As a featured speaker at MediaPost's Online Media, Marketing & Advertising Conference during Advertising Week next week, one seriously has to wonder if Agency.com Executive Creative Director Tom Ajello will be able to discuss any topic other than his fist bumping Subway Pitch video. I feel for the guy but he really has to take that thug life wool hat off. Anyway, we're not going to be there because MediaPost doesn't like us but feel free to tell us how it goes,
In a very un-TV network-like manner and in response to freaks like this who are offended any company would dare to promote anything on YouTube, NBC created a video called Bill the Promo Guy in which Bill asks viewers to understand he does the promos because the salary he receives for producing them puts his son through prep school and buys his daughter a horse. NBC has arrived. It gets YouTube. It gets the video response. It gets this groovin' social media thing. Ah fuck it, it's just another ad. But a good one. A really, really good one. Kudos.
Adverb tells us about a new Yahoo TV campaign and the interesting alignment between the company's "in the now" approach and it's release of campaign outtake video to, well, keep people in the know.
- Scion is looking for architectural and interior designers for Scion Floorplan, a design competition where individuals will be asked to submit a complete design concept for Scion's dealership showroom. The first place winner will receive $5,000 and the opportunity to have their design brought to life as the next generation Scion dealership showroom.
- This has been done before but, hey, it's not something you see all the time.
- HSBC has launched The Property Panel, a monthly webcast offering tips and advice on buying a home.
Fights with Mark Naples aside, Datran has joined the bloguverse (isn't that better than blogosphere? After all, with blogging growing and a universe being bigger than a sphere, it's a valid replacement for the oh-so-tired and overused "blogosphere") with a blog named Outperformance Marketing because well, Performance Marketing was taken and ouot performing is better than performing. The name choice is explained on the blog thusly, "Datran Media coined the term Outperformance Marketing to describe our commitment to employ superior performance-based marketing strategies. The Outperformance Marketing Journal is our way of sharing this commitment beyond our walls to marketers everywhere." Not that they're actually going to share anything they could otherwise sell but, hey, it's an admirable venture. Editorial will provide email marketing news and research written by "an industry leading editorial staff" ie. Datran marketing folks
Like a scene out of Mallrats, four guys in this commercial for the Alltel Wireless My Circle plan plot a way to stop the "call ten friends for free no matter what plane they are on" feature because, after all, who could possibly have more than ten friends? Created by Campbell-Ewald, the spot is part of the wireless company's second campaign called "Sales Guys" which follows the initial "Icons" launch campaign. Beyond television, the campaign will include radio, print, event marketing, online advertising and webisodes. Be sure to check out the geeks on the Alltel website along with "Chad" who attempts to get in touch with competing wireless company CEO's to tell them about the My Circle plan.
Here's an interesting site created by Maclaren McCann Direct & Interactive for Pontiac Canada to promote the 2007 G5 on which visitors can fool around with their mouse and keyboard to create customized visual and audio representations of the vehicle. There's also a "build your own" section and a contest to win a new G5. One of the more engaging car sites out there.
Part Barney cartoon, part Second Life experience, part Honda Hate, this entrancing Colorado State Tobacco Education & Prevention effort created by Cactus and AgencyNet with help from Biscuit, Final Cut, Company 3 & R!OT, Lime and Beacon Street Studios on the TV spots is an elaborate creation of an entire online town, called C-Ville, with endless things to do and see. The underlying message within the town is choice. The right choice of course and the importance of choice when it comes to deciding whether or not to take that drag.
PSAs, viewable on the site and currently on air, show the importance of making the right choices and direct kids to the site for more education about making the right choices. Final Cut's Carlos Arias explains the approach saying, "Kids are so sophisticated these days so we don't need to make the message obvious. This is a new way of communicating with youth -- by not spoon-feeding them. Through great visuals and interesting stories, we were able to build up the intrigue. These PSAs had an interesting, short film style - like a throwback to 80s movies or branding commercials with sing-a-longs. They're just zany!" And, indeed they are. Zany enough to maybe actually work.
Sponsored by the NRDC, the Environmental Countdown and Ford, former Rocketboomer Amanda Congdon is heading across America on a five week road trip in a hybrid vehicle for a project called Amanda Across America. On a blog and in videos, she'll document her trip and meetings she'll have with other bloggers, politicians and environmentalists along the way. Looking like a Loneleygirl15 spoof (intentionally), Amanda kicks off her trip with a video taken in her "Connecticut bedroom" in which she displays exuberant excitement usually reserve for, well, loneleygirl15 videos.
Anyway, Gawker wonders about the whole thing, writing, "Is she really passionate about driving cross-country on some environmentalist-sponsored road trip that landed her in Good magazine? Or is she relatively unemployed and desperate for the world not to forget that she's got a decent rack?" We think the latter but we're not going to say that because she might hang up on us like she did the radio DJ who tried to tell her she was hot.
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