Agency Uses Foot to Promote Branding Service

Here's something you don't see all the time. To promote its branding service Gulp & Go, PR agency Antonia created a video that likens its approach to branding to, well, a foot. Oddly, it all makes a convincing argument.

Ad Age Sends Back iPod, Adrants Keeps It

Ad Age has been doing some important journalism this week reporting on the holiday swag it has been receiving from PR and media companies. We do miss our time toiling in the media prisons departments of agencies where we'd generally receive more gifts in one year what most people would hope to receive in five but we sure don't miss the slave labor hard work and long hours put in to get those gifts pump out 300 version of a media plan for whiny account managers and self-important clients.

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Popular Ad Campaigns Get Snarked

Illustrating how ads embed themselves in culture, Canada's ihaveanidea.org and agency Taxi have created three very funny, insiderish videos that show the cultural power, well, at least to those of us in the industry, of popular ad campaigns.

Australian Agency's Christmas Card Lectures Clients

Spoofing its own "UnAustralian" ad featuring Sam Kekovich, BMF Australia, in its Christmas card, tells advertisers to "increase the size of your budgets, decrease the size of your Legos logos, make better ads and make sure you put me in them." While we have no idea what the Legos (note, he said Legos, not Lego), reference means, Kekovich says he's sick of watching bad advertising such as singing families in breakfast commercials and women having orgasms to sell shampoo and says "you don't have to make ads dull enough to sedate hyperactive Australian Idol contestants just to sell your products."

To explain the power of good advertising, Kekovich tells marketers, "Take my lamb ad. it won loads of awards and sold shitloads of lamb." And to those in charge of business, Kekovich says, "the research-driven, penny-pinching, logo-loving CEOs out there may disagree with me but they can get stuffed." Such a delightful, however very true, holiday greeting. Give it a watch.

Chicago Wrapped Vehicle Company Takes On Big Boys

Chicago-based Wrapped Exposure has launched and offers outdoor advertisers a fleet of ad-wrapped vehicles. While acknowledging he's competing with the big OOH boys, Founder Pete Wilson hopes to urge local and national advertisers to give his medium a shot. Remember, David did beat Goliath.

Lindsay Lohan Learns Marketing Deal Means Appearing in Ads

Perhaps in an effort to put all that obsessive body curvature-related press insanity behind her, actress Lindsay Lohan has, reportedly, signed a marketing deal with fashion label Chanel and has been photographed by Karl Lagerfeld. Displaying a keen sense of awareness regarding the purpose of the photo shoot, Lohan said, "I'm shooting with Karl Lagerfeld! It's amazing. I'm so excited. I think it's for a magazine." Yes, Lindsay, that's where fashion advertising usually appears.

Italian Fashion House Nabs Julia Roberts As Spokesmodel

Coming out of apparent seclusion, Julia Roberts, the formerly high profile, $20 million-per-movie actress has signed a marketing deal, her first it seems, with Italian fashion house Gianfranco Ferre to appear in the company's ad campaign. The campaign, shot by Mario Testino in LA, will run across Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Ads will begin to appear in magazines Spring 2006.

Commenting on his selection of Robert's Ferre gushed as only a fahionista can, "What enchants me most are her presence and manner, her way of being energetic and calm at the same time and her naturally aristocratic self-possession. I love her smile: open, direct, inviting and at the same time captivatingly shy. And I adore her vitality, her natural ease, and her free spirit. Everything about her makes her the authentic Ferre woman."

Google Love Begets Consumer Generated Media

There's not much Google does that doesn't garner praise which has lent itself to consumer love and consumer generated media. Micropersuasion reports someone likes Google Maps so much, they went and created a commercial for it on their own.

Embedded Video Comes to Email For Some

Florida-based company KOTW has announced a new product that allows for the delivery of video via email and which embeds the video within the body of the email rather than as an attachment. The new service will also provide metrics to advertisers such as number of views, length of views and who did the viewing. There's just one problem. It uses ActiveX which, if a personal firewall such as Norton is in place renders the thing useless and, counter productively, results in the need for a traditional video download or trip to a webpage where the video can be viewed.

NOTE: In Comments, Michael Murray of KOTW clarifies some misconceptions we had about the product and offers a more detailed explanation of what the technology can do.

Fitbug Capitalizes on Holiday Gorging season

OK, there's absolutely nothing new about this little video that claims to be a viral before its even had a chance to become viral but it it cute enough to share. It's an "I'm so fat from eating so much during the holidays" fitness promotion for fitness website fitbug.