Yesterday around 10:30AM a truck owned by the band Imperial Stars blocked all three southbound lanes of freeway 101 near Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. The stunt, three months in the making, was originally planned for Monday but moved becasue of the Columbus Day holiday.
The stunt was hatched to promote the band's new single, Traffic Jam 101, which the band performed live atop the truck while traffic piled up for miles.
As many as thirty people in other vehicles were part of the stunt. Imperial Stars IT Manager Tyler Fairbanks said, "Most people were in shock, but then we started getting people yelling at us."
Well, yes, Tyler, people do tend to yell when idiots block traffic on a highway. People don't take kindly to being stuck in a traffic jam. Especially when it's for some stupid publicity stunt.
You've got to laugh at these celebutantes who pump themselves up to E cup deliciousness and then end up regretting it after the fact. Apparently, that the sentiment UK Big Brother star Chantelle Houghton has about her surgical boost to 32E.
But that minor issue didn't stop Houghton from using her assets to make a little money along the way. In a new campaign for La Senza, Houghton proudly flaunts her generous curves for the lingerie brand.
Sharing her regret over having the surgery, Houghton told Heat magazine, "They're just too big. Now I just want to hide them. I thought I wanted to go up to that size and I loved them at the time, but now I wish I'd never had them done."
Well, Chantelle, hoisting your pulchritudinous puppies into some revealing lingerie is hardly going in the right direction if concealment was your goal.
The Interactive Advertising Bureau and PwC US have released the IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report for the first half of 2010. Internet advertising revenues in the U.S. were at $12.1 billion during that period, setting a new half-year record that represents an 11.3 percent increase over the first half of 2009. This is also the highest second-quarter revenue on record, up 13.9 percent over the same period of 2009.
Display-related advertising - which includes banner ads, rich media, digital video and sponsorships - totaled more than $4.4 billion in the first six months of 2010, showing a significant increase of close to 16 percent over the same period in 2009. Digital video grew as well, this year achieving the highest half-year performance ever and up 31 percent over first half 2009. Search advertising remains the largest percentage of overall interactive spend at 47 percent, representing more than $5.7 billion for the first six months of 2010, up 11.6 percent from the same period in 2009.
This semi-recent commercial from Fisher Wallace Laboratories which calls attention to the company's medical device which is said to treat depression without the use of drugs. It's unlike any drug commercial you've ever seen. Because, well, it isn't selling a drug and, therefore, isn't burdened with all that disclaimer crap that usually fills up more that half of a DTC commercial.
Of course the name of the product, the Fisher Wallace Cranial Stimulator doesn't exactly instill much confidence the thing will actually work.
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Digital agency Albion has created a new campaign to tout Air New Zealand's new interiors, seating set up and inflight meals. The campaign carries the tagline, "Forget everything you know about flying."
The campaign includes print but also some interesting page takeover units you can view here, here and here.
We're guessing the new seating and service arrangement isn't going to be cheap.
New York agency Breakfast created a "trackable experience" for Conan O'Brien's blimp. For the blimp's tour of the Eastern seaboard during the month of October, Breakfast made it possible for people to check in on Foursquare when they saw the blimp fly overhead. Doing so would garner the Foursquare user the Conan Blimpspotter Badge. You can track the blimp's location here.
It was only a matter of time before Blendtec's Will it Blend did their own version of Old Spice's I'm on a Horse. So, here it is. And, yes, it blends.
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Sometimes commercials are so weird, they need no commentary. They just need to be experienced. Such as this commercial for Labrad which offers up a sexy woman (Ancilla Tilia) in a short, cleavage-bearing lab coat and a guy's head that, well, just watch. Weird
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Backpedaling from one of the biggest marketing gaffs in recent history, Gap, following overwhelming public pressure, has, unsurprisingly, announced it will box it's new logo and return to the original design. Announced last week, the new logo, designed by Laird & Partners, was roundly mocked by the design community, especially when the brand asked designers to "crowdsource" new ideas (un-related to the new logo the brand insists) for free.
A statement on the brand's Facebook page now reads, "Ok. We've heard loud and clear that you don't like the new logo. We've learned a lot from the feedback. We only want what's best for the brand and our customers. So instead of crowdsourcing, we're bringing back the Blue Box tonight."
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Have you heard of a conference called BlogWorld? You should have because its primary topical focus is on the growing importance of social media. Now, unless you've been hiding under a rock or still believe the ad industry's product du jour in the :30 commercial, you know that social media is all the rage. Just like word of mouth was a few years ago. Just like buzz marketing some years before that and just like viral marketing did even earlier.
Yes, social media encompasses many of the aforementioned trends/fads/whatever but much like mobile which has finally earned it's "year of" status, social media is going mainstream and that what this conference is all about.
Taking place in Las Vegas October 14-16 and with panels on content creation and sharing, analytics for listening to customers, enterprise-level adoption of social media, the SEO of social media, crisis management in social media, social CRM, PR in social media, the conference will inform and educate those who need to know what's coming down the marketing freeway.
Check it all out here.
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