'Baltimore Examiner' Changes The Way You Feel About Newspapers

We're not sure whether this commercial reaffirms the uselessness of printed newspapers or somehow explains why a recently launched newspaper called The Baltimore Examiner is so much better than your average newspaper. The new publication is owned by Clarity Media and will publish six times per week.

Sleeping Late Doesn't Make Advertising News Stop

Sometimes we all have those days when we wake up late and nothing we can do gets us back on schedule. Since the news never stops, all we can do is play catch up so here, machine gun style, is what happening today in the world of advertising.

GM has launched a new blog that, unlike its FastLane Blog, will be written by GM employees from all levels and approach topics from a grass roots level.

7Up, without saying so, is eluding to health in a new commercial that has cans standing in for fruit and vegetables.

Cricket Cola is has sent a cease and desist letter to Coke asking the company to stop using the tagline "happiness in a bottle" which Cricket Cola has used for some time.

The second part of the Montana Meth project is even grosser than the first, again, showing the disgusting effect of the drug.

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Blind Love Blossoms Between Tribeca And Advertising Week

If you follow George Parker's line of thinking that the marriage of Madison Avenue and Hollywood is sort of like that Britney Spears/ Kevin Federline train wreck the gossip media can't seem trash enough, you'll likely think Advertising Week 2006's partnership with the Tribeca Film Festival is equally dumb. The two have come together in a partnership through which each entity hopes to glom off the other whatever remaining originality is left. What the two don't understand is there are no similarities. Advertising is all about selling shit. Movie making is all about entertaining. Or, at least, that's the way it should be. Unfortunately, the two just want to increase each other's celebu-status rather than concentrating on what each should be doing separately and better.

Owens Corning Launches Pink Panther Blog

We almost forgot that the Pink Panther has, for 25 years, been the Owens Corning mascot so we were scratching our heads when we saw AdFreak reference a press release announcing the launch of the Pink Panther Energy Blog. Like all marketers jumping into this blogging thing, Owens Corning will use the blog to "address hot button energy issues and provide information on energy-saving tips and products - all while
having a little fun." And we thought the whole character blog thing was over with the Barbie Blog.

Oddly, Owen Corning chose the very unfreindly URL saveenergy.owenscorningblog.com for the blog when, it seems, the more appropriate thepinkpantherblog.com and pinkpantherblog.com appear to be readily available. The Pink One will take on the persona of Chief Energy Officer on the blog and spout snarky witticisms about how to save energy....by using Owen Corning products, of course.

Bayer's 'Racing For Hemophila' Sponsored by ExactTarget

Email service provider ExactTarget is sponsoring Racing for Hemophilia, an event aligned with the Indy Racing League and the Indianapolis 500 Mile Race that will raise money and awareness of bleeding and clotting disorders, like hemophilia. The program, which will benefit the National Hemophilia Foundation, was created by Bayer HealthCare the National Hemophilia Foundation, and Andretti Green Racing, Inc.The event will take place on May 28, 2006, at the 90th Indianapolis 500 and will feature the famed Andretti racing family.

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Philips Is Making Us Angry

We were going to ignore this one because it's just so stupid but we keep seeing everyone talking about that Philips patent that would make it possible for broadcasters to somehow disable the ability of people to skip through commercials. However, we just can't leave it alone and we left a comment over at AdFreak which we'll share with you here.

"It's bad enough now that some DVDs force you to endure move previews...and that DVD manufacturers go along with the ploy. I have mixed feeling about where this will go. After all, if this thing actually took hold, people, as they use to do, would just get up during the commercial break and go to the kitchen or to the bathroom. And, to boot, since research is getting better at knowing when people actually see a commercial versus knowing it was simply broadcast to an empty room, marketers will bail out on this before it goes anywhere."

What do you think?

UPDATE: In an Advertising Age article today, Philips has clarified its patent claiming it meant to offer choice, not force viewership of ads, "We developed a system where the viewer can choose, at the beginning of a movie, to either watch the movie without ads, or watch the movie with ads. It is up to the viewer to take this decision, and up to the broadcaster to offer the various services."

Shopping SIte Adopts Wiki Format

Just launched ShopWiki, a search engine that crawls 120,000 stores to create its index of products, is using the anyone-can-edit Wiki format for the site's buying guides. In this manner, we suppose ShopWiki has jumped into the social media space. While it's not that different from a bunch of Amazon reviews, the Wiki is a single, ever changing document as opposed to a collection of individual comments/guides written by users and manufacturers. While we do like the concept of this shopping meets blogging concept, we wonder just how fluid we want our product information.

ShopWiki claims its search engine, which crawls the retailer's site rather than relying on a data feed, is more accurate and can provide better results to complex queries. Currently in beta, ShopWiki plans to go global in Fal 2006.

Shocker: Internet Primary Resource Among Affluent For Product Info

In yet another confirmation of the obvious, a recent Burst Media survey found more than half (57.1%) of respondents to a survey of more than 3,700 web users 18 years and older, say the Internet is their primary source for information about products or services they might purchase. Use of the Internet to gather product information rises dramatically as household income (HHI) increases - going from one-half (50.6%) of respondents reporting HHI less than $35,000 to fully two-thirds (69.2%) of respondents reporting HHI of $75,000 or more. Hmm. Let's do the math. Less money equals higher inability to buy computer. Lack of computer ownership equals inability to access Internet. Inability to access Internet equals inability to use Inter as "primary source for information about products or services." Did we need a study for that or did we just want to put out a press release?

Thousands of 'Private' Careerbuilder 'Monk-e-mails' Viewable By All

CareerBuilder, the job site that has a love affair with chimps, has had a feature called Monk-email for a while that lets people create video messages to send to their friends. Usually when companies engage in this sort of send-a-message-to-a-friend thing, the assumption is that the message will be private and only viewed by the intended recipient. Well, it seems that's not the case with CareereBuilder's Monk-e-mail. As Adrants reader Taariq Lewis tells us, one can very easily view any of the thousands of the individually created messages simply by changing a few of the numbers in the URL.

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Subway Movie Poster Offers Ringtone Via Bluetooth

While riding the subway to work in Toronto, Jonathan Hung noticed a poster promoting the Lord of the Rings musical (who knew?) at the Prince of Wales theater. What caught Hung's attention was the poster's encouragement to fire up the bluetooth or infra-red on his phone, point it at the poster and get a free ring Lord of the Rings-themed ring tone. While Hung says the musical isn't supposed to be very goo but the ad is a lot better than all the "take one to learn how to speak any language" ads that seem to be everywhere.