In a refreshing bit of common sense, President Bush, in C-SPAN interview Sunday, lauded free speech and said parents who complain about television content, music lyrics and movies need to "pay attention to what their children listen to." He added, "They put an off button on the TV for a reason."
As much as we're all for free speech, we, somehow, get an icky feeling imagining Bush seeing Janet Jackson's breast last year and saying, "Hey, I like that!"
John from Random Culture points to a new UK campaign for the Honda's FR-V and how its agency, Wieden & Kennedy, zeroed in on one of the car's attributes and drove it home in three very engaging, very different spots. The spots highlight the vehicle's front seat three-across seating capacity by aligning that with common activities families do together. They are so dramatically different from standard car commercials, that, alone, makes them interesting and a brilliant break from the plethora of car ad boredom the industry can't divorce itself from.
Way back when, Boston-based Hill Holiday attempted a break with tradition and created a campaign for the launch of Infinity which incorporated nature visuals geared to emote the feeling the care showered upon its owner. It was a valiant attempt but, ultimately, did not work and was replaced with standard fare. Perhaps Honda will have more success as it recently did with "groovy" spot for the launch of its new diesel engine.
As many have noted, Adrants has been sick. Ill from popularity.
Strangled by those maddeningly eager to see what will be the next greatest advertising move. As a result, we are causing a server to stress out and exploded under the load. Hosts don't like when that happens and they turn you off. Well, if you're reading this, we've successfully moved off the coughing, gagging, suffocating server to a new, Hulk-strength server capable of serving the advertising industry's salivating need for Adrants-style advertising news. Welcome back.
Aside from getting our head above water, we'll be debuting a new site design along with the addition of contributed feature articles from practitioners in the field. They'll share with you their expertise on various areas of marketing and advertising. The features will appear on a semi-regular basis.
Finding a "lost" passport in the back of a cab or at the end of a bar may become a trend in cities across the countries if New York-based communications agency Cossette Post has their way. The company will litter cabs, bars, libraries, malls and other popular locations around the country with fake branded passports. Upon finding the passports, people will find in place of a photo of a fellow American, information on Carlsberg beer. For its first major targeted consumer effort in the US, New York based advertising agency Cossette Post has created the Carlsberg Passport, inviting consumers to "Drink with a world of friends." The guerilla marketing "passport" campaign will commence across the U.S. on February 1, 2005 in key cities in 35 states across the country including Chicago, Boston, New York, Las Vegas, San Francisco and Philadelphia. The passports will be distributed through April of 2005 by local Carlsberg affiliates. A national television campaign will follow.
The faux passports, which look and feel like the real thing, feature textured covers in Carlsberg Green and include 12-pages of company facts and worldly information presented in a fun and attention getting fashion. Designed to appeal to the worldly consumer, the inside pages include the requisite stamps from countries around the world along with information on how to toast in 34 different languages and how to ask "May I please have a Carlsberg beer" in everything from French to Romanian. There is also a two-page outline on "The Carlsberg Way of Making A World of Friends," which includes international dos and don'ts for world travelers. For example, in China, "spitting, staring and drinking Carlsberg are acceptable. However, wearing shorts isnt," and in the Netherlands, "if you split the bill, never say your going Dutch.' Its really an insult."
We wonder how our security conscious, over-reactive society will take to this. We're sure it will be much fun to watch.
Adrants reader Andrew points us to a campaign McDonald's is running on ESPN which has a guy lewdly thinking about a Double Cheeseburger followed by "I'd Hit It." No matter how many mood-altering chemicals they put in their burgers, we just don't think they are quite that hot.
We knew this was coming. Beyonce Knowles has signed a license agreement with the Tarrant Apparel Group to produce the House of Dereon line of clothing she named after her grandmother, Agnes Dereon. The line will be targeted to 18-28 year old women - which means 13 year olds will buy it. Beyonce says, "There will be a lot of sexy tops, sweaters and party dresses, things that I would wear either on or off the red carpet."
Hmm. Middle school goes Hollywood. Parents are gonna love this.
Former Leo Burnett President Bob Brennan has been named director of marketing foe SABMiller's Miller Brewing Company. He takes over for Steve Buerger who left for Time Warner. After Brennan's exit from Leo Burnett, we all wondered where he'd end up and speculation abounded he would head up a media group at Interpublic or launch an uber-media shop of his own. Some say Brennan could be tough to get along with and was referred to as "Chainsaw Al." I never saw that.
I spent a year at Starcom under Brennan and Jack Klues as a media director hired to start a media division to handle the media needs of recent Leo Burnett acquisition, TFA, a Chicago-based high technology agency with offices in Chicago, Boston, San Francisco and Austin. I spent another 1.5 years working at TFA in association with Starcom. To say the least, it was excrutiatingly difficult and I ultimately left.
It was the dot com era and there were new business pitches every other day it seemed. Couple that with the day to day media needs of clients across the four offices, the work, with no support staff, quickly turned into a recipe for burnout. This was during the birth of StarcomWorldwide, StarLink and the growth of a high tech agency from nothing to over $200 million in a year and there were, to say the least, some juicy management issues to deal with.
While it was a difficult time and there were those that made life miserable, Bob Brennan was not one of them. As a newcomer to the Starcom "media director's club," Brennan was supportive and, on several occasions, personally made sure I was aware, and invited to, important agency functions and social events. It was a dynamic time full of positives and negative and, in a sense, the whole thing begs for a book to be written on the experience. Someday, perhaps.
Foreheads, skulls, arms, chests. Body parts auctioned off on eBay as human ad placements have become the most annoying trend we are forced to cover recently. This time, 22 year old Amber Rainey is auctioning off her very large, very pregnant stomach. "I got the idea from the guy who put his forehead up for bid and he got $37,000 doing it. I was like joking around. I'll put my face up. I said, wait a minute. I have a really big stomach, you know. Hey, and you can't help but to look at."
Hopefully, there's an upside to all this eBay oddity. Perhaps, this is just the messy start of what could be a billion dollar business for eBay when serious ad dollars and ad placement are auctioned on the site.
In the so over category, Joe Tamargo has joined the legions of odd soles selling off their bodies on eBay as moving billboards. We're not even going to bother summing up recent stories on the trend. There everywhere and easy to find. Wait til you hear the one about the pregnant woman who is selling her tummy to advertisers on eBay.
The Mister Softee brand has, forever, been identified by its truck's trademark jingle. Mayor Bloomberg has proposed a ban to eliminate the jingle as part of the city's noise code but Mister Softee execs claim that would put the company out of business. However, a compromise has been reached that allows the company to play its jingle while its trucks are moving but not when they are parked. While the reduction of the, to some, annoying, Mister Softee jingle may help reduce city noise a bit, the physical removal of horns from every New York City cab would certainly make greater headway toward a quieter city.
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