Demi Moore New Face of Versace

The New York Post reports Demi Moore will take over for Madonna as the new face of Versace. The paper says speculation began following a sighting yesterday, noted in Women's Wear Daily, of Moore, boyfriend Ashton Kutcher, photographer Mario Testino and Versace herself eating lunch at V in London.

Trend: Ads Imitate Game Shows

New York Times Columnist Stuart Elliott takes a look at a developing trend whereby advertisers are modelling their commercials after the tried and true game show format. Orbitz, Bank of New York, Cingular, FedEx and Old Navy are a few of the marketers who have glommed onto the trend. Orbitz has hired game show host oldtimer Wink Martindale, host of High Rollers and Tic Tac Dough three decades ago, to host a series of the company's game show style commercial.

Prize Offered For Most Contagious Media

ContagiousMedia, an organization that embraces consumer-created, contagious media, has launched a Showdown where prizes are offered for various categories including the creation of a site with the most unique visitors, the first site to reach an Alexa rating higher than 20,000, a Technorati prize for the site with the most links from blogs and a creative commons prize for the most popular site under an attribution ShareAlike license. Go at it all you creative types.

LA Times to Waste $10 Million On Marketing Campaign

While the company might consider revising this number downward following GM's advertising exodus, the LA Time said, yesterday, it will launch a $10 million to boost its ailing circulation. The campaign, pointless in the face of steadily increased online newspaper readership, will include direct marketing, television, radio and, smartly, online. The paper's circ is down 5.6 percent and, rather than look to new areas for growth, the paper blamed recent telemarketing limitations for the decline. Perhaps we should just spell it out for the LA Times and for all other newspapers engaging in this losing battle:

NO ONE READS PRINTED NEWSPAPERS ANYMORE!

OK, so a few still do but wouldn't it make more sense for a company to embrace a growing medium as opposed to a declining one? That said, newspapers don't have to say goodbye to paper forever but they should concentrate on a business model with more promise such as custom published versions of the paper, based on a reader's interests, delivered online but, if desired, printable by the individual for those moments when it's not so cool to bring a laptop into the bathroom. Additionally, 70 percent of a newspaper's content is, likely, of no interest to an individual reader. It's senseless waste of time and effort to produce content no one will consume. Newspaper publishers should set their sights on delivering products where 100 percent of the content is of interest to the reader. Yes, much easier said that done but so was the notion of human flight.

McDonald's Taipei Outdoor Ads Get Interesting

More interesting that the usual run-of-the-mill taxi cab advertising, Taipei-based photographer Richy caught this image of Ronald McDonald's feet adorning a taxi. He also shot an image of this giant wallscape on which the likeness of Ronald McDonald has been placed to look as though he is climbing up the board. It reminds us of the Adidas board in Japan on which two players, hung from ropes, played ten minute soccer matches.

Time Inc. Launches Wireless Campaign

Teaming with U.K.-based mobile marketing company Flyxt, Time Inc. launched, on April 1, a text messaging campaign directed towards current and prospective People and Teen People magazines that provided news, polls, horoscopes and chat rooms. The campaign is expected to expand to other titles, including Time and Entertainment Weekly, this week and to Sports Illustrated in a few weeks.