 Advertising truly is everywhere. You simply can not escape it. It is in urinals, in golf holes, on ATMS, on shopping carts and baby strollers. On police cars and in taxis. The list never ends.
The advertising industry has gone beyond all rationale when it comes to unique ad placements. The problem though is that it is self perpetuating. As one who is in the business and knows, if you don't do it, your competitor will do it first. Is it right? Maybe. Maybe not. From a business perspective, it's hard not to engage in the ever intrusive forms of advertising that you see today. I'm in the biz and I hate it. I close pop ups before they pop, delete spam before I read it, hang up on telemarketers after the telltale delay, switch to another channel or station when a commercial comes on, throw direct mail away in bulk before I even look at it. Yet, the message still gets through to me. I am still bombarded by every new product launch and stupid "new and improved" commercial.
So what am I going to do? Hide? Of course not. I'm going to come up with the next best form of ever present intrusive advertising. Let me think...I've got it...toilet paper with my client's logos on it!
Tallahassee Democrat: There's no escape from advertising, even in the backseat --------
Just when we thought we were safe from the inanities of Martha Stewart, here she comes again with "Everyday Food" a food category book for the masses. And in a well conceived move, her name takes a small place in the tagline.
Ad Age: MARTHA STEWART LAUNCHES NEW MAGAZINE
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Vote for the best weblogs of the year here:
Third Annual Weblog Awards
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Another long-form advertainment has been launched. "Waiting for Woody", a 30 minute comedy that is a veiled commercial for Best Buy, can be downloaded by Tivo users in California. This is apparently the third Tivo advertising outing for Best Buy following a May Sheryl Crow video sneak preview, and a November promotion for it's James Bond collector edition DVD set.
The urge to merge programming with advertising continues to grow and is obviously in the best interest of Tivo to play along since broadcasters are wary of it's commercial skipping abilities. Even though it may seem like there will be no escape from advertising, perhaps this form will force an improvement in creativity.
IAR: Best Buy Sponsors Film on TiVo
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With consumers finding ever increasing ways to avoid advertisements, in-program product placement is becoming more prevalent. Labatt USA takes over the bar on Fox Sports Net and Labatt will also have cameo appearances by the Labatt bear mascot. Home Depot follows next month with a set designed to look like a backyard deck.
The ad game is definitely changing. In fact, it"s a return to the soap opera days when in-show product placements were common. Is this a good thing? If done properly, yes. After all, people use real brand name products in real life situations. The trick will be how well advertisers integrate their placements so the desired commercial message is achieved yet without having it appear staged.
New York Times: Blurring Ads and TV Programs
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You have to love (or hate) a country where a company with absolutely no money can go out and spend $50 million on an ad campaign. Screw the creditors. An advertising campaign is much more important.
Well, in the long run I suppose it is. No advertising...no increase in business. No increase in business....can't pay creditors. So I guess this is $50 M well spent.
Don't you just love advertising?
USA Today: USATODAY.com - Bankrupt United plans $50M ad campaign
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One could only hope. However, there are 140,000 people in Massachusetts that have said enough is enough and have placed their name on the new do not call list.
Boston Globe: Over 140,000 join list to block telemarketers
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Can't leave this one alone. I sympathize but adrants is always interested in the latest Britney move. After all, she was the premiere marketing queen, right? This time she gets two guys to fight over her in a bar. Is that classic or what? Does that still actually happen? Apparently, she was leading them both on. And you know she could lead most any guy anywhere she wanted. So she's drinking with one guy (isn't she only 20?) then gets up to go dance with another guy. In typical male neanderthal fasion, a fight breaks out.
Read more about Britney's downward spiral here.
People Online: Britney Starts Fight
[via Gawker]
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Ross Mayfield has created a social network analysis of the "blog tribe" on the Ryze network.
What does this all mean? Ryze is an online networking site. The "blog tribe" is one of the social networks within Ryze. Some members of the blog tribe have weblogs. The social network analysis is a visual analysis of the relationship between people in those two groups. Basically a six degrees of separation sort of thing. Check out the whole anlysis here.
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If AOL has anything to do with it, it is, by definition, mainstream. Well, AOL is now getting into the weblog world. AOL will be releasing blogging tools in its next software release. There's good and bad to this. The good? Maybe more people will actually understand what a weblog is. The bad? If you think most weblogs are mindless drivel, just wait until there are 10 million AOL based weblogs out there.
Rick Robinson, AOL's vice president of community products, told an interviewer, "There will be a significant (software/feature) release probably in the February time frame ... which will fundamentally alter the way people currently interact in threaded discussions." Essentially confirming a recent Washington Post report, Robinson told Mark Hurst of Creative Good that the AOL Time Warner (AOL) online unit has been looking at offering Weblogs. "It's natural that the blog and the home page would combine. And when you remember that AOL has the largest collection of home pages in the world, it kind of gets interesting," he said.
[via CBS MarketWatch]
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