You might think everyone on the planet has a PDA, but alas, that isn't true. "Only" seven percent on U.S. households are predicted to have a PDA user by 2008, according to Jupiter. But PDA users are most often the cream of the demographic crop - highly educated, higher income and more Internet savvy.
Through aggregation services such as Vindigo and AvantGo, advertisers can reach this highly desirable segment through channel sponsorship or even through the creation of a content channel. One of ClickZ writer James Hering's automotive clients recently ran a campaign on AvantGo and saw costs per lead half that of comparable web-based campaigns. This is not surprising, given the uncluttered content environment of the PDA and the control the user has over the content that is delivered.
Hallmark, known for its weepy television movies, has introduced a new ad unit on its Hallmark Channel called the Sponsored Solutions Unit. It consists of a four minute break during each movie hour - much less than is standard. Claritan bought all the units last month for the channel's airing of "The Long Shot." While rating for the movie were respectable and efforts to reduce ad clutter and commendable, do these units really mean more people are actually watching the commercials? We will never know until Nielsen gets with the program, changes its model and starts measuring ad viewership instead of program viewership.
As part of its event marketing services, Clear Channel will now offer advertisers sponsorship of originally produced programming from its broadcasted concerts and sporting events. Clear Channel is hoping advertisers create their own events and include Clear Channel as a programming partner and distributor.
Radio broadcasting firm Emmis has plans to add at least two paralegals to its army of dump button pushing legal staff. The company is considering adding these new hires to Chicago's WKQX Mancow show and to St. Loius' KPNT for its Howard Stern broadcast. Emmis currently has $28,000 in fines pending due to past Mancow broadcasts. From an economical standpoint, one can't blame the move. On the other hand, radio is going to get a lot more bland and boring in the years to come if this trend continues.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
 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."
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