To promote its line of online security products, Symantec has launched Safetytown. Created by Night Agency, the site contains "choose your own adventure" videos that follow the travels of a father who has been informed a mysterious charge has been made to his credit card. Full of overwrought melodrama and really bad fashion, the first installment shows the dad receiving a call from his credit card company informing him a charge was made to his card from a sporting goods store in Arkansas. Dressed only in his bathroom and a winter coat, the dad sets off to find out who used his card while his wife and child tearfully watch him leave.
The site's got other goodies such as wallpapers, music, the dad's bathrobe and a trial download of Norton Internet Security. If memory serves, this is the first time Symantec has done anything outside of the basic technology sell in its marketing.
Aap Global, the company that created the technology behind elevator handrail advertising, is now licensing the technology to partners internationally.
MySpace is now part of the PointRoll Include program. We're not sure how all those teens will take to the company's Fatboy, BadBoy, TomBoy, PaperBoy and TowelBoy expand-o-banners creeping all over their pages.
We're not quite sure how but this game, Maconomy X, is supposed to induce creatives into filling out their times sheets.
Doubleclick has released a new white paper, Best Practices for Optimizing Web Advertising Effectiveness, that aims to share help marketers improve their online advertising efforts.
Two college professors, University of Colorado Marketing Professor Paul Her and the late Binghamton University Associate Professor Yong-Soon Kang, are about to poke a whole in the ad industry's love affair with sex as a tool to sell. In June, the pair will release a study, "Beauty and the Beholder: Why Pretty Faces Don't Always Help Sales," conducted among 200 college students that will show sex-laced advertising can backfire. We hope everyone ignores the study.
If you've seen any financial services-related commercial in America, you know most drone on incessantly about service and advice and expert consultation or good hands or they get all warm and fluffy like a Kiplinger's Magazine cover or a State Farm commercial. In India, they have fun. In India, they poke fun at the American cowboy. In India, they catch the market by the balls...uh...bulls. Written by Sunil Shibad and produced by Steam Engine Production, this commercial is for Ventura Securities.
Let's see. A magazine gives you a few pictures and words 12 times a year. The Internet offers billions of pictures of women in various stages of undress and enough online games to play until one is 152. Marketers screw up a lot of things but they're pretty good at following the eyeballs. Mediaweek Monitor says ad pages in men's magazines have dropped four percent through June. Conde Nast admits they had a terrible first quarter for Details.
OK, this online game is so totally for engineering geeks. But, that's the whole point because it's for GlobalSpec, a specialized search engine and information resource for engineers. We took one look at the game and didn't even try to play. We're sure it's good but we got an F in college physics so we've already had our fair share of shame.
Delta has a new spot that features Atlanta Braves player Jeff Francoer which we like a lot. Perhaps it's because this brings back the nostalgia that once captured the game. Perhaps it's the music. Perhaps we're just feeling emotional this morning. Who know. You watch it and tell us.
Custom Brooklyn bike shop NYCBikes recently launched a poster campaign created by Woods, Witt & Sons. the campaign promotes biking as a superior means of transportation in and around the city. See all the posters here.
Boston's Mayor Menino is upset over French Connection's recent Fashion v. Style ad campaign which centers on women fighting each other and says the campaign "promotes negative images of women and violence."Earlier, we took a look at a video ad that was part of the campaign here that pits two women against each other karate-style. Menino wants French Connection to pull the ads from Boston's Newbury Street and Copley Place French Connection retail stores.
Sadly, an endearing relationship has come to an end. We cheered, we cried, we vicariously lived a deep and meaningful relationship but, alas, it has all come to an end. AdFreak tells us they've received an email announcing the breakup of Brook Burke and the King. A sad day this is, indeed. Following the announcement, marketers could be heard weeping the world over.
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