Leprechaun Leaps For Lucky Charms in Viral

Dipping its feet into the viral advertising waters, with the help of AsaBailey and Saatchi New York, General Mills has created a "The Italian Job" movie spoof called "The Irish Job" which features a tiny leprechaun in a car racing away from perusers with a box of Lucky Charms in the seat next to him. The video has been seeded to 250,000 U.S. students and 20 somethings.

Step Aside 'Vogue,' 'New York Times' Wants Ad Page Press

Not to be out news'd by Vogue's September ad page monstrosity, The New York Times Magazine announced today its upcoming fall issue of "T: Women's Fashion" has a total of 169 advertising pages – surpassing last year's debut issue, which had the largest number of ad pages since 1985 among any of its predecessor "Part 2-Women's Fashions of the Times" publications. "T: Women's Fashion" will be published on Sunday, August 28 and will feature actor Tilda Swinton on the cover.

Charades Games Eases Highway Construction Project Stress

To call attention to Upgrade 74, downstate Illinois' large road reconstruction project, Ross Creative + Strategy has created an online charades game, Upgrade 74 StayCool, which offers prizes to those who guess the correct movie title construction worker Jack Hammer is acting out. Prizes range from round trip tickets to Orlando to a large Papa John pizza each month for a year to tanning packages, free CDs and movie passes.

Having lived through the last 15 years of Boston's still unfinished Big Dig project, we can certainly identify with the need to portray the construction worker as a friendly, humorous character rather than one who conjures up images of the devil as you try to squeeze your way through a maze of detours on your way to work.

Radar Pays Big For Tom Cruise, No Money Left For Promotion

It's rumored Radar magazine paid $300,000 for insider info on the Tom Cruise Scientology feature which appeared in its September issue. That, perhaps, explains the apparent lack of funds available to support any street marketing beyond a couple of lame stickers shown in this image taken by our street shot snapper Bucky Turco.

JWT Takes On Mother Nature

In an effort to passify those who think men are portrayed in advertising as over sexed, neanderthal morons, JWT has announced it will cease characterizing men as boob-fixated, humping jack rabbits. The change in policy follows the release of a book by one of the agency's vice presidents, Marian Salman, who says men have been mocked in advertising for far too long. While true when it comes to illustrating men as clueless buffoons as Verizon did recently, to strip away certain innate behaviors is questionable. Perhaps it's all payback for, until recently, portraying women as clueless, man-serving kitchen maids.

Salman says, "All too often in the marketing arena, we're portraying man as the victim - of his sexual organ or his lust, his emotional neediness, his overinflated ego or his sheer ineptitude." OK, true. That could be toned down a bit but do we want to re-engineer man to appear as if he's become some sexless, robotic, new age, virtue-spewing automaton?

Emmys to Accost Passengers Inflight

In an attempt to stem sliding rating, the Emmy Awards organizers have signed a deal with United Airlines to show a 20 minute commercial on flight beginning September 1 to promote the September 18 broadcast. Last year's broadcast was viewed by 13.8 million, down from 17.9 million the previous year. Perhaps it's not the award show itself but rather most everything on TV sucks.

Adam Corolla May Replace Howard Stern

As Howard Stern rides off into the sunset known as satellite radio, rumors abound over who will replace him. There's been talk of David Lee Roth and, since appearing on the Stern show in early August, there's talk of Adam Corolla. No one's confirming anything but Corolla did tell the LA Times, "It's hard to say when it will start. I'm not being evasive; I really have no idea. Right now, I hope it's later rather than sooner."

"I'm really just trying to hash out the next two weeks of my life," Carolla told the Times. "So, something that is potentially four months down the road is not just a mile down the road for me, it's a million miles down the road."

Commercial-Free Kidhood Advocated

Marketing to two-years-olds is a no-no so says the Campaign for a commercial-Free Childhood. We agree. Enough advertising crap will find its way to kids eyes and ears soon enough. we say let kids be kids for a while and screw all that crap about building early brand loyalty.

Hotties Promoted With Google Maps

925M points to a little project by San Francisco-based software firm Frozen Bear which has combined the recent Google mapping capabilities with the find-a-hottie site Hot or Not. Just imagine if an enterprising marketer or brand fan put this sort of thing to good use. For example, a national map of Verizon wireless towers which actually showed where the towers where rather than where those fact marketing maps show them to be. Or an outdoor company like Clear Channel using it to allow outdoor board buyers to drill down to exact board locations. Oh well. For now, finding hotties appears to be a lot more fun.

Microsoft Launches Cryptic Xbox 360 Promotional Site

John Keehler over at Random Culture informs us Microsoft has launched another cryptic promotional site for what some say is tied to the upcoming Xbox 360 release. The site contains no live links and only the image of a tree, a rabbit and a very faint countdown clock which will reach zero at noon EST on September 27. Microsoft has done this sort of thing before with the OurColony website which was tied to Xbox2. As always, geeks will freak and time will tell.