Aquent today announced the launch of a new Web site, The Business of Touch, designed to help business professionals create good first impressions with people from other cultures. The site demonstrates, through animated characters, the proper etiquette for successful greetings in nine languages and fifteen countries, including the United States - which is good since we Americans don't even know how to properly greet.
And no, "Hey, Dude" isn't quite right.
With a tongue-in-cheek style, the humorous animation, by internationally recognized American illustrator and graphic designer Paul Davis, Business of Touch gives site visitors practical tutorials on the very serious business of how to greet and take leave of associates from other cultures. Behaviors such as eye contact, when a kiss is appropriate, whether or not to offer a handshake to women, general body language, and personal space distances are several of the topics covered for each country. The site was created by Heller Communications.
We are loathe to do this but we have to. Last week, VCU Adcenter hosted it's "Annual Event of the Century," a toast and roast to the accomplishments of ad greats Lee Clow, Jeff Goodby, Dan Wieden, David Kennedy, Andy Berlin and Steve Hayden. While, no doubt, these gentlemen are some of the finest in the advertising business and have led agencies and advertisers to tremendous success, the event seemed to portray them as a bunch of hairy old ad guys trying to cling to their youth and be cool by saying fuck and shit a lot. Oh don't listen to us. We're just bitter we're not on stage with them.
Have a look for yourselves.
View video clips at ihaveanidea's website.
A while back, we reported on an ad-hoc campaign created for Coke by industry vet Harry Webber with the idea, Coke needed something bigger than its current campaign.
Coke didn't bite. In an interesting twist there's now a spoof of the campaign. That's right. A spoof of a campaign that never appeared anywhere. While the ad-hoc campaign endeavored to portray Americans as fine, upstanding citizens, the spoof, called A Real American, is more sadistically honest in its snarky portrayal. The spoof, created by Trevor Thomas, a Canadian, interestingly, is a must-see.
McIhenny Company, makers of Tabasco Sauce is suing a restaurant in Marion Iowa, Tabasco's Restaurant and Patio, for using its name. The restaurant says the use of an apostrophe eliminates brand confusion. Uh huh. The restaurant also states they named the establishment after the state in southeastern Mexico and not the hot sauce maker's product.
McIhenny Company "see you in court."
Volvo has signed a deal with Weblog, Inc.'s Autoblog as launch sponsor of the automotive weblog's podcast. A podcast is an MP3 broadcast delivered via RSS making it easy and automatic for people to receive.
The sponsorship consists of an announcer-read :60 at the top of the podcast, other mentions throughout and logo signage on Autoblog's Podcast page.
iPodder.org, which tracks podcasts now reports there are over 3,000 podcasts. Podcasts are an extremely low cost method of publishing audio over the web allowing small sites to produce radio-like broadcasts for download and later listening on people's computers or MP3 devices. As citizen-produced media and MP3 player usage proliferate, this channel is well positioned for exponential growth and offers advertisers yet another niche targeted medium though which to advertise. Just as blog advertising network and rss feed ad networks have sprouted so, no doubt, shall podcast advertising networks providing advertisers efficient means by which to tap this channel.
Drudge reports the Academy is concerned about their choice of Chris Rock for host of this year's Academy Awards show because of some recent comments he made. Reportedly, Rock said, "I never watched the Oscars. Come on, it's a fashion show. What straight black man sits there and watches the Oscars? Show me one! Awards for art are fucking idiotic." Looks like this year's broadcast could be a juicy one.
21st Century is taking an intriguing approach to promoting its car insurance services. It is painstakingly re-creating famous car crash scenes from Hollywood movies such as The French Connection and Speed.
Assuring the ads will mirror the movie scenes as closely as possible, Interpublic's Dailey & Associates worked with the original cinematographer for The French Connection spot and have hired Jan du Bont, director of Speed to film the Speed commercial.
