Cindy Crawford Super Bowl Pepsi Ad Most Viewed on AOL

America Online reports Pepsi's Cindy Crawford commercial was the most viewed 2005 Super Bowl ad on AOL. Not suprisingly, GoDaddy's "Hearing" ad placed close second. The ads, which were available through Saturday on the Web at AOL.com and on the AOL service, were viewed 18.6 million times, more than double the 9.2 million views recorded last year for the 2004 Super Bowl ads. AOL also announced that ads from its Classic Commercials package, which featured popular spots from previous Super Bowls, were viewed 3.8 million times, bringing the total number views for all Super Bowl commercials to more than 22 million. AOL ranked viewership as follows: 1. Diet Pepsi - Cindy Crawford -- 899,773 views 2. GoDaddy.com - Hearing -- 894,983 3. Bud Light - Skydiving -- 803,999 4. Bud Light - Cedric -- 648,430 5. Ford Mustang - Winter -- 605,585 6. Ameriquest - Store Trip -- 600,599 7. Diet Pepsi - P. Diddy -- 596,986 8. Bud Light - Sharing -- 573,280 9. FedEx - Ten Things -- 553,023 10. Ciba Vision - Bubbles -- 526,338 11. Bubblicious - Lebron -- 472,534 12. Visa - Super Heroes -- 459,337 While Pepsi took top viewership honors it was Budweiser's salute to the troops that garnered the most votes among AOL users as the best spot.

Commercials receiving the most votes among AOL users are ranked as follows:

Rank     Company            Spot                     Percentage 


1        Anheuser Busch     Tribute to US Troops             15% 2        Bud Light          Skydiving                        11% 3        Ameriquest         Romantic Dinner                   8% 4        Ameriquest         Store Trip                        7% 5        Diet Pepsi         P. Diddy                          7% 6        GoDaddy.com        Hearing                           6% 7        Ford Mustang       Winter                            5% 8        Bud Light          Sharing                           5% 9        FedEx              Ten Things                        5% 10       Diet Pepsi         Cindy Crawford                    4%

All the spots can be viewed here.

15-Feb-05 » File under: (0)

Aquent Launches Business Manners Tutorial Site

Aquent today announced the launch of a new Web site, The Business of Touch, designed to help business professionals create good first impressions with people from other cultures. The site demonstrates, through animated characters, the proper etiquette for successful greetings in nine languages and fifteen countries, including the United States - which is good since we Americans don't even know how to properly greet.

And no, "Hey, Dude" isn't quite right.

With a tongue-in-cheek style, the humorous animation, by internationally recognized American illustrator and graphic designer Paul Davis, Business of Touch gives site visitors practical tutorials on the very serious business of how to greet and take leave of associates from other cultures. Behaviors such as eye contact, when a kiss is appropriate, whether or not to offer a handshake to women, general body language, and personal space distances are several of the topics covered for each country. The site was created by Heller Communications.

14-Feb-05 » File under: (0)

Old Ad Guys Reminisce At VCU Adcenter Event

We are loathe to do this but we have to. Last week, VCU Adcenter hosted it's "Annual Event of the Century," a toast and roast to the accomplishments of ad greats Lee Clow, Jeff Goodby, Dan Wieden, David Kennedy, Andy Berlin and Steve Hayden. While, no doubt, these gentlemen are some of the finest in the advertising business and have led agencies and advertisers to tremendous success, the event seemed to portray them as a bunch of hairy old ad guys trying to cling to their youth and be cool by saying fuck and shit a lot. Oh don't listen to us. We're just bitter we're not on stage with them.

Have a look for yourselves.

View video clips at ihaveanidea's website.

14-Feb-05 » File under: (0)

Canadian Spoofs Cool American Coke Campaign

A while back, we reported on an ad-hoc campaign created for Coke by industry vet Harry Webber with the idea, Coke needed something bigger than its current campaign.

Coke didn't bite. In an interesting twist there's now a spoof of the campaign. That's right. A spoof of a campaign that never appeared anywhere. While the ad-hoc campaign endeavored to portray Americans as fine, upstanding citizens, the spoof, called A Real American, is more sadistically honest in its snarky portrayal. The spoof, created by Trevor Thomas, a Canadian, interestingly, is a must-see.

14-Feb-05 » File under: (0)

Tabasco Maker Sues Restaurant For Trademark Infringement

McIhenny Company, makers of Tabasco Sauce is suing a restaurant in Marion Iowa, Tabasco's Restaurant and Patio, for using its name. The restaurant says the use of an apostrophe eliminates brand confusion. Uh huh. The restaurant also states they named the establishment after the state in southeastern Mexico and not the hot sauce maker's product.

McIhenny Company "see you in court."

14-Feb-05 » File under: (0)

Volvo First Major Sponsor of Podcast, Medium to Grow

Volvo has signed a deal with Weblog, Inc.'s Autoblog as launch sponsor of the automotive weblog's podcast. A podcast is an MP3 broadcast delivered via RSS making it easy and automatic for people to receive.

The sponsorship consists of an announcer-read :60 at the top of the podcast, other mentions throughout and logo signage on Autoblog's Podcast page.

iPodder.org, which tracks podcasts now reports there are over 3,000 podcasts. Podcasts are an extremely low cost method of publishing audio over the web allowing small sites to produce radio-like broadcasts for download and later listening on people's computers or MP3 devices. As citizen-produced media and MP3 player usage proliferate, this channel is well positioned for exponential growth and offers advertisers yet another niche targeted medium though which to advertise. Just as blog advertising network and rss feed ad networks have sprouted so, no doubt, shall podcast advertising networks providing advertisers efficient means by which to tap this channel.

14-Feb-05 » File under: (0)

Academy Fearful of Chris Rock

Drudge reports the Academy is concerned about their choice of Chris Rock for host of this year's Academy Awards show because of some recent comments he made. Reportedly, Rock said, "I never watched the Oscars. Come on, it's a fashion show. What straight black man sits there and watches the Oscars? Show me one! Awards for art are fucking idiotic." Looks like this year's broadcast could be a juicy one.

14-Feb-05 » File under: (0)

Insurance Company Re-Creates Famous Movie Car Crashes For Campaign

21st Century is taking an intriguing approach to promoting its car insurance services. It is painstakingly re-creating famous car crash scenes from Hollywood movies such as The French Connection and Speed.

Assuring the ads will mirror the movie scenes as closely as possible, Interpublic's Dailey & Associates worked with the original cinematographer for The French Connection spot and have hired Jan du Bont, director of Speed to film the Speed commercial.

14-Feb-05 » File under: (0)

Dove Milks Apprentice Debacle, Educates Candidates

Because each of the teams on The Apprentice created such horrible commercials during last week's challenge, Dove is extending its 15 minutes of fame by offering a Marketing Boot Camp to all Apprentice candidates, beginning with Kristen, who led the failing team. The Boot Camp will include training at Dove headquarters with sessions on advertising and brand marketing, as well as a critique on why the ads were so bad. We'd pay to be a fly on that wall. Particularly if one of the candidates asked Dove why there so-called professional commercial was so bad.

13-Feb-05 » File under: (0)

Russell Crowe Craps On Celebrities in Foreign Ads

Always one to cause a stir, actor Russell Crowe, in a GQ interview said actors who go overseas to do commercials are a bunch of money hungry losers.

Crowe told GQ, "I don't use my celebrity to make a living. I don't do ads for suits in Spain like George Clooney or cigarettes in Japan like Harrison Ford. And on one level, people go: 'Well, more fault to you, mate, because there's free money to be handed out.'" Take that you Hollywood sell outs.

He further snipped, "...to me it's kind of sacrilegious. It's a complete contradiction of the fucking social contract you have with your audience. I mean, Robert de Niro's advertising American Express.

Gee whiz, it's not the first time he's disappointed me. It's been happening for a while now." In today's over popified culture, he does have a point.

If you want to see more of what Crowe speaks, visit Japander.

There, you will see an enormous collection of Hollywood stars who do commercials in Japan to make more money thinking visibility there won't over expose them here. Perhaps they haven't heard of the Internet.

13-Feb-05 » File under: (0)