Boston Marathon Runner Auctions Self For Children's Hospital Charity

Bob Cargill tells us Boston Marathon runner Dr. Paterson, Ph.D, in order to raise money for the Boston Children's Hospital has placed an auction on eBay asking for $8,000. In addition to asking for the charity money, he's offering himself as well to the highest bidder in the form of a dinner date

42 Below Takes On Celebrities in Latest Viral

While this is definitely not as funny as their classic gay viral, New Zealand's 42 Below Vodka has, in its cheeky fashion, taken on celebrities for it latest viral.

MarketingSherpa Seeks Viral Marketing Campaigns For Survey

MarketingSherpa needs agencies and companies using viral marketing and advertising to participate in this year's survey on Viral Marketing, and to submit their best viral marketing and advertising campaigns for the 2006 Viral Advertising Hall of Fame here. "Last year, we conducted the first survey, gathering practical information and data about Viral Advertising. We were blown away by participation from more than 2,400 survey participants," explains MarketingSherpa's Publisher Anne Holland. "We're interested in seeing year-over-year data, as well as this year's most successful viral marketing campaigns." The survey results will be available for free at MarketingSherpa.com and will be sent to everyone who participates in the survey. The survey deadline is March 17th; for campaign submissions, March 22nd. get thee virals submitted.

360° View Launches Podcast, Explores Agency Search Process

360View describes itself as a Blog and Podcast designed to provide marketers with a fresh perspective on keeping up with the supersonic changes that are happening in the world of marketing. The site has just added a Podcast interview about the advertising agency search process with Michael Keeshan who has helped clients like AT&T and Novartis select their agencies. Future Podcasts will highlight interviews with an email marketing genius, a couple of agency owners, the Creative Director of Time Inc, a division President at PrimeMedia, the President of Post Cereals and an exec at Yahoo!

Aloha Airlines Deals With Luggage, Not Baggage

Now here's an ad with some moxie if that's the right word. In this ad for Aloha Airlines, we have this couple sitting together accompanied by the copy, "We'll deal with your luggage. You deal with your baggage." Whether that sentiment eludes to the husband's bulging mid-sectional baggage or the personal baggage he burdens his wife with with his apparent smugness, the ad certainly extends well behind the save haven of most ridiculously sachrin airline advertising. The work comes from Hawaiian agency Milici Valenti Ng Pack.

Tire Shop Taps Assvertising

The assvertising trend continues, this time, with Russian tire shop 6 Koles which stand for six wheels.

AOL Debuts Crappy Video Service With Old Content

AOL' s new free video service, In2TV will launch Wednesday with premiere advertisers Intel, Kia, Kraft and Hershey. In2TV will host thousands of old Warner Brothers shows hoping to become the first stop on the web for video content. We wish them luck. We have no idea who would want to watch all those old shows and, maddeningly, they had to go and use some video technology that requires Active X rather than a more graceful solution like YouTube or Quicktime. There's also this thing called Hi-Q which, of course, doesn't work with Firefox.

So basically, the service is perfect for all those middle America, late adopter, IE-Suffering couch potatoes who somehow find pleasure in watching reruns of Wonder Woman, Head of the Class and Welcome Back Kotter.

Avid To Send Avid Creatives to Las Vegas

Avid, that wizard behind commercial creation, is hosting a contest which will send the winner to NAB2006 in Las Vegas. The contest site says, "Cool ideas. Hot technology. That's what turns us on. What are you avid for? Maybe it's snowboarding on fresh corduroy. Or all-night poetry slams. Or your best friend 's band. Whatever it is, if you can convince us to love what you love in a 60-second video, you may win a trip to Las Vegas this April." If you're into the whole Las Vegas thing and you're creative, whip up a :60 and get yourself a free trip.

Gaming Sites On Top, PR Sites On Bottom of Website Effectiveness Study

The Web Marketing Association, sponsor of the annual international WebAward competition, today announced the findings of a decade-long study of Web development trends across more than 80 industries. The resulting Internet Standards Assessment Report provides industry benchmarks for Web site development and is based on data collected from nearly 10,000 Web site evaluations.

The report reveals that gaming Web sites dominate the top scores in every category, followed by music, which placed second overall, and automobile and sports Web sites, which tied for third place. The industries with the lowest average Web site scores included radio, public relations and search engines.

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Radio Station Launches T & A College Ball Tournament

Indianapolis radio station WFBQ has launched its own version of the NCAA tournament. Sponsored by Hardee's, Finlandia Vodka, Southern Comfort and Jack Daniels, WFBQ's version of the tournament throws basketball teams out and replaces them with hot models. Now, rather than tracking your team, you can track hotties.

Each division gets it's own set of models to select from. For someone who really doesn't give a crap about college basketball, this contest is way more fun.

Microsoft Created It's Own iPod Packaging Spoof

iPod Observer reports Microsoft was behind the creation of the iPod packaging spoof we had here earlier that slammed Microsoft for its overuse of design elements, snips and other call outs on it's packagaing. The video spoof demonstrated what an iPod package would look like if it came from Microsoft. Microsoft spokesman Tom Pilla told iPod Observer, "It was an internal-only video clip commissioned by our packaging [team] to humorously highlight the challenges we have faced RE: packaging and to educate marketers here about the pitfalls of packaging/branding,"

Nothing this funny, whether created internally or externally, is able to be contained. While the video has been removed from YouTube, you can view it at Google Video.

GM Launches 'Create A Tahoe Commercial' Contest

While we missed it while fast forwarding through the commercials during Monday's The Apprentice (yes, we still watch that crap), Chevy has teamed with The Apprentice and launched a consumer-generated advertising contest for the 2007 Chevy Tahoe, heavily featured in the episode. Rather than asking people to simply submit hack videos, Chevy has set up a site where people can click and drag commercial components together to create a canned spot. We;re sure that's fun for the average Joe but if Chevy actually wanted something creative, they'd let people submit original stuff. Then again, the promotion is supposed to be for the general public and not creative geniuses. Oh well, yet another brand climbs on the consumer-generated media truck.