The New Juice Toss

If you think windsurfing is fun, you should check out this "sport". Get kicked, fly, and do it all while bathing yourself in your favorite drink. Weird. Click the picture to view.

Courtesy of Apechild.

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A Billboard PETA Really Won't Like

Courtesy of Apechild
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Chimp Ad Draws Complaints

Seems the complaint meter is going up again in the U.K. This time, it's for an ad featuring chimpanzees for car and bike equipment chain, Halford's. Under the tagline, "because you pay peanuts, we give you monkeys", the chimps cavort around the store in track suits. The ad has receive 75 complaints so far and the Captive Animals Protection Society, U.K.'s version of PETA, is calling for a boycott.

Halfords refuses to pull the ad saying, " The ad was pre-approved by the broadcast advertisers clearance center, part of the ITC (Independent television Commission), and we are happy to run it. The marketing team did have some concerns about using chimps, but our advertising agency heavily researched the ad with audiences and it was well-received. All the rules and regulations in place for the protection of animals were adhered to and there were trainers and vets on site."

The ad is off the air but only because that was in the plan. It is scheduled to air again beginning in July.

The animal protection group, CAPS, does not want it to return to the air calling the ad "cruel" and "totally unacceptable" stating, "This ad is stepping back 20 years. It is not funny and doesn't give the products a good image. PG Tips (a previous advertiser who used chimps) stopped using chimps because they realized it was no longer acceptable."

Where has our sense of humor gone? View the ad here, although the link was broken at the time of publication.
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New York Times Scandal Not Likely to Affect Readers

"Remember that most of the criticism was coming from within the industry," stresses Robert Passikoff, founder and president of Brand Keys. "Did the guy on a Metro-North train reading the Times in the morning think any less of the paper? What happened was a black eye and it was embarrassing, but I can't remember the last time anyone died of a black eye or embarrassment."

That's the general feeling in the industry. What happened at the Times was very bad but like most "events" in America, we seem to have a very short term memory for these things.

"Most of the paper's readers aren't especially interested in the internal workings of the Times," says Charles Fountain, an associate professor at Northeastern University. "Sure, [the newspaper] is a little bit damaged right now, but it's mostly damaged within the industry, which tends to be a little bit insular and not really reflective of people who read the newspaper."

The long term affects of this for readers and advertisers is likely to be nil. [via Mediapost]
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Two Interesting Trends to Watch

TrendWatching, a newsletter that finds and names new trends has two new ones to consider. The fist, called Mass Class, refers to the group of people who have taken advantage of the democratization of luxury made possible by low cost luxury retailers such as H&M, EasyJet, Gap, Nokia, Virgin, and Zara. This group has been able to "step" in class and are now an entirely new audience to market to.

The second trend dubbed, Online Oxygen, refers to the 600 million consumers worldwide who crave online access. They will do anything to get it and cannot live without it. The growth of broadband and wireless access continues to grow at a healthy clip. Intel is making this shift even easier by adding its 'Centrino' chip to over half of all new laptops in the next quarter. The 'Centrino' chip has specific wireless abilities. Additionally, the number of "hot spots", or wireless access points will grow from 9,700 this year to an estimated (IDC) 118,000 by 2006.

Click on the links above to read more about each of these trends.
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