JC Penney's Crue Boarding is giving away rebates for the full purchasing price when you send them an e-receipt and a shot of you wearing their gear.
To infiltrate its target market -- "full time slackers" into "surfing beer music classy girls" -- Penney's invented Samthebrodude, a fake video blogger who does jack besides post vlogs about this promotion.
Sam's videos are short and the lighting terrible, harking back to a time (pre-dating Lonelygirl15) when those characteristics might have suggested authenticity. Beyond that, he's too much like a character invented out of intensive MySpace research.
Plus, he joined YouTube three weeks ago and has uploaded seven videos -- five of which are all about Crue Boarding's promotion.
See him clutch a guitar, just for show, and flash his rebate check. As if you care.
So I just returned from a week-long, back to back conference trip where I re-connected with current friends and made lots of new ones. Personally, I love traveling to conferences. Sure, it puts a huge dent in daily productivity but what you glean from the experience, what you learn while you are there and the new connections you make with people far out weight staying home and going through yet another day of the same old thing no matter how much you love your job.
 In Las Vegas at Blogworld, a conference which explores blogging and its role in just about everything, I was lucky enough to have wandered over to the conference a day early where there was a sort of pre-conference occurring. At the conference, Wine Library's Gary Vaynerchuk, who I'd seen once before in Boston, was giving a keynote about how, as a blogger, one can carve out a niche and work their way towards becoming the expert in that niche. It was very motivational talk, filled with Gary's trademark excitement. It was informative and gave me more than a few ideas I could put in motion to improve my own situation.
 Wherever I was - at the conference, at the Techset party, at the Affiliate Summit dinner, at the Prive party, at Mirage's Revolution, in the exhibit hall, at a Planet Hollywood dinner, hanging by the Maker's Mark bus during the exhibit hall party or during the insane last night during which 23 of us just sort of moved from one place to another in the MGM Grand - I just kept seeing and meeting more and more people I knew or came to know.
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Encouraged -- but apparently not inspired -- by the success of its talking stain Super Bowl spot, Tide to Go solicited users for their own talking stain ads earlier this year.
YouTube's emceemiko won that contest. His spot -- where a rapping stain mocks an interview candidate -- appeared during the Desperate Housewives premier. The low-budget feel made it instantly recognizable as CGM, but the rap was surprisingly good -- even relatable! -- so I guess sometimes it pays to ask Main Street to do Mad Ave's job.
Part of doing Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years "properly" is reflecting on how they've been done before, a cultural habit that primes everybody for Memory Lane. That's why the holidays are a perfect time to bang out some pop culture nostalgia, wrap a tagline around it and call it an ad.
Under year-old slogan "The Magic of Macy's" (JWT/NY), Macy's cashes in on these sentiments by leveraging its long brand history. Check out this patchwork quilt of "Macy's" mentions in movies and shows like Charlie Brown, Family Guy, Seinfeld, I Love Lucy and Miracle on 34th Street (which I watched every Christmas as a kid!), among others.
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- The McCain campaign was caught proclaiming John McCain's victory in the Presidential debate -- before the debate even happened.
- For down-and-out creatives that need to feel like heroes. V-v-v-via.
- PETA insinuates that fishermen have small penises.
- Sarah Palin needs prayer from advertisers.
- Ogilvy picks up Wachovia. Good fucking luck!
- Ed McMahon does rap vids for FreeCreditReport.com. Guess the waiter was unavailable that weekend.
- Citigroup vs. Citi-Mobile. Here's a thought: why not just buy the bastards?
So while Ad Week doesn't officially end until today, Friday, it felt like it ended Thursday. I didn't make it to the Facebook party but, instead, opted to have drinks and dinner with some friends. The first stop was Undercurrent marketing in SoHo where I met Julia Roy (who was just featured on Awesomeology) and Yianni Garcia.
Undercurrent is a young, small agency which specializes in online marketing and social media. We ended up somewhere in mid-town at a place which looked like it was right next to Wall Street. Everyone had a suit on and, if it were the eighties, could have been labeled Yuppies. Pictorial goodness here.
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At the PricewaterhouseCoopers Auditorium during Advertising Week on Thursday at 2PM, Corbis hosted a panel entitled How Mega Celebs Are Boosting Mega Brands which explored how brands and celebrities are working together towards similar ends: boosting their visibility and connection with people.
On the panel were McCann Erickson EVP Chief Creative Officer Joyce King Thomas, Greenlight Director of Brand Strategy and Development Martin Cribbs, Sony/ATV Music Publishing Global Marketing Senior VP Robert Kaplan and Corbis Outline Publicist and Photographer Relations Megan Wiley. The panel was moderated by OK! Weekly Executive Website Editor Chris Morran.
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Wednesday night during Advertising Week, Adobe held its Battle of the Bands even at the Nokia Theater in Times Square. It was well attended and there was some amazing talent on stage. Agencies participating were The Concept Farm, Eric Mower & Associates, Vidal Cendeno Advertising, Initiative, Grey, May & Co., Tribal DDB, Surge, Pyper Paul Kenney, TargetCast TCM, Starcom Chicago, Twon Sports International and McCann Erickson.
And while there was certainly talent on stage, it was the winning stage presence of McCann Erickson's More Fucking Cowbell that won over the judges and the crowd. Rocking out classic eighties heavy metal in full, big hair regalia, the group, along with two females dancers, just owned the crowd. There was no way they couldn't win. There would have been a riot of epic proportion. See pictures of the battle here.
Following the Battle of the Bands, I tagged along with the Barbarian Group to a little hip hop place in the Lower East Side for some drinking and dancing which lasted until 3AM. that agency knows how to party. One emplyee IM'd she had "85 hangovers" this morning. Sweet. All kinds of pictures here.
Sony Style is working with Extreme Group/Toronto on a rebranding effort called "Experience the Wonder." Print ads will be used to distill the magic people feel when walking into a Sony Style store.
"A typical consumer standing outside a Sony Style location has the same look on their face as a kid in a candy store," said associate CD Anthony Taaffe, explaining the ad at left.
It's weird, but for some reason the image of a dazzled kid in oversized clothing always makes me think of Disney.* It's like those guys have a monopoly on childlike awe -- not to say Sony hasn't occasionally swept me off my feet.
Anywho, the work will appear at Sony Style stores and launch events in Montreal, Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver.
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Because I've always wanted to share my bra size, waist-to-hip ratio, and breadth-of-ass with a fabric softener company that cares just that much, I sat around taking the "Discover Your Shape" quiz on DownyDesignTags.com. This is part of a partnership between myShape and P&G's Downy.
At the end of the test, long-suffering women get a Downy Design Tag, a personal style guide that reveals what our best colors are and which clothes most flatter our bodies. (What is this, a joke?!) Advice is proffered by a celebrity stylist called Jorge, who also dispenses cockle-warming welcome letters and coupons to Ann Taylor LOFT.
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