Don't be ashamed if you aren't hip enough to know what dogging is - we weren't and had to ask. It's the practice of having exhibitionist sex in semi-secluded spaces which are publicized for participation or for voyeuristic pleasure. Now that we've admitted to our un-hip lifestyle, we can get on with the story. Pot Noodles, a UK noodle maker is capitalizing on the dogging trend with a "meet-up" site of its own, called Natural Noodling, including tips on how to dog - or as they call it - noodling, maps, pictures and a guide to get started with noodling. We'll admit it's an effective strategy. Sex does make you hungry afterall.
Bordering on clothed porn, Hardee's, last month, launched a television commercial featuring the very hot Camerson Richardson writhing, to the tune of Foghat's Slow Ride, atop a mechanical bull while having oral sex with a burger. Oh wait. She was just eating the burger. It was hard...to tell until viewing a few times. Promoting the chain's new Western Bacon Thickburger and capitalizing on men's fascination with women humping inanimate objects, the spot follows the tried and true strategy of association: Hardee's equals hot women, hot women eat at Hardee's, I'm going to eat at Hardee's. Or, perhaps, it just caused the sudden, uncontrollable urge to have sex. All good. As the ad says at the end - Eat Right. Exercise More.
Adland reports McDonald's is dropping the golden arches from its advertising in the UK apparently attempting to distance itself from the association between the logo and clogged arteries. There's even a new tagline just to make sure we noticed the change: "McDonald's. But not as you know it."
Perhaps trying to distance itself from the recent "Supersize Me" movie in which Morgan Spurlock eats McDonald's food exclusively for a month risking his death, the campaign will promote coffee, salads, fruits and, of course, calorie-laden bagels with cream cheese. Leo Burnett is behind the campaign and there's no doubt it's being considered for the U.S. as well.
A website for what is believed to be a post production house has launched, called New York Post House, mirroring the look of the New York Post.
There are reports of printed versions of the site being "sold" outside ad agencies in the city today by old school paper boys shouting the proverbial "extra, extra, read all about it!" The site is reminiscent of AdWeak, an intermittently published site that skewers the ad industry with an overload of wit and insightful humor. New York Post House is split into sections similar to USA Today including news, lifestyle, sports, horoscopes and classifieds with a focus on ad industry shenanigans.
The current New York Post House cover story reports Nike's placement of its swoosh on the moon to reach "night-goers" and promote the new "Getaway" line of shoes "designed for sprinting away from police and security guards." Now there's a company that knows its target audience.
We're told the mystery behind the site and its creators will be revealed to all Friday. Stay tuned.
Writing in MediaPost's Online Spin, Tom Hespos posits satellite radio, with its seemingly limitless bandwidth, could become the new Internet allowing anyone, through satellite company lease, to broadcast their own radio show. Internet publishing and recently, weblogs, have provided a global voice to individual inclined to shout loud enough. Satellite could do the same for wannabe radio personalities.
In what is believed to be a first, Toronto ad agency Vaughn Whelan & Partners, which does not have the Molson account, placed a commercial for Molson Canadian over the weekend. It was placed, along with other marketing efforts, to attract the attention of Molson Chairman Eric Molson, Molson CEO Dan O'Neill and Adolph Coors CEO Leo Kiely. Vaughn Whelan & Partners CEO Vaughn whelan employed the tactic in a bid to win the account away from incumbent Bensimon Byrne as part of an ongoing agency review.
The 60-second ad told the story of a Toronto bike courier who took on Revenue Canada and won after arguing his daily food bill should be deductible as fuel. In a nod to the usual beer ad, the spot concluded with the line "Respect," a patio shot with the triumphant courier, the obligatory buxom babe and the tagline "It's a Canadian Thing."
- Writing in Ad Age, Al Ries claims Trump's failing Atlantic City casino's are due to flawed marketing strategy.
- Experiential marketing defines itself with a manifesto.
- Mobile service provider has selected Publicis Groupe's Conhill for its first $20 million Hispanic effort.
- ABC's Desperate Housewives continued to enthrall with 20.3 million viewers tuning in Sunday night for a peek inside suburbia.
- CBS's Two and a Half Men is keeping the comedy genre aloft and landing the series in the top ten.
- More from the TV world: WB execs are telling advertisers, while they will go after the 25-34 year old crowd, the network will keep its focus on the tween/teen/college 12-24 female audience.
- Verizon, again, tops Ad Age's half year measurements of ad spend. The company spent $730.8 million in the first half of 2004.
Dismissing the minor detail that fast food kills, Carl's Jr. Restaurants (OK, so they're not exactly fast) is maximizing the obsession with penis size in a new campaign to promote its new double the killing power, double burger. With the voiceover "everyone in Washington is talking about how big they are," images of everyone from Bush to Kerry to Clinton to Rice are shown indicating their size (or desire for in Rice's case) making sure we know the Carl's Jr. burger is BIG.
Lest we forget other fine, though sexually unrelated spots this week in Ad Age's TV Spots of the Week, Visa has Brentson Buckner kissing is shoes, Zaxby's piles on the carbs with the much over used pencil in the ceiling tile analogy, iPod silhouettes, Ameritrade bores us with some guy's morning routine, American Legacy Foundation continues is realty series approach to quitting smoking, Oral-B, whose name, alongside images of women's grinning mouths, alludes to something other than whiter teeth and TGIFriday's gets the whole family to the restaurant.
A few days after the first Presidential debate, there were accusations from both sides claiming Bush and Jerry "cheated" during the debate.
There was talk of Bush being fed answers through an ear piece and Kerry using a cheat sheet. New York paper AM New York ran a front page story yesterday about the issue and cited Google searches, "Bush and bulge (in jacket" and Kerry and cheat sheet" yielding many searches as an indicator of the accusation's validity. Journalistically, there's a difference between many people saying something happened and many people searching to see if something actually did happen.
Black Rocket, once the high flying agency that created Yahoo's famous yodel, is now in the throes of an ugly dispute with parent company Euro RSCG. Founding partner Steve Stone, whose Euro contract has run out, wants to buy the firm and take back the Black Rocket but Euro wants to bury the name yet will consider selling the company back to Stone. Founding partner John Yost has just resigned citing the need to take a break. Agency business as usual.
And all along we thought Black Rocket was just some oblique product from failed Internet backbone provider Genuity. Never heard of it? Neither had we until sauntered into a tricked-out, dot com boardroom a few years back for an explanation while working on the account. Our eyes are still glazed over.
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