BoingBoing points to a Wired Music Blog post that highlights some changes to YouTubes terms and conditions that could give them complete control and ownership over anything that is uploaded to their site. In theory, the blog points out, YouTube could sell any uploaded video or take a musical track and sell it, royalty-free. This change will make certain organizations think twice before handing over all revenue making ability derived from created content. It's nice to get wide distribution of your work but it's also nice to maintain some control over it as well.
Here's another one of those commercials that takes far too long to make its point, poorly at best, which, in :30 could have accomplished its goal rather than wastefully taking :90. The spot urges people to despise SUVs by illustrating how fellow office workers despise the guy who owns an SUV. More pompous nattering from Greenpeace.
There's two reasons why US Airways' decision to place advertising on air sickness bags is pointless and stupid. First off, when was the last time you puked on a plane or actually looked for or even found an air sickness bag? Not a smart media buy if you're trying to reach a crowd. Second, during the act of puking, are you normally able to focus on anything other than making sure you properly projectile the substance from your stomach? Oh, and third, do you really want to look at the bag after you fill it with puke? The only benefit any advertiser will receive from making a buy on puke bags is the press that will surround the first advertiser who decides to do so.
We'd love to see the measurement metrics on this ad medium as well. Cost Per Puke? Gallons of Puke Per Flight? Any media planner care to weigh in on this?
Here is, perhaps, one of the most uninteresting car commercials we've seen in, well, ever. Trying to highlight the engineering feats of the new Lexus ES 350, Team One Advertising, along with Digital Domain, have created spot with an oddly mismatched voiceover, awkward pacing and the inclusion of special "computer aided design" effects intended to reinforce the spot's concept but, at least to us, don't. No doubt the digital effect and production of this spot are impressive but they can't make up for the less than exciting message the spot tries to convey.
Now this is preciously priceless. Coors Brewing Chairman Pete Coors, tha man who always urges responsible drinking in Coors ad campiagns, was arrested yesterday for drunk driving. He was stopped for rolling through a stop sign and his blood alcohol level was found to be above the legal limit for the state. For his part, Coors was conciliatory saying in a statement, "I made a mistake by driving myself home after a friend's wedding celebration. I should have planned ahead for a ride. For years I've advocated the responsible use of our company's products. That's still my message, and our company's message, and it's the right message. I am sorry that I didn't follow it myself." Oops.
Leave it to the politically correct, sexually squeamish mind of an American to become so offended by those red-lipped, mouth-shaped urinals in a Netherlands McDonald's, the person's complaints caused the owner to remove them. Yes, we Americans are, for the most part, an oversensitive bunch so caught up in our fervent desire not to do anything that might remotely cause bad vibes for a person or a particular group of people, we read negativity into almost everything. The designer of the toilets, Meike van Schijndel, said the toilets were designed to be cartoonish and not represent a woman's mouth. Of course, way back in 2004 when they first appeared at New York's JFK airport, we didn't know how to react either.
Slingbox, a device that allows you to watch anything from your home-based cable box or DVR while anywhere in the world through an Internet connection, has a new competitor. Sony is launching Location Free which pretty much does exactly what Slingbox does. Unfortunately, Sony's website for this product doesn't do a very good job explaining the product whereas Slingbox does. Sony's site is heavy on Flash and light on clear product description. Slingbox provides a simple site with a simple to understand (albeit a bit informercial-ish) product tour video that clearly explains exactly what the product does.
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Adrants reader John Eppstein doesn't like the new Cuervo Black campaign which promotes it as an ingredient for a Cuervo Black and Cola. He thinks the ads are a bit pretentious and a turn off to the very audience the campaign is trying to reach. We'll let him explain:
"Have the people in charge of the current Cuervo Black ad campaign secretly been paid off by the competition? Or are they simply too stupid to understand that, while an obnoxious, oversaturated ad blitz may get a product to stick in the audience's collective memory, it is not always a desirable result? The current Cuervo Black ads inspire a strong aversion response in a large segment of the market. The smug, insincere voice reading lines obviously written by some flack who thinks everybody is even more stupid and vacuous than himself are an immediate turnoff..... and when this advertising is scheduled in heavy saturation the result is people swearing that they will never, ever partake of the product that this noxious advertising is attempting, oh so clumsily, to shove (or pour, in this case) down their throats."
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Take a trip over to Lindsey's MySpace page and you'll be surprised at what you find. An Adrants readers woke up Saturday morning with 27 new friend requests, on of which was Lindsey so he decided to check her out. When he did, as soon as her page loaded, he was redirected to newxvidz.com, a porn video site. It seems some enterprising porn vendor has found a way to redirect MySpace pages tto sites selling porn videos. Yup, just one more thing for marketers eager to tap the MySpace audience to worry about.
Movie Marketing Madness tells the story of John Campea who runs The Movie Blog and his recent run in with Paramount. John had been hyping the Paramount movie [name withheld so as not to provide any undeserved publicity] by talking about the production of the film and posting images from the production. Like a bunch of clueless idiots, Paramount execs did some very silly things. First, they asked John to remove a couple pictures from his site. John complied after making sure Paramount wanted to remove this publicity from the million people who read his blog. Yes, they did and so he removed them. Then the next morning, he found his site down which he later realized was due to a cease and desist letter sent from Paramount to his hosting company complaining about a third picture which Paramount never notified him about.
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