OK, aside from the fact it's Pointcast all over again, why in the word would any sane human download a piece of software that seems, apparently, only to deliver billboard ads to your desktop? We're have a group head scratch here so if anyone can help us out, please do. Perhaps something is being misunderstood here but Tessa Wegert, writing on ClickZ. thinks it's the next nirvana of advertising claiming it has benefits of both the offline billboard of old and the measurability of the online banner. Oh sure, it's wonderfully customizable and can be targeted efficiently for the advertiser and it's permission based but what's the value for the consumer? If there is one, it's certainly not clear anywhere on the AdDiem website nor in the ClickZ article - unless you're a recipe hound. Perhaps desktop advertising will someday rule. We just don't see it yet. Then again, we were wrong about CBS's NCAA March Madness on Demand.
Acknowledging nothing could be more boring than the topic of workers' compensation, the Workers' Compensation Board of Nova Scotia has launched a site that calls attention to the 4,754 bodily injuries that occur each year to workers by displaying "lost" body parts in a retail store setting. The store comes complete with the usual displays but these displays contain legs, arms, feet, fingers, ears, backs and a friendly sales person with witty comments to assist you with your shopping. Created by Halifax-based Extreme Group, the site offers safety tips to young workers, how to handle workers' compensation issues and how to return to work.
Canadian beer Kokanee wants Canadians to know it's beer is brewed in Creston, British Columbia where the "glacier streams flow from snow-capped mountaintops." They also want Canadians to know that, contrary to popular belief, Coors sold in Canada is not brewed in the Rocky Mountains as, apparently, most of the ads tout but in Etobicoke, Ontario near the Pearson International Airport, hardly the picturesque Rockies. They've created a simple site with postcards from each location, the ability to Google Map each location and the ubiquitous "Send to a Friend" feature.
If the premise of Ford's new Bold Moves documentary, which promises to rip the bullshit out of the company, holds true, the company may actually live up to the promise of its new "Bold Moves" ad campaign. The online documentary series promises an unfettered look inside the company and how it plans to return to profitability by 2008. The first episode of the series recounts Ford's glory days but very quickly admits its tenuous position in the face of superior foreign automotive companies which continue to take more and more market share. With the documentary, Ford promises to tell the honest story of how it will engineer its own comeback.
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And just when we thought the World Cup was a fine, upstanding, respectable event unlike the gratuitous, sex-laced, GoDaddy-powered Super Bowl we get Wet T-Shirt World Cup.
As soon as I promise not to complain about Cannes any more, two drunk knuckleheads claim to have lost their Lion on the beach after burying it near the MSN beach party and then, three hours later, try to dig it up while filming it and claiming it's not any kind of promotion. Oh but wait. What respectable hipster would be seen anywhere without their digicam. OK, so if any of the rest of you drunks stumbled over a Lion on the beach and stole it to place in your ego case, you had better give these guys a call. Their boss isn't too happy with them. Oh. they're offering $1,000 if you find/return it.
OK. I'm going to shut up about Cannes now. I always call it a pointless boondoggle but I have never been so I have no real right to condemn something I've never experienced. Before Bud Theisen of Alphabet Soup went to Cannes, he asked me if there were any questions I'd like to ask those in attendance. I said sure. With the viewpoint Cannes is just an industry circle jerk, I wanted to know why Cannes mattered. I wanted to hear it from the mouths of those basking in the glory of their company's expense account.
While Bud did ask the question, it seems he asked is the event worth it rather than why it's worth it. Two very different question but I'm not going to complain because the answers he got were great and can be summed up eloquently, "Fuck 'em if they don´t like it. We deserve it".
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Panasonic, with help from Renegade Marketing, has joined the rest of the lemmings blindly walking towards the user-generated content light. The company has launched Share the Air, a hip-ish site on which there are photoblogs from Atiba Jefferson, Sam Smyth, and Jimmie Mcguire, people we assume are hip-ish in some sort of way, videos from Girl and Chocolate and, yes, a user-generated content section where visitors can submit their own action sports videos to be considered for a $16,000 Panasonic HD video prize.
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Blender and Best Buy are getting together to launch "Blender Approved" music endorsed by the editors of the music magazine.
- Our old Boss, Jeff Winsper, President of Winsper Inc. has picked up the Exeter Hospital business and will develop a full on marketing program for the client. Huh? Oh. Sorry. Of course, we're mentioning this here because we worked for the guy and he's brilliant. Why else would we mention such small time news?
- Some people just don't like the fact that those Charmin Bears have to do their business just like every other animal on earth. Oh wait. It's the over used poop joke. Bring back that creepy freak Mr. Charmin. At least he was entertaining in a weird sort of way.
- Using email lists, message boards and video sites, Hub Strategy gave a viral boost to its commercial for Lombardi Sports in which death by extreme skiing is touted as killing fewer people than live as an inactive couch potato.
- In China, Intel employees get branded every morning with during their ritual exercises and this song.
- One Adrants readers thinks a recent Ad Week headline "Mazda N.A. Imports Marketing Exec" describing the movement of one of its employees from Japan to America is offensive. We think it's quite catchy ourselves.
- Here's a few outtakes of those kids in the Adidas World Cup 2006 Impossible Dream ads.
- If the U.S. Senate approves a constitutional amendment to prohibit flag-burning, Commercial Alert is urging U.S. Senators to define commercializing the flag as a form of desecration of the flag.
If you work in media and you spend your days planning, negotiating, buying and sending out IOs you really don't even care what the agency production department is sending to an individual ad you bought. In fact, one can go years without ever having seen the actual ad they bought space for. But, on the other side- over at the magazine, they see every ad that comes in the door and sometimes they don't like what they see. Now, we're not talking about ads that are just plain crappy. We're talking about the ones that do not arouse good feelings when received. This was the case with a recent campaign created by TDA Advertising for Titus Cycles and sent to Mountain Bike Action magazine.
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