42 Below Acknowledges Its Gay Customer Base

Calling all gay men. New Zealand vodka, 42 Below, wants your pink dollars. Closing with "In an effort to prevent sexual stereotypes, this ad was run by two fags and a queer," 42 Below knows how to have fun. Check this flash ad featuring the teletubbies, the star trek crew, the village people and Liberache.

by Steve Hall    May-10-04    




Humping Bunnies Hit Times Square

Accompanied by the tagline, "Touch your swatch, pick your position," a new Swatch billboard in Times Square shows six loving pairs of rabbits doing their thing right up there for all to see.

"Oh, my God. That's disgusting," said Pat Pearson of Mahwah, N.J. "We have enough sexual implications in the world. Why are you going to use these animals having sex?"

Call the decency police.

by Steve Hall    May-10-04    




NYT Catches Up on Month Old Mini Cooper Robot Story

Crispin Porter & Bogusky have had an "interactive fiction" campaign going for more than a month where several web sites have been set up tracking an engineer who is building a robot out of Mini Cooper car parts. This is the agency that brought us the Subservient Chicken too. Great stuff.

The agency plans to "reveal" the campaign next month with a wall poster campaign in major markets.

by Steve Hall    May-10-04    




Jealous Girlfriend Can't Compete With Boyfriend's Toyota Tacoma

It's been a long, long...very long time since I've seen an automotive television commercial that actually made me laugh and didn't suffer from the ridiculously insipid "winding, mountainous road syndrome." In this new commercial, we have a guy and a bunch of his friends ripping it up on the beach in their Toyota Tacoma pick up. We then quick-cut to a segment of a girl ranting about what she thinks of her boyfriend Mike's stupid truck while, in the background, her friends push Mike's truck off a cliff. Surely, the girlfriend can't wait to show this video to her boyfriend. Trouble is, the truck lands on all fours, undamaged. However unlikely that might be, it sure does shut the bitch up.

Other commercial this week from Ad Age's TV Spots of the Week include a Sunkist offer so busy, one can't even keep up with the name dropping and the rules, a fat dude that kills clubbers with his body odor while dancing for Right Guard, another great Apple iPod commercial, two police interrogators get all metrosexual for GE Light Bulbs, a weepy drug spot for EpiPen, a couple can't understand the great service from Comcast and some lime-green dude finds a lime green car on cars.com.

by Steve Hall    May-10-04    




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TV Sports Still Best Way to Reach Male Car Buyers

Acura National Advertising Manager Susie Rossick says television sports is where she gets the best return on her car advertising dollar. This Ad Age article offers and update on the current marketing methods car manufacturers are employing to push their products.

by Steve Hall    May-10-04    




'Stuff' Doesn't Like Laddie Magazine Label

Check Out This 'Product'

Rather than live within the easy to understand laddie magazine category, Stuff General Manager Mark MacDonald and Associate Publisher Aric Webb would like the magazine to be know as "a leading product-based pop culture magazine for guys." Or maybe "a men's lifestyle magazine." Or even a "magazine for guys." Granted the magazine is more about stuff and less about clothing-challenged women, but layering on all this marketing blather-speak gets comical after a while.

So if it's about products, the website would be all about widgets and gadgets, right? Nope. The current home page carries a picture of Bianca Lawson with the caption "The Girl You'd Love to Love." Love? Right. I can think of another word that would be far more appropriate and on the tip of every wagging male tongue looking at that picture. A couple pages in there's a picture of Rachel Bilson in the middle of an orgasm and Juliane Rossi offering up her ass for consumption.

There's nothing wrong with a magazine like this. Everyone knows men love this stuff even though it makes them look like Neanderthals. Worse though is trying to position it as something it's not. A more honest description of "Stuff" might be, "Gear that gets you off."

by Steve Hall    May-10-04