Marlon Brando Wants to be Your Pitchman

The man most famous for his incoherent mumblings wants to be your pitchman. That's right. Marlon Brando has a demo tape on CED Voices, a voice talent search engine. Listening to the demo, you can just picture him gasping for air between every utterance as his body bulges outward and out over the edges of the stool he sits upon in front of the mic.

Britney Spears in Deal With Elizabeth Arden to Launch Cosmetics Line

Pop hottie Britney Spears has signed a deal with Elizabeth Arden to develop and market a line of fragrance, skincare and color cosmetics. In an effort to change its luck with teenage appeal, Elizabeth Arden is tapping Spears to get the cobwebs out of the older-focused cosmetics company.

Now if she can stay "married" to this deal longer than a day, Spears might actually do some good for Elizabeth Arden.

Apple iPod Does Subway Roadblock Campaign

The Apple iPod has taken over the St. George subway station in Toronto. Basically everything in the station has bee grafted with Apple iPod imagery even the staircase which was turned into a gigantic version of the print campaign. While expensive, these roadblock campaigns are very effective in achieving instant awareness as well as bonus press coverage.

Thanks to Adrants reader Barry L. Ritholtz for spotting this.

Molson Chases Beaver

Here's an ad for Molson that the Canadians are gleefully running because they know the FCC would never allow such an atrocity to appear on our sacred airwaves.

Thanks to Apechild for this.

'The Passion of Christ' Filled With Product Placements

Because the movie is so gory, you probably missed all the product placements that were apparently rampant within the film. Thankfully, our friends over at Something Awful have gone through the film frame by frame and pulled out the many sponsors.

For The Love of Howard Stern

Jeff Jarvis explains why he likes Howard Stern. If you like Stern or hate Stern, you should read this. You should also read Jeff's blog every day if you have any interest on the effects the Super Boob event is having on our culture.

Content Just Gets in the Way of Advertising

Poking fun at TiVo and shopping mags and advocating content that is just ads within ads within ads as well as calling the political process and most other "content" a waste of time and a hinderence to getting rich, is this snarky take on where advertising is headed:

"It�s a shopping lad mag. Seventeen for grown men, if you can still call them that. It�s ads surrounded by ads, with ads placed in the ads. It�s fucking beautiful. I�ll give you an example of content. They have this feature in there that�s called, �Honey, does this make me look gay?� Now, a reasonable person would deduce that, if you made it to page 72 of Cargo, that question is already moot. But, fortunately, people aren�t reasonable. So you get this great thing where it�s a whole book full of ads that the guy flips through, only to come to the �content,� which is basically, �Buy this or you�re a fucking queer.� It doesn�t get much better than that. That�s where tv is going. Hell, that�s where politics are going. Buy or you�re queer. Buy or you�re queer.

Thanks to Adrants reader Brian Diedrick for pointing this out.

Consumers Accepting of Online TV Commercials

From January through February, Honda, Warner Brothers, AT&T Pepsi and Vonage ran full length television style commercial on such web sites as about.com. ESPN.com and others. A follow up survey of 1,700 Internet users found only 28 percent deemed these commercials annoying, far less than was originally expected and less that the 38 percent who find actual television commercials annoying.

Carat Interactive Online Campaign Manager Judy Gern who managed the Vonage campaign said, "I was astounded by the results. There's absolutely no question we'll be doing this again."

Therein lies the problem. These ad units are new. They are novel. People are curious about them. Tread lightly, marketers, or webmercials will go the way of the dreaded pop up.

Reebok Launches New Music Mix Site For RBK Brand

Ad agency Zugara has created a new website for Reebok's RBK brand called RBK Sound & Rhythm. On the site, visitors can make their own music mix by sliding the sneakers left or right. Also, there are profile of Reebok wearing basketball stars to check out.

Wacky Packages Makes Comeback

Way back in the seventies, there were these stickers called Wacky Packages that made fun of popular brands in the day such as Bazooka Bubble Gum which was called Gadzooka and Jello which was called Jail-O. In the mid-seventies, every kid had them plastered on their school locker or notebook (that's paper notebook for you young kids reading this). Well, they're back. Will they take off and become as successful as they were in the seventies? Will they become the next greatest viral marketing scheme? In our highly jaded society, it's difficult for anything to succeed before it is labeled a lame attempt at commercialism. Hopefully, they'll last longer than Trucker Hats.