New Zealand vodka maker 42Below is hosting its own World Cup except this one involves bar tending instead of football. From September 10-17, the company's annual Cocktail World Cup will take place in the mountains of Queenstown New Zealand and involve bungee jumping, rafting at 80 MPH and sliding down snow covered mountains. It's yet another way the cheeky vodka maker has a bit of fun while, at the same time, gaining some publicity. For the event, 42Below seeks the 42 best bartenders from the UK, Ireland, USA, Central America, Asia, Europe, New Zealand, Australia and Canada. What...there's no good bartenders in Africa?
Pontiac, along with its Hispanic agency Accentmarketing, has launched a new brand campaign which attempts to position the car maker as sexy. The campaign, called "Diseñado Para Seducir," or "Designed for Seduction" and featuring music from Kinky, launched June 20 and will consist of two television spots airing on Spanish-language networks. In one ad, Grab, a woman can't keep her hands off the keys of the new Pontiac Solstice while fondling her man. In another, Traffic Stop, the driver of a G6 Convertible gets more attention than he expected from a hot police officer. We'd agree the attempt is a success.
Now that Britney has no real use for Kevin Federline, Virgin's Richard Branson has, apparently, taken pity and recruited Federline for a Virgin Mobile Penny Texting promotion which seeks to leverage legislation that will, apparently, eliminate the penny. Branson, Federline and American Common Cents Director Mathew Eggers will be the first to sign a "Save the Penny" petition in New York's Times Square Wednesday June 21 at 1:30 PM.
Virgin Mobile's Penny Texting plan offers 1,000 text messages for $9.99 per month, hence the need for pennies. Nothing like leveraging disparagement, U.S. legal idiosyncrasies and the lowly penny for a marketing promotion but we'd expect nothing less from Virgin.
Automobile rack make Yakima has launched Yakimagrams. Created by Stick and Move, the site lets visitors create singing telegrams and send them to their friends. There's canned Yakimagrams as well as options to create customized versions. We didn't spend too much time with it but it looks amusing enough considering there's really nothing all that exciting about roof racks.
Award-winning documentary filmmaker and commercial director Stacy Peralta of Nonfiction Spots and DDB Chicago created a new commercial for Budweiser which honors three generations of the Earnhardt family's NASCAR success. The spot debuted on Father's Day, during the broadcast of the 3M Performance 400 from Michigan International Speedway Using stock footage gathered from The Earnhardt family, Anheuser Busch, The Associated Press, Getty Images, NASCAR and Sports Illustrated, and working side-by-side with his colleague, editor Paul Crowder -- who edited Stacy's documentary features "Dogtown and Z-Boys" and "Ridings Giants" -- the spot collects 50 years of the Earnhardt family's racing legacy and, of course, aligns it with Budweiser's support for auto racing.
While this PSA for Action Against Hunger ran a year or so ago following the December 2004 Tsunami, it was created through a communal effort among members of the WheresSpot advertising community group. Copywriter Stefanie Wasserman is a member of WheresSpot and, through the community, she met producer and editor Yatin Parkhani with whom she created the PSA. The pair created a commercial that avoided typical post-disaster imagery and used, instead, puppets from the Brooklyn Puppeteers Coopertive . Yes, puppets. The spot tells the story of of a girl who was left behind without her family after the tsumani. The spot does have a happy ending as it does for its creators who just won a 2006 Telly for their work.
Communications company Cisco Systems has launched a new campaign centered around the typically nightmarish aspects of office life such as missed meetings, endless phone tag, conference call insanity, video headaches, wiring difficulties and all those other inane idiosyncrasies that make you wish for the days before the fax machine launched us into office technology hell. Ten videos cover just about every office technology nightmare except for the biggest one of them all. People. No matter how wonderful Cisco technology might be, no technology can connect people if there's no one there to connect to. If Cisco can solve that problem, office life might actually be something to look forward to.
Travel site Orbitz has launched Orbitz Games, a community site on which people can help Orbitz build an 18-hole golf course by designing a golf hole and voting on those designed by others. By designing and voting, people can win airfare for two to anywhere in the U.S. It's sponsored by Golfsmith Golf & Tennis.
Lynx is promoting its latest online stunt called Billions of Bikini Babes which will, apparently, air in the UK at 7:25PM on ITV1 just prior to the England versus Sweden football game. The trailer promises bikinis, babe, beaches and one guy that looks like he's in bikini nirvana.
Beyond "far forward right hand page," most media people don't give a crap where their print ads appear in a magazine. Apparently, Chrysler's Mark Spencer does and he jumped, when called by People magazine, at the opportunity to place an ad next to the article about Brad Pit and Angelina Jolie's baby Shiloh. While the placement itself is a great one, the headline of the Dodge Caliber ad, "It's Anything But Cute," makes it one of the better ad placement juxtapositions in recent memory. Forgive the insane LeftlaneNews brandapalooza and baby facial coverage on the image. Why even botther? The image is already out there the world over.
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