'Chicken Little' Promoted With Art Gallery Chickens

To promote the upcoming Disney movie, Chicken Little, Boston-based marketing firm, ALT TERRAIN, enlisted 30 artists/influencers to transform unpainted vinyl Chicken Little characters into anything the artists chose for a bi-coastal gallery show and online auction. The first show was held May 19 at Meltdown in Los Angeles. The second show will be held June 16 at 360 Toy Group in New York. Check out some of the artists' work here.

Multitasking Begets Multifragmentation

In yet another confirmation of the obvious, BIGresearch, in its upcoming Simultaneous Media Survey, found
that multitasking causes people to pay more or less attention to the individual multitasked activities depending upon which activity is receiving primary attention. In English, that means a person watching TV while on the Internet will pay less attention to both those media if they decide to make a phone call. Or, when the TV commands primary attention, the email being typed to a friend will pause mid-stream. You get the point. Most people can only do one thing at a time effectively. This whole multitasking thing is really a myth. It should really be called Multi-fragmentation. Afterall, that's what's happening. Attention is being further fragmented among multiple points of concentration.

Google Could Trump Broadcast Advertising

With Google's new online video search to be released in the near future, anyone can upload a video for indexing by Google so searchers can find it. Those that provide the video can also set a price the downloader has to pay before viewing. Google gets a cut of that price. As with anything, ads will find their way into these videos thereby placing Google in the position of Netcaster, providing a new advertising platform for marketers to exploit and for Google to realize revenue.

Applebee's Says 'Go Dunk Yourself'

Random Culture points to this Applebee's DunkTank online game in which you upload a picture of yourself, crop your face, dress yourself in a choice of clothing and dunk yourself like one of those carnival games. Random Culture says it's pretty funny. We'll take his word for it. When we realized we had to upload a picture of ourself, we decided it was too much work so we'll just show you Random Culture's pic instead.

Mitsubishi Takes Over Yahoo, Firefox Blissfully Ignorant

For Your IE's Only

So, today, Mitsubishi launched their cool-ish Yahoo page take over to promote the new 2006 Eclipse. By using the a,s,d,w keys, visitors can drive the car around the Yahoo page before heading to the car's microsite. It's engaging enough as page takeovers go but we have one concern. It's hard to believe that most marketers, especially a supposedly savvy marketer like Mitsubishi, still think Internet Explorer is the only browser worth designing for. You see, we use Firefox here because, well, it's just, like, way better than Explorer. We also spend our entire day writing about advertising. You'd think Mitsubishi would want those who write about advertising to easily and without need to fire up another browser, view their page takeover creative. Apparently the 10 to 20 percent of us that use Firefox don't matter. Actually, maybe that's a good thing. Those that use Firefox also use it because most of this fancy stuff doesn't work with Firefox and we like that little "feature" just fine.

Charter Promotes Broadband Phone, Vonage Laughs

Not Very Amusing

Charter is promoting its $39.99 per month broadband phone service with a not so great spot that take the "laughing all the way to the bank" pun overboard. Aside from unfunny creative, why would anyone with cable use a $39.95 per month broadband phone service when they can just hook up with Vonage broadband for $24.99 per month?

Charter did one thing right though. The call to action in the spot is an 800 number instead of a website. Good thing. That $39.99 price is nowhere to be found on the Charter product page. All you get is pointers back to the 800 number. Is it really that difficult to list prices so people can make decisions without having to wade though layers and layers of phone menus just to be placed perpetually on hold?

Absolut Launches 'Find Your Flavor'

Absolut has launched a pseudo-scientific little Flashy thing, called "Find Your Flavor," that lets you take a timed quiz which then determines which flavor of Absolut you are. We seem to me Mandarin but that's probably because we get dyslexic navigating fancy Flash sites. No matter, give it a whirl. After all, you have no actual work to do today, right? You're just "concepting."

Irony Eats It's Own Snark eBay Style

New York JWT ad exec Steve Coulson has launched the mother of all eBay ironies with his "Your Logo on my Golden Palace" bid. Poking fun at eBay's ability to catapult absolutely nothing to fame and Golden Palace's ceaseless appetite for all parts of the human body, the ad promises the winning bidder's logo will be placed on a small Golden Palace which will be displayed on Steve's desk and seen by "decision makers, media buyers and celebrities" who visit his office. Perhaps this will finally end this little mini-trend.

Coke to Introduce 'Zero' With Remake of Classic Commercial

Hippie Goes Hip-Hop

Later this month. Coke will launch a campaign to introduce its new calorie-free drink, Zero. The centerpiece of the campaign will be a remake, created by Crispin Porter + Bogusky and shot last week in Philadelphia, of the classic "Hilltop" spot which featured the famous song, "I'd Like to Buy The World A Coke" which also introduced the tagline, "It's the Real Thing." The new commercial is being labeled "Chilltop" and the song will be sung by G. Love.

Fast Company's Ryan Underwood isn't too thrilled with the song's new lyrics which have, as he writes, "about as much personality as the mahogany table around which they were surely penned."

USDA Refuses to Adopt Commercial Alert Junk Food Petition

Commercial Alert is a bit upset the U.S. Department of Agriculture, yesterday, rejected a petition (pdf) asking the government group to enforce its own rules which prohibit public schools from selling "foods of minimal nutritional value," otherwise known as junk food. The petition asked for, among other things, monthly certification by schools that they are abiding by USDA guidelines, annual audits by state agencies to insure guidelines are being followed, adherence to guidelines as a critical area of review for school food authorities, adherence to guidelines an integral part of Food and Nutrition Service review of state agencies and USDA management control over compliance with guidelines.

Commercial Alert Executive Director Gary Ruskin isn't pleased. "It is outrageous that the USDA is refusing to enforce its own rules against selling junk food in public schools. They have turned their back on American children, who are suffering from an epidemic of obesity." While no one is forcefully placing the mouths of children on the dispensing area of vending machines, temptation is hard to resist.