The sub shop franchise Quizno has placed a billboard in Lafayette, Louisiana with the headline "EatMe" which has caused at least one person to make a complaint about its sexual overtones.
"I travel Kaliste Saloom (a road), and I am deeply offended by the Quizno Classic Sub sign that has a vulgar caption, in my opinion, said Mrs. Robert LeBlanc of Lafayette. "If their sandwich is good, then why do they have to use sexual overtones to sell them?"
But Mrs. LeBlanc, what excactly is vulgar about that statement? All Quizno is saying is "eat our food." Get your mind out of the gutter!
In one of the best movie website spoofs in a long time, Greenpeace launched a take off of the new "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" movie to position President Bush as a tree killer. The humorous video shows Bush running through the forest cutting down trees and threatening animals with his chainsaw. Greenpeace claims environmental laws have been dismantled since Bush took office. Politics aside, this is a brilliant marketing move on Greenpeace's part to capitalize on a very popular movie.
In a departure from the usual beer commercial with big breasted babes pillow fighting or mudwresting to excite the male mind...or other body part, this spot from Australia's TooHeys New beer features, among other things, a small breasted babe who uniquely uses a body part of her own to open a beer bottle.
Kelly Clarkson will compete in FOX's 'World Idol' to be broadcast on Christmas and New Year's Day. The competition will take place in London with Clarkson competing against Canada's Ryan Malcolm, Poland's Alicja Janosz, Germany's Alexander Klaws, the United Kingdom's Will Young, South Africa's Heinz Winckler, Norway's Kurt Nilsen, Lebanon's Diana Karazon, the Netherlands' Jamai Loman, Belgium's Peter Evrard and the yet-to-be-decided Australian winner (the show is down to its final two).
Have we been sleeping or is Kelly more curvaceous than ever in this picture?
Years a ago, Guinness was forced to stop using the headline, "Guiness is Good For You" but recent research now points to the health benefits of the stout beer. A University of Wisconsin research team found the beer may work as well as aspirin for maintaining heart health.
Aware of today's litigious and politically correct society, the brewer has no plans to re-introduce the old tagline and will, sadly, stick with its "drink responsibly" approach.
With a stealth teaser campaign including "I'm not Ted" street signs and "One Word. Ted" billboards plastering the city of Denver, United is hoping to create a personlized new airline that stands for fun and low fares.
Like a drug addict looking for his next fix, marketers will hunt you down and find you where ever you are and they have re-discovered an old method of marketing: your doorbell. While telemarketers have been banned from calling you, don't expect them to leave you alone. Your doorbell is likely to ring a lot more often now as some marketers experiment with the old door to door sales approach.
Door to door sales used to very popular and prominent in the 50's and 60's but died out altogether except for the occasional religious freak. Though with the jaded, "seen it all" mentality of the current American culture, there will certainly be a lot of doors slammed and "Solicitors Not Welcome" signs hung if this tactic becomes prevalent.
Unless a "Do Not Door to Door" law is passed, like a teenage boy in heat, marketers will hump the streets until they reach the nirvana of the marketing orgasm - a sale. So get out your anti-marketing contraceptives. The imminent explosion is nearing.
In Amy Coor's MediaPost Out to Launch column this week covers several interesting campaign from a new Dodge Durango campaign by BBDO, the largest ever campaign from Rayovac, an online campaign on MSN for the new Honda Accord and a campaign promoting Chablis - the wine and the region.
The winner this week for weirdest tagline goes to Price McNabb for their work on a campaign for Bojangles chicken. The campaign expresses people's strong desire for the special taste of Bojangles chicken and what they will do to "GottawannaneedagettahavaBojangles."
Uber ad critic Bob Garfield says, in this iMediaConnection interview by Joe Jaffe, advertising is still about selling shit to people but the industry has lost its way and is now consumed with its pompous self and the size of its award case.
Creativity, regardless of medium is still at the center of advertising success and Garfield says the Internet provides limitless possibilities to be creative saying, "Im so charged up about the Internet is because I believe its going to force people in the business to entirely rethink what constitutes creativity."
He cites a couple outstanding online ad campaigns but also balances that with the rampant abuse of the medium claiming, "The 'advertrocities' so gigantically outnumber the triumphs that I fear for the future." Garfield has high hopes for the medium but cautions, "We saw what Joe Camel did to big tobacco. Dont let some obnoxious pop-up do that to the online industry, just as its in its infancy."
The Internet, as a medium, is on the cusp of replacing television as the primary medium for advertisers. No longer can one say the medium "is just not there yet." The Internet has been proven over and over again to deliver measurableable results to a finitely targeted audience with little to no waste. Once creatives get over the "cool factor" of the :30 television spot and realize the power and flexibility of the Internet, the medium will usurp television's current position as primary advertising vehicle.
ABC has ordered a script for a pilot based on the Melvin Burgess book about male teenage lust. The series, called "Doing It," will follow the travails of three teenage boys as they awkwardly work their way through their first sexual experiences. The program will be executive produced by former ABC entertainment president Francie Calfo and will be written by Jeff Judah and Gabe Sachs of "Freaks and Geeks" fame.
Network censors will be put to the test on this one if the series is to be true to the book which holds nothing back in its depiction of teen sex.
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