Red Sox Manager Signs With Metamucil

Writing on his weblog, A Fine Kettle of Fish, Bob Cargill gives us a humorous take on World Champion Red Sox Manager Terry Francona recent advertising spokesman deal with laxative maker Metamucil. Cargill also ranked the many post-game congratulatory ads and named Metamucil's, which had the tagline, "Way to go! Congratulations Boston on your World Championship.

Let's hope it becomes a regular thing," the best.

Baby's Parents Turn Down Lucrative Advertising Deals

As if China needs to get any bigger, its 1.3 billionth citizen recently entered the world and has been showered with advertising spokesbaby offers. In a uniquely smart and very un-American move, the baby's father, Zhang Tong has turned down all offers except one which provides insurance to his child saying, "It's lucky to be China's 1.3 billionth citizen. But it's unnecessary to act as an image representative for so many products, since Zhang Yichi is too young and too many commercial activities will have negative impact on the boy's healthy growth."

TiVo Co-Founder Steps Down As CEO

TiVo CEO and Co-Founder Mike Ramsay, 55, has announced he will step down as CEO, a position he held for eight years, after a successor is in place. TiVo has been under the gun from cable and satellite operators who have been building their own, non-TiVo technology into set top boxes. On a brighter note, TiVo recently launched TiVoToGo, a product that enables TiVo users to transfer recorded programming to their computers and portable media players. Ramsay says his move has been in the works for some time and is not in reaction to any particular event.

Plight of CMO Explained

Author and marketing luminary Seth Godin explains the myth behind the Chief Marketing Officer and why blame for bad marketing should not always be heaped upon the person in this position.

Hall's to Offer 'New' Print Product Placement Tool

Retooling what it has done for years, Hall's Reports LLC which tracks editorial content, ad to edit ratios and brands mentioned in print, is re-purposing its service and offering it as a web-based print product placement tracking service for media planners. Called "Hall's Reports: Editorial Credits," the service will monitor print and photographic editorial mention of brands in 130 magazines beginning in late March.

Woman Sues Estee Lauder Because Ads Said She'd Stop Aging

Fourty-seven year old Debra Scheufler has filed suit against Estee Lauder and other cosmetic companies claiming their advertising makes false claims with respect to their "anti-aging" properties. Scheuffler, refreshingly, wants only for the alleged false advertising to stop and to be reimbursed an estimated $1,000 she spent on the products.

"The real question is, what does anti-aging mean? If a product has a sunscreen in it, it has anti-aging properties," she said. "And moisturizers can give the appearance of decreasing wrinkles. Or if you have dead skin that's exfoliated, the light reflects better and skin looks younger and better."

The answer is simple. Anti-aging means one stops getting older and no product has, to date, been able to accomplish that.

Kraft Ends Junk Food Advertising to Young Kids, Still Makes Older Kids Fat

Under the delusion that junk food, apparently, makes only young kids fat, Kraft Foods has, rather than actually introduce healthy foods, decided to placate those concerned with childhood obesity by ceasing the advertising of it's snack foods to children under 12. Perhaps no one's told Kraft that media isn't yet quite that exact when it comes to targeting and kids under 12 are still very likely to see ads aimed at older kids.

Kraft PR mouthpiece Mark Berlind said, "We do recognize that people and parents are concerned about advertising to young children. We hope this will address that concern." Mark, tell management that an Oreo cookie has the same amount of fat in it whether it's eaten by a 5 year old or a 50 year old.

Monster Will Not Advertise on Super Bowl

After a six year run, job site Monster will not advertise on this year's Super Bowl and will instead use local radio, television and online marketing. Radio advertising on 180 stations will include a partnership with Infinity Broadcasting consisting of one minute Monster Career Moments featuring Monster founder Jeff Taylor and interview clips from business people, athletes and celebrities. Monster has also partnered with online local TV network Internet Broadcasting Systems to provide career content on the education, technology, business and family pages of IBS television websites.

Teaser Site Launches With Two Headed Dog Theme

A tipster keeps wetting our appetite by sending pictures and pointing to a site called The2HeadedDog so we thought we'd take a look. As the name connotes, it's all about a two headed dog. That theme carries through to several sections of the site. On the homepage, there are "Tricks Du Jour," a collection of really strange looking videos, all of which, incorporate a logo of a dog with two heads. Another section, called "Dog Pound," allows people to upload interpretive images of the two headed dog logo. A section called "Freestyle" appears to be a bunch of "on-the-street" amateur rap takes incorporating the phrase "two headed dog." Lastly, a section called "Arcade" contains, as the name suggests, three online games which are actually quite fun to play, especially the ones called "Ass Blaster" and Mailman Attack." A little addictive actually.

Of course, the theme here is "two" so it's likely some brand that is about to re-launch or introduce a new product is behind the stunt. The site is registered to Pier Borra in New York which, upon searching, doesn't point to much other than the CEO of healthcare company CORA Rehabilitation Clinics which seems unlikely to be the type of company which would engage in stealth marketing of this sort. As is always the case with these things, it's only a matter of time before that cat is out of the bag. Stay tuned.

UPDATE: Comments point to this being something from MTV.

UPDATE 2: A reader named "James," claiming to be in the know, assures us this is for the re-launch of MTV2.

Wrangler Drops Frozen Jeans On Cities

Amsterdam-based BSUR recently completed a unique street marketing program in three German cities for its client, Wrangler Jeans. As part of the company's "Wanted" campaign, one-ton ice blocks were placed around the cities as if they had dropped from the sky. Inside the ice blocks were Wrangler jeans with WANTED sprayed on them. Upon discovery, people stared at, touched, chopped, climbed on and, otherwise, just plain had fun with the gigantic ice blocks. Wrangler Promotion teams took pictures of people interacting with the blocks and placed them in area retailer window displays where the frozen ice block theme was continued. Full size images are here, here and here.