Toronto-based iStudio has created a Holiday card that offers far more than a bit of humor and wit. iStudio has developed a "card" with 12 parts following the 12 days of Christmas advent calendar tradition. Each business day, a new part is revealed. Each part contains indepth information on particular topics which range from shopping to travel to Christmas cocktails to music to baking and more. The "card" also has an RSS feed to subscribers can be notified when each new day's topic has been posted. It's a nice idea and had we not seen it, we'd never know about the Candy Cane Martini.
MSNBC, today, launched the largest BlogAds buy ever according to BlogAds Founder Henry Copeland. To promote its digital day this Wednesday, MSNBC purchased ads on 800 weblogs, including Adrants, more than the Audi BlogAds buy of 286 last spring. From online affairs to porn to bizarreness caught on tape, MSNBC will take a close look at all things digital.
Unfortunately, the page the ad points to isn't very clear on exactly what MSNBC is trying to accomplish. There's all kinds of bloggy stuff on the page which is, perhaps, the point but there's not much emphasis given to the shows being promoted. That may be besides the point as MSNBC knows all 300 bloggers will go to the site, perhaps read a few of MSNBC's blogs, write about what they've read, link back to them and, poof, dramatically increase traffic to MSNBC's blogs. Oops, we just took the bait.
Adrants reader tlubin writes, "A buddy of mine saw some guerrilla marketing for Saturn down in SoHo the other night...basically just a guy sitting in a truck with a nice projector on top, projecting crystal-clear ads onto buildings nearby. Would be cool if someone could investigate/get a snapshot of this if it's still going on. Indeed. If any readers saw that an caught it on disk, please send.
For the third time in ten years, the California Milk Processor Board has teamed with Kraft Food's Oreo brand promote milk and Oreo in a new Got Milk spot called Triplets. In the ad, three identical young "ballerinas" are seated at the kitchen table. One of the triplets serves milk in tall narrow glasses for herself and her sisters and they prepare to dunk their Oreo cookies in unison. When the Oreo cookies won't reach the small amount of milk in the bottom of each tall glass, the triplets decide working together is the only way to go and they combine their milk into one glass and easily dunk their Oreos. The ad closes not with the original Oreo tag line, but with the now-universal question, "Got Milk?" It's cute.
Just when you thought the million dollar homepage trendlet had run its course and couldn't be taken any further, University of Maryland Baltimore County graduate Jason Gunther has elevated the game with Smash My Viper. In short, the more an advertiser spends on the page for pixel space, the physical greater damage they can inflict upon Gunther's Viper. Yes, he's letting people pay to destroy his car while offering them ad space in return. Gunther hopes the ongoing saga of the slowly destroyed car, which will be covered in detail on the site and the site's blog, will keep people coming back for more and keep the impression level high for advertisers. Oh, and then there's the eye candy. And we don't just mean the sexy car. Gunther has gathered together some models, likely his friends, to slither all over the viper in typical car model poses all while the car is being slowly destroyed.
Purchasing one ten by ten pixel gets the advertiser a 6 inch key mark on the Viper. Purchasing five ten by ten pixels get the advertiser a hole drilled in the car. A purchase of 25 ten by ten pixels gets a Louisville Slugger bat smash and placement of the advertisers' 12 inch by four inch logo on the car. And, in true media negotiation style, for those advertisers who purchase 50 ten by ten pixels, Gunther will allow the advertiser to come up with their own idea such as placing a pig wearing a sweater with the advertiser's logo on it in the car for a week or have Gunther do a burnout until the tires pop.
This is ingenious. Ingenious as million dollar homepages go, that is. This is consumer created all the way. Content, promotion, sales, everything. And it has a purpose beyond simply making money. Gunther hopes to use the money to launch a business.
In an era when fruit baskets and fancy boxed trinkets don't cut it anymore, agency Christmas cards continue to get more and more elaborate and this years card from Via is no exception. The agency did a video remix of holiday favorite, A Christmas Story, creating a movie trailer called A Christmas Gory. If anything, it proves there's no such thing as reality, only what happens in the editing suite. To invite people to the "card," the agency created a box like the one in the movie, stuffed it with wood shavings and a certificate pointing to the site.
The site also has buddy icons, desktop wallpaper, t-shirt and stuff through CafePress and an inspirational nod to a remix of The Shining. Acknowledging the world domination of the iPod, the agency also offers the remixed video in video iPod size. We hope all the rest of you agencies send your cards too. Maybe we'll have some sort of contest to see which agency's is the best.
The Art Directors Club has launched ADC Young Guns 5, its fifth biennial competition for young professionals ages 30 and under working in advertising, publishing, graphic design, illustration, photography, film and video, packaging and environmental design, experimental fashion and interactive media. Notice of ADC YG5 appears on the Club's 85th Annual Call for Entries, just issued, and full details are on the ADC's awards website. The entry deadline for ADC YG5 is February 1, 2006.
GM, to introduce its stylish new Saturn Sky roadster and to position the vehicle as a compliment to one's fashion versus a nice hunk of metal to park in the garage, GM PR agency Weber Shandwick sent journalists a package of information that aligned perfectly with the communications message of style and fashion. An iPod. A black one no less. On the iPod were images of the new Saturn Sky and a video which conveyed, through a very stylish channel, the car's element of fashion. Notably and thankfully, the package contained no traditional, overly wordy, superlatively saturated, presumptuously pretentious, bombastically boastful, pompously proud, cavalierly conceited, smart-aleck snooty press release. Oops...there is one. It's on the CD that came with the package but it's secondary to main focus of the communication and, thankfully, it's fairly superlative-free.
The entire package, including the beautifully designed outer packaging; the CD which contained the above mentioned press release, images of the car and a video and, of course, the stylishly black iPod, beautifully delivers the Saturn Sky message.
Wexley School for Girls, in partnership with design firm General Public created The Washington Mutual E-bus, a full size commercial bus, retrofitted as a self-contained, mobile technology center with computer workstations and Internet connectivity through satellite. The E-bus brings the bank to the people and offers access to credit reports and homeowner education
Wexley photographed a house, wrapped the bus on all sides and set a world-record for "Largest Door Mat" which measures 10 feet tall by 36 feet long. The E-bus started rolling two weeks ago, and will operate in Southern California where it will tour over the course of six months.
Writing on TalentZoo as a guest columnist, copywriter, brand consultant and author Hadji Williams brings to light the rampant dismissal among major agencies of multicultural advertising and explains how "ethnic" agencies are brought in by AOR's at the last minute to black/Latino/Asian-ize campaigns only to have them end up looking stupid and perpetuating stereotypes. It's an insightful examination of the practice and one I can admit to engaging in having done my fair share of minimizing the importance of the ethnic portion of a campaign.
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