spend are ads carrying the "wrong" message and buys being made with "wrong" timing. ARF suggest after recovering from "morning after" syndrome, you walk right up to your creative director and account director and say, "Dammit, we need to test this creative before it runs!" Yes. Test. What a novel concept.

In fact, ARF says testing creative will knock $10 billion off that wasted ad dollars figure. Try it. It could work.

21-Sep-04 » File under: (0)