In a move to avoid embarrassment during Advertising Week, several Interpublic and WPP agencies, have promised to set goals for increasing black representation at their firms and signed agreements with the City of New York that call for the agencies to provide reports on hiring, promotion and retention and to develop recruitment programs. The City's Human Rights Commission has plans to hold hearings beginning September 25 at which agency executives would have to testify to their company's position in the area of diversity.
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In the absolutely whacked category, Copyranter sends us this ad for German wine company Schmitt Stone Wines. The healine is "Introduce yourself to a little German." The image is of a little German sitting on the servers tray. It certainly gets the point across but as Copyranter mentions, it's so truly whacked, how many people will actually remember the product versus the image of the little man on the tray?
I wasn't in the city on September 11, 2001. I was unemployed, sitting at home, looking for a job. A bit past 9 AM that day, I received a call from a former co-worker who said, "Did you hear what happened?" Of course I had not since I had pretty much tuned the world out after having been laid off following the dot com orgasm. I spent the next four days on the couch, glued to the television, suffering sensory overload as the event unfolded over and over and over.
I knew Karen Martin, a flight attendant who was aboard the ill fated American Airlines Flight 11 that day. I used to work with her years ago when we both worked at a Friday's restaurant. We didn't know each other well. Just about as well as any two close knit restaurant workers know each other but I think of her every time I see a 911 retrospective as I did Sunday night on CBS which re-aired that documentary about the New York Fire Department rookie. And just under five years ago when her name scrolled up the list on the banner behind Bono as he sung during half time at the Super Bowl in 2002. That was chilling.
When 9/11 rolls around each year, I often think of Jeff Jarvis who was right in the midst of it all that day and chronicled his experience of the tragedy in several audio tapes. He revisits the day five years later in a recent post on his blog.
While the day is etched into my mind as a very painful one, it's nothing compared to the indescribable pain and suffering those more directly involved went though and will continue to go through for the rest of their lives: the families of those who lost their lives in the towers, of the firefighters and police who died attempting to save those in the buildings, of the passengers and crew on the two planes that hit the towers, of the passengers and crew of the planes that hit the Pentagon and crashed in Pennsylvania. And the innumerable others who were affected because of their involvement.
Five years later, ground zero is still ground zero though documentary host Robert Deniro tells us plans are underway for the beginnings of Freedom Tower, accompanying buildings and a large, permanent memorial. As part of the new World Trade Center design, the imprint of the towers will remain intact.
This past weekend, New Zealand vodka maker 42Below held its its 42Below Cocktail World Cup.which took place in the mountains of Queenstown New Zealand and involved bungee jumping, rafting at 80 MPH and sliding down snow covered mountains all while mixing drinks. It's yet another way the cheeky vodka maker has a bit of fun while, at the same time, gaining some publicity. For the event, 42 bartenders from around the world battled it out. Winners will be named September 16 at the Cocktail World Cup Finals.
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Heeding the culture jam call, Dr. Strangelove took it upon himself to have a little bit of fun with the recently launched Koch Media Crusty Demon online promotion by editing together the various tattoo strip videos the site enables people to make. If you want to get the full force of the Crusty Demon promotion all in one sitting, check out Dr. Strangelove's creation. It's good. The music bed is also the creation of Dr. Strangelove.
With the tagline "you have no idea what a difference that makes" applied to both sex without a condom and the choice between living healthy or living with AIDS, this video showing two men in the throes of getting it on sends a powerful message and hopes to raise awareness in the country of the increasing spread of HIV in the gay community.Created and released virally on the web by AddictAD, the video has been viewed 200,000 times since launching less than a month ago. A heterosexual version is planned as well.
While we're quite sure, if given the choice, most waste management companies would be happy as a dog tearing apart a trash bag full of food to simply dump their waste in a good 'ol dump of yesteryear. But with the rise in environmental awareness and creation of lengthy rules defining exactly what trash is and what isn't, waste management companies like the appropriately named Waste Management must now adhere to these strict guidelines and appear to be as green as Greenpeace when it comes to the environment. So it is without surprise, in this commercial, we see a great green Waste Management truck doing the winding mountain road thing alongside a flying bird and "lush expanse of green" as if the truck were right at home with nature. The spot was created by Fogarty Klein Monroe and directed by Plum Productions' Eric Saarinen.
Just when you begin to wonder WTF is going on in this commercial, One Man Fight, which shows one boxer getting the crap beating out of him by another, you realize there's an important message here from Amnesty which reports one in two women murdered are killed by their male partners, often during an ongoing abusive relationship.
In typical Axe fashion, here's another commercial that, again, illustrates wearing Axe deodorant makes a guy a babe magnet. Though instead of Axe attracting existing hotties as in prior ads, this ad shows how the deodorant transforms seemingly average women into super babes by combining the best features of the two into one. Of course, the whole ad just reinforces the impossible-to-live-up-to stereotype of the perfect woman by demeaning women at the same time. Oh it's just an ad. Let's not get all over analytical here and just enjoy the transformation into hotness.
 While it won't effect Times Square, New York's Bloomberg administration is moving forward with efforts to enforce Local Law 31, a 2005 law that restricts certain types of outdoor advertising structures which were built after 1979. The City wants to dismantle 50 to 60 percent of the boards, reduce the size of others and place restrictions on those that remain. Reacting to the move, OTR Media Group President and CEO Ari Noe said, "Banning billboards and scaffolding signage will cause a significant financial loss for many different sectors of the economy - property owners, local businesses, union labor, advertising agencies and advertisers," Particularly hurt by this move would be stores who are undergoing renovation and who advertise on the scaffolding to make sure people know they are still open for business. While it might be everywhere, outdoor advertising to us is the least invasive and annoying ad medium of them all. They just sit there, You don't have to look at them and they don't interrupt programming as literally every other form of advertising does. isn't there still crime here in the city that needs to be dealt with instead of this minutia?
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