 Gulp. I Want My Minutes Here's another hilarious U.K. ad for Virgin Mobile. Like the very bendable gymnastics babe that flitted about a Virgin Records store offering up a certain desirous body part hoping to lure an unsuspecting clerk into giving her free airtime for her Virgin Mobile phone, a dude now stuffs a hanger down his throat for the same.
As the spot ends, the announcer reveals a much simpler means to getting the free airtime. Thanks to Viralmeister for the link.
 No Skin. No Good MediaLife writer A.J. Livsey doesn't like the new FOX show Skin saying, "The show wouldn't be terrible if the hype hadn't killed its chances before it began. The title does less to capture any envelope-pushing situations and more to address the shallow premise of the drama. Even if the idea is accepted initially, it's unclear how Fox can maintain the storyline beyond the first couple of episodes. Can the Romeo and Juliet conflict persevere for an entire season? How many times can the DA try to bring one company down? It�s unlikely that the story can remain engaging."
Bummer. I was looking forward to watching it. Ron Silver I can do without but Olivia Wilde is an actress I could watch for a while. Of course, I say that witout ever having seen her act. The series premiers tonight at 9PM EST so I'll know soon enough.
 Breasts Are Not For Eating Pamela Anderson has joined the ranks of celebrities who are urging the public to boycott KFC because of the supposedly uncivilized manner in which the handle breasts...um...chicken. Anderson says, "If people knew how KFC treats chickens, they'd never eat another drumstick." Maybe she meant breasts but that's besides the point because this article is supposed to be about breasts...I mean chicken, not breasts. Hard to concentrate here.
Anyway, Anderson further states, "What KFC does to 750 million chickens each year is not civilized or acceptable," Anderson wrote in a letter to KFC. "I am calling for a boycott of all KFC restaurants until my friends at PETA tell me that you have agreed to be kinder in your practices."
PETA filed a law suit against KFC in July claiming the company buys their chicken from suppliers who abuse chickens "through drugging, feeding and slaughter practices."
predictably, KFC says there chickens are raised in palatial suites and are fed caviar on a regular basis. Andersen joins a long line of celebrities including Paul McCartney who have banded together against KFC.
Those in the editorial department of the New York Post must have been beside themselves with embarrassment as they woke up Friday morning to read in their own New York based paper that their team had lost the pennant. Yup, along the lines of Dewey Defeats Truman, the Post ran an editorial Friday morning bemoaning the Yankees loss to the Red Sox Thursday night.
Huge oops! You can read the editorial here courtesy of The Smoking Gun.
George Simpson writes in MediaLife about Madison Avenue's ridiculous pursuit of the so-called "metrosexual" saying "A metrosexual is nothing more than a guy who finally figured out he'd get laid a lot more with a haircut, clean fingernails, his shirttail tucked in, and thus empowered, able to entrap dates in his apartment by cooking them meals."
He says Madison Avenue has forced us to "endure this fiction that metrosexuals are an important new marketing niche squeezed, tweezed and teased somewhere between gay men, and the "hysterical heterosexuality of tits, beer, sports, cars, and fart-lighting."
He claims the media has gone too far in trying to cater to this very small target group when me simply do not care about looking good and shopping saying, "Unlike women, whose lives are often caught in cyclical indecision while considering every possible option before making a choice, men are utterly linear in the buying process. See it. My size? Not a bad color. A third off? In the bag."
Even more scathing to marketers who foist this on us is this statement: "We (men) are simply not at the dawn of a new age in which men, suddenly in touch with their feminine sides, redefine what it means sartorially to be men. Rather we are caught in a trendy dust devil spawned by the gaseous hope of Madison Avenue that men will become voracious consumers of all sorts of upscale crap they don't need or particularly want."
Take that, Madison Avenue.
 Are We In Or Out? Us Weekly and Brand Republic are reporting that following the BenLo/Bennifer/Afflo/Jffleck wedding media fiasco, Miramax has decided to remove any likeness of Affleck and Lopez from upcoming Kevin Smith movie "Jersey Girl" promotional material and instead promote it solely as a Kevin Smith film. Reportedly, Miramax is skittish about the public perception of the Loffleck wedding nightmare and the pair's disaterous turn in "Gigli."
This story, originally appearing in Us Weekly has been denied by Kevin Smith directly. Thanks to Brendan from Brendoman (see comment section) for the tip. Here is Kevin's denial:
"Speaking as a guy who's about as close to this movie and the marketing plans as it gets, I can tell you that there's no truth to that story. Market the movie on me? So fucking ridiculous.
Trust me: I've seen the marketing concepts on this movie from as early on as when we were still shooting up to just yesterday. EVERY poster is centered around Affleck. Some show Affleck and Jen, some show Affleck and the kid (which would make the most sense), some show Affleck and Liv Tyler. None show me. And as with every flick I've made, this is not billed as "A Film By Kevin Smith" - the hallmark of any marketing campaign built on the director.
"The Fourth Film by Quentin Tarantino"? THAT'S a director-driven marketing campaign. A standard "Written and Directed by Kevin Smith"? That's hardly what I'd call selling a flick on the director's back.
Smells like some editor at Us Magazine was desperate for a Ben and Jen story. That this bogus tidbit fit the bill shows a surprising amount of creativity on their part, but further solidifies their reputation in the print community as little more than a glossy version of the Enquirer"
Well said, Kevin.
TiVo has launched a campaign created by UNCLE that is a 20 minute advertorial following people as they become TiVo subscribers. This, perhaps, is an example of what TiVo envisions advertisers to place on its service. Other campaigns this week reviewed in Amy Corr's MediaPost Out to Launch column include a campaign for Yahoo placed in the New Yorker, a new campaign for Motor Trend, a Hispanic campaign for Honey Nut Cherios, a campaign from American Business Media extolling the virtues of B to B advertising, a CR-ROM based campaign for the Marines and a relaunch of the Diageo Smirnoff brand.
Oh hell...why try to write anything about this. All you have to do is look and enjoy. Oh, and I just noticed. It's actually an ad for Omega watches. Sorry, I was distracted.
Thanks to ApeChild for this.
The new $20 bill is getting 1.6 million $20's put behind it to let everyone now it really is a $20 and not Monopoly money. The U.S. government is launching a $32 million campaign to let us know about the redesigned $20 bill. Subsequent campaigns will follow to promote the new $50 and $100 bills that will begin circulation in 2004 and 2005 respectively.
A Chinese company has created an adult-themed ad campaign centering on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to promote its new growth pill. The pharmaceuticals firm has adapted the story for a series of radio ads, which tell how the dwarfs take a pill, grow to normal size and start getting it on in a polygamous relationship with Snow White. Oh, the horror!
Authorities in the east Chinese Jiangsu province, where the ads are being run, say they have not received any complaints about the ads. But, according to the South China Morning Post, some children have been left surprised by the new ending.
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