Asian expert Tian has taken Old Navy to task for their apparent lack of cultural knowledge in the creation of several t-shirts which butcher culture such as associating the Japanese rice wine sake with the Great Wall of China and describing a black t-shirt with images of Asian men in black masks with a Ninja star as a Karate t-shirt rather than, correctly, a Ninjutsu t-shirt. Seems America's great melting pot has forgotten the rest of the world has many varied, distinctive cultures that don't wish to be melted away by American marketing tricks. Tian does tell us Old Navy customer service reponded kindly and apologetically when the Sake t-shirt was brought to their attention writing, "It was not our intention to cause any offense. Please accept our apologies for any concern created by our product."
Perhaps forcing Nielsen to more quickly move its plans to measure commercial rather than programming, The PreTesting Company has is currently conducting a 2,500 Omaha home test of its MediaCheck Project Wannamaker (nice reference to the 50/50 statement), which measures ad viewership rather than program viewership, found most people tire of a campaign's commercials after just two weeks indicating overexposure and poor creative hurt TV campaigns the most. The study also found that DVR-equipped homes did not skip commercials any more than non-DVR (by changing channel, etc.) homes.
The company has plans to roll out a national, 50,000 home study and is is talks with cable operators to incorporate the measurement technology in set top boxes. Hello? Nielsen? Hello?
Dipping its feet into the viral advertising waters, with the help of AsaBailey and Saatchi New York, General Mills has created a "The Italian Job" movie spoof called "The Irish Job" which features a tiny leprechaun in a car racing away from perusers with a box of Lucky Charms in the seat next to him. The video has been seeded to 250,000 U.S. students and 20 somethings.
Not to be out news'd by Vogue's September ad page monstrosity, The New York Times Magazine announced today its upcoming fall issue of "T: Women's Fashion" has a total of 169 advertising pages – surpassing last year's debut issue, which had the largest number of ad pages since 1985 among any of its predecessor "Part 2-Women's Fashions of the Times" publications. "T: Women's Fashion" will be published on Sunday, August 28 and will feature actor Tilda Swinton on the cover.
To call attention to Upgrade 74, downstate Illinois' large road reconstruction project, Ross Creative + Strategy has created an online charades game, Upgrade 74 StayCool, which offers prizes to those who guess the correct movie title construction worker Jack Hammer is acting out. Prizes range from round trip tickets to Orlando to a large Papa John pizza each month for a year to tanning packages, free CDs and movie passes.
Having lived through the last 15 years of Boston's still unfinished Big Dig project, we can certainly identify with the need to portray the construction worker as a friendly, humorous character rather than one who conjures up images of the devil as you try to squeeze your way through a maze of detours on your way to work.
