Alex, the college student who made good with the Million Dollar Homepage idea that none of us could believe we didn't think of first, is back post-million with a philanthropic offering. No, that's not the right description.
Pixelotto, in a shade slightly more garish than the Million Dollage Homepage, promises to make a millionaire out of a hopeful ad clicker. All this fervent ad clicking presents an incentive for advertisers to keep investing in this pay-per-pixel insanity we thought would die and stay dead after Alex had enough money to get those socks he wanted so badly. Will the pixel Boy Wonder do it again? - Contributed by Angela Natividad
It's been a while since we've added to our "vertising" list but, today, we have a new candidate: thumb-verstising. As part of a new Sara Lee Coffee campaign to promote the company's "coffee pods" that turn into a drink when pumped with thumbs, the brand co-ops thumb-vertising, a movement that offers up thumbs as the next great medium. The site is complete with all you'd normally find on an new ad medium's site: services, case studies, diagrams, surveys and, for those willing to lend their thumbs to the cause, a chance to win a Wii. It's reported "thumbers" are rising subways across Europe holding their thumbs up for hours, promoting thumb-vertising clients. There have been several reports of marketers running towards thumb-vertising trampling those still scurrying for yesterday's medium of the moment: Second Life
The holidays are fast approaching. With that in mind, a representative at LAVA Communications, Australia sent us a few bizarre videos they put together to celebrate the season among civilized kind. If we thought Canada was the go-to country for farcical antics and shenanigans galore, Australia may just blow them out of the water.
First comes a video depicting what we figure must be a common misunderstanding around this time of year. And of course there's nothing nicer than licking your own balls to soothing holiday music. Not that we'd know, of course. - Contributed by Angela Natividad
Yesterday, bus shelters in California started smelling like chocolate chip cookies as part of a Got Milk campaign. The smell comes not from actual, fresh-baked cookies but from New York-based Arcade Marketing's Magniscent adhesive stickers. Great. As if there weren't already enough drooling kooks at bus stops already. Now everyone's tongue will be hanging out, dripping saliva and jonesing for cookies.
UPDATE: A bunch of cause group idiots with nothing better to so than make life miserable for the rest of us complained and got the campaign pulled because of the so called damage the scent could do to "chemically sensitive" people.
Not even ten seconds into this video in which a boxer tells his corner man he's got nothing left and needs something big, something really big, we're already yelling at the screen, "Bend over loser and take it up the ass like a man!" Then we realize it's not some cheesy porn flick, it's a Nemer Fieger-created, Twist-directed Subway commercial for the chain's new Big Hot Pastrami sub. Seriously. We know it's just us but the combination of "needing something really big" coupled with a bulging, footlong object made our mind go to an entirely different place than a Subway restaurant.
- If you love to bitch about the importance of Cannes-winning creativity versus creativity that actually sells stuff, you might like this Effie webcast tomorrow featuring Carl Johnson of Anomaly, Chuck McBride of TBWA\Chiat\Day, Greg Stern of Butler, Shine, Stern & Partners and Paul Woolmington of Naked Communications.
- In case you missed it, here's (1, 2) those Chrysler ads that slipped out "by mistake" and was then "pulled" by the automaker.
- While crapping all over recent campaigns he feels are really bad such as Charmin, Pepto-Bismol, Mucinex and ExxonMobil, Scott G says the ad industry should simply stop hiring people who create these ads.
- Deep Focus has done some extensive work for HBO's Rome that pits two protagonist characters, Atia and Servilia against each other with dueling online sites in a celebrity smack down of sorts.
Back the in day when YouTube was just a twinkle in those soon to be billionaire's eyes, ad agencies used to produce professional, high quality, elegant Christmas (excuse us...Holiday) cards and videos. Kinda like the work they produced for their clients. Now, post-YouTube orgasm, every agency (we're not going to mention Agency.com) seems to think it has to go out and buy a shitty video camera, hand it to an intern, tell hem to shake the camera on purpose, edit the thing with a sledge hammer and barf up some consumer-generated crap and pass it off as some sort of uber-cool, hipsterati-laden creation...kind of like the work they now produce for their clients.
Speaking of barf, TBWA backward slash Chiat backward slash Day New York upchucked a video to YouTube full of tasty projectile chunks - an apparent highlight of their 2005 Christmas party - as an invitation to this years party where, we assume, all kinds of bile will blow. Do they want people to go to this party?
In moralizing reverie, Stop Geek points out this funeral ad posted alongside some metro rails. We have to admit it gave us the shakes considering we did get a little closer to a similarly positioned ad that probably merited it less. And we have to admit it's a wittier campaign than the calendar girls on coffins, though its tastefulness may come into as much question.
In our experience professionals in the funeral industry have a cadaverously dry but present sense of humour. (Really, how can you not?) Some people take life too seriously. Some people take death too seriously. They're two sides of the same coin; if indeed you feel the compulsion to come closer, then ... well ... we don't know what to tell you. - Contributed by Angela Natividad
If you're wondering why so many marketers are talking about word of mouth marketing it's because, according to the Word of mouth Marketing Association, it works. In fact, it, seemingly, works so well, the organization is having another conference on the topic covering word-of-mouth, viral, buzz and blog marketing. On December 12 and 13 at the organization's Word of Mouth Marketing Summit 2 held in Washington, DC, marketers can learn from other marketers who've done successful words of mouth marketing campaigns, learn why today's trend toward consumer control is ripe for word of mouth, listen to Mentos' Pete Healy talk about his company's successful leveraging of the Mentos/Diet Coke viral wave and hear AOL's Ted Leonis talk about AOL's initiatives in this area.
As Grey's Anatomy's Meredith always says, "Seriously." Seriously, if you wonder why companies are successful without spending a boatload of money on TV, word of mouth can play a significant role. Get more info here.
To support the launch of Prison Break on the Portuguese FOX channel, Portuguese agency Torke created a guerrilla-style outdoor campaign with a band of chained prisoners walking the streets, posters with images of the show's cast placed behind the bars or windows and fences and small headshot posters and cards placed in shops. Accompanying the campiagn was a press kit a hidden spoon and a prison blueprint. See it all here.
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