U.S. Cannes Contenders Presented

From Axe to Altoids to Ikea to Nextel to Adidas, Ad Age has collected ten Cannes contenders from U.S. agencies for your viewing pleasure.

It's Summer! Let's Kill Beach Goers With Ads!

The once quaint, red-lettered banner dragged behind a small bi-plane has increasingly given way to gigantic sky banners, sailboats equipped with logo-emblazoned sails, grooming equipment that paves the beach with logos in the sand, logoed umbrellas, handouts, beach chairs, towels and flip-flops. Tantalized with the ability to reach millions of beach goers each summer, advertisers can't pass up the opportunity to ruin the once pristine views one might assume exist at their local beach. It's amazing Gary Ruskin or the Billboard Liberation front aren't out on beaches every season with giant paint ball cannons equipped with gallon-sized, white paint bullets defacing all that "image pollution." Of course, the sponsored nightlife can sometimes make up for this daytime blight.

Oxygen Network Co-Ops Gary Brolsma's Numa Numa

Numa Numa creator Gary Brolsma fame boy said it best himself. "I really don't know how it happened, the Internet is a mighty place, obviously nothing too interesting must be happening because my stupid video debuted on CNN...the ONLY place I uploaded it was Newgrounds, and now it's everywhere." That it is as well as many spoofs of his original work collected on this website. Even Oprah's Oxygen Network has jumped on board with a recently created version of their own including, presumably, Oxygen network staffers belting out the network's signature "Oh!" to the kooky Numa Numa tune. There's even an "Oh!" logo at the end.

The video does not seem to be directly available on the Oxygen site but is hosted there and is deep linked from the Gary Brolsma fan site. We wonder if they just created it for internal enjoyment or if they meant for it to leak virally. We think it will be the latter now. Make sure you see Gary's original too.

Ad Banners Get It On

Here's a collection of interesting, animated ad banners that are, apparently, for a Brazilian Internet company.

Hummer Street Art Gets Defaced

Earlier this month we pointed out some Tats Cru, Inc. street art that GM commissioned to promote its new Hummer H3, the small man's hummer. Predictably, the art has been defaced as noted by flicker user Irena Tejaratchi who took this image including the phrases, "sell out, "no blood for oil," "sham" and "dummer." While GM might not like their brand defaced, they knew what they were getting into and they most likely figured they'd get a bunch of press, too, which they have.

Radar Magazine Collects Gay Logos

From the New York's Olympics bid to the NBC peacock to FTD Florist, Radar Magazine has taken a stab at what it calls the gayest logos. In truth, some are pretty gay.

Big Boobs Keep Foster's Beer Cold

OK, then. We know boobs have been used to sell beer forever but not in association with the large shady area a pair of prodigious breasts can provide. Under the photoshopped boobage of one woman, another woman holds a glass of Foster's beer accompanied by the headline, "Well. You Wouldn't Want A Warm Beer, Would You?" At first we thought we were looking at some new form of breast-produced beer milk until we came to our senses and focused on the shadier aspects of this ad. Thanks to flickr user mollyeh11 for this one.

Goodyear Blimp Crashes

Yesterday, one of Goodyear's gigantic, flying billboards crashed into an industrial park in Florida during a thunderstorm. No one was injured but that's not going to be an easy ad medium to replace.

Ambiguously Described Products Preferred Over Un-Ambiguous

Wharton marketing professor Barbara E. Kahn and Elizabeth G. Miller, a marketing professor at Boston College recently conducted a study which found marketers that name products with ambiguous or surprising descriptions for flavors or colors are likely to see increased sales over conventionally described products. With studies involving the selection of jellybeans and sweaters, the study found showing an example of a strangely named sweater color actually decreased the satisfaction upon respondents seeing the actual sweater.

The study findings elaborate on this further. "We find that the revelation of the color shade (through a picture of the color) prior to viewing the name decreases preference for ambiguous color names, but increases preference for unexpected descriptive color names," the paper states. "These results support the notion that when consumers encounter a surprising name (because it violates beliefs about informativeness), they engage in additional elaboration about the name to try to understand why it was provided. The type of elaboration will depend on how the name violates expectations: If the name is uninformative in a literal sense, consumers will engage in a Gricean process to determine the meaning of the communication; if the name is uninformative because it is atypical, consumers will search for the reason the particular adjective was selected as described by incongruency theory. The result of this additional elaboration is increased satisfaction with the product."

The study reveals online merchants may see better sales for products with uncommonly named colors if a sample of the color is not shown.

'Entourage' Suite Launched With Party At Palms

Animal Magazine publisher Bucky Turco made his way out to the Palms Resort in Las Vegas for the unveiling of the official HBO Entourage suite. Turco reports, "This branded suite on the 51st floor of the Palms boasts a black-jack table, comes pre-stocked with: Absolut and Jack Daniels, Ben Sherman gear, and two Xbox's playable on large flat screen TV's. Additionally whoever checks into the Entourage suite gets keys to a Mercedes M-Class SUV, massages, and a complimentary Motorola razor phone. To kick off the promotion HBO brought in the whole cast and lots of scantily dressed ladies. This ultimate bachelor pad is available for the next 6 months, groupies not included." Check out images from the event here.