Last week, writer Stephen Baker of BusinessWeek wrote a collaborative article with Twitter users. The compilation took several days and generated more than 250 contributions, including quotes and citizen reporting.
The result, "Why Twitter Matters," was published today. (Expect tons of linkbacks to individual tweets, not to mention gratuitous use of "tweet" itself.) Looks like the stream-of-thought community just won a new convert.
Hey, Baker. Think Twitter ex-architect Blaine Cook looks anything like Jesus?
Well OK. So now when you troll MySpace, Facebook or whatever your favorite daily social diversion may be, you can view, yes, even more ads courtesy of SocialVibe, a service that lets people choose brands they wish to endorse with a widget they can embed on their profile pages or blogs.
For example, Nicole Lynn's cleavage endorses...oops, I mean Nicole Lynn endorses Adobe. By displaying the SocialVibe badge on profile pages, people get points they can use to donate to charities as well as the chance to win trips, gadgets and entry to events.
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It's probably just me. No, I'm sure it's just me but I'll ask the question anyway. Is there something strange about Miley Cyrus jumping immediate from that Vanity Fair/Annie Liebovitz "scandal" in which she was portrayed as, well, a bit more sexy than our sexually repressed society can handle to an appearance in the Body by Milk campaign in which she sports...white stuff all over her lips?
One could argue it's just a natural transition to the next level of...um...participation in the oh-so-seedy activity of...OMG....engaging in dirty sex acts. But, that would be gross so let's just leave that stuff on the table.
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In hopes of selling, I don't know, more sweet potato casserole through May, Boston Market is trying to turn Mother's Day into a month-long event.
Visit The Moms Party to check out the campaign. And if you really want to make the matriarch cringe, upload her picture into a "President of the Moms Party!" poster.
It could always be worse.
Anyway, all members of the Moms Party will get free desserts with purchase through May at Boston Market. The more views your mom-inate (get it? Like "candidate"?) poster receives, the more likely your mom is to become the party leader.
Horrors.
For MTV and the Burma Arts Board, Shilo and Ogilvy & Mather/Amsterdam created the "Burma Viral," which will air on MTV's Times Square Jumbotron and elsewhere around the world.
The film depicts war planes lifting off all over the world and meeting over Burma. I watched with a pinch of irritation as their hatches open, expecting bombs and the requisite sight of human suffering, but -- unexpectedly -- the planes rain a canopy of flowers over the cityscape.
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In a lengthy analysis of a recent Pepperidge Farm print ad for the company's Milano cookie, Beyond Madison Avenue in which such details as "soul mates" versus "soulmates" are examined, the writer points to another take on the ad, from 360Nu.com, which...wait for it...calls the ad racist. Yes. A racist cookie ad.
It seems there may need to be a WTF category added to Adrants to house all these idiocies. However, before immediately tossing this off as yet another case of Chronic Overthink, the 360Nu writer offers interesting commentary on marketing, advertising and packaging as they relate to the reflection, creation, perpetuation or racial stereotypes.
Using two examples, angel food cake with white frosting over black cake and Devil Dogs with black ...stuff over the white, a corollary is made between the white over black as positive and the black over white as negative (devil).
Whether or not you decide to file this away in your own personal WTF category, you should at least read the piece firts. Then you can label the writer a crack pot or an insightful genius.
The Max Havelaar Foundation, a coalition of fair trade producers and initiatives worldwide, is using this video to promote fair trade practices.
I'm not really sure what's going on, aside from that a bunch of subversives seem really unhappy with what they're finding at the grocery store.
Alternatively, they could just be looking for buddies to play catch with. Reason #458 to take up Ultimate Frisbee.
Oh my. These ads for the Sci Fi channel make me want to adopt a sweet little potbellied alien. And name it Oliver. And maybe homeschool it.
The tagline: "Open your heart to science fiction. Adopt Sci Fi." Agency: BETC EURO RSCG 4D (thanks, in:fluencia!).
See the short version, but it's the long one that made me the suffer the angst of shedding genre prejudice. Anime overload, here I come.
- Fast Company loves itself some Alex Bogusky. Enough to compare him to Jesus. No word on whether the author washed his feet with her hair.
- Shelf that silly Microsoft morale video. "It's here and it's hot! Home Depot Solid Gold!"
- To combat the eBay suit, craigslist countersues. Then the nanny found their babas and put them down for a nap.
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Having generated reluctant admirers with its "Ugly can be beautiful" campaign in 2005, Crocs now gives us "What a Croc!" -- which has guts in spades, and occasional moments of flair, but is otherwise far less coherent.
See insane screaming man and the pretty pretty princess. The latter is the result of a collabo between Crocs and Jibbitz, self-styled "the official Crocs shoe charm." And you thought those Godforsaken mules couldn't get any uglier.
Thanks AdFreak for bringing "What a Croc!" to our attention.
If it weren't bad enough an army of wannabes copied, unsuccessfully, Alex Tew's very successful Million Dollar Homepage, now there's a dude who wants to spread that filth all over an actual hillside, as in a real-world hillside in Austria.
Thomas Kager, a 34 year old software developer plans to sell both pixels and actual real estate on a 10,0000 meter portion of a hill. As the press release explains, "Kager's idea is to market squares of virtual advertising space on his website to companies and individuals who, after their purchase, will receive one square meter of real outdoor advertising space for a five-year period."
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- AgencySpy reports layoffs occurring at Chicago's Critical Mass including creative director Mike Rezac and at Seattle's Publicis West office.
- An insider shares news JWT Canada may have lost the Kellogg business due to a "global Realignment." Don't you just love the phrases people create to describe layoffs and firings?
- Bulldog Reporter PR University, today, is presenting an audio conference entitled "Blog Pitching Update for PR: Top Tech Online Influencers Reveal Advanced Blog Relations Practices"
In the course of his Presidency George W. Bush has both enraged and made us laugh, often at the same time. We've seen plenty of ways where his unique talent has manifested in reactionary advertising. Sometimes the results are funny, sometimes they piss us off, and often they do both at once.
Either way, it's become impossible to leave the States without a good sense of humour -- or an iron-on maple leaf.
Ivan of CreativeBits put together an invaluable collection of print ads where Bush is the star. This close to November, it almost makes us fond of the guy -- the way you grow fond of a stooge you're about to screw over in a drug bust.
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Imagine sitting on the northbound Metro Red Line between Hollywood/Highland and Universal, reading whatever's in your lap, when all of a sudden a Speed Racer trailer starts playing just outside your window.
"WTF," you might say. "Even underground, LA's infested with movies."
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InGrid Home Security recently tapped video site National Banana -- whose online offerings include "Gay 4 Obama" and "Spitzer Call Girl Resigns" -- to help build some saucy new ads.
Yeah.
See the results of the collabo on InGrid. The idea behind the spots is to compare InGrid's sexy "wired" home security with the cumbersome systems of yore. The out-of-touch dad/embarrassed-young-daughter gimmick was not lost on us.
Horrid.
"Hey Adrants! I don't know if you'd be interested or not, but this homebuilder is hip." (Signed "anon.")
An email like the one above is a really good way of guaranteeing we will quietly hate your company even before we're exposed to its creative. Anyway, check out Shapell Matchmaker, a Shapell Homes campaign that pairs people to their ideal corner of suburbia.
See cheesy video. (Was Bruce Campbell busy?) I took the website quiz, which was kind of fun. My perfect match was the Glens in Gilroy.
So not hip.
I'm not really sure what to say about "Spare a Rib" for KC Masterpiece (agency: DDB, SF). I guess I'd argue that if some guy solicits you for food with a catchy chorus, then compels everyone around you to leap up and perform choreographed dance moves, you should probably leave, because that's some unnerving Pied Piper shit, and we all know how that story ended.
Oh, and nice touch with the ragey guy breaking his banjo over the anvil.
In specific, the Honda Pilot will steer you into the path of geriatric ballooning nudists, jetpack users and at least one guy trapped in a cement block. All will be male, and all will be slightly left of your comfort zone.
These unlikely Good Samaritan scenarios highlight the Pilot's merits: rearview camera, navigation with voice recognition and "surprising" fuel efficiency. None of that is terribly unique, but all of it is now lodged in my brain, if only so I can turn the ads into slow-night bar fodder.
But wait! There's print stuff too. See Youtility and Ride Ready, which are less creepy, but also less interesting. Agency: RPA.
Or possibly just turn it into a thumb. TBWA\Wien, Vienna: what were you thinking?
Gizmodo, which is now an Xbox convert, says the PS3/Playboy ad was not formally approved by Sony. That's nice and all, but it's still repelling people right and left.
At times like this, it's not enough to say "Sorry, this ain't ours." Contrary to popular belief, a crappy ad can adversely impact sales. Sony needs to pull some Vatican crap and deploy a creative assassin. Or maybe some sort of secret weapon, like the Giant Mouse of Minsk.
Ladies, when a bartender peers lustfully into your eyes while thrusting a large, stiff brush deep inside a glass, slowing stroking it in and out with commanding determination and urgency while undressing you with his eyes, do you A.) begin to feel a warm, tingling sensation between your legs that excitedly inflames your entire body causing a tidal wave of uncontrollable arousal titillating you to desirously caress your nipple-stiffened breasts with your eager finger tips while imagining that huge pulsating brush deep within your quivering and moistening nether regions pleasuring you to the point of...OK...I'll stop right there or B.) grab your purse and run from the freak?
Make your choice but it seems the woman in this Flirt vodka commercial opted for A.
Kankles! I haven't heard that term in a while. But it's one of the many things uttered during the walk of shame the morning after you've bedded someone who's name you've now completely forgotten and who's clothing you are probably wearing.
Well, thanks to AMP Energy, shame is a thing of the past and we can all now hold our heads high as we march home proudly remembering the prior evenings dalliances with glee and song.
I will admit I did not "get" this Mother New York-created Mother's Day video at first. I figured it was yet another sappy ode to a holiday that demands men to, in one day, must express their appreciation for the mom in their life with trite ditties such as a card or a meal at a restaurant as opposed to the daily verbal appreciation that truly expresses appreciation.
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Um, open your mind? Facial reconstruction? Experience the beauty of music? Be kind to animals? Kill your kid by blowing off his head? Some campaigns occasionally cause a serious case of WTFness. This one from Bilioteq Creative books goes so far beyond WTF that after seeing them maybe, akin to the ads themselves, you'll tear off your face and rip out your brain forever leaving behind any chance you'll ever again have to be faced (ooo...was that a pun?) with the challenge of harming your brain cells interpreting WTFness such as this ad campaign from South Africa's FoxP2.
Adult Swin, those crazy folks who bring us Aqua Teen Hunger Force has teamed with Honda for a T-shirt contest to promote the auto maker's Fit. Dubbed Adult Tees, the contents asks viewers to design t-shirts inspired by Adult Swim. The winner of the contest, which runs from May 12 for seven weeks with the sweepstakes portion from June 30 to July 7.
To promote the contest, Adult Swim will air "Fit is Go" themed on-air promotions and :30's which will encourage people to visit adultswim.com to upload their t-shirt designs and to check out other contestant's submissions. Oh, and Honda branding and videos will be all over the Adult Swim website, natch.
Oddly, as of today, there's no mention of the contest on the website yet.
- A billboard for the eco-friendly Toyota Prius is eco-friendly to the trees behind the board allowing the branches to put through cut outs in the board.
- Newscaster drops angry F bomb on air.
- Alisa Leonard explains Google new Friend Connect service which provides site owners the ability to port in content and members from other social networks.
- PubMatic's AdPrice Index reveals eCPMs for large Web sites dropped 52 percent from 38 cents in March to 18 cents April. Medium Web sites were nearly flat, with monetization dropping from 34 cents in March to 33 cents in April. Small Web sites improved, increasing from $1.18 in March to $1.29 in April.
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