Over two years ago, Bernard Urban rebranded his URBANadvertising company to become GIGANTIC. In April, agency We Are Gigantic was born out of an MDC consolidation of its MFP and Kirshenbaum Bond & Partners agencies. We Are Gigantic is headed by Niel Powell who formerly was a partner at the now defunct MFP which suffered significant client loss.
Both GIGANTIC and We Are Gigantic are located in New York. Urban has taken issue with MDC naming its new shop We Are Gigantic and has filed suit against We are Gigantic, L.L.C. and Neil Powell claiming trademark infringement.
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If you're a fan of Candystand, or even if you hate their guts and think you could make all their games 10 times better, you will dig this.
Candystand is seeking would-be game designers to help them put together a new baseball game. Of course we jumped at the opportunity to join but it keeps making our browser crash, which is a bummer, because we really think Steroids Showdown (our "concept") would have curried a following of near-religious proportions.
Contest winners get to hit NYC to hang out at Candystand's Development Headquarters, which we imagine looks a lot like a cross between Dave & Busters and Willy Wonka's edible paradise. (It is, lest we forget, a Wrigley's company.)
How do you get a passel of users to interact with your ad? Give them a compelling scenario with a cliffhanger that demands they mouse over to learn more.
Not a bad strategy. But a conversation about figure skating...? Come on, T-Mobile.
Our best guess is they were trying to capture the kind of inane conversation you'd have on a landline. (That is, before the advent of "free nights and weekends.") But the "hours later..." punchline isn't that great, either.
Last night The Ad Club of Boston held its 47th Annual Hatch Awards high atop the Boston skyline at State Room, a grand event space with two story, floor to ceiling windows offering beautiful vistas of the city. Cocktails began at 5:30PM and at about 9:30PM the Best of Show Award was presented to Arnold, along with Crispin Porter + Bogusky for their Singing Cowboy commercial, part of the American Legacy Foundation's truth campaign.
The event was well attended and there was some nice work acknowledged. This year, in response to comments on the structure of last year's event which was held at the Back Bay Events Center with a more traditional auditorium-style awards presentation far from the food and drink, the event was moved to the State Room where the food, drink and mingling along with the award presentation became one. Results were mixed at best.
The trouble with advertising people and advertising awards shows in general, especially when alcohol is involved, is that no one cares who wins unless it's themselves. So The Ad Club President Kathy Kiely and Master of Ceremonies John Verret had a tough time commanding attention from the crowd who were seemingly oblivious to the presentation ceremony and more concerned with socializing and drinking than paying respect to their peers who had won awards.
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For those seeking a hero in a beauty queen, Miss America has created her own browser to protect young girls from online predators.
Each site the browser accesses is filtered and approved by the Miss America Organization and the Children's Educational Network. It also reads email out loud and can instruct kids to do laundry or homework, based on parental programming.
Par for the course if she can improve the ratio for the 1/5 Americans who can't locate the States on a map. Miss South Carolina failed miserably in that regard, but maybe that's why she didn't win the crown.
We love Diesel. We've been shopping there since we were old enough to comfortably blow triple digits on sneakers.
So maybe it's our bias when we look at one of their myriad scatterbrained campaigns and suggest that maybe Diesel does know what it's doing. Maybe they're the rock stars of the fashion world: burn-outs on the outside, but soaked in talent and a profound quest for meaning from within.
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We were about to trash this concept, but now we're not sure if we want to. Pay it to Me! is a site where people can post images of stuff they want, with the cost and currency prominently displayed. Then an advertiser buys the item for the person and gets some traffic to their website in exchange.
Sounds simple enough, but we had it explained to us once and still had to reread it on the site. It's hard to tell what the site is for unless you scroll down a little.
It also doesn't seem like traffic is jumping, though the creators hope they've got the next Million Dollar Homepage on their hands.
Either way, this could be an awesome opportunity to ask for completely inane stuff. Like Lincoln Logs put together in the shape of Jesus. Or a car made out of cake. Come on, baby, pay it to me.
Here's a great way to maintain staying power in a market: make the product illegal, and ensure enforcement is next to impossible.
Word has it that an Oakland-based business called Tainted, which pushes weed-laced candies and other food products to "cannabis clubs," got raided last week.
Business was apparently thriving: the company has ordered almost four tons of chocolate in two years to support a sweet tooth for Mr. Greenbud and Buddafinga bars.
A store manager and two couriers have been arrested, but the firm's owner Michael Martin is still at large. He faces charges of federal conspiracy.
There's something wrong with this picture. Can you imagine a bunch of pot-laced kids trying to overthrow The Man? They can't even get up off their couches. Legalizing cannabis might be the best thing that ever happens to our government.
We're not really sure why you'd want to tell a buddy that he or she "is God," but Eric Clapton's PR team is hoping you will.
The image at left is being promoted to celebrate "Complete Clapton," which goes out on October 8. In the meantime, you're invited to send a "[Buddy's Name Here] is God" ecard to somebody you (presumably) worship in exchange for the chance to win a Fender Stratocaster electric guitar.
Guess that makes sense.
- Even fashion models can sound intelligent. Especially when they steal their lines from an MIT professor.
- Paddington Bear creator Michael Bond and fans are angered because Karen Jankel, Bond's daughter gave the go ahead for the character to be used in a Marmite ad when it's well known Paddington likes marmalade.
- As more and more nudity becomes readily and freely available online, Playboy has decided to cut back paid circulation 13 percent to 2.6 million as well as offer more free content online.
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