VW Promotes Car With Terrorist Bombing

There's a VW viral ad floating around today for the Volkswagen Polo. It's a smaller car than the Golf and has undergone a facelift. Currently, the car sells in Europe. It's unclear whether it will be available in the U.S. Considering current world events, this creative is quite daring but, at the same time, very supportive of the tagline, "Small but tough." Unfortunately, the guy in the spot chose the wrong car for his job.

Ad Creatives May Lose Jobs to India

Just as many other industries outsource the bulk of their work, it's not surprising it's now being done in the advertising industry. Ad execs David Banjeree and Seema Trivedi have launched Banjeree & Partners, a New York-based agency which will outsource a portion of the creative process to India. Founder Banerjee says research and initial concepting will be handled in New York and then sent to 15 teams in India who will create the actual work. Banerjee claims his shop can do the work for 40 to 60 percent less than going rates.

American Marketing Association to Debut Internet Radio Show

Tomorrow and noon EST, the American Marketing Association will debut its Internet radio show Marketing Matters LIVE! hosted by Tim Riester. The show will be webcast on wsRadio and include interviews with AMA members on marketing topics including the growth of Internet radio.

Viral Award Winners Announced

The winners of the Viral Awards were announced last week in London at the Royal Society of Arts for an evening of viral celebration. More than 200 members of Europe's advertising community turned out for the festivities. Winners included Crispin Porter + Bogusky with three first prize awards including Best Writing, and Creative use of Media; Matt Vescovo picked up an award for Best Use of Humor for a series of "Instructoart" spots for MTV; McCann Erickson USA took the Word of Mouth Award for their work on the Masterclass “Priceless” campaign. The Best Campaign went to The Viral Factory for its "Trojan Games." A full list of winners is here.

Rolling Stone Rejects Bible Ad

At first look, sex, drugs and rock and roll might not be an environment in which a bible advertiser would want to associate with but for Zondervan, publisher of Today's New International Version of the Bible, it's right where its target audience of 18-34 year olds hang. So maybe Rolling Stone isn't completely about sex, drugs and rock and roll but the iconic publication doesn't want religious ads in its magazine and has rejected an ad for Zondervan's new edition of the Bible.

The word "truth" in the ad's tagline, "Timeless truth; Today's language," raised the eyebrows of Rolling Stone parent company Wenner Media General Manager Kent Brownridge who said, "The copy is a little more than an ad for the Bible. It's a religious message that I personally don't disagree with [but] we are not in the business of publishing advertising for religious messages."

Electronic Arts Signs Fifteen Year Deal With ESPN

Fifteen years is a long time to commit to anything especially in the fast paced world of marketing but that's exactly what Electronic Arts decided to do with ESPN. The video game maker will pay ESPN between $750 and $850 million for the exclusive right to use the ESPN brand name in at least nine of its sports games. The deal follows another in which EA paid the NFL $300 million to use the likeness of the League's players, stadiums and uniforms.

FCC Insanity Continues, FOX Pixelates Cartoon Butt

Even though the episode originally ran five years ago, FOX, in light of the recent FCC crack down, decided to digitally cover the butt of the baby Stewie character in a recent re-run of The Family Guy. The move is, perhaps, in reaction to its recent run in with the FCC which, in October, fined 169 FOX stations $7,000 each for a Married By America episode in which whipped cream was licked from a strippers body.

While Anheuser-Busch has already stated one of its spots will make fun of last year's Super Bowl halftime show which kicked off all this insanity, there are sure to be more humorous references to this year's heightened sensibilities.