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Perhaps we should consider being a bit less jaded around the Adrants offices since it seems to be causing us to ignore what, at times, turns out to be a pretty good story. A day or two ago, like many other people, we received some strange images of Brooke Burke with the Burger King king and we figured...screw it...just another one of the hundreds of pieces of crap passing through the bloated Adrants Inbox so we, religiously, deleted them and went on with our day. Now, we see AdFreak put one of the pix up and has pointed to some sites that have combined the images to hokey music. Well, once you have more than one offbeat image it simply has to be...yup...yet another Burger King viral effort from the beloved Crispin Porter + Bogusky.
Because of our overly jaded viewpoint, we apologize for bringing you sloppy seconds but, even Adrants has to suck once in a while, right? So enjoy. There's are image/music collages here and here. And here's a collection of the images over at Buzznet. We promise to check our jaded pompousity at the door each morning now and be sure to look twice when we receive these witty viral teasers. Of course, we could have been right all along and this really is just a bunch of random Burger King, Brooke Burke pix.
We make no claims as the the recency of this little clip promoting Village Voice classifieds with a bunch of hipster wannabes but we were a little freaked out by the masked, dancing fat guy at the end. The "Click Right. Think Left" tagline is great though.
The Wall Street Journal reports MTV's VH1 will, on January 13, launch "Web Junk 20," a show featuring video clips found on MTV-owned iFilm. MTV hopes the show will drive viewers to the company's online channel, Vspot. Unfortunately, as with other MTV online efforts, Vspot does not work with Firefox and visitors using that browser are met with "We're Sorry. PC Users with Netscape, Mozilla or Firefox: you need to run Internet Explorer to use VSpot." Idiots. Those most likely to be interested in Vspot content have a clue and those who have a clue use Forefox, not IE. Please get a clue, MTV and screw your deal with Microsoft.
Eatmail.tv's Emily has put together the top five video clips of 2005 which include the Citroen C4 spoof, the Nut Bra, the Guinness Good Things Come to Those Who Wait ad, the Bill For First Lady political ad and Axe Deoderant's Ravenstoke Alaska news clip.
OK, there's absolutely nothing new about this little video that claims to be a viral before its even had a chance to become viral but it it cute enough to share. It's an "I'm so fat from eating so much during the holidays" fitness promotion for fitness website fitbug.
A new online campaign for the Jennifer Anniston, Kevin Coster movie Rumor Has It has played sweetly into our fluff and puffery-filled world of journalistic nonsense. Online marketing firm Pod Digital Design has created RumorMaker, a site that lets visitors create their own front page tabloid scandal about a friend complete with photograph and snarkish commentary. If there's no photo or snark available, visitors can choose from several provided choices. We couldn't resist temptation and had a bit of fun with Alex Bogusky and his hair.
In an elaborate marketing hoax, it appears the Sony PlayStation2 game Shadow of the Colossus is being promoted with sitings of giant, unexplained archaeological findings around the world. Three large, prehistoric entities have, reportedly, been found - one in India following the tsunami, one in the Sulu sea and one in Bam, Iran following an earthquake. There's even video news footage from the Indian finding to go along with the hoax.
Fueling the notion this is all just a big marketing ploy - albeit a grand and intriguing one - Joystig points out all this information appeared at the same time just this week, an anonymous tip pointed them out, there's the predictable blog (with a podcast) and two of the site's follow that tired, Geocities-like, "this site is so bad it has to be real" design strategy.
One has to admit, it is quite admirable the lengths to which a company with boatloads of money will go to get its products talked about. One also has to question the potential backlash of such an elaborate lie.
Interactive agency Inspire has created an online video featuring Mr. Jefferson who loosely reveals all of his family's inner secrets illustrating just how unprotected life can be if, of course, one does not use Microsoft security products. While the video (the Netherlands version) is in English, the sites are not. We'll leave it to you Belgian speaking folks to tell us whether we've made any sense here. And would Adobe, for the love of David Ogilvy, please make freakin' Flash understand a browser's Back button?
Basically ramming a dagger in the back of buzz marketing firm BuzzAgent, word of mouth marketing firm BoldMouth has launched with a ferociously negative view of buzz marketing practices. Mincing no words, the companies press release reads, in part, "Real word-of-mouth marketing is about sharing advice as well as product and service recommendations. These informal and typically person-to-person dialogs should not to be confused with 'buzz marketing' that is nothing more than an attempt to artificially engineer a referral by offering incentives so that "agents" make recommendations on behalf of an organization." Ouch. Dave Balter might have a bit to say about that back stab.
As if gleeful in his attack, BoldMouth Founder Todd Tweedy said, "Word of mouth is an operational principle that organizations can pursue and model to increase loyalty and ultimately revenue that creates a customer-centric approach to marketing. Disguising a commercial as a person and having these 'agents' share commercial messages on an unsuspecting audience with misleading 'buzz' tactics simply creates more ad clutter and puts brands in unnecessary danger. It's time to put an end to buzz marketing."
Somehow this all seems very counter productive to the growth of a nascent advertising practice but the verbal warfare that will undoubtedly follow this release will be charmingly amusing to watch.
OK, we have nothing against people doing all they can to stay in shaped but when women work out so freakishly they end up looking like, well, a female body builder, it's just kinda gross. Call us sexist but everyone's entitled to an opinion including Virgin Mobile UK which has launched Super Buff, a site promoting its "totally buff phones" with help from super buff women. It's all quite hilarious, though. Adland reveals the work was created by 12foot6 and Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe/Y&R.
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