Now this is what Adrants loves finding amongst the hundreds of penis-enlargement emails in the Inbox after a short, but enjoyable vacation - asses. Not just any asses but asses with a purpose. In this case, ass-vertising asses.
Last Friday, a bunch of shapely asses paraded outside Grand Central Station in New York to promote the New York Health and Racquet Club and a class they offer, called, appropriately, "Booty Call." The event was put on by Ass-vertise!, a division of the NightAgency ad agency. NightAgency founder Darren Paul told me, "people were going nuts, as building windows were lined with people in there offices trying to get a glimpse, passers-by stopped for quite a while to watch it in action, and a bunch of news reporters came to have a look."
Check the photos out here and the video here.
Probably to bail itself out, AOL has signed a deal to buy ad network Advertising.com for $435 million in cash. The acquisition will allow AOL to provide its advertisers with additional inventory from Advertising.com's 110 million internet which represents 70 percent of all U.S. web users.
Crispin Porter Bogusky (we assume) is up to it again. Following its Subservient Chicken work for Burger King, the agency has launched Ugoff, a dude that utters vocal oddities with an accent all in the name of promoting Burger King salads. At the site, you can sign up to receive daily "Ugoffliments" which are random, non-sensical statements that are kind of humorous. There's also a fashion section that outlines Ugoff's design process. Strange. Weird. Great. Adland has more details.
ANA to Open Annual Conference to Marketing Bloggers
The Association of National Advertisers, the industry trade association that represents 340 companies with 8,000 brands that collectively spend over $100 billion in marketing communications and advertising, will issue media credentials to established marketing bloggers for its upcoming annual conferences.
The first conference the ANA is inviting bloggers to is the Marketing Accountability Forum on Jyly 19 in New York. The big event is the ANA Annual Conference, which takes place October 7 � 10, 2004 at the Ritz-Carlton Naples, in Naples, Florida, and is the industry�s marquee event. It focuses on the big advertising issues, including building brands, accountability and ROI, and marketing innovation. Terry Semel, CEO, Yahoo and McDonald's CMO Larry Light will keynote the ANA Annual Conference. Ron Insana, of CNBC's Street Signs, will join as host. Other speakers include Michael Winkler, chief marketing officer, Hewlett-Packard; John Costello, executive vice president, merchandising and marketing, Home Depot; and Kevin Roberts, CEO Worldwide, Saatchi & Saatchi.
Bloggers interested in securing credentials should contact Steve Rubel at srubel@cooperkatz.com. Webloggers are required to cover their own travel expenses for the conference and will receive credentials based on a qualitative assessment of their audience and topic relevance. For more information on the conference, visit www.ana.net.
In a spoof of a spoof twist, a poster campaign in San Francisco is spoofing both the iPod Apple spoof campaign as well and the Got Milk campaign in an effort designed to make Americans question our government's democratic motives in relation to recent international events.
Campaign creator and San Francisco novelist Robert Mailer Anderson explains, "It's not pro-Democrat, it's not pro-Republican -- it's supposed to make you think. Do these people in Iraq have democracy? And do we have democracy? The Guantanamo Bay issue of suspending people's rights - - Americans and Iraqis -- smacks of McCarthyism, which is a kind of fascism. Billions of dollars are going toward (Iraq) and yet we don't have money for our schools and our homeless and we don't have a national health-care program? And a large part of the (Iraq) money goes to (Halliburton), which our vice president was formerly president of and is a large stockholder in? It seems like such an overt boondoggle. If (this) were any other country -- and use the criteria that Bush uses toward other countries -- we'd not be called a democracy now."
There are 1,000 posters spread throughout the downtown and South-of-Market areas.
Two big, inter-related topics are a big part of the discussion this week at Cannes. Namely, the increase in consumer control over the media they consume and the increasing irrelevancy of the :30 television commercial.
P&G's Bernard Glock told attendees he hopes to eliminate his company's bias toward using the :30 and said, "We are all back to school in media communications to learn how to connect with the consumer in a way that is touching and enjoyable and welcome."
Not sure advertising will ever be welcome but he's on the right track. Advertising needs to become something that is sought out rather than avoided. That is the biggest challenge in this current day consumer-controlled media universe.
For years, P & G has been claiming the floating quality of Ivory soap was a production mistake:
"Perhaps Ivory's most famous feature--its ability to float--was the result of an accident! An employee failed to shut off the soap-making machine when he went to lunch. When he returned, he found the soap mixture puffed-up and frothy. After consulting with his supervisor, the decision was made to finish and ship the soap since the ingredients had not been changed in any way by the longer mixing time."
Over 100 years later, P & G is coming clean on that story in a new book, Rising Tide," which finally reveals the truth about the floating soap. In 1863, P&G chemist James N. Gamble made an entry in a notebook saying, "I made floating soap today. I think we'll make all of our stock that way." The book notes further that Gamble, the son of P&G co-founder James Gamble had previously studied with a chemist who had already made floating soap.
This certainly has to take the prize for the longest running marketing lie. Thanks to Adrants reader Tom Hespos for the tip.
Currently, she's number 21 on Billboard's Hot 100 but today Foxboro, MA's Jojo (Joanna Levesque) hit number one on Boston radio station Kiss 108's "Hi Five at Noon." Congrats.
See her "Get Out, Leave" video here.
Referred to lovingly at McCann as "ass-ware," project management software company Adware sent the agency an email stating Adware was changing its name to Adware Systems after giving up the fight to distance itself from the use of the term "adware" to describe pop-up, spyware and maleware companies.
Oddly, www.assware.com seems to be available for the taking.
In response to a recently passed senate bill that had an FCC $3 million indecency fine buried in it, Howard Stern has promised, once Bush signs the bill, to change his format and play only music. Stern says he's doing this because he has no clear understanding of what is now considered indecent and cannot afford to pay a $3 million fine. He's also doing it in protest to the puritanically right-winged insanity that is sweeping the country.
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