Hilary Swank Joins Key to Cure Cancer Campaign

Oscar winner Hilary Swank has joined the Saks Fifth Avenue Key to The Cure cancer campaign, following Nicole Kidman and Charlize Theron. The Key to The Cure is a two day shopping event help at Saks stores nationwide October 28 and 29. In PSAs promoting the event, Swank will wear a Swarovski crystal covered Diane Von Furstenberg t-shirt. Five percent of sales over the two day period will be donated to cancer research programs.

Study Claims PR Works Better Than PPC Advertising

It's always been known PR is an efficiently powerful thing and here's another bit of research that supports that notion at the expense of pay-per-click advertising. A research brief released today by MarketingExperiments announced that public relations campaigns can cost less and deliver better returns on investment (ROI) than pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaigns.

Over a six-month period of time, MarketingExperiments tested nine news releases covering various topics that were sent out over professional and free newswire services. MarketingExperiments tracked the direct incoming traffic and backlinks on its site as well as the interview opportunities that resulted from each press release. It also compared the average cost per visit associated with each news release versus both the cost per visit associated with its average optimized PPC campaign and the cost per click for relevant targeted keywords in Google.

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President Bush: Lord of War

We've seen this image of a billboard at Mission and Duboce in San Fransisco floating around for w few days so we figured we' share it. It's a billboard for the Nicholas Cage movie Lord of Ward bur the image has been covered over with a picture of President Bush yielding a cute, little political statement for us all to laugh at.

Guidewire Launches Corporate Blogging Survey

Guidewire Group, producer of the BlogOn conference has partnered with content management company iUpload to launch a survey querying corporations on the current state of blogging at the enterprise level and the blogging strategies behind current blog-related initiatives.

Lone Marketer Sticks With kate Moss

Kate Moss may has been ditched by many marketers over her cocaine use but one is holding out and capitalizing on the publicity. London cosmetics company Rimmel, who has used Moss previously, is keeping her on and will feature her in a commercial highlighting her partying persona with Rimmel standing on for coke when she needs a boost the morning after. The name of the advertised line: Recovery. How appropriate.

Video Promotes Lance Armstrong Ad Week Scavenger hunt

The now corporation has produced a video to promote Boards-hosted Lance Armtrong "The Boards Big Find," a New York City Advertising Scavenger Hunt held September 29, in association with Advertising Week. Teams from the agency and commercial production communities will be challenged to find a series of industry-related objects and articles and help raise money for the Lance Armstrong Foundation.

Ads to Appear on Parking Lot Stripes

In the seemingly endless quest to plaster every last surface of the world with advertising, Denver ad man, Greg Gorman, creator of the Budweiser frogs and their signature "Bud-Wei-Ser," has applied for a patent and trademarked the words, "Parking Stripe," which is the name of his company. The company will work with 3M, a client of Gorman's at Golden advertising, and parking lot owners to adhere special strips containing ad messages right over existing parking lot lines. Parking lots could become very colorful places in the not too distant future.

BuzzMetrics Acquired by Trendum

Online word of mouth research firm BuzzMetrics,has been acquired by Trendum, an Internet search and linguistic analysis technology company. The tow companies hope to create global standards to measure and analyze consumer buzz.

The company will do business as BuzzMetrics and have the strategic backing of VNU, owner of ACNielsen and Nielsen Media Research. VNU is a minority shareholder in the new company. BuzzMetrics hopes the deal will build on Trendum's technology, and expand the operation through VNU's global sales, marketing and research capabilities.

Ad Age Finally Features 'Big Ad'

Ad Age has done two things of note today in its TV Spots of the Week column, First, it features a Toyota Prius ad that is unauthorized by the car maker and was created by Area 51 Films and distributed by New York PR firm Juice to highlight director Theodore Melfi. The second, months after the ad raced through the Internet, Ad Age has finally decided to include Carlton Draught's Big Ad. Why the wait?

Other spots this week include a great spot for Cincinnati Bell, created by GJP Advertising, which shows a guy using dial up and as the camera zooms out, we realize he an exhibit in a museum...next to a cave man exhibit. Quite brilliant actually. Unless, of course, you're the loser still using dial up. Dockers does a love connection with San Francisco street cars. Canada's CHUM Television has a spot, created by Mitchell Gabourie, for the Buck Calder experience, a comedy series that follows an American director working in Canada making a fool of himself.

Advertising Week Kicks Off, Overly Sprawling

Ad Age keeps us up to date on Advertising Week happenings. Ad Age Editor Scott Donaton's take is the event is far too publich and far too sprawling, celebrating advertising as it was 30 years ago rather than advertising as it is today. Ongoing coverage is here.

'The O.C.' Hits Cell Phones With Game

As if watching FOX's The O.C. wasn't enough to whisk people into the fake world of Orange County's plastic wannabes, FOX has signed a licensing deal with game maker Gameloft to create a mobile game that, according to Gameloft president Michael Guillemont, will let players take on the role of one the the show's main characters, create an original character, join cliques, dress hip and generally go O.C. with their cell phones. That's all we need. More mindless Marissa pretenders. The game is set to release next year.

Mortal Combat Viral Answer to Meeting Insanity

Celebrating the beauty of violence and glorifying its callous regard for it, Mortal Kombat has launched a new viral (or, at least an online film they hope goes viral - after all, it's ain't viral until it becomes viral), called Blood on the Carpet, to promote the new Shaolin Monks game. The film was directed by Seamus Masterson of Maverick and will be tracked by Viral Chart. Violent or not, you have to admit, after day-long, mindless, chest-thumping, group hug, brand-building blather sessions, this is exactly what you'd want to do to the pontificating, puffery-spewing idiot sitting next to you.

Pepsi Australia Spoofs Own Campaign

Spoofing its own Pepsi Max Heaps Rich campaign, Pepsi Australia has launched a viral advertising campaign called Heaps Poor Pepsi Min which, over the past three weeks, has been viewed by 160,000 people. The site features a spoof of Pepsi's currently running promotional television spot along with purposefully bad prizes and a game that lets visitors determine how boring they are. Some nice insiderishness here.