A hilarious site containing a Ronco-style TV commercial in the vein of all those other agency spoofs, called, "Ad Guy Starter Kit," provides those wishing to become super cool ad guys a kit which includes a dickie, soul patch (chin hair), certificate of creativity, eight piece tchotchke desk set, coffee shop card, bagel with cream cheese and, yes, a Creanus Award. The site was created by Young Isaac, a Columbus, Ohio-based ad agency. Of course, it's all virally and you're supposed to send it off to all your ad buddies.
New York Times television critic Virginia Heffernan is on the scene this week live-blogging the upfronts. Tune in for her witty takes on Jeff Zucker. Imagine her rolling her eyes as Zucker's presentation pokes fun at last years flops, Hawaii, LAX and Father of the Pride. Read how she likens it to a parent slapping a kid. And wallow in the appearances of Tina Fey and Ming-Na, both pregnant, both promoting a new show called Inconceivable, in which a woman gets implanted with the wrong eggs. Wait. Pregnancy take nine months, right? How's that show going to get dragged out for five years?
Yesterday, Mario Marsicano stumbled upon a street promotion at Park and 53rd in New York City, part of a larger Degree In-Action Heroes promotion which involves the use of action heroes who do good because they, well, use Degree deodorant. The street promotion was a "live" version of the "Suck Up" In-Action Hero who, as the name implies, sucks up to his boss.
Because the man in the In-Action Hero booth is an actual human being, Marsicano wondered what would drive a person to sign up for this thankless job. Well, there's money, of course. But, maybe he just needed a lifetime supply of deodorant. He'll certainly need it standing in that box.
The New York Times has made the speculation official announcing it will charge for some of its online content. A new product, called TimesSelect, will place many of the paper's columnist behind a $49.95 per year wall yet subscribers to the physical paper will be able to access all online content for free. Reportedly, general news will continue to remain free for all. The fee also grants access to the paper's archives which currently date back to 1980 and will ultimately offer content back to 1851. New York Times SVP of Digital Operations Martin Nisenholtz hopes the move will add an additional revenue stream for the company without cannibalizing current levels of ad revenue.
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For five months, Jeff Tweiten has been waiting in line in front of the Pacific Science Center IMAX theater waiting to see the new Star Wars movie. And everyone has been talking about it. Is anyone this freakish? Brenner Thomas doesn't think so. In fact, he thinks Tweiten's presence in front of the theater, along with couch, Internet connection and weblog is all a marketing ploy to build buzz for the movie. After all, it's not like it's gong to be difficult to see this movies since theaters will have it running on half their screens. So Thomas's theory could very well be correct.
While we don't pretend to be a medical expert, we've certainly heard sugar has a little something to do with a disease called Diabetes. Well, after sugary soft drink marketer Cadbury Schweppes entered into a three-year, multi-million dollar alliance, American Diabetes Association Chief Scientific and Medical Officer Richard Kahn seems to think otherwise and told Corporate Crime Reporter, in an interview, "What is the evidence that sugar itself has anything to do with diabetes? There is no evidence."
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Clearly a sign the GoDaddy-like, too-hot-for-TV, banned commercial strategy to milk press has jumped the shark, Motts has aired a spot for its Clamato juice featuring, simply, the brand's logo, official sounding text indicating the ad was deemed too racy for broadcast and a plea to visit the Mott's Clamato juice website to, surprise, view the commercial. A tipster points out, humorously, when attempting to view the video, all one sees is "Error 509 Bandwidth limit exceeded." Apparently, the spot's too hot for the web too.
Previously thought to be too hot for TV, the Carl's Jr. commercial, featuring Paris Hilton in a revealing bathing suit, lasciviously slathering soap suds on the side of a Bentley with a big ass BBQ Six Dollar Burger to the tune of "I Love Paris in Springtime," will air nationally tomorrow night on Entertainment Tonight followed by local placement in Western states. To maximize the PR quotient of this too-hot-but-maybe-not-that-hot strategy, the company plans to release a racier, 60 second version of the spot on its website as well.
Likely to be far more popular than her recent movie, House of Wax, the ad promises to be "appealing to our demographic," said CKE Restaurants Inc. President and CEO Andrew Puzder.
UPDATE: The full spot can be viewed here.
After a Wal-mart funded ad with an image showing a 1933 Nazi book burning accompanied by the headline, Should we let government tell us what we can read?" appeared in the May 8 issue of the Arizona Daily Sun, complaints began to flood in and now Wal-mart is apologizing profusely. The ad states Wal-mart's position against a ballot proposal that would prohibit its expanding a store in the Flagstaff area to include a grocery store.
Wal-mart Director of Community Affairs Daphne Moore said the ad was "reviewed and approved by Wal-Mart, but we did not know what the photo was from. We obviously should have asked more questions." Well, yes. People get all uppity about this stuff don'tcha know?
While this impressive Versace POP window display featuring Madonna is filed under the flickr tag, "advertising," we're not entirely sure it was the POP display flickr user frenchtower was interested in capturing but rather an equally impressive display of another kind.
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