Hispanic 'Got Milk' Campaign Gets Quirky Rejuvenation

The Hispanic Got Milk campaign which has focused on "family, love and milk" and has run for nine years has just received a quirky boot in the ass with the launch of three new spots entitled, Contortionist, Amazon Hair Goddesses and Teeth Town. All three are set to air January 30 and reinforce milk as a kind of "wonder tonic." Created by Long Beach-based Grupo Gallegos and directed by Andy Fogwill, each of the three spots uses humorous exaggeration to illustrate how milk offers various benefits, odd as they may be. The new tagline is, simply, "Drink Milk."

Absolut Rebrands With Older-Focused Iconic Imagery

We aren't normally a fan of iconic brands drastically changing their image, logo, tagline and overall marketing but we've taken a quick look at the new Absolut campaign from TBWA/Chiat/Day New York and we like it. We really like it. Gone is the bottle, mostly, and gone is the print heavy focus. TV has been added to the mix showing iconic imagery such as an image of Steve McQueen with the tagline, "The Absolute Man," an image of the Statue of Liberty with the tagline, "The Absolute Welcome" and an image of the moon rover with the tagline, 'The Absolute Road Trip." Clearly, the over crowded, hipsteresque vodka landscape has required a different tact for Absolut to set itself apart. This just might work.

Online Magazine Extends Spoof of MPA Campaign

When the Magazine Publishers of America launched an ad campaign that illustrated even though life would be very different in the future and that people would still be reading magazines, online magazine ZOOZOOM spoofed the campaign and talked about how life is right now and that people are reading magazines online right now. ZOOZOOM has extended that spoof into a real campaign, taglined "Doing It," which shows people online in various scenes. There's also a video that illustrates how magazines aren't even good at killing a fly anymore.

Paris Hilton's Daddy Rolls Out New Ad Campaign

Hilton Hotels Corp. will launch its first television advertising campaign in more than 10 years when it rolls out new spots on Jan. 15, the marketer said. Y&R, which won the $40 million account last July, has developed four spots for the hotel chain which will air on CSI, Boston Legal, Desperate Housewives among others and on cable as well. The campaign will boast a new, un-sexy but very informative and practical headline, "Travel should take you places.

SAK Adds Chicks to Ad Campaign

Perhaps unable to afford overpriced super models or, as the company chooses to explain it, handbag maker SAK along artist Sloane Tanen will borrow from Tannen's work and use chicks (the bird kind, you lech!) in its upcoming ad campaign. Beginning in March, ads will appear in Lucky, InStyle, Marie Claire, Glamour and Teen Vogue.

Bongo Grabs 'Laguna Beach' Cast For Campaign

Taking over for Nicole Ritchie and DJ AM, the cast of MTV's Laguna Beach will be featured in the Spring 2006 ad campaign for fashion label Bongo. Cast members Alex Murrel, Jason Wahler, Lauren Conrad, Stephan Colletti, Kristin Cavallari and Tallan Torriero will begin appearing in print ads in Seventeen, Teen People, Us Weekly, Star and Teen Vogue among others. Online will accompany print.

Dari Marder, Creative Director, BONGO, explains the campaign, "The Bongo demographic is the MTV viewer, so we could not think of a better way to reach our consumer. The concept behind the campaign is a party. So we rented an amazing mansion on PCH in Santa Monica, hired an Orange County band, 'The Colour' and let the gang do what came naturally. Alex, Jason, Lauren, Stephan, Kristin and Tallan had a blast on set and it comes through in the campaign. Alex who has an album coming out this spring got on stage with the band and sang, while the boys got a little carried away by pushing each other in the pool."

AT&T to Attack Internet

Surely, you've already seen the new AT&T/SBC campaign at least 300 times on TV. You know, it's the one in which the world looks like it's being attacked by two luminous alien vehicles. Well, that campaign, with $500 million behind it, is about to take over the Internet. AT&T isn't saying what percent of the $500 million will be allocated to the Internet but, beginning Monday, January 9, they do plan to reach 137.8 million unique monthly user, nearly half of everyone who goes online in a given month. So be prepared for banners, banners and more banners everywhere along with page takeovers, interstitials, sliders, dog ears, video ad units and all manner of online creative. We wonder if they've heard of these things called blogs. Apparently, they have.

Adobe to Launch 'Faces of InDesign' Campaign

Created by Goodby-Silverstein and GREY Direct, Adobe will, on January 9, launch a new online campaign called "Faces of InDesign" to promote the company's Creative Suite 2 which launched earlier this year with the tagline, "Everything but the idea." The campaign will feature the images and personal stories of designers, art directors and ad execs as they go through their day using Adobe products. One of the creative elements in the campaign can be seen here.

Scarlett Johansson Joins L'Oreal Celebu-Campaign

Nabbing $4 million for her efforts, actress Scarlett Johansson will appear in L'Oreal's celebrity-focused ad campaign joining Eva Longoria, Mila Jovovich Andie MacDowell and Beyonce Knowles. Johansson's previous celebu-campaign appearances include Calvin Klein and Louis Vuitton. Reportedly, Johansson will appear in ads displaying a range of L'Oreal-enhanced hair colors.

Blogging Campaign Doubles Sales, Disrupts Norm, Trumps Tradition

Gapingvoid blogger Hugh Macleod worked with U.K. wine brand Stormhoek to use blogging as a means to increase sales. It worked. Big time, doubling sales in less than 12 months. The increases didn't come from the hundred or so bottles he sent out to U.K. bloggers who might blog about it and get a few of their friends to buy a bottle. Surely, they did drink the wine and did blog about it but the big increase in sales came from what Macleod calls The Porous Membrane, the wall between internal brand conversations and external consumer conversations.

Macleod posits blogs are a good way to make things happen indirectly and that they are disruptive to the status quo. To double sales inside of a year can't possiblely come from a few more people drinking a couple of bottles of wine. It can, however, come from a vastly improved internal attitude and sales process. The simple fact that the wine was out there and was being blogged about became part of the story telling sales process. As the sales force went out to supermarket buyers and importers, there was a new, different and exciting story to tell. Additionally, a retail outlet is far more likely to take on an increased inventory if it knows the product is getting talked about. The mindset is that if they're talking, they're more likely to buy. That's exactly what happened.

more »