Argentina's Telecom Arnet got into the holiday spirit and went into charity this month. Juan Manuel Fraga, a decade or two past his sexual prime and balding all the while, serves as the poster child for Todos Por un Pelo. For every new customer who signed up for broadband in November, Fraga got a hair implant courtesy of Arnet and a Canadian clinic run by Dr. Tomas Ballve.
We're not even sure how to approach this but the shit was funny. We would totally have jumped at the chance to sign up for broadband in Argentina if we could watch those hairplugs get pulled out one by one. Maybe that can be a follow-up campaign.
Check out how Juan looks now. - Contributed by Angela Natividad
We find it really difficult to bash any effort that aims to reduce teen binge drinking so we're not going to. But there's no need to in this case. We're going to applaud this effort by Grey San Francisco for the Youth Leadership Institute called Unhappy Hour that succinctly addresses the subject with a concise definition of binge drinking, informative facts about alcohol content and its effect, information on how parents, students, educators and researchers can help and, finally, two spots that feature conversations between friends that would never happen if alcohol weren't in play.
- Tonight from 6P - 9P at Flute in New York City, interactive advertising publication adotas will host its monthly media mixer where you can hobnob with others like yourselves.
- The next Future Marketing Summit will be held March 5, 2007 at the ADC Gallery in New York. Founded by Strawberry Frog, the summit will focus on integration and how it relates to the design, entertainment, technology and delivery aspects of marketing.
- The Silly Girl takes a look at the recent PS3 and Wii launches, provides and analysis and tells us why Wii came out on top.
In this week's Advertising Age, that on again, off again culturati wannabee magazine Radar has placed an ad announcing its return. We've lost count but we think this is at least the third time the magazine has attempted a comeback. While we've seen all manner of magazine ads touting their numbers as if they were the only choice a media buyer could possibly make, there's something cheekishly inventive about this Radar ad. Especially the last fact: 0 subscriptions ordered by the Holmes-Cruise residence.
This is the third time we've been forced to use the "Fudge Packs" headline and even we are getting sick of it. Just how many times does an ad exec need to leave the same company? In the case of Y&R's embattled Anne Fudge, the answer is three. First, in April 2005, she announced she would step down as Chairman and CEO of Y&R Brands. Then, in June 2006, Hamish McClennan was brought in to assume the role of CEO for the network portion of Y&R Brands as she lived out the final days of her three year contract. Now, it seems, Fudge is packing for the final time and will retire from the ad business at the end of this year. That's a lot of press for someone who's leaving a job.
Her performance was not well regarded once she took over the reigns from former Y&R head Michael Dolan. It was thought, as Advertising Age writes, she focused too much on the inner working of the agency division and not enough on winning new business for the company. As with all agency heads who either succeed or don't, she'll retire a millionaire.
With Winter approaching, Lynx (Axe in the U.S.), the only company that, over and over again, seems to successfully be able to milk sexual innuendo for all its worth has released yet another man-friendly amusement site filled with women who can't seem to kept their clothes on. This site, LynxBlow, offers visitors to the chance to help a poor, freezing woman standing in the snow warm up by, yes, blowing at her through your computer's microphone. Unfortunately - or fortunately for the viewer - when wind comes her way, her clothes get blown off. She doesn't seem to mind though and winks knowingly at the viewer like some sort of Eskimo exhibitionist with an Arctic freeze fetish.
Thankfully, through the kindness of our friends at Dare who worked on the creation of this visual pleasure, you don't even have to go thought the site set up to see the "goods." You can see all the best blow off scenes in a YouTube video here.
You know we're in the midst of an era-shifting marketing mashup when one of the oldest media out there, flip books, gets into bed with over-hyped medium du jour Second Life. That's right, my friends. Flippies, the company that turned that old medium into something new again for marketers has created a Museum of Flip Animation in Second Life.
At the Museum, visitors can check out the early history of animation, play with a flip book machine and check out Flippies' latest creations. "As a long-time collector, being the curator of a museum dedicated to the art of flip animation has always been a dream. Second Life has made it possible for that dream to now become reality." said Flippes President Jeffrey Kay.
You can check out some images of the Second Life installation here.
It took us a while to wade through the blather-filled press release from Scratch Marketing that led with the headline, "Word of Mom," and went on to talk about how Cuisinart and Urban Moms had teamed to "build a relationship with mothers by offering unique, relevant and personal opportunities for moms across Canada to interact with the Cuisinart brand" before we realized it was all about the launch of another brand-sponsored blog. OK, we're jaded but why does the meat of the matter always have to be so slathered with marketing babble rather than a few clearly descriptive sentences the average human being can understand?
How about this: "Canadian mom site Urbanmoms launched Kitchen Party, a blog sponsored by Cuisinart that will offer recipes moms can make using their food processors. Along with a downloadable recipe book filled with recipes for newborns, the blog wil also give moms what they really need after a long day with their screaming babies: blender drinks." Much simpler, right?
There's nothing quite like the attention-grabbing abilities of a spot that opens with a gun to a guy's head. For the United Nations Refugee Agency, DraftFCB Lisbon created a compelling spot that promotes the 7th International Conference on Refugees on November 29-30. The commercial uses suicide as the analogy for refugee concerns aligning the act with taking the lives of those who are still alive and in need of rescue.
The ongoing LA Weekly campaign is dipping its toes into the consumer-generated space with Blank Blankly, a section of their site that allows people to upload an image, add some text and, poof, create an ad similar to the newspaper's campaign that's been running for quite some time. Trouble is, once you've upload your image and make a mistake like we did, it doesn't appear you can edit it after the fact. And adding the copy? Well we gave up in frustration. Of course, it could be that we're just not that smart around here and the promotion is a great one. You decide.
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