Celebrities And Brands Tie Big Knots

From Hilary Swank to Mischa Barton to Eva Longoria, celebrities are tying themselves to brands like a geek tied to Slashdot with Swank launching a celebrity-studded game show, Barton hawking Keds and Longoria primping for L'Oreal. Britney Spear, Bono, Ashlee Simpson, Hilary Duff, and Joss Stone are in on the knot tying too. George Clooney thinks it's great. Russell Crowe thinks it's all crap.

Advertising Helps Breasts In Thanks For Breasts Helping Advertising

In a unique twist to the preponderance of pendulous breasts in advertising, the American Cancer Society and the Eisner Museum of Advertising and Design have turned breast messaging on its head with an ad for a fund raising event April 28 in Milwaukee. The headline for the ad reads, After All Breasts Have Done for Advertising, It's Time Advertising Did Something For Breasts.

DoubleClick Examines Past And Future of Advertising

Painting a picture far less bleak than Bob Garfield did with his Chaos Manifesto, DoubleClick Director of Research Rick Bruner has published The Decade in Online Advertising, a look back at the history of online advertising as well as a look forward to what can be expected in the future. Granted, Garfield's piece focused on the entire field of advertising while Bruner's piece focuses on the online segment, there are similarities, namely, the increasing control consumers will have over the consumption of media. Along with the increase in consumer control, Bruner states online media's accountability will cause marketers to demand more accountability in traditional media and the recent rapid growth of online advertising will turn the medium from a buyer's market to a seller's market.

While Garfield has painted the future of advertising as some sort of doomsday, Bruner has produced a fact-filled, optimistic viewpoint of the future. Both, though, are well worth reading. Garfield's is here. Bruner's DoubleClick report is here (pdf).

Coming Soon: The New Adrants

At the end of this week, we will launch our long-overdue site redesign and shift our publishing platform from Blogger (yes, believe it or not, we still use Blogger) to MovableType. Keep your fingers crossed but we are in the good hands of design-4-results Komra Moriko, a great designer and kick-ass MovableType guru.

The content of the site will remain the same but, in the coming weeks, we will be adding feature articles from those working in advertising which, ideally, will lend additional and deeper commentary to Adrants. Comments and suggestions are always welcomed.

Movie Promo Gets Butts in Seats With Butts

Ypulse points us to a movie promotion that's co-branded with Sears. Warner Brothers is releasing a movie called The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants which is tied to Sears ads promoting the Levis jeans which will appear in the movie. The promotion, apparently leveraging the uncontrollable urge of 14 year old boys to stare at girl's butts, will likely insure those same boys invite their girlfriends on a date to see the movie. Seems everybody wins on this one.

UPDATE: There's a viral that goes along with the campaign as well.

Brooks Runs Through Life in 90 Seconds

Brooks used to be a big name in running shoes and perhaps it still is. But with our widening waistline and endless onslaught of Nike and Reebok billion dollar ad campaigns, we just don't know. What we do know is Brooks has launched a video, called Run Workld Run, created by JohnsonSheen Advertising, incorporating catchy vocals written by Chris Ballew and animated by Matt Clark, that takes us on a 90 second walk through life courtesy of Brooks Running Shoes.

I'm Not Really Lovin' It

The Sneeze, which describes itself as "half zine. half blog. half not good with fractions," has, after wondering why McDonald's is so presumptuous as to assume everyone really lovin it, offered up a few, less presumptuous versions of the burger chain's trademark tagline. From "i'm just datin' it" to i'm just regrettin' it" to "i'm only likin it as a friend," The Seeze let's McDonald's know it might not want to assume so much.

Study: Internet Helps, Not Hurts Other Media

Forrester Research and Headlight Vision, commissioned by Yahoo and Mediaedge:cia will, today, release a study that shows the increase in Internet usage is actually increasing, not decreasing the consumption of other media. Detailed findings will be released during a Yahoo forum at the Museum of Television and Radio today. Early indications lead to the belief it's multitasking, not an increase in total media consumption, that's saving old media. Unfortunately, multitasking goes against the idea of "undivided attention" and "captive audience" many advertisers crave.

NBC And ESPN Nab NFL Rights For $12.5 Billion

The broadcast rights for the National Football League's Sunday and Monday Night Football has been acquired by NBC and ESPN for an estimated $12.5 billion. Under the deal, NBC will broadcast Sunday Night Football and ESPN will broadcast Monday Night Football. Ad Age has the complete story.

HALLS Fruit Breezers Gets Croaky

Hall's teamed up with weebls-stuff to create a new Hall's Fruit Breezers site which includes the "Croaky Channel," basically a video illustrating how Fruit Breezers can improve one's croaky singing voice. The site teases with a new, yet un-launched channel, the Hoarse Network." Can't wait.