In late September we began receiving links to a site called Great Pointed Archer which positioned itself as a save/rename the rat cause site. They even sent us T-shirts. Of course we immediately figured it was a front for something else but the folks behind the site held fast and insisted it was simply an effort to be nice to rats. Sure. Well, as expected, it was a ploy. Today, an Adrants reader went to a Great Pointed Archer rally in Manhattan and reports it is, in fact, just a stealth marketing effort by a PR firm who, he figured, wishes they were an advertising firm. At least that's what we've been told We're tracking down the details.
UPDATE: According to Alex from Museum of Hoaxes, this same claim that a rally occurred in Manhattan was received by him. Our sense is it really is just a stealth stunt by some entity who is playing all of us to some final purpose which, at some point, will be revealed making us all look foolish.
Created in June, this Axe news-report-mocking video about a fictitious Alaskan town that used Axe deodorant to attract women because the town had none, has finally found a home beyond the bits and bytes of the viral highway. The video will be central to an interactive television campaign running on Comcast ITV's Cartoon Network Swim Block and will consist of a news banner that runs along the bottom of programming which, if clicked, leads to the video.
Newly researched, MarketingSherpa's Email Marketing Benchmark Guide 2006 is out and includes 310 charts, tables, and heatmaps featuring data on open rates, clickthrough rates, email budgeting, typical conversion rates, business-to-business email marketing, and ecommerce email campaigns. Seven eyetracking heatmaps are also included which reveal the results of eyetracking lab tests conducted by MarketingSherpa to determine how the human eye interacts with email, including text versus HTML formats.
For you email marketers, this is the bomb. Oops, we can't say that because we're only , so we'll just say, "You gotta get this report, homies!" Oh wait, that's not right either. Let's try, "This report kicks ass!" Hmm...too blunt too eighties. How about, "Get this report and you'll be counting clicks all the way to the bank." Nope. Way too cheesy. Well, perhaps we'll just say, "If your marketing department sends out email newsletters and/or sales alerts, the new MarketingSherpa Email Marketing Benchmark Guide 2006 is a practical must-read." There. That's it. When in doubt, just copy what the press release says.
Minneapolis-based John Deere agency Mackenzie is looking for farmers for an upcoming John Deer ad campaign. The agency wants "real farmers, with farmer tans, well-formed paunches, and tattoos." A newspaper article states male farmers will photographed shirtless and should be between 25 and 55. There was no mention of 35 to 55 year-old, shirtless female farmers.
IDG World Expo has released details of the "Syndicated Company and Product Environments" conference track at Syndicate, scheduled to take place December 12-14, 2005 at the Hilton San Francisco. This track will discuss how companies of all sizes, from corporate titans like GM to neighborhood book stores, are syndicating all kinds of content in pursuit of real business goals.
The Syndicate conference shows how syndication and social media tools such as RSS, blogs and podcasts are helping to change the way businesses do business. The "Syndicated Company and Product Environments" track is one of four tracks, and it is geared to help companies learn how to better interact with and directly inform their customers.
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In a November 16, 2005 Wall Street Journal article, "What the In-Crowd Knows: From Hollywood to Wall Street, Our Guide to the Blogs Insiders Read to Stay Current." Adrants was named, "One of the best ways to keep up on Madison Avenue's ups and downs. Published by Steve Hall, a former ad-agency employee, Adrants covers topics ranging from urinal advertising to the news of the day, all with a bemused tone. The site also provides links to breaking-news stories featured by other Web publications. John Osborn, president and chief executive of the New York office of Omnicom Group's BBDO Worldwide, is a fan." We humbly thank Brian Steinberg from the world's foremost business publication and Mr. Osborn for their kind acknowledgments.
While all politics are, well, political and most conversation between various entities clinging to one ideological party or another amounts to nothing more than bickering between middle school kids trying to prove who's cooler, a situation has arisen over at the BlogAds Liberal Advertising Network that's causing a bit of bitchy buzz. Rogers Cadenhead reports he's been kicked out of the network, along with Retort, Raw Story and Smirking Chimp, by network organizers Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos and Chris Bowers and Jerome Armstrong of MyDD which I always thought was a blog about bra size but, surprise, actually focuses on politics.
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The Web Marketing Association has announced it's accepting entries for the 2006 Internet Advertising Competition Awards, the ad industry's award competition dedicated to online advertising. Awards will be presented within each of the industry categories and advertising formats such as online ad banners, interstitials, rich media ads, email, online newsletter campaigns, microsite/landing page, integrated ad campaigns and even ads the client didn't choose.
Unfortunately, oddly and sadly, pop-ups are also included in the competition. No industry entity should acknowledge this bastion of marketing idiocy which amounts to nothing more than utter disregard for human preference and which represents the lowest form of scum this industry has yet to rid itself of.
iMediaConnection's Kevin Ryan is in Shanghai this week at ad:tech and reports there's tremendous interactive marketing growth occurring in China and things could dramatically heat up in a year or two. While the conference was much smaller than the recent New York ad:tech, Ryan reports search engine marketing is alive and well as is online commerce in the form of online shopping. U.S.-based shopping site Smarter.com has entered the market and, according to Ryan, will "focus on fashion, baby and maternity, pet supplies and sporting goods among other key categories in Japan, while Chinese will focus on 3C channels (computers, consumer electronics and communications.)"
Random Observations points to the new MTA "Holiday Bonus" ads which offer bonuses on New York's buses, trains and subways from Thanksgiving to New Year's Day. It's that warm holiday feeling all over again.
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