In some weird ode to the seventies (or was it the eighties), emarketing company eROI has created a silly little site called WearShortShorts on which office co-workers do, well, strange things while wearing short shorts. we guess this is some form of viral attempt at driving traffic to the company's website. Or, it's just a bunch of advertising wackos, sick of their client's ridiculous requests, letting off some steam. Other than that, we don't know. Oh wait, there;s a store that sells the short shorts, a t-shirt and a headband so you can fully don the idiocy of seventies cool.
Virgin has launched a game on Heavy called exercise your muscle which calls for players to, as they name indicates, exercise their brain and music muscles to identify the 74 bands represented in an image on the game's page. There's a magnifying glass that can be rolled over the images for greater detail. Game prizes include an Alienware computer and one free year of music from VirginDigital, MP3 players with one year subscriptions to VirginDigital and one year subscriptions to Paste Magazine. Only true music aficionados need play. This one is a challenge and will keep you delightfully engaged for hours.
OK, so maybe we don't like the new Sprint Together With Nextel thing but we absolutely love the company's Entertainment Anytime cab ride experience that promotes Sprint's Powervision network which consists of video, news, music, games TV and other goodies for your cell phone. This little piece of amusement resembles that of HBO's Taxi Cab Confessions except there's no confessing and it's all G rated. Basically, the keys on your keyboard become devices through which to add a bit of entertainment to a usually boring cab ride all while making an analogy to Sprint's far better choice of entertainment on its cell phone network. Perhaps we'll forgive them for all that yellow and inane combo-branding strategy.
Now here's something you don't see all the time. Well, at least not in public that is. There's plenty of it in private. Likely, without all that paint though. These ads for Humo magazine promise to give away Durex condoms in its next issue. Freakish as they are there's an even freakier TV spot for them as well. Obviously this is not an American campaign as we are far too prudish for this sort of thing. At least in our advertising.
British Columbia production and voice talent company Wayne Kozak Audio Productions has some funny stuff buried deep on its website. It seems someone at Wayne Kozak is having fun with CD covers and has created one called March of the Tampons and Other Feminine Hygiene Tunes. Other include STD Moments: Pharmaceutical Company Classics, Wrist Slitting Tear Jerkers and our favorite, Dance of the Large Breasted Skank, Music For Your Beer Commercial. Who knew production company employees were so humorous?
Renault in France has launched a website that does nothing but feature the company's ad campaigns, old and new. Called, On reclame la pub!, which is hard to translate wordplay hard the loosely means both "we want ads" and an old school version of "We advertise ads," the site appeases what the car maker dubs "brand fans and advertising addicts." Well, that would be us but not sure about the rest of the world. The site also has a newsletter that announces new campaign launches, screensavers and wallpapers. So if you love Renault, this site is for you. You just better be able to read French.
American Copywriter perfectly sums up our feeling and, no doubt, the feelings of other who didn't see the value in jumping on the Million Dollar Homepage wagon. American Copywriter wallows, "Why didn't I think of it? Why why why?" we're in touch with that emotion.
Great Britain college student Alex Tew, creator of Million Dollar Homepage, has brought in $623,800 in ad revenue from selling various pixel-sized ads on MillionDollarHomepage and will, likely, reach his goal of one million dollars. Ashamedly, Tew a couple months ago, sent us a link to his page and we scoffed it off as just another Internet prank. Well, with egg on our face, we bow to the feet of the Million Dollar Homepage master and apologize profusely for not publicizing his effort way back when.
American Copywriter lists five psychological stages of dealing with Million Dollar Homepage psychosis from denial to resentment to rationalization to depression to, well, blogging about it. Tew is the man and he's even made all the way to the pages of the Wall Street Journal.
Either we suck at games or this thing just doesn't work so we'll let you give it a go. Mercury has launched an online game in which you set traps to prevent people from driving off with your new Mercury vehicle. Go ahead. See if you can save your car. OK, we did get a few points but we still suck.
Neil French's sudden non-appearance at a Singapore AdAsia conference, held November 21-23, isn't news. What's news are comments he made in a Singapore newspaper article run a day prior to the show in which he tried to claim it's not just woman who are "crap" because they make time for family, it's men too. French claims, according to Ad Age, children are "incompatible with the long hours needed to become a top creative." Egoistically proving his point and hinting fatherhood is for wimps, French told the paper he hasn't seen his only child, an eight year-old boy in months. Keep smokin' that cigar, Neil but humbly suggest you give that Harry Chapin song, Cats in the Cradle, a listen. It's got an important message for you.
Of course, one could claim the above is written from an overly PC, American viewpoint. If you flip the coin and acknowledge cultural differences between America and Singapore, where French has spent most of his career, French comes out smelling like roses as indicated by a comment reportedly made by a creative who said, during a dinner attended by French and, we assume, the Ad Age reporter who reported it, "You have to look at this through a cultural filter. In Singapore, its still legal to beat your wife." While we find that hard to believe, we're not making it up.
Kenneth Cole tries its hand at cultural relevance with a new billboard on New York's West Side Highway which carries the headline, "Hurricanes Aren't Ending And Bird Flu in Coming...But Wear?" Uh...OK...funny.
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