When one is hoodwinked, the natural reaction is to get mad and start calling people names but we're not going to do that because we think this hoodwink was one of the best marketing stunts to come around in a long time. As we reported in late January, a helicopter with a naked guy hanging from it was spotted at New Zealand's Big Day Out but the stunt went wrong and the guy fell to the ground and was injured. We also received a taped conversation between what was assumed to be a representative of New Zealand's Civil Aviation Authority and a person at DDB, the agency thought to be behind the stunt in which the CAA representative was trying to obtain details of the event.
None of this happened. While we were skeptical at the time and knew New Zealand site Nzgirl had something to do with the stunt, we couldn't get anyone to confirm or deny anything. As it turns out, Nzgirl, which has a reputation of doing crazy, stunts, wanted to top everything they'd done before so they decided to do nothing...except tell a few people they did and let the rumor mill run with it. A dozen people were hired to spread the story about the helicopter and the nude guy and that was it. New Zealand media bit and reported the story as if it had happened albeit with a bit of distrust. Nzgirl reaveals all here.
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Continuing its "Brilliant" campaign, Guinness has launch a new commercial, called Dance, promoting the St. Patrick's Day season. Yes, it's a season, now, not just a day. In the ad, the famed Brewmaster's dance a rendition of an Irish step dance until it becomes too mch for the floor to withstand and they figure they're better off just drinking a Guinness. The spot kicks off this weekend on cable networks such as ESPN, USA and F/X and continues through St. Patrick's Day March 17.
The "Brilliant' campaign has 11 spots in it so far, each one featuring the goofy but enjoyable-to-watch Guinness Brewmasters. The campiagn and this Cance commercial were created by BBDO New York.
Apparently, Brooke Burke didn't have a non compete clause in her agreement with Burger King and Crispin Porter + Bogusky as indicated by these images of her entering and leaving a McDonald's.
Or, according to a Buzznet editor, these images may simply be a twisted continuation of the Burger King Brooke Burke photo viral. The editor tells us, "The 'boink' galleries where the Brooke Burke pics are posted seem to be owned by someone who is 'in the industry' PR-wise. The person/company behind 'boink' tends to have a lot of pics that end up being widely available but they really seem to have them first. There's a couple other galleries like 'boink' at buzznet that could be the same person but are posting promotional photos of bands, etc." We'll keep you updated.
While we could certainly do without, a new national advertising award show called The American Advertising Festival is an online competition where all the entrants judge the initial phase of the competition. Cool. Enter your own work then vote for it. That's logical. The final decision is made by a jury of selected creative talent. The best part of the competition and regardless of the judging outcome, all entrants will receive a summary of how their work fared under the scrutiny of their peers, including any comments about the execution. Hmm...no doubt comments will be rife with "This Sucks!"
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Joining the conversation, brewer Guinness has launched a weblog created and written by the company's marketing staff. After reviewing the site, Hugh Macleod over at Gapingvoid wrote, "The good news is, the marketing team decided to do it themselves, not hire the job out to an ad agency. Otherwise I'm sure the results would have been utterly disasterous." Sadly, that is very true. Many blogs created/produced/written by agencies for clients just don't seem to gel. It's not that every client-created blog with either but the closer the blog is to the humans creating the voice, the truer and more realistic the blog will sound. To check out the blog, just say you live in England from the drop-down list. Some legal crap disallows your visit if you are not from a particular list of countries.
Grammar-challenged Adpunch points to a refreshing campaign from Granger Community Church which is promoting a five-week discussion series called Pure Sex during which the church will openly support its belief that God wants everyone to have great sex. The series will cover topics such as porn, lust and whether to inform your spouse about your latest trip to Vegas.
The series is being promoted with a billboard campaign which points to a microsite called MyLameSexLife on which sex's fun factor is gleefully lauded.
Advertising for Peanuts points to this inventive and conceptually brilliant Australian commercial for McDonald's in which the the true meaning of the "inner child" is explored.
Steve Dworon, who worked with Donny Deutsch at Deutsch/Dworin from 1991 to 1994, is suing Donnie Deutsch for defamation and a breach of an agreement the two had that barred each from being nasty to each other for the rest of their live's. It seems Donnie said some unkind things about Steve in his new book, Often Wrong, Never in Doubt. The battle, which began in the pages of Page Six last week, has all the making of a crappy TV movie: office infighting, name calling, publicity whoring, crying...yes, crying, and promised revelations as to why Dworin really left Deutsch back in 1994. Hmm. We're not going to postulate lest we suffer tha wrath of defamation suites ourselves but we're happy to let you all speculate wildly in comments as to what's really going on between the two.
Of course Creative and Archos have been producing these things for years but no one seems to care. Only when Apple decides to release a video iPod with a screen that covers the entire front of the device does anyone care. Though rumors have been swirling since last summer, it looks like this spring will mark Apple's introduction of a new video iPod with a 3.5 inch screen and a touch screen click wheel. No sooner have we all unloaded our wallets to grab Apple's first video iPod offering, many of us will frustratingly do it again upon release of this new device.
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We don't no whether to thank or hate Bucky Turco for bringing this feeble excuse for an online game for Pony to us. Called Teddy's Revenge, the game is supposed to somehow extend the company's "Rise Up Now" theme and involves the simplistic control over a character that walks, jumps and adhere's graffiti to storefronts. Pointless. Useless. Utter waste of marketing dollars. To satisfy curiosity, can someone please explain the point of this game and, if you had any involvement in it, what it's supposed to accomplish?
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