According to a new report (PDF) from Gary Ruskin's Commercial Alert "sixty percent of movies advertised on the in-school TV program Channel One portray smoking." Ruskin claims since January 1, 2000 40 out of 67 movie ads aired on Channel One portrayed smoking. Ruskin's group, of course, doesn't like this and claims the portrayal of smoking in movies causes 390,000 young people take up smoking each year.
It appears the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws is hopping on the consumer-created advertising wagon as indicated by this post in the group's Yahoo Group. The organization plans to launch a contest October 3 which offers a $5,000 prize for the person who submits the best, we assume, pro-marijuana video. Maybe the groups should also shoot for some product placement action on the now-popular Showtime series Weeds.
As part of our continual bickering about the incessant proliferation of inefficient, un-targeted advertising, over two years ago we predicted toilet paper would be the next medium of choice. Well, yesterday, we were sent a link to Just Toilet Paper, a company that imprints toilet paper with all sorts of cutesy designs but that also sells ad space and, as it turns out, has been doing so since 2001. The company, which claims people go to the bathroom, on average, six times a day, will imprint a company's logo or design on various sizes of toilet paper. While there's certainly merit to this medium, what with it's "captive" audience, we're just not sure many brands want people wiping there ass with precious corporate logos. Of course, it's a great way for consumers to take out their aggressions on brands and shit all over the ones they don't like.
A creative team at an un-named agency has launched, Words & Pictures "a comic strip about the adventures of a creative team in a large advertising agency. Too stupid to create avatars that would give us plausible deniability, everything in the comic is 100% true - with the notable exception of anything that would make us look bad or get us sued. That stuff's made up. New strips are posted every Monday." And, they are funny. Check them out for some industry insiderisms.
To insure skiers and boarders hit the slopes in droves this winter, American Skiing Company, parent to Killington, Sunday River, Sugarloaf and others, has launched Skier Intervention, a viral site with characters that dish out tough love in hopes people will get off their butts, head North, buy a season pass, make American Skiing Company rich and...oh yea...get people to take up the winter's best sporting and leisure activity. After all, skiing's not just about sliding down snow-covered hills but enjoying warm fires, cozy condos, beer and cheese fondue.
Unfortunately, there's a big problem with this viral. It can't be sent unless senders enter name, address, city, state, zip code and email. That's a lot to ask of someone just to pass along fun little viral. The site explains the information is needed to send various prizes, earned based on referrals to friends, such as season pass discounts, accommodations drawings and free lift tickets. While we can't fault a marketer for collecting leads, there's really no need to collect that information until after a person has actually won. To make matters worse, deep inside the privacy policy, which no one ever reads, it says the collected information may be used for offline direct mailings from ASC or "trusted partner companies." Just what we need - more crap in our mailbox. It seems this online viral is just a disguised direct marketing database-building mechanism for future offline marketing efforts.
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Hollywood's only true spirit, Tony Pierce, sat down with UPN Love, Inc. star Busy Philips for an interview. Philips was previously on the tube in Freaks and Geeks and Dawson's Creek and in the movie, White Chicks. While no one's ever heard of Love, Inc. Tony says it's "a good old-fashioned sitcom. It's witty, it's funny, it's quick and it's packed full of hot babes." We just might have to tune in.
Steve Rubel says there are better ways to use RSS feeds than to stuff them with ads. He suggest using a deed as just-in-time inventory control which would ping an adserver to deliver a particular ad based on inventory. As RSS feed could be used to poll incoming links to a website and deliver ads based on incoming readership. An RSS weather feed could ping an ad server to deliver climate-appropriate ad content. This is just a start. Who has more ideas?
Negating the pain and suffering hurricane Katrine caused, to idiotic Louisiana lawyers are attempting to capitalize on recent events by requesting a patent for alcoholic drinks bearing the Katrina name. Andrew Vicknair and Harold Ehrenberg are the two kooks who applied for the patent September 4 which included a logo with the name Katrina, a satellite image of the hurricane and the tagline "Get Blown Away." Harold's website, on which he also refers to himself as a chiropractor might explain this weird move.
In the everything-looks-like-something-else and the over-sensitivity department, Muslim Rashad Akhtar claimed the design on the covers of Burger King ice cream cones resemble the Arabic inscription for Allah and finds it sacrilegious. Yes, an innocuous ice cream cone cover is sacrilegious. What's next? Will someone claim those signs with squiggly arrows that indicate curves in the road ahead resemble a devil serpent and cause their removal country-wide?
AdPulp points to a billboard for shopping site Bloom which shows a pan of muffins, out of which, one has fallen and crushed a car beneath. Now that's creative!
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