Tian aims our sights to The Indepundit, where some logic-challenged commercial song choices are discussed.
Kentucky Fried Chicken...sorry...KFC makes the geographically-challenged decision to uses part of Lynard Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama" - a fairly angry song - in their television spots.
JC Penny used the 80's tune "99 Red Balloons" - a song about nuclear war - for a Valentine's promotion. While both marketers use just pieces of each song in their commercials, one must wonder what sort of "strategic thinking" led to choices like these. Perhaps no one reads or even hears song lyrics anymore. Perhaps no one wants to bother with the real meaning of the song as long as it has a catchy riff. Perhaps it's all irrelevant.
 Contestant T.J. Meyers Court TV ups the anti in its efforts to shed its prior, staid image with a double-entendre filled ad campaign for the new crime reality show Impossible Heist.
The series pits two teams of ripped six packs and big boobs against each other re-enacting famous crimes for real while attempting to elude capture.
The ad campaign features Catherine Zeta Jones Entrapment cat suit style imagery with the tagline, "Likes to work on all fours;" a woman scaling a building below the headline, "She'd Rather Be Tied Up Than Down" and others with equally sex-laden tags like "It's not the size of the tool, It's how you use it" and "Well hung." The creative will appear on buses, posters, boards, kiosks and other outdoor media.
Gawker reports a Starbucks Licensed Store Awards event in Seattle featured a bastardized version of Jefferon Starship's "We Built This City" created, apparently, to celebrate, with employees, the chain's success.
Listen at your peril.
Talent Zoo has announced After Hours, a series of offline networking events for advertising industry folks to gather socially. Talent Zoo says these events are not typical networking parties, but simply a reason to go out, have fun, meet friends and make new ones.
The After Hours events are free but an RSVP is required. In the coming months, After Hours will be in New York, Miami, D.C., Detroit, San Fran, Vegas, Boston, and Chicago, among others. The next event is in New York at the Pink Elephant March 9 at 6:30PM.
The Advertising in Games Forum, April 14, 2005 at the Metropolitan Pavilion, in New York City, plans to explore the creative and audience targeting potential of video games as an advertising medium. The Forum will feature a keynote presentation by Mitch Davis, CEO of Massive Inc, the creator of one of the first video game advertising networks, as well as executives at industry leading game companies, technology companies and agencies.
Attendees will hear how brands can make use of the rapid expansion in new video game formats and technology platforms to reach target demographics and achieve ROI and tracking objectives. Attendees will learn how to address the increasingly fragmented gaming audience through a variety of alternate creative treatments; how the unique format of on-line ads affects creative and overall campaign costs; how to manage long development cycles for games; how ads can add realism to games, and how the relationship between the ad agency and the developer/publisher can be managed to mutual advantage.
To promote its M3Power razor, Gillette and its media agency MindShare, cast a green glow on one of Singapore's busiest subway stops, City Hall MRT, by placing green transparency over most of the station's lighting. The station domination campaign also included the placement of station poster featuring spokesman David Beckham. If anyone from Gillette or MindShare have images, please share.
Writing in Business Week, Diane Brady examines the market's reaction to Martha Stewart's time in jail and her release today. Brady says Stewart's company stock is up, Stewart stand to collect a big paycheck upon release, TV appearances and series abound (The Apprentice: Martha Stewart) and book deals are in the making.
At the AAAA's Conference in New Orleans this week, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts discussed his company's adoption and rollout of video on demand and how that will enable both Comcast and advertisers to serve the specific needs of individuals. During his speech, Roberts announced a partnership with Rentrak Corp. which will yeild monthly VOD metrics including counts for VOD-enabled boxes per market, views per month, unique box views per month and total monthly minutes viewed.
Discussion from the panel netted little additional insight into the understanding of VOD's potential for sustaining an advertising model.
To us, it's simple. VOD will simply be a video version of the Internet's point and click navigation scheme. Watch a program, see something of interest, click on it, show pauses, shifts to video of item of interest and so on. Product placement won't have to be so blatant. If a viewer likes what an actor is wearing, driving, eating, touching, etc., click on it and get more info about it. In fact, marketers won't pay for the actual product placement but, rather, pay for the link to the screen/video that contains more info on the item.
Of course, marketers will still engage in product placement efforts so that their product appears and can be clicked on. It's not a perfect model and we know you'll shoot holes right through it but we think it has potential.
Assuredly among many, one of the advantages women have over men is their ability to become "interested" in someone without visibly "announcing" it for all to see. In this video for Pot Noodles, this poor chap, walking into a bar, has a very large public "announcement" in the form of The Pot Noodle Horn. At first, he denies to his friends he has The Pot Noodle Horn but then proudly displays it for all to see, embraces it and blows it loudly. He then scurries off, returns, disheveled but relieved, though with a bit of Pot Noodle "evidence" spilt on his clothes. Despite the description, this is perfectly safe to view at work.
One of the major reasons people use pop up blockers or switch to browsers like Firefox which have built in pop up blockers is to, no doubt, block pop ups. Serving pop ups is one thing. Ignoring people's preference to avoid them as a whole different animal. Companies that circumvent a consumer's choice to block pops by deploying anti-pop up/under blocking software are scum in our book. We use Firefox. Until recently, the past year and a half or so have been blissfully pop-free. A month or so ago, we have seen the resurgence of the pop while using Firefox. We don't like it.
Today, while visiting Dictionary.com, we were presented with a pop under. We forget the advertiser but we do know Advertising.com serves on-page banners to Dictionary.com. It's known that pop ups and unders do not always emanate from specific sites but from behavioral profiles built up over time so we aren't sure Dictionary.com or Advertising.com had anything to do with the pop.
Later today, while loathe to do so, we found it necessary to visit DrudgeReport. Sure enough, two pop unders appeared. This time, we paid more attention and saw that Tribal Fusion served the pop for Emode's Tickle. The other pop was one of those obnoxious flashing banners, this time, for travel site Travasaurus. We can't confirm who served that one but we sure like Drudge a lot less now that we did before.
Respect for peoples choice to opt out of seeing pop ads seems like a no brainer. It's sort of like answering "yes" to a waiter after he's asked if you're finished with your meal only to have him scrape what food might be left on the plate and jam it down your throat. It's just not a nice thing to do. Why is it so difficult for companies to grasp that concept? And we're not buying that whole argument that pops, like telemarketing work so they must be a OK. Times are changing. People aren't going to stand for this shit. Advertisers and sites should not stand for it either.
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