It seems public service advertising is the only kind which contains any sort of meaningful drama or that's allowed to depict reality without being glossed over by meaningless creative pontification. All other forms of advertising pale in comparison. Mostly because PSAs depict real life. And real life is a far cry from the kind of fairy tale life painted inside the cozy confines of an ad campaign.
British children's charity Barnardo's is out with a powerful commercial in which a girl is repeatedly subjected to the after effects of child abuse. As the commercial progresses, the girl's troubled life is repeated with increasing intensity until it culminates with the rapid fire reality of child abuse, a cycle that, if unchecked, is doomed to repeat tself over and over again until dramatic steps are taken to prevent it.
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- Massive inked a multi-year, in-game ad deal with THQ. So far, the only game that will for certain feature dynamic advertising is Saints Row 2.
- Queen Rania of Jordan has won the first-ever YouTube Visionary award for her daily videocast. I kind of love her.
- Six Apart has launched something called the TypePad Journalist Bailout Program. Under it, about 30 ex-bloggers or journalists will receive a free TypePad Pro account, tech support, representation on Blogs.com and auto-enrollment into Six Apart's ad network. 300 applications were received in less than two weeks.
- "Diddy is so Sarah Palin."
- Close-up on crotchvertising.
- New buzz word: sexting! Almost as fun as nuggnut. (Click on "Nuggnut pledge" for awesome brainwashing action.)
- Tom Messner on web two-dot-oh: "TV was still social medium in 1965 as people gathered around it; nobody gathers around the Internet unless you think that everyone is gathering around it at any time." Read more up-close with Hustle Knockin'. (V-via.)
- Twitter waves $500 million in Facebook stock off the table.
- Montreal-based Sid Lee opens doors where we all wish we could: in Amsterdam!
- "Oh, haven't you heard of Glah-day?" Someone finally speaks out about those Godforsaken Glade Scented Candles ads.
- George Parker will host your Second Life wedding if you promise to pass him some dirt on Enfatico.
- Google lets you customize search results.
- Planning to die? Don't forget to switch on the webcam.
- Shepard Fairey discusses his work and his design agency, Studio Number One, in a video interview.
Dear Bank of America and Microsoft,
Your recent upgrade to the new state of the art ATMs which, among other things, can accept check and cash deposits without an envelope has been, shall we say, less than pleasant. Apart from all the disconcerting noises and beeps they make, did you really have to assign the Windows XP Ding sound to the machines which plays every time a button on the touchscreen is pushed? Hello?? That's the same sound everyone in the world hears when they mis-click or make an error on their PC.
Don't you think choosing that sound to represent common function on the ATM was, well, pretty stupid? Not to mention incredibly disconcerting to the person using the ATM? Do you really want everyone to think they are making an error every time they push a button? Was this some sick joke your programmers decided to play on the unsuspecting public? Would it really have been that difficult to have pick something else from the hundreds of other less disconcerting system sound God forbid, create a new one?
The last thing I want to feel when I'm using an ATM is that I'm making a mistake or, worse, it's making a mistake. Which brings me to my next topic...
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Just another idea by our good (if lazy) friend Chuck, who hashes it out like so:
"Give adult entertainment production companies such as Evil Angel and Vivid Entertainment limited rights to music from upcoming video games for use in their adult films, six months to a year ahead of release.
"The soundtracks for most adult films are fairly pathetic, and I am sure that many companies would welcome free, quality music for their films."
Chuck's previous epiphanies have included porno product placement -- but lest you fool yourself into thinking he's a one-track kinda dude, consider this: he also came up with Hacky Snacks (complete with working prototype!) and, um, candy cane chopsticks. Better for the environment, I guess, but potentially also extremely sticky.
Goes to show there are still a few unturned tricks left in advertising. (Pun much intended.) So think like Chuck. Or steal his ideas. Which, oddly enough, is what he wants you to do. (Just send him a kickback once in awhile.)
In an open letter to Facebook dovetailing, in a way, with recent comments from P&G's Ted McConnell regarding the inappropriateness of traditional advertising on Facebook, iCrossing Senior Social Media Analyst Alisa Leonard Hansen explores the social graph, Facebook's place within it, the value exchange it offers marketers and consumers and why Facebook really does have the "golden ticket" to the perfect monetization strategy.
So what does an "aging" Disney star do when she gets too old for Mickey? She gets nude, takes pictures, puts them on her laptop, loses the laptop at JFK, reports it stolen and then attempts to twist the whole thing into a career-shifting media frenzy. But unlike her younger Disney brethren, Miley Cyrus and Vanessa Hudgens who accidentally (or so it is assumed) found themselves in compromising positions, 25-year-old Cheetah Girl Adrienne Bailon's "compromising position" was entirely planned by her publicist Jonathon Jaxon.
Yes, the girl might as well be a grandmother in Disney's eyes. After a successful run with three Cheetah Girls movies and musical tours, the Cheetah Girls movie franchise has come to a close and Bailon will seemingly be put out to pasture to fend for herself in the "grownup world."
And so it goes. The blunt transition from Disney to adulthood, never an easy one, plays out again. It will happen (is happening) with Miley Cyrus, the entire crew of High School Musical fame, Camp Rock's Demi Lovato and Wizards of Waverly Place star Selena Gomez.
Surprisingly, there hasn't been much press on AT&T's Lost in America, a Wal-Marting Across America-style (sorry, Justine) travel blog program fronted by Justine Ezarik, a.k.a iJustine and Karen Nguyen. For a few months now, the pair have been "lost" in America and exploring Alaska, Austin and Chicago.
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