'Hide This Thing' Wants to Create 'Easter Egg' Language

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Like hidden dirty images in family-friendly Disney posters, easter eggs have always been a favorite of designers the world over to express, perhaps a twisted sense of humor or, simply, to just have fun. Now, apparently, Hide This Thing wants to create a community around the practice and even create a common visual easter egg language of sorts. Like a digital flash mob, Hide This Thing hopes to create mass appearances of various objects inside TV commercials, print ads, websites and anything else a creative lays his hands on.

We do wonder though if "making official" easter eggs doesn't detract from exactly what they are supposed to be: crazy one-offs that express something the individual was feeling at the moment of creation. You decide.

by Steve Hall    Jul- 2-07    
Topic: Agencies, Guerilla, Trends and Culture



Advertising Week Event to Advance Diversity in Advertising

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Continuing our quest to open the advertising industry to a more diverse group of people, Adrants along with Business Development Institute and the organizers of Advertising Week 2007 will host Experienced Hire Diversity Recruiting Program during Advertising Week September 25-28, 2007. The event, unlike our two previous diversity in advertising events, will "focus solely on advancing the presence of mid to senior level diversity leaders in the communication industries by offering individual companies the opportunity to exclusively recruit top level experienced professionals through private one and half hour recruiting sessions."

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by Steve Hall    Jun-29-07    
Topic: Events, Trends and Culture



Latin American and Hispanic Markets Adjust to Consumer Control

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For Wednesday's Keynote Roundtable, held the second day of ad:tech Miami, Advertising Age's Laurel Wentz gathered together a collection of the finest minds in the Hispanic and Latin American market places to discuss the changing relationship between consumers, content and control. On the panel were MTV Networks VP of Digital Media Luis Goicouria, VOY Group Chairman and CEO Fernando Espuelas, Batanga Chairman and CEO Rafael Urbina-Quintero and NBC Universal, Telemundo Network Group Senior VP Digital Media Peter Blacker.

Among all members of the panels, the overriding acknowledgment that consumers have the keys to content kingdom was agreed to though not to the exclusion of well-produced content. Content is still king as has been said. It's simply being created and consumed very differently than it was just three or five years ago. The panelists agreed the explosion of consumer generated media has forever changed the media landscape and will continue to do so in ways even the best minds can't yet imagine.

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by Steve Hall    Jun-28-07    
Topic: Consumer Created, Industry Events, Trends and Culture



Batanga Miami Party Quite Possibly the Best ad:tech Party Ever

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During the evenings of most ad:tech conferences, we have to troll around the host city to make sure we cover the extensive party scene each night yields. Not so during the first night of ad:tech Miami. While there may have been smaller parties around town, none likely compared to the scale and quality of the Batanga-hosted opening night party held at the Royal Palm Hotel on Miami Beach.

Quite possibly, this was the best party we've attended in the four years we've covered ad:tech conferences. Firstly, the party planners made use of all the hotel had to offer: two pool bars, one long outdoor courtyard area on which food was served, one upper bar overlooking a pool with white linen covered tables and lounge beds, one conference/club room in which the band Tartara performed and several hallways with food stations. This was no Crobar.

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by Steve Hall    Jun-26-07    
Topic: Industry Events, Online, Trends and Culture



Social Networking Perfect For Close Hispanic Family Ties

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The gist of the Hispanic: The State of the Industry panel led by ADN Communications CEO Jose Lopez-Varela with Publicitas VP of Digital Media Paul Meyer, mun2 Director od Digital Media Jose Nestor Marquez and Machado , Garica, Serra Associate Media Director Stephen Paez was that the Hispanic market is both very much the same and very much different than the general market.

With many families splitting with some members coming to American and others staying in their home country, the strong family bonds built from that separation make social networking a big growth area. Facebook recent opening of its API to developers could be a boon to Hispanic-specific social network development. Also, services such as Ning, which provide drag and drop social network creation, lend hem serves perfectly to topic specific networks.

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by Steve Hall    Jun-26-07    
Topic: Industry Events, Research, Trends and Culture



Double Standard Alive And Well With Les Shoppeneboys

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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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by Steve Hall    Jun-21-07    
Topic: Brands, Opinion, Point of Purchase, Racy, Trends and Culture, Video



Man Sells Non-Personally Identifiable Information to Marketers on eBay

One could look at this eBay auction promising a marketer complete access to this person's non-personally identifiable information for a 30 day period so as to razor target the marketer's advertising as a joke or one could realize this is exactly what the future holds: people divulging detailed information about themselves and selling it to the highest bidding marketers in return for a promise to view all their advertising.

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by Steve Hall    Jun-18-07    
Topic: Direct, Online, Opinion, Research, Trends and Culture



Axe Turns Tables on Construction Worker Cat Calls

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While women might hate getting cat calls from construction workers, men, on the other hand, love any attention they can get and stench-maker Axe is taking advantage of this in a new Bom Chika Wah Wah promotion that has females dressed as construction workers cat calling men as they walk by. Ask A Copywriter was one of the unfortunate (fortunate?) to experience this ritualistic name calling and snapped a shot of the lovely cat callers who were dressed in denim shorts and stylized construction vest tops.

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by Steve Hall    Jun-13-07    
Topic: Good, Guerilla, Opinion, Trends and Culture



Once Again Boobs And Beer Subject of Complaint

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About six months too late, boob haters are complaining about that Australian Hahn boob ad in which a women, after frolicking lovingly in the waves with her man, draws a heart in the sand only to have the man, as men will do, edit the heart image into a less threatening (to a man) image of boobs. Also subject of complaints is the online component of the campaign which has a video up hand-cupped boobs which turn out to be man boobs and closes with the tag, "Boobs, great on women. Not so good on men."

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by Steve Hall    Jun-13-07    
Topic: Trends and Culture



Live Garmin Commercial to Air on 'Tonight Show'

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For a very different reason than it was done years ago, NBC will air a live commercial during Tuesday night's broadcast of The Tonight Show for Garmin International - the folks who brought us that Godzilla-style Super Bowl commercial. Tonight Show announcer John Melendez will perform the spot dressed in a white lab coat discussing direction disorder which is an allegory to the company's mobile direction devices. A "regular" spot will also air during the commercial break immediately following the live commercial.

With DVRs having a noticeable effect on commercial viewership, we may begin to see more and more of this as the nets continue to circumvent ad skippage.

by Steve Hall    Jun-11-07    
Topic: Commercials, Television, Trends and Culture