If you followed my Advertising Week adventure at all, you probably know I hit YPulse on Friday. In the late afternoon, a bunch of kids were corralled onto the stage to give us one last shot at learning their inner-workings before hitting the road.
Like the minds of the demographic it hopes to distill, the one-room YPulse Tween Mashup conference hall is a different world.
Upon entering, you're accosted by Michael Jackson's ABC (this is before Hanson's Mmmbop was spun about 6 different times) -- and with so much pink SWAG just waiting to be snapped up, you feel roughly the same emotional tug that only Lisa Frank's overpriced unicorn-shaped pencil sharpeners could conjure.
With all this going on, the YPulse atmosphere serves to make marketers feel pre-adolescent and out-of-touch, all at the same time.
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WongDoody, which recently brought us the clever Horizon Air campaign, has extended its No Stank You youth anti-smoking campaign for the Washington State Department of Health with a social media and fashion styled campaign.
The program is described thusly, "To earn a free No Stank You shirt, teens visit No Stank You and participate in the "Do 3, Get T" incentive program. Points are awarded for adding a No Stank You banner to a personal Web site, submitting an original tee design, referring a friend to the No Stank You site and more. Each activity is worth one point. Three points earns a free tee."
Supporting the effort are TV and radio. View one of the six spots here. Gross. Weird. Good.
We're a little confused about Trojan's position in the social networking space. While encouraging sexually active users to "Evolve" from pig to man via MySpace, the Facebook flyer for Trojan's Magnum series appears to be encouraging us to poke each other to a frenzy.
Maybe they thought dudes with bigger schlongs just don't read Orwell.
To be fair though, the innuendo behind Facebook's "pokes" is a little hard to resist. We can't even count how many users have made us feel uncomfortable with their incessant poking.
If we reciprocate, will they think we're whores?
UPDATE, 10-5-07: A contact at Edelman says the ad isn't Trojan's but (possibly) an online condom vendor's. Well, baby, free promotion never does hurt. Unless you happen to be running a campaign specifically aimed at discouraging porky poking practices.
Interesting. When every marketer is on a land grab for the latest Second Life, MySpace, Twitter or Facebook stunt, Metropolitan Life, perhaps being true to the blandness that if life insurance, has chosen old fashioned eBay (remember all those stupid auctions?) to place its MetLife Snoopy in Fashion promotion. Part of Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week, the promotion lets people bid on fashions designed by Heatherette, Isaac Mizrahi, Betsey Johnson and Pamella Roland, Kristin Chenoweth, Whoopi Goldberg, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, and Ingrid Hoffmann.
Design for a September seventh runway event, proceeds from the bids will go to Dress For Success, "a non-profit organization which promotes the economic independence of disadvantaged women by providing professional attire, a network of support and the career development tools to help women thrive in work and in life."
For once, an eBay auction that doesn't have anything to do with tattooing body parts or auctioning off pixels on a website. And who doesn't love Snoopy?
There's something strangely appealing about this simple promo for ABC's Pushing Daisies. Developed by True North Inc., Plant a Daisy lets you write out a name and a question for your beloved (or detested?) deceased, then plant a daisy. The field of daisies gives way to a teaser for the show, which walks a line between funny and touching in some sad way.
The show premieres tomorrow.
It seems those in the Pacific Northwest think alike when it comes to travel and tourism advertising. In early September, we took a look at a campaign for Horizon Air which highlighted the 200 mile stretch of Interstate 5 between Seattle and Portland. It's referred to The Slog for all the oddities and annoyances along the way that make taking a Horizon Air (of course) flight to traverse the distance instead.
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If you think strange homages and coincidences in advertising creative are a new thing, you would be mistaken. Writing on Freaking Marketing, Robert Rosenthal shares with us the fact the famed David Ogilvy-created Rolls Royce headline, "At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock" wasn't exactly original. Perhaps this is common knowledge is some circles but it's the first we've heard of it.
In a very level headed examination, Rosenthal explains how a headline, "The only sound one can hear in the new Pierce-Arrows is the ticking of the electric clock" appeared in a Pierce Arrow print ad in 1932, many years before it appeared in a Rolls Royce ad. It's nearly identical to the Rolls Royce headline.
Certainly Ogilvy was old enough to have seen the ad but, as we've seen many times before, coincidences happen and even if work plays off former work, it's usually done, as Rosenthal points out, simply to accomplish whatever the campaign set out to do. While everyone likes to say there are no new ideas today perhaps they've been gone for over 50 years.
UPDATE: In comments, Rosenthal, after digging deeper, tells us the headline may have come from the Technical Editor of a magazine called The Motor. Oddly, it sounds like we may have known this before but don't count on our brain cells for much. We're just sharing the facts as they present themselves.
This just goes to show that holding executive status in the same universe as Virgin's Richard Branson is an increasingly ridiculous job. Janet Stanek of Stand Advertising has committed to spending 30 hours perched on a billboard overlooking a highway in Buffalo, NY.
She was set up there yesterday morning and will remain there until noon today.
The stunt accomplishes (?) three goals: to celebrate Stand's 6th anniversary, raise $30K for Make-a-Wish, and "get out of those interminable Monday morning status meetings." We feel you on that one, Janet.
Janet will be tethered onto the billboard with little more than a sleeping mat and a tent (which, we hope, includes a loo). Watch her brave the elements (for the children, no less) at Boss on a Billboard.
Any way we can get a soccer ball up there with her?
In mid-September, we shared with you a series of videos featuring an eye catching, very large breasted cheerleader hanging out in a locker room to promote the upcoming Fox film The Comebacks which will star The Office's Melora Hardin, Carl Weathers, Reno 911 and The Office alum David Koechner and Andy Dick among others.
In a new video, our cheerleader, Amy, who is now on crutches, tells us about a cheering accident she recently had. After she hobbles in to the locker room, falls over a bench and gets up (while showing us her pink panties), she pulls out a pair of Barbie dolls to illustrate how her spotter threw her up but didn't catch her causing her to land in the stands. Of course, we had to watch the video five times before our brain finally transferred cognitive abilities from our eyes to our ears.
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Ahh. Here's what Profitable Marketing Communications aspired but failed to be because the authors were too busy trying to be memorable writers. Jason Burby and Shane Atchison make no such pretension.
Actionable Web Analytics reads more like a textbook than an indulgent marketing tourguide. Its lessons are practical, actionable, simply explained and well-illustrated.
Buy it. You don't even have to read it; if it's on your shelf, you'll actually seem smarter. We'll even overlook the fact that co-author Shane looks like a hipster.
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