Nothing warms the heart like the sight of a kid schooling his parents on the importance of travel insurance.
Also see Did you have a nightmare?: "Dents are easy to fix, but liability's the nightmare! Ah, don't get up. I'll tuck myself in." I kinda want to hug him. Or buy him a graphing calculator.
You know what would be awesome? If this kid and the Umpqua lemonaire got together and built the ultimate risk-free lemonade stand, equipped with biodegradable paper cups (to appease the environmentalists) and curved corners for child safety.
Apparently seven.
Seven Days to Sex Appeal claims swagger and sex appeal can be taught. Good to know there's hope out there for foaming-at-the-mouth underdogs.
According to Amazon, 93 percent of customers bought the book after seeing the product page. And dude, it only got 3 stars out of 5. So I'm guessing optimism, however loose in wallet, does not a sex god make.
The book was brought to our attention by Very Smart Brothas, my new favourite blog candy. Seriously. Read their pick-up artist post. One of the writers claims to have picked a girl up by writing her a haiku. At the library. AND RUNNING AWAY!
- Can your manly-man hair pass the caress test?
- If a chaste mermaid won't save Starbucks, maybe frozen bananas will. (Ugh, dude.)
- Some celebrities educate the public on the Burma situation; John Cusack tallies similarities between McCain and Bush. MoveOn, as usual, is helping raise money to get the ad on air.
- Apparently the Copyright Nazis are after more than just pirates these days. In the UK, you can be prosecuted for playing music too loud or playing it for callers on hold without a license. From now on, let's just keep all music secret and see how the record industry fares.
- Baseball and the Tour de France aren't the only sports to disillusion one-time fans; almost half of Advertising Age readers believe the NBA rigs its games. I fondly await the day Canadians lose faith in hockey. Oh wait, many - already - have.
- A Microsoft Xbox Live group banned a player because he used "gay" in his gamer tag, "RichardGaywood." Upon discovering that was the guy's name, they BANNED IT ANYWAY. Microsoft, you charmers, you.
Whoa. Weren't we all just in Miami getting our interactive (and, um, other things) on at ad:tech? Indeed we were but now it's time for the Chicago version of ad:tech. OK, OK, so it's not hot, sunny, sand-filled Miami Beach but it is Navy Pier and Lake Michigan which provides an awesome skyline view of Chicago. That is, if you have a friend with a nice big sailboat who's kind enough to take you out.
Someone will have a booze cruise. Someone will have a party at The W. CIMA will have a party at Fulsom's. And, no doubt, one night we'll all end up atop Rock Bottom at the end of the night. Aside from that, there will keynotes from author Clay Shirky and Google CPG Industry Director Kevin Kells. There will be three panel tracks covering Media and Branding, Tactical Marketing and Emerging Platforms.
Conversational Branding will be explored as will mobile, search, viral, the death of he banner, new media economy and, yes, of course, social media.
Oh look! We do love our own kind! Those four starving Creative Circus students who won Cannes Future Lions but couldn't afford to go to Cannes and held a bake sale to raise money succeeded and, yes, will now go to Cannes to collect their awards thanks to some kind sponsors. Or maybe they're going only because some quick thinkers saw an opportunity for publicity. [Ed. Oh, why do you always have to such a dick about these kind of altruistic things?]
Thanks to Leo Burnett who picked up their air fares and 22 Squared, AKQA, Jannie Gerds, Grigsby Consulting LLC, Dave Holloway, Jeb Quaid and The Creative Circus which covered the rest of the travel costs, the four will now bask in the glory of Southern France sun, fun and, likely, the requisite debauchery that goes with Cannes.
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Unless you''re into rough play or S&M, fighting and kissing usually don't go together. Unless, of course, the fighting and kissing take place during Mentos' Kiss Fight. So if you're bored, like to repeatedly press your keyboard's arrow keys or just didn't get it on they way you thought you would with that hottie of your dreams this weekend, have a go at Kiss Fight and get your kissing needs met.
It's a little less sick than Mentos' earlier effort, Kiss Cam. But not much.
Last week, Visa announced Lindsay Lohan would become the new face of this year's Visa Swap fashion show, a UK event which encourages people to swap unwanted clothing. Along with clothing charity Traid, Visa Swap is the place for the fashion conscious to check out the duds of their fellow fashion conscious brethren and buy them with points earned for donating their own clothes. All clothing items left over are donated to Traid.
[Witty Lindsay Lohan comment about how her clothes are no good because they are likely alcohol or puke-stained from her social antics goes here but...well....it's just not presenting itself right now.]
Those videos with cell phones popping corn have been floating around since May 28 and have garnered much discussion surrounding their validity. While cell phones can fry your head and reportedly cause cancer, they don't pop corn. They can, however, take on a starring role in a series of videos for Bluetooth headset maker Cardo Systems.
On the YouTube page where Cardo posted its reveal, the marketer writes, "More than 4 million people have watched our little videos since May 28, 2008. We are very happy to have made this contribution to an important international public debate."
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Some storks bring you babies. But watch out for the one with the glasses; he's got nothing but pickles.
Publicis & Hal Riney/SF is helping to reposition reinvigorate pickle company Vlasic and its 34-year-old stork icon. The stork's personality was modeled off Groucho Marx and appears in current TV ads* as a quirky friend of the family. Vlasic's tagline was also changed to "That's the tastiest crunch I ever heard."
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Playing against the somewhat limiting squeaky clean image the International Children's Games has, Grey SF came up with a campiagn that makes kids look at bit more...hmm...Dennis Rodman. Cuz, well, who wants to see a perfect Limited Too kid with Hannah Montana sneakers when you can see kids with tattoos, soccer ball heads and ears pierced with golf clubs?
Grey Creative Director said, "Once people heard about the idea, help came from all over. World-renowned photographer Jill Greenberg joined the team. Then the free media poured in with billboards, wildpostings, bus shelters, and posters. But best of all, the kids ate it up. So much so, we offered free haircuts and henna tattoos to any kid who wanted one, turning hundreds of kids into walking billboards."
Nothing wrong with a bit of kid-powered viral marketing. See the other two ads here and here.
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