It's one thing for a marketer to claim, say, its product will mow your lawn better than any other lawn mower but it's clearly another when a drug maker claims its product will cure certain ills and then cause a heart attack. That's an extreme case but the makers of the cholesterol drug Vytorin are now red faced after a study (which it held for over a year while taking in billions in sales of the drug) found it's drug did not do what it claimed to do.
Vytorin is the combination of two existing cholesterol drugs, Zetia and Zocor, which is supposed to reduce the amount of fatty plaque on artery walls. The study found it didn't which compelled U.S Representatives John Dingell and Bart Stupack to issue a complaint to the drug makers and to the FTC.
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While brands certainly don't want people using their products, logos and other related imagery to create products of their, own, the hammer that Ford legal dropped on the Black Mustang Club seems a bit heavy handed. Recently the club created a calendar which contained images of club members' cars photographed by the members themselves. Ford didn't take kindly to this and asked CafePress, the service the group had chosen to print the calendars, to kill the project claiming all the images in the calendar are the property of Ford...including the Black Mustang Club logo (this has been clarified in the update below. in actuality, it was CafePress which, based on past Ford trademark dealings, initially refused to print the calendar).
It's understandable that a brand would and should do everything it can to protect itself from any kind of potential negative effect but to attack a group of people who, clearly, love the product in question simply for showing their love of that product is, well, idiotic and more harmful to the brand had they done nothing at all.
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Shake Well Before Use points us to Engadget's collection of the best of the worst ads seen at this week's CES conference. Predictably, one involves word play on big boobs. Check them all out here.
What do you get a monogram-happy couple for the holidays? A framed mash-up of their names!
Remember when mashing up mismatched letters was the sole domain of serial killers and passive aggressive molotov cocktail waiters? Whatever happened to those days?
Hey kids! Guess what? If you study hard and get good grades, guess what you'll get? No, not a college scholarship, sillys. That would be too boring. No, if you get good grades on your report card, you'll get a Happy Meal coupon on the card that you can use to get fat...uh...have a free lunch.
Yea, people, you read that right. In-school advertising's idiocy has spread to report cards. Yes, report cards. For covering the paltry $1,600 printing cost of Seminole County Florida's 2007-2008 report cards, McDonald's was able to place the coupon on the report cards of kids who received all A's and B's. Yes, you also read that right. Only smart kids are allowed to get fat.
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For reasons having mainly to do with the writers strike, which is slowly sucking all the life and vigor out of TV (even online TV!), we ended up watching The Breakfast Club on Hulu last night.
We're not really sure what in hell Hulu is doing. We heard somewhere that they're trying to make their ads more intuitive and more in line with the online viewing experience. So tell us why the entire fucking film was jam-packed with the same mind-numbing ad for Chevy hybrid SUVs.
In said ad, unfortunate users witness the creation of an ice cream sundae. And it's ugly and horrifying. Everything from the elevator music, to the pallid vanilla, to the badly-poured chocolate, to the artificial whipping cream, filled us with glorious disdain for everything Chevy. (Especially the Lumina.) And, somehow, John Hughes, too.
Gotta love a politician who points a derisive finger at "aliens" that molest our hallowed borders and threaten the American dream (taking our jobs! Terrorizing innocent people worldwide!).
"Because someone needs to say it." You said it all right, Tom. You said it like the fucking Red Scare.
Maybe we're stupid. Maybe we're dumb. Maybe we're old school but we simply can't understand why the creators of Firebrand believe it will amount to anything more than a great resource for the ad community to see each other's commercials. Really. Do you know anyone outside of advertising that would actively seek out a website or a cable channel to view commercials, the very thing they are so blissfully skipping with their DVRs? Please. Tell us. We want to meet one of these gluttons for punishment.
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An Adrants reader has some pleading words for those behind the Toyota media buy. "Can't Toyota come up with another commercial to rotate with that stupid 'ran out of gas' ad with the girl laughing at her date? Every day every channel, I'm over it."
Can't the ad industry come up with another method of advertising than the old school tonnage model? Aren't we past that yet? Are we still dumb enough to think people want to see the same crap over and over again? Aren't we smart enough to realize this is chance to go to the client and ask for more money to produce a new commercial every one (except this guy, apparently) will skip over with their DVRs? Aren't we aware the consumer has been burned out since the turn of the century? Aren't we smart enough to come up with something better? Aren't we?
Adrants reader Steve from Brand Canada Blog tips us to yet another contextual/text advertising oddity. Squeaky clean Disney site Disney Family has found itself hovering over a video of the stunningly curvaceous and undeniably hot "Andrea" as she fondles her (clothed) breasts, removes her shorts and tantalizingly plays with her thong while swinging her impossibly perfect booty in front of her webcam for horny guys to admire.
While we're sure guys who occasionally get horny and occasionally view racy webcam videos are also be fine, upstanding students, professionals, parents and role models, we're thinking this isn't exactly the mood Disney was hoping its potential target audience would be in when viewing its family-focused ads. After all, moods like horny tend to distract people quite a bit from just about everything except matters directly in hand. A captive audience for sure but captivated by something entirely other than an annoying text ad. Besides, thoughts of family fun aren't likely to be top of mind at this particular moment.
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