Lone Marketer Sticks With kate Moss

Kate Moss may has been ditched by many marketers over her cocaine use but one is holding out and capitalizing on the publicity. London cosmetics company Rimmel, who has used Moss previously, is keeping her on and will feature her in a commercial highlighting her partying persona with Rimmel standing on for coke when she needs a boost the morning after. The name of the advertised line: Recovery. How appropriate.

Video Promotes Lance Armstrong Ad Week Scavenger hunt

The now corporation has produced a video to promote Boards-hosted Lance Armtrong "The Boards Big Find," a New York City Advertising Scavenger Hunt held September 29, in association with Advertising Week. Teams from the agency and commercial production communities will be challenged to find a series of industry-related objects and articles and help raise money for the Lance Armstrong Foundation.

Ads to Appear on Parking Lot Stripes

In the seemingly endless quest to plaster every last surface of the world with advertising, Denver ad man, Greg Gorman, creator of the Budweiser frogs and their signature "Bud-Wei-Ser," has applied for a patent and trademarked the words, "Parking Stripe," which is the name of his company. The company will work with 3M, a client of Gorman's at Golden advertising, and parking lot owners to adhere special strips containing ad messages right over existing parking lot lines. Parking lots could become very colorful places in the not too distant future.

BuzzMetrics Acquired by Trendum

Online word of mouth research firm BuzzMetrics,has been acquired by Trendum, an Internet search and linguistic analysis technology company. The tow companies hope to create global standards to measure and analyze consumer buzz.

The company will do business as BuzzMetrics and have the strategic backing of VNU, owner of ACNielsen and Nielsen Media Research. VNU is a minority shareholder in the new company. BuzzMetrics hopes the deal will build on Trendum's technology, and expand the operation through VNU's global sales, marketing and research capabilities.

Ad Age Finally Features 'Big Ad'

Ad Age has done two things of note today in its TV Spots of the Week column, First, it features a Toyota Prius ad that is unauthorized by the car maker and was created by Area 51 Films and distributed by New York PR firm Juice to highlight director Theodore Melfi. The second, months after the ad raced through the Internet, Ad Age has finally decided to include Carlton Draught's Big Ad. Why the wait?

Other spots this week include a great spot for Cincinnati Bell, created by GJP Advertising, which shows a guy using dial up and as the camera zooms out, we realize he an exhibit in a museum...next to a cave man exhibit. Quite brilliant actually. Unless, of course, you're the loser still using dial up. Dockers does a love connection with San Francisco street cars. Canada's CHUM Television has a spot, created by Mitchell Gabourie, for the Buck Calder experience, a comedy series that follows an American director working in Canada making a fool of himself.

Advertising Week Kicks Off, Overly Sprawling

Ad Age keeps us up to date on Advertising Week happenings. Ad Age Editor Scott Donaton's take is the event is far too publich and far too sprawling, celebrating advertising as it was 30 years ago rather than advertising as it is today. Ongoing coverage is here.

'The O.C.' Hits Cell Phones With Game

As if watching FOX's The O.C. wasn't enough to whisk people into the fake world of Orange County's plastic wannabes, FOX has signed a licensing deal with game maker Gameloft to create a mobile game that, according to Gameloft president Michael Guillemont, will let players take on the role of one the the show's main characters, create an original character, join cliques, dress hip and generally go O.C. with their cell phones. That's all we need. More mindless Marissa pretenders. The game is set to release next year.

Mortal Combat Viral Answer to Meeting Insanity

Celebrating the beauty of violence and glorifying its callous regard for it, Mortal Kombat has launched a new viral (or, at least an online film they hope goes viral - after all, it's ain't viral until it becomes viral), called Blood on the Carpet, to promote the new Shaolin Monks game. The film was directed by Seamus Masterson of Maverick and will be tracked by Viral Chart. Violent or not, you have to admit, after day-long, mindless, chest-thumping, group hug, brand-building blather sessions, this is exactly what you'd want to do to the pontificating, puffery-spewing idiot sitting next to you.

Pepsi Australia Spoofs Own Campaign

Spoofing its own Pepsi Max Heaps Rich campaign, Pepsi Australia has launched a viral advertising campaign called Heaps Poor Pepsi Min which, over the past three weeks, has been viewed by 160,000 people. The site features a spoof of Pepsi's currently running promotional television spot along with purposefully bad prizes and a game that lets visitors determine how boring they are. Some nice insiderishness here.

Flickr User Upset Over Yahoo Ads on Photo Pages

With Yahoo's purchase of Flickr, it didn't take too long for Yahoo text ads to begin appearing next to Flickr member's pictures. Unlike Google AdWords, Yahoo text ads, at least on Flickr, appear on personal Flickr pages whether or not the member wants them. Granted, Flickr provides the service for free which negates a non-paying Flickr member's ability to completely control what appears on their photo pages but one Flickr user, tanais, doesn't like the practice, commenting on an ad placement next to an image of, we assume, his dog, "I do not like my pictures being used to advertise a specific breeder (they may be excellent they may be terrible - that's not the point)... so I shall sit down and think about how best to AdBust this."

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