Big, Big BIG news! Long time Advertising Age man Scott Donaton has been wooed by Time Inc. to become the publisher of the company's Entertainment Weekly. Having been with Crain's Advertising Age since 1989, Donaton has seen a lot of changes at the flagship advertising trade publication and has had a big hand in making them happen as well.
As a reader of Entertainment weekly since its early small "e" days, we can't wait to see what Donaton does for the mag. Apparently, it's ad pages are down and it needs a boost. Hopefully, Scott can do it.
In other ad trade mag news, skillfully giving the change a positive spin, AdWeek today announced it will expand its digital offerings (though it didn't offer details) and will reduce the frequency of its print publication to 26 issues a year. Are Jonah Bloom and Rance Crain high fiving each other today or what? Not that AdWeek ever posed even the tiniest threat to Advertising Age. Long live AdFreak!
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These images (1 at left, 2, 3) are part of a Nike campaign called I AM FORGED BY THE ELEMENTS (yeah, all caps). It was put together by Cole & Weber United and will run in Sports Illustrated and on ESPN.
The ads illustrate the carnal athlete who perceives inclement weather conditions as partners rather than as obstructions.
Inspirational and all, in Nike's usual style. No big shocker there. Maybe we'd feel differently about the whole thing if we flipped open a health magazine during one of our psycho winter diet binges and saw a shot of some dude pumping iron in the snow. Tough call outside of context, though.
Signature Marketing Solutions has brought back the Subservient Santa from last year. We asked him to kill his reindeer friend and we enjoyed his pretended adamance.
This year Santa comes in kid-friendly and naughty versions. Knowing what we know about kids, we hope they made the "naughty" one kid-friendly.
A slew of new languages also includes Pig Latin. Glad that version of Latin never went out of style.
New take on the speed-dating thing. We give you speed introductions, courtesy of WooMe.
Hoping to drag the power of the first impression outside the domain of quick-fix courting, WooMe users join little clusters of users segmented by interest, sex and age -- not necessarily for romantic reasons. (There are "ladies' night" and sports fan groups, for example.)
When the music starts, you've got about a minute to video chat each group member, one at a time. After that, you decide which users you dug and click "I'm Woo'd." If you're woo'd by somebody who's been woo'd by you, the pair of you drop a dollar for contact info.
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Here's another cautionary tale for the MySpace scandal scrapbook. Last year, a girl named Megan Meier met a boy on the social network, fell in love, then killed herself after he told her the world would be better without her.
A year later, Megan's parents have come forward to say a couple months after their daughter's death they discovered the boy was the invention of some neighbors they know -- not other kids, mind you, but other adults, trying to find out whether Megan herself spreads rumors about their own spawn.
The incident naturally sparked talk about whether MySpace and the 'net in general should endure more regulation.
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Tomorrow on VH1, MTV and Comedy Central, among others, Converse will be launching the first leg of "Disruption."
Guided by Anomaly, the campaign consists of nine :15 and :30 spots that marry "disruptive" -- or at least interesting -- messages to a passel of new artists.
We dig its simplicity, lack of major time investment on users' parts, and the jam-pack of little factoids. For a taste, see Three Chords. It's powerful, in its own little way. The featured little girl is from a band called Care Bears On Fire.
A contender for the Velvet Underground? Why not -- at least post-Nico.
Copyranter points us to a Czech commercial that illustrates something that, at certain points in in his life, every man wishes was possible. While commenters deride it for its possibly sexist nature, if the roles in the spot where reversed, as they often are in real life, would anyone be complaining? No, we'd be laughing just as we do at most ads which portray men as blithering, complaining idiots.
So no matter whether you are male or female, enjoy what this commercial has to offer. An instant off button for your annoying bf/gf/spouse.
Euro RSCG has created spiral bound notebooks with pages made of actual napkins because, as we all know, great ideas usually come when we're not in the office and are away from our computers and scratch pads and having a pad made out of napkin pages would solve that problem, right?
Well, it might if you had the actual notebook with you which you wouldn't because you left it in the office with all your other stuff which is why all you have to write on is an unbound napkin laying on the bar.
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Pity the peppy pepperoni and the odoriferous onion who, in a backhanded celebration of Hungry Howie's flavored crust pizza, have to take a backseat to the chain's "completely unique," eight flavored delight which surrounds its pizza's, Yes, once again, pizza makers will do anything to get people to eat the lowly crust. But at least Howie's, in light of every other pizza chain tweaking its crusts, can do it in a "yea, whatever" way that you have to admit is at least a little bit funny, right? Tattoo Projects created.
He actually scared us in our childhood and if a man like that wandered the aisles of a grocery store today asking us not to squeeze the Charmin, we'd probably call the men in white coats. But Mr. Whipple, played by Dick Wilson, was a lovable, humorous television advertising icon back in the day when brands didn't change campaigns and agencies at the whim of a here today gone tomorrow CMO. In fact, Mr. Whipple lasted 21 years. 21 years! That just doesn't happen anymore.
Over the course of the campaign's 21 year run, more than 500 commercials where made featuring Mr. Whipple. On Monday, November 19, 2007 Dick Wilson died of natural causes at the Motion Picture and Television Hospital in Los Angeles at the age of 91.
We never squeezed our Charmin but we always got a kick out of the weird dude on TV who did. RIP, Mr. Whipple.
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