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There's a little rumor going around that a disease called Morgellons, a creepy skin disease that involves little bugs a bug-like sensation under the skin, and the websites associated with it are just a viral marketing campaign for the upcoming movie A Scanner Darkly. Michael Shostack of The Halting Point has collected some information pointing to the likelihood the disease is, in fact his opinion, a viral campaign. Shostack, who, since one never knows when it comes to virals, may actually be part of the viral campaign, points to a Slashdot story which says "Imagine having a disease that is so controversial that doctors refuse to treat you." The Slashdot story leads to a June 2005 Popular Mechanics story about the disease which has, reportedly, been around since 2002 when websites (1, 2) about the disease began appearing.
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It seems Boston's Digitas has been busy creating a Geocities-like site for Gillette called NoScruf. NoScruf stands for National Organization of Social Crusaders Repulsed by Unshaven Faces, a group ,headed by apparent swimsuit model Terry Tarentelli, that is sick and tired of the unshaven, male scruffy look. In a sort of protest, women on the site appear unshaven with hair on their legs and under their arm pits. There's a couple films that document the movement. The site is purposefully designed to look like crap and just like Geocities sites of yesteryear, there's broken links, cheesy graphics and really bad typeface. It all kinda makes you want to go out and by a really good razor...from Gillette, of course.
Our spies tell us StrawberryFrog has created an online campaign for MSN and Sprite called Exposure. It's a site the agency created to highlight work from three different groups of kids: graf artists, a basketball team and a band. Each person is making a video (or it's being made for them) about who they are, what they do, what they stand for, how they think. The video are then edited and placed on the site. We're told new content will be added to the site over the next six weeks. It's sort of a cross between reality TV, documentary-style video and a blog of sorts. Each person has an MSN Spaces blog as well.
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Copyranter points us to Gawker today where the New York gossip site has, with the click of a button, allowed its readers to banish all ads from the site except for evian water who is sponsoring a detoxed version of the site for two weeks. Once the button is clicked, all ads disappear except for some subtle mention of evian, some soothing snow-capped graphics and a means for those who publish an RSS feed of their site to "detox" their own RSS feed. The sponsorship was done in partnership with Mediavest and Feedburner. This is what the Adrants RSS feed looks like "detoxed."
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This MySpace page, set to launch Wednesday, created by Deep Focus and promoting the news season of HBO's Entourage is about the most tweaked out MySpace page we've ever seen. In fact, except for the MySpace URL, you wouldn't know you were on a MySpace page. While other companies have co-opted MySpace for commercial gain, this is, by far, the most elaborate we've seen. The page is still in the test stage with many non-working links but there's a contest that calls for entrants to create a MySpace page featuring the member's own "entourage" and then publicize it through the member's network of friends. Not a bad way to get HBO's Entourage message in front of a ton of MySpace members. The motivation to create a page comes in the form of a chance to win a car four each of the four people in the member's entourage. Other prizes include trips to LA with $1,000, Xbox 360's, Samsung cell phones and Entourage DVDs.
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Those cheeky United Kingdom citizens love their meat and hate PETA so much they've gone out and created a site called Meatylicious to drum up support for what they hope to be the world's biggest ever virtual march to celebrate meat. The site's got all sorts of fun meat facts and a "Meatyfest" with includes such gems as "Eat with your mouth open so others can enjoy it," "A man with no meat is no man at all" and "A good steak is like a sunny day: bloody lovely." PETA will love this. The work was created by London agency Grand Union.
While FishNChimps claims this is a new viral from Marmite, we could swear we've seen this poor mother before. Since we can't remember anything past today, we consulted the always reliable Adrants archive, didn't find it so, of course, we are, in fact, deeming this new. Maybe we're just suffering some sort of deja vu or maybe it really is new. Enough of that. The spot features a new mom sitting in her dark kitchen eating a piece of Marmite covered toast while nursing her baby. Suddenly, the baby has a problem. I big problem. A problem that, because this baby is breast feeding, thereby sucking down the very same nutrients mom's putting in her mouth, makes us wonder if eating Marmite is actually a good thing.
Here's a whacked little promotional clip for FOX's American Dad that features a guy with a great attitude on life. At the end of the clip, he tells us why he's such a positive guy.
In February of this year, a blog called Spacecadetz launched. The purpose of the blog is to highlight some of the best MySpace content from profiles to videos to new features to events. Currently, the blog has an interview with Al Cabino, the man behind a petition that asks Nike to bring back McFlys, the sneakers featured in the Michael J. Fox movie Back to the Future II. Cabino, who's coined the term "sneaker activism" doesn't want to wait until 2015, the year rumor has it Nike will, perhaps, introduce McFlys to the public. Cabino wants the kicks now and has launched a vigorous campaign to get Nike's attention.
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This viral webcam video, created to promote the Lynx/Axe ClickMore site, began with promise then devolved into a stupid, cheesy, illustration of stereotypical webcam/online video antics. The premise has a woman creating a webcam video for a guy she met the night before. Since she forgot to leave her number with him, she plans to do it in the video by doing a striptease, slowly revealing each number hidden underneath a piece of clothing. After that, it goes downhill fast turning into a ridiculous lingerie/cheerleader/stripper/pillow fight-fest. Intamacy would have prevailed nicely here but the creators chose to go for cheese factor. Or, maybe it was intended to be ironic all along. Either way, this could have been so much better.
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