If you're into following the top online viral videos, a new tracking site has launched called Vidmeter. It tracks videos from Atom Films, Break.com, Daily Motion, Google, iFilm, Metacafe, Myspace, Revver, vSocial, Yahoo, and Youtube. It ranks the top 100 daily and keep a running tab on the top videos of all time. While there's other video tracking sites out there, this one seems to be more complete, less infiltrated with paid plants and simpler to use.
If memory serves, after 9/11, wasn't it the French who sort of dragged their feet and made things difficult for the countries trying to tally together against Bin Laden? If so, that might explain this ad for French tree hugger site Defi Pour La Terre which thought it would be witty to transform the image of two trees into the twin towers burning on that fateful day. All to somehow equate the value of a tree to the value of a human life.
We not sure any amount of time passed makes this sort of thing OK. Then again, we're American. We knew people on Flight 93. The French? Well, perhaps they didn't know anyone who died that day or just feel Americans can't keep their hands out of other countries' issues. While the latter may be true, mocking a world event such as 9/11, at least for now, is still in very bad taste. And the French are supposed to know about taste, right?
We know Microsoft wants us all to think its new Zune MP3 player is the MP3's answer to social networking what with its questionably easy method of song sharing and such . What we didn't know was just how social the staid monolith would get in order to convey its apparently very friendly social skills. Look at this banner ad for Zune found on Metacritic and ask yourself exactly what this particular sort of social activity has do to with song sharing. And before all you conservative types jump out of your seat and scream "Adrants goes for cheap salaciousness again!", ask yourself why Microsoft or the art director behind this creation cold not have chosen from 3 million other shots of a woman making love to a microphone before choosing this image which alludes to an entirely different kind of love making. Click the image to increase the size of the love making.
We stood behind Rosie after that Donald Trump nonsense. We like that she stuck by what she said even when the Trumpster threatened to fling a lawsuit in her direction on one of his ninja-star toupees. But this makes us feel funky about her.
Kimberly-Clark hits The View to push their room makeover sweepstakes. Rosie gets exhaustively excited and right when we think she can't look more insane she does a Broadway number complete with dancing K-C products. And that's not something we could have made up even if we tried really, really hard.
Rosie, we hate to be the ones to tell you, but you're not funny anymore. We can't remember whether you ever really were. You're a bit cartoony. And not in a neat Jim Carey way. You're more like, well, that Roger Rabbit villain who tried to kill the other cartoons with Dip.
He gave us the horrors. And these days, you do too.
Show Me Some Lube, a viral-intended love letter to us from our cars (courtesy of Serve Assist), is a handy demonstration of how even businesses on a shoestring budget can showcase their creativity and draw traffic to their services.
The language doesn't reek of cool-hunter. We can picture our cars lying propped up on a canopy bed with a feathery purple pen jutting out the side of its hood as it dreamily scrawls. We also like the use of car images to make sexual suggestions. But considering the potential of this neat hodgepodge of adolescence, low-riders and sex, it's pretty one-dimensional and we hope they do more with it.
Here's a weird one. Sinless gets behind Bar Code designs, an odd project in which people can flirt and hook up with a form of sign language for those too cool - or simply too lame - to talk or offer to buy somebody a drink.
Bar Code sends registered users a new sign to learn every week or so. We registered for the list but are thus far pretty skeptical. It reminds us a little of Esperanto, that experiment in universal language that was supposed to bring cosmopolitan travelers together but is mainly utilized by awkward people trying to shortcut learning an actual native tongue.
Dissemination of the hipster signs depends on word of mouth but we don't see it working unless a critical mass is already out there using it. Otherwise those willing to get savvy will just be out there with limbs akimbo, monkeying an artificial social langue only they and maybe five other people in the universe understand, which gives us something new to laugh about, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. For us, anyway.
The chums at Mortar point us to the eSurance hottie's latest ad. To say nothing of the eSurance ads in general, which are dramatic, well-animated and blessed with catchy music, Erin Esurance is hot. We've always thought so.
But until SpaceGhost confirmed it in a recent interview with the pink-haired incognito op (aptly labeled Daddy's Little Bad Girl) we might have kept our feelings for the curvaceous cartoon to ourselves. It doesn't quite matter what she says and she doesn't even really have to leap tall buildings; her pixels could just shift from side to side and most of America would still be paying attention. Is that pathetic?
To poke a semblance at serious, though, good execution on the eSurance/SpaceGhost collaboration. SpaceGhost is always a good way of gauging whether brands have a sense of humour about their work. And Erin passes with flying colours, broadening her appeal to a more cynical audience.
Clean Butt is the spankin' new concept site for BidetSpa, which specializes in, well, bidets. We don't know who in America buys bidets but we found the Clean Butt URL catchy and amusing.
There are features on the site we're dying to check out but can't because either the site or our internet is misbehaving this morning. But how can you not want to explore a link marked Toilevator? Or Bidet Spa with Wireless Remote? We feel like Alice slamming her head into the Looking-Glass to no avail. They're killing us here!
Beer takes the internet dive with Here's to Beer, an Anheuser-Busch/MingleNow collabo intended to bring beer's social merits to social networking.
Here's to Beer includes blurbs on which celebrities you'd have a pint with, as well as some beer trivia and brewing history. We thought it was a fairly coherent idea but upon mentioning it to a twenty-something beer aficionado he scoffed, "Beer trivia and brewing history? All you need to know is Anheuser-Busch makes shit beers."
For A-B and MingleNow's sake, we hope that doesn't speak for the whole demographic. Actually, that's a lie. Bud's fine for drinking in secret at home when you're all depressed about your life, but we can't remember the last time we ordered one on tap.
- Google command over the ad industry may increase even further with the purchase in-game ad company Adscape Media.
- Time Inc. is not having a good time these days as automaker cut $100 million in ad spend across the publisher's titles.
- It would appear the Saatchi 17 are now wishing they never left in the first place haviing just been axed by Interpublic.
|
|
