Abercrombie & Fitch Deny Involvement With Nazi-esque Outdoor Posters

Previously, we reported the existence of outdoor posters in the window of an abondoned store in San Francisco for Abercrombie & Fitch which incorporate Nazi imagery.

Adrants has contacted Abercrombie & Fitch and the company has clearly denied any involvement with these postings or the imagery.

Online Political Ads May Face Regulation

Political advertising on the Internet has, to date, been a free for all. The money to pay for online campaigns can come from anywhere and candidates to not have to appear in the ads endorsing them. Currently, online advertising does not have to adhere to the stricter offline rules which are regulated by the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act. That may soon change as the Federal Election Commission begins to review whether the Internet should continue to be exempt from campaign finance law.

The FEC is revisiting the law after U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ruled in September, the FEC's special treatment of the Internet flys in the face of the law's intent.

Pirillo: RSS to Replace Email Marketing

At a recent Blog Business Summit, industry consultant Chris Pirillo said, "Email marketing is dead."

He claims spam and filters have killed the channel as a viable advertising medium. A former fan of email marketing, Pirillo, and other industry luminaries have switched gears and are now proponents of RSS as the new method of content delivery and advertising.

Weblogs are the biggest users of RSS allowing readers to be notified through a newsreader when new content has been added to the weblog.

News organizations have also started using RSS to publish their news stories. So far, RSS is spam free and, as long as advertisers don't clutter feeds with ads, RSS will likely overtake email as the preferred method for receiving content.

ISP Blocks Body Parts to Promote Parental Controls

An Adrants reader points to today's edition of Metro newspaper in Toronto carries a four page cover wrap ad for ISP Bell promoting their Bell Sympatico online service which includes parental and viral controls. On one panel, using an image of a school text book showing a woman's body with breasts and pelvic region blurred, the headline reads, "You'll do anything to protect your kids from inappropriate content."

Apparently, we are to believe that sex education is a bad thing and kids should be protected from it. That's twisted logic. Now if Bell had used an image of, say, Jenna Jameson with appropriate body parts blurred, the message would make far more sense. This ad basically says Bell will shield your kids from beneficially educational content which wreaks of over protectionism.

View a larger version of the ad here.

Vibrating Couch Confuses Mum, Embarrasses Daughter

Oh those Brits and their humor. Here's a spot from Durex that has Mum stymied by the vibrating device she finds under the cushion of her daughters couch during a visit. Needless to say, the daughter is a bit embarrassed.

Brian Adams Valentine Viral Vomit Follow Up

OK, so Valentine's day was two days ago and on that day, aside from Hallmark's website crashing, Bryan Adams revealed he was behind the disgusting Who Ordered Room Service viral video in which a waiter enters a hotel room and pukes all over a knecking couple enjoying some love on the bed. Yup, Adams' new album is called Room Service and somehow he thought the relationship between puking and promoting an album was a good thing. Usually puking is associated more with having a great distaste for something rather than having a great love for it.

Perhaps, for some odd reason, we're all suppose to hate his new album.

Experience the power puking here.

UPDATE: It's all a hoax. We've been had. Adland discusses the fake viral trend and how it is ruining any semblance of trust that might have, at one time, existed between marketer and consumer.

Abercrombie & Fitch Spoofed By Nazi-esque Outdoor Campaign

Photopia reports seeing outdoor posters in the window of an abondoned store in San Francisco for Abercrombie & Fitch which incorporate Nazi imagery.

Other than grabbing attention, we wonder what A & F were thinking.

Nothing, of course. They had nothing to do with it. As others have pointed out, seemingly unable to grasp our sense of humor, this is, clearly, a spoof. The work of someone with a great distaste for AF. Now we've spelled it out for you. It really does takes the fun out of it, doesn't it? View more images here.

To be clear, Adrants has contacted Abercrombie & Fitch and they have clearly denied any involvement with this imagery.

Napster Wastes $2.4 Million on Super Bowl Ad, Music Stolen

Just a few days after Napster spent $2.4 million to promote it's new, $15 per month, music rental service, Napster To Go, enterprising souls have already cracked the code allowing people to get up to 20,160 minutes worth of free music during the service's 14 day free trial period. That amounts to 252, 80 minute CDs. The site reports the hack works with Napster's standard service as well. Seems Napster is destined to be a free music service after all.

While it takes some work and some time, the process is not complicated and is described here.

Napster has responded with "A note from Napster's CTO" on their website claiming, as if to deflect focus from Napster, the hack will work on any music service. We're wondering how other music services feel about Napster's CTO making that statement publicly. It seems, though, Napster's CTO statement is referring to a process other than the one described on the "marv on record" site. We'll leave that technical debate to the geeks.

While we don't entirely condone the stealing of music, we do get a rise from "power of the people" responses to large corporation's stifling business practices. Music executives everywhere are wishing the computer was never invented.