An early believer in blogging and podcasting, GM, a while back, created Fastlane, a blog written by GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz and other GM top executives. Today, Lutz has produce his first podcast in which he talks about "the realities of today's market for full-size sport utility vehicles with host Bill O'Neill, GM executive director of communications." It's encouraging to see executives at this level in large companies engaging in these two new, but very powerful media.
Enabling the consumer-created advertising trend is a company called AdCandy which has positioned itself an exchange for people who think they have great ad ideas and marketers who think consumer-created ads are worthy of buying. We're not quite sure this is going to take off. Afterall, can you imagine anyone in our ego-centric advertising world allowing something to pass for an ad that doesn't have their name all over it so they can tout it during new business pitches and pre-award run ups? Oh wait...this is a good thing! People creating ads for products out of true love rather than ego-maniacle, head-swelling glory.
Following Kate Moss's trouble with the white stuff and her losing marketing deals with H&M, Burberry and Chanel, it looks like actress Sienna Miller is talking to Burberry's to become the company's spokes model. In other news, Burberry photographer Mario Testino is throwing a hissy fit and may quit because he, apparently, wanted to work with Moss.
Hotel Chatter tells us Marriott Hotels has unveiled mSpot, a combined live billboard/musical concert billboard, in New York's Times Square. The board promotes what the hotel chain calls its "hip new room design" and will feature appearances by musical acts Ciara, Marc Broussard, Antigone Rising and Collective Soul along with a wedding held behind a glassed in section of the board. The "board" will be in place for four days.
Picture Marketing, Inc. has created a technology that turns personal photos into an ad medium. Called Picture Marketing In-a-Box, the offering is a combined hardware and online service that enables marketers and event organizers to take pictures of people at sponsored events, trade shows, and retail locations. The online service then combines those photos together with survey information supplied by each person, to build a mini-advertising campaign around each individual's photo.
According to Picture Marketing, the service has many potential applications. For example, automakers at car shows can take pictures of event attendees posed with the latest car models on display, and later mail ads featuring the individual's photo, which, one hopes, the person will show to their friends and family. Sort of a marketer-enabled, word of mouth tactic. Brand advertisers can also use dozens of the service's specialized cameras at stadium events, in order to capture thousands of leads in a single day - assuming people visit the companies marketer-branded survey website after seeing their mug. One has to wonder about the potential misuses that could come from accidental, un-approved pictures.
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With all the recent examination of circulation's underbelly, one wonders whether circulation rules and loopholes are becoming more rampant that tax law. Time Inc. has been subpoenaed to turn over information about its sponsored sales programs under which the publisher can sell subscriptions to sponsors for as little as one cent an issue. Those paid subscriptions, which end up distributed in public spaces, are noted by Time as paid subscriptions which help up the publisher's rate base. Time has decided to re-qualify these as "qualified" on its ABC Publisher Statements which will move about five percent of the publisher's circulation out of the paid category.
Rick Bruner has pointed us to this very cool commercial for the recently unveiled and soon to be released Nintendo Revolution game controller which, as the name indicates, intends to revolutionize the game control. The Revolution has done away with wires and now looks like a television remote. It transmits the player's every hand motion, wirelessly to a receiver which is connected to the TV. The ad does a great job demonstrating the units use and the freedom it gives to gamers.
To promote the release of FOX's The Family Guy DVD, Fuel Industries has created a Subservient Chicken-like site, called Stewie Live, featuring the character Stewie. As is usually the case with these command-based sites, Stewie, of course, burps, farts and has sex. Beyond that, Stewie reacts to 160 commands so far and the list will surely grow. To view an homage to the grand daddy of this genre, be sure to type in the word "chicken."
To help marketers and agencies understand and take advantage of gaming as a medium, has launched a series of Gaming 101 sessions. IGA hopes to educate the marketplace about the current and future videogaming landscape, the changing demographics of gamers, how the hardware platforms differ from each other, and how to run in-game advertising campaigns that get results.
Advertising agencies that have held or are scheduled to hold IGA Partners Gaming 101 sessions include Crispin Porter + Bogusky, Bartle Bogle Hegarty, SS+K, Manning Gottlieb OMD, Avenue A | Razorfish.
A typical IGA Gaming 101 session provides an overview of the gaming space and gaming ad formats such as advergaming, product placement/plot-integration, dynamic in-game advertising, and casual gaming. Along with any form of consultant comes buzzwords and IGA's "Metrification," a proprietary in-game advertising quantitative and qualitative measurement and analysis framework.
Called Parental Enlightenment Kit, this site is packed with ammunition and propaganda kids can use to convince their parents they really, really need a cell phone. With pressurePoint presentations, pre-written emails, stickers, iron-on t-shirt patches, a tear-inducing thank you card, wallpaper kids can put on their parent's computers, and other stuff, the site arms kids with all the tools they need for the snow job.
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