Focus Group Company Promotes Services With Cheap Focus Groups

For all you Boston area ad agencies that want to put your work in front of focus groups on the cheap, Bernett Research is offering a 20-30 minute focus group for $1,000. The reason they're doing it is to promote their new Seaport facility. Stacy Graiko is putting it together and if you are interested, you can contact her here: [email protected]. There. We've done our good deed for the day.

Playful Hospital Room Delivers Serious Message

We're late getting to these but these Ministry of Health in Portugal ads created by McCann Portugal are great. The imagery is fun and playful but the message is very serious: don't screw around with your health. Be sure to monitor your blood pressure and cholesterol level before it's too late.

In one ad, we see a huge teddy bear dressed as a doctor with a inflatable giraffe/nurse in a doll room attending a sick woman. In the other one, a man is alone at night in an emergency room made with Lego. See both ads here and here.

Lack Talent? Have Hair

While it doesn't answer the question of how American Idol survived beyond its first season, our current theory, that lots of hair can keep you buoyant despite any other merits you may lack, is the reason we think the unlikely Sanjaya Malakar remains in the musical running.

See his audition here.

His singing ain't fantastic but the whole seven ponytails ("For good luck!") shtick he recently pulled off is endearing to somebody. Many somebodies.

Even Simon is at a loss for words, noting if America likes him then it doesn't matter what he says. The defeated attitude wears badly on our judge of choice.

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Wanted: Writers, Bloggers for ad:tech San Francisco

Four times a year Adrants, along with MarketingVOX, produces the ad:tech weblog, a site that provides in-depth coverage of the ad:tech conferences. During each show, we report on topics discussed during conference panels and keynote speeches along with memes and trends that arise from the show. We also walk the exhibit hall floor to discover the latest and greatest the industry has to offer as well as scour the party scene to see who's hip and who isn't. It's a fun gig and we like to share the fun.

We're looking for a few well-versed people in the ad industry who'd like to join our team to cover the ad:tech show in San Francisco April 24-26. ad:tech focuses on interactive and online marketing so you should have a good understanding of that space and be able to write intelligently about it as well as offer opinion and insight. If you already write or blog about the industry, that's a plus.

The compensation isn't stellar. In fact, there really isn't any to be honest other than free entry to the conference (about $1,000 depending upon when you sign up) and the chance to schmooze with the industry's best. Oh, and then there's the parties. So, if you're interested in joining the team, please contact me, Steve Hall at [email protected].

Karl Rove Enthusiastically Molests Hip-Hop

We don't know what Mr. Rove was thinking at the Radio Television Correspondents' Association Dinner, but if hip-hop wasn't dead before he just shot it in the face. We'll never again be able to purge the memory of him jerking his hands from side to side and whipping out his cell-phone with knees bouncing.

Well, if we were part of the Administration we too would run with the strange, liberating sensation that comes with having nothing left to lose.

Men Speak Blunt Truth in Book Campaign

The Silly Girl points to a set of hilarious videos which promote the Harper Collins book The Average American Male by Chad Kultgen. In the videos, the usual scenes between male an female take place (woman tells man she loves him, man shocked at dinner bill, man put in awkward position when girlfriend's Dad wonders when he will propose to his daughter) but rather than the men in the videos responding as one might expect, they respond more truthfully than many might like to think.

ad:tech Announces Bigger, Better Awards Ceremony

ad:tech San Francisco is on the way. Yes, we go. Yes, we promote it. This year ad:tech is hosting a newer, bigger, better Awards Show. The biggest yet, the event will judge work in 24 categories from best B to B website to best campaign optimization to best mobile campaign to best overlay ad to best consumer campaign and more. Finalists include AKQA, T3, Mullen, Sharpe Partners, Deep Focus, Ogilvy, Draft/FCB, R/GA, Spacedog and others.

The judging will be done by 80 members of the advertising community along with an executive panel of 16 including FedEx's Steve Pacheco, Denuo's Scott Witt, Organic's Mark Kingdon and Real Girls Media Network's Kate Everett-Thorpe. And that's just the formal stuff.

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Cougar Moms: Jesus Loves You More than You Will Know

Because 50-something Beverly Hills slingback-trollers need constant reminding about their divine responsibility to unwind the threads of age, Restylane releases this viral hopeful about the dangers inherent to having a cougar mom.

Do you really need to get work done to inspire a giddy 20-something to make out with you? Boys have harbored MILF and teacher fantasies since the beginning of time. It's not like little Bennie needed much convincing to fall into the arms of the sultry (and conventionally deformed) Mrs. Robinson.

If 50 is the new 22, does that make 40 the new 16? And if so, where does that put actual 20-somethings? Are they competing with fetuses?

Ogilvy Canada Goes Old School For HoneyComb Cereal

With a mid-nineties style, Geocities-like site, Ogilvy Toronto has embarked upon a quirky journey for Kraft Canada HoneyComb Cereal. They've created a site called Bee Boy which follows the research of Barbara Sommerville as she explores Jane Goodall-style a boy who has seemingly been raised by bees. Awkward encounters with vibrating cell phones ensue.

We're inclined to say the use of decades-plus old design tries a bit too hard. Beside, it's been done many times before. It's not like Ogilvy is hiding the fact they're behind the project but with the available publishing tools at people's disposal today, it's near impossible to create a site like this unless you know raw HTML. Doing to just screams, "This was done by an an agency trying to make it look like it wasn't!" Perhaps creating a faux blog would have been a more timely approach. Having said that, the videos on the site are amusing enough and worth a look.

Ad Display No Match for Bouncing Boobs

We already know that Wonderbra likes playing with the space between magazine pages, and they've taken that concept outdoors. This scrolling display can't seem to do its job because of all the, uh, baggage on Wonderbra's well-endowed model. Clever. Maybe Viagra or even Aussiebum should start paying attention, considering this isn't the first of the bra company's campaigns that can go both ways.

Do you know what kind of bra ad would really catch our eye? A dramatic expansion, a violent pop, and mass hysteria. Are you paying attention, Wonderbra?

Milwaukee's Best Brings Us Closer to Technology than We Ever Wanted

We're completely weirded-out by the T-Scan 2000 for Milwaukee's Best Light.

The TScan scans your tongue to gauge which beer is right for you. Because we're sharp as tacks, we didn't actually put our tongues on the screens, just clicked through the scanning process to the very end. But the system rejected us because it lacked sufficient tongue information. Okay, whatever. So we clicked through again. Again, insufficient tongue information, and could we please add pressure too?

OMGWTF, we said. So, ever so gingerly, we put our tongues on the monitor.

And still yielded no results.

And now our screen is wet.

We feel so douchey.

Wal-Mart CEO Doesn't Like Advertising, Prom Queen Hits MySpace

- Wal-Mart CEO: I'm not a big fan of marketing. Oops, I meant advertising.

- It seems Microsoft might scoop up DoubleClick for a questionable $2 billion.

- More contextual foolishness. In a Herald Sun article about two Sudanese women getting stoned to death, an ad with a man and his son throwing stones appears. Don't you love the intelligence of computers?

- Michael Eisner has hooked up with MySpace which will broadcast his online series Prom Queen beginning April 2. Eighty ninety-second episodes will be released. Check out the teaser here.

- Musician Nathan Bennett has, in one day, written a song and created a video called On MySpace which thanks listeners for finding him on MySpace. He hopes to use it to promote himself.

- Even prostitutes advertise.

Kit Kat Says Get A Third Life

For all you lovers of Second Life, this Netherlands Kit Kat spot, created by UbachsWisbrun/JWT is just for you. So get off your ass. Turn off the laptop and get a Third Life...or at take a break with a Kit Kat bar.

Sears Opens Review For $780 Million Media Business

Sears wants better "efficiency and effectiveness" in its media buying and, apparently, incumbent MindShare and MEC Interaction aren't delivering. A review for the $780 million piece of business will be opened. Aiming to complete the review by second quarter, the retail giant has not named the consultant that will handle the review nor the names of any considered agencies. At this point, Sears' creative agency Y&R Chicago seems to be on safe ground.

Diversity Conference Series Travels to Boston

Continuing our support of the diversity in advertising cause, on May 16th, Business Development Institute in partnership with Boston University, The Ad Club, and Adrants will host the first annual Boston Advertising, Marketing and PR Industry Diversity Job Fair and Leadership Conference. The two-day event will be hosted by Boston University on May 15th and May 16th and will provide advertising, marketing and PR companies an opportunity to connect with today's up and coming minority job candidates in New England. A Networking Reception will take place the evening of May 15th and the morning of May 16th will consist of a Leadership Conference followed by the Job Fair.

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IFAW Lets Letters Linger for Endangered Life

The International Fund for Animal Welfare launches a campaign under the banner "Will only words remain?" The idea is that if we don't start taking care of our furry little friends, we'll lose all but the memory. To correspond with this they're spreading actual words spelling out endangered animals. Here's a video of them creating a zebra-shaped zebra crossing in Amsterdam.

Unless they're also leaving educational brochures or at least a sad but eloquent zebra mascot nearby, we're not sure it quite gets the message across. And we feel a little guilty about thinking it would be kind of fun to walk across the word "zebra" - you know, it would be like playing hopscotch or walking down a warped crosswalk. There's something so Through the Looking Glass about that.

Boredom is the Next Pseudo-Disease

While trolling our usual palette of sites we were unpleasantly distracted by a Hellraiser-esque video of a girl affixing clothespins to her face. The ad gave us an unpleasant start and after clicking onward we found ourselves at Boredom Hurts, allegedly founded by Colin Padden, first to pin and air the latest (and perhaps most common) reason to pop pills: boredom.

Clicking on a beaker marked "Cure" (very "Eat me" a la Alice in Wonderland) reveals a timer counting down four more days until the latest alternative to Xanax is revealed. Can't wait to see what genius is behind this campaign. We hope it's not Vista again.

Adworld: the next Big Pharma? Everybody from Earthlink to P&G is trying to push a diagnosis for a product cocktail.

Update: an Adrants reader reports a "view source" check on the site reveals Ford URLs. Bleh. The boredom connection is apt.

Burrell Dissects Young Black Americans. Because Nobody's Ever Done that Before.

Multicultural firm Burrell Communications Group conducted a study on current perceptions of Black History Month (February). At least 79 percent of those researched agree future generations should understand African-Americans' historical struggles, though the message of honouring these struggles doesn't resound as strongly for younger generations as in previous ones.

Black youth also have a different picture of black challenges, believing issues of racism and oppression are more covert today. They focus more on financial empowerment, battling crime, and educational advancement, and prefer for Black History Month to highlight current African-American accomplishments and issues.

63 percent of respondents also think companies' participation in Black History month helps enhance their image and are more likely to buy products and spread hype for those that tote black achievements.

So maybe Nissan's onto something. But we doubt it.