Google Love Begets Consumer Generated Media

There's not much Google does that doesn't garner praise which has lent itself to consumer love and consumer generated media. Micropersuasion reports someone likes Google Maps so much, they went and created a commercial for it on their own.

Embedded Video Comes to Email For Some

Florida-based company KOTW has announced a new product that allows for the delivery of video via email and which embeds the video within the body of the email rather than as an attachment. The new service will also provide metrics to advertisers such as number of views, length of views and who did the viewing. There's just one problem. It uses ActiveX which, if a personal firewall such as Norton is in place renders the thing useless and, counter productively, results in the need for a traditional video download or trip to a webpage where the video can be viewed.

NOTE: In Comments, Michael Murray of KOTW clarifies some misconceptions we had about the product and offers a more detailed explanation of what the technology can do.

Fitbug Capitalizes on Holiday Gorging season

OK, there's absolutely nothing new about this little video that claims to be a viral before its even had a chance to become viral but it it cute enough to share. It's an "I'm so fat from eating so much during the holidays" fitness promotion for fitness website fitbug.

IE-Only Marketers Are Stupid

"PC Users with Netscape, Mozilla or Firefox: you need to run Internet Explorer to use MTV Overdrive," so says MTV's Broadband Video Channel site. Excuse us, MTV, but no, we don't. Perhaps you haven't heard that Firefox isn't just this little side project that a bunch of geeks work on in their spare time in-between discussing episodes of Battlestar Galactica. It's a full fledged, far superior to Internet Explorer, browser that's gaining some serious market share. Marketers who continue to practice this loyal-to-Microsoft buffoonery are unsmart, unintelligent and losing out on a vast chunk of business.

Publicis Says Shoot the Elves

From Publicis Copenhagen comes this little Christmas time-waster. It's a game where, in order to stop the elves from distracting busy agency workers, you shoot the elves with snowballs while avoiding shooting the employees. Actually, it's a good mental release for anyone who's sick of their boss going to all the Holiday parties while they have to stay strapped to their cube pumping out work for which their boss will take credit. Shoot away.

News Flash: Alex Bogusky Has No Hair!

A new online campaign for the Jennifer Anniston, Kevin Coster movie Rumor Has It has played sweetly into our fluff and puffery-filled world of journalistic nonsense. Online marketing firm Pod Digital Design has created RumorMaker, a site that lets visitors create their own front page tabloid scandal about a friend complete with photograph and snarkish commentary. If there's no photo or snark available, visitors can choose from several provided choices. We couldn't resist temptation and had a bit of fun with Alex Bogusky and his hair.

Family Group Forces Retailers to Say 'Merry Christmas'

Oddly, the American Family Association thinks everyone in America is Christian and celebrates the Christmas holiday. Certainly the vast majority are and do and the recent politically correct shift from labeling everything formerly known as "Merry Christmas" to "Happy Holidays" may have gone too far but we're not sure we need an organization to force companies to say "Merry Christmas" in their marketing. But, unsurprisingly, in our overly issue-oriented world, there is.

The American Family Association has been boycotting stores such as Sears and Target for not including "Merry Christmas" in their signage and advertising. Apparently, the AFA is quite powerful. Both retailers have relented and added "Merry Christmas" to their messaging. We don't know what's more stupid; forcing a retailer to adhere to one particular religion over another or the politically correct insanity that got us here in the first place.

Golf Cart GPS Campaign Worked For Cadillac

A recent Cadillac campaign placed Cadillac DTS ads on thousands of GPS-enabled golf carts at 105 high end golf courses for three months beginning in September was deemed successful by AdverTickets, the company that worked with Cadillac agency Starcom on the effort. A follow-up survey conducted by Edison Media Research found 42 percent noticed an advertisement on the GPS system, 70 percent of the respondents that noticed an advertisement recalled specifically seeing an advertisement for Cadillac DTS, 54 percent of which recalled the advertisement unaided. Younger golfers, under age 24, had a recall of nearly 90 percent.

There Is Most Certainly Life After the :30

During the bathroom breaks and :30 coffee breaks we are allowed here at Adrants headquarters, we have finally finished Joe Jaffe's book Life After the 30-Second Spot. Actually, we finished it about two weeks ago but, again, we aren't allowed much time here to do anything serious what with all the stunt marketing and cleavage out there that had to be given our journalistic excellence. So, finally, we've found a few moments to hide from the Adrants Overlords to reflect on Jaffe's book and share our thoughts with you.

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