Adverband Releases First Single For Symantec

Formed in early October by NightAgency, the adverband RockDotRock is now out with their new video that promotes Norton Confidential for the agency's clint Symantec. We're no music expert so we're going to leave this wide open for you readers to comment on. Is this good? Is it bad? Are Adverbands the wave of the futer? Is is marketing gone crazy? Do tell.

Lindsay Lohan Puts Clothes on For Fashion Label

Blah blah, blah Lindsay Lohan blah, blah, blah Miu Miu blah blah blah Prada blah, blah, blah new ad campaign blah, blah, blah celebrity spokes-ho blah blah blah, recent GQ spread blah, blah, blah former Louis Vuitton spokesmodel blah, blah, blah gossip queen blah, blah, blah panty-challenged blah, blah, blah 2007 campaign launch blah, blah, blah...

Georgia-Pacific Thinks People Care About Wood

This Georgia Pacific site, GPTimeMachine, is designed to show how long the companies products last by providing viewers a virtual time machine through which they can check out a house ten years into the future to see how it's holding up. Nice concept but the execution is extremely goofy and corny. So much so that it actually might be good though we remain undecided on that front.

This is one of those ingredient branding things that always makes us wonder why companies bother doing it. Obviously it must work or else Intel wouldn't still be doing it. Unless your a geek or a detail freak, you likely don't give a crap what sort of chip is inside your computer or what kind of wood is used to build your house. We could see this Georgia Specific thing being targeted at home builders but we'd really like to see what results come from this consumer-focused, ingredient-branding approach Georgia Pacific has taken. Do tell. Numbers please.

42Below Offers Up Vodka Story Telling Game

As a follow up to their Cannes Gold Lion-winning print and outdoor campaign that visually illustrated what can happen when one drink 42Below vodka, the company has launched a game, called 42Belowstories, based on the same concept. The game lets players create their one lurid tales of debauchery using an online story teller filed with images that can be combined to tell the appropriate tale.

Monkeys Motivate, SpotTV Tubes, Agency.com Heads Depart

- Games, games and more games. This one promotes cbcampus.com, an entity that helps hook up college grads with their first job.

- On Friday, November 24th, 2006, branded entertainment TV network Spot TV will offer YouTubers a sneak peak.

- Whether it's related to that video or not, things continue to go not so well for Agency.com. The heads of the New York and San Francisco offices have left.

Tobacco Company Involvement With YouTube Smoking Videos Pondered

CMM News points to a Sydney Morning Herald article which calls to our attention the odd proliferation of videos on YouTube that show women smoking. Now that wouldn't be so weird except for the fact that in many of the videos, that's all they're doing: glamming on the cam while puffing away seductively. Sydney University School of Public Health Professor Simon Chapman viewed many of the 27,000 smoking-related videos on YouTube and while he acknowledges the videos could simply be an innocent social phenomenon, Chapman also wonders whether it's a clandestine effort by tobacco companies to promote smoking's cool quotient.

While tobacco advertising in America has been severely limited, it's been completely outlawed in Australia since 1992. Whether or not any tobacco company is behind this is likely to remain a mystery. A Philip Morris rep neither confirmed or denied involvement in with the video and said the company adheres to local laws and Internet advertising to minors should be banned. YouTube declined to comment for the story. While we find it hard to believe tobacco companies have any involvement in this and there's plenty of not-so-glamorous smoking videos to back up that belief, stranger things have certainly happened regarding this industry's marketing efforts.

Campus Bicycle Rides, Facebook Group Promote Credit Card

Pop quiz: What gets 29,000 college students to sign up for a credit card company's loyalty program in a four week period? Free bicycle rides around campus. That's right. Working with Trashtalk! Outdoor (gotta love that name), financial institution Chase placed branded bicycles on 17 college campuses and offered students rides from 9A to 3P while urging them to sign up for a Facebook group where they could enroll in Chase's credit card loyalty program. Now that's way more fun than getting handed a boring flyer while passing by the student union, right?

Tide Moves Outside Laundry Aisle

Tide demonstrates how white it is by marketing in the milk aisle. Very clever. Whether it's effective is another story. There's something weird about picking up a box of powdery white soap when you're in milk mode. - Contributed by Angela Natividad

'Turistas Go Home' May be Underhanded Anthem

Here's an interesting ad for the film Turistas which comes out December 1. So soon after the other anti-tourist film Hostel, we're guessing there's a growing distaste for obnoxious half-naked co-eds traveling the world. The billboard's mild urban terrorist style is also disturbingly appealing. - Contributed by Angela Natividad

Yahoo Mail Launches E-mail Championship

Because there isn't enough geeky stuff in the world with its own championship games, Yahoo! Mail in conjunction with Poke London have decided to launch an E-mail Championship to determine the world's best e-mailers. The object is to position Yahoo! as the choice of e-mail champions.

We're sure a pocket of people are going to eat this up. So if you type mighty fast and can communicate in hieroglyphics just as well as English, consider joining. It would be an awesome thing to tell your grandkids about when they're midway through joking about the reality TV phenomenon. We're sure it will really impress them. Really. - Contributed by Angela Natividad