The New Juice Toss
If you think windsurfing is fun, you should check out this "sport". Get kicked, fly, and do it all while bathing yourself in your favorite drink. Weird. Click the picture to view.
Courtesy of Apechild.
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Chimp Ad Draws Complaints Seems the complaint meter is going up again in the U.K. This time, it's for an ad featuring chimpanzees for car and bike equipment chain, Halford's. Under the tagline, "because you pay peanuts, we give you monkeys", the chimps cavort around the store in track suits. The ad has receive 75 complaints so far and the Captive Animals Protection Society, U.K.'s version of PETA, is calling for a boycott. Halfords refuses to pull the ad saying, " The ad was pre-approved by the broadcast advertisers clearance center, part of the ITC (Independent television Commission), and we are happy to run it. The marketing team did have some concerns about using chimps, but our advertising agency heavily researched the ad with audiences and it was well-received. All the rules and regulations in place for the protection of animals were adhered to and there were trainers and vets on site." The ad is off the air but only because that was in the plan. It is scheduled to air again beginning in July. The animal protection group, CAPS, does not want it to return to the air calling the ad "cruel" and "totally unacceptable" stating, "This ad is stepping back 20 years. It is not funny and doesn't give the products a good image. PG Tips (a previous advertiser who used chimps) stopped using chimps because they realized it was no longer acceptable." Where has our sense of humor gone? View the ad here, although the link was broken at the time of publication. New York Times Scandal Not Likely to Affect Readers"Remember that most of the criticism was coming from within the industry," stresses Robert Passikoff, founder and president of Brand Keys. "Did the guy on a Metro-North train reading the Times in the morning think any less of the paper? What happened was a black eye and it was embarrassing, but I can't remember the last time anyone died of a black eye or embarrassment." That's the general feeling in the industry. What happened at the Times was very bad but like most "events" in America, we seem to have a very short term memory for these things. "Most of the paper's readers aren't especially interested in the internal workings of the Times," says Charles Fountain, an associate professor at Northeastern University. "Sure, [the newspaper] is a little bit damaged right now, but it's mostly damaged within the industry, which tends to be a little bit insular and not really reflective of people who read the newspaper." The long term affects of this for readers and advertisers is likely to be nil. [via Mediapost] Two Interesting Trends to WatchTrendWatching, a newsletter that finds and names new trends has two new ones to consider. The fist, called Mass Class, refers to the group of people who have taken advantage of the democratization of luxury made possible by low cost luxury retailers such as H&M, EasyJet, Gap, Nokia, Virgin, and Zara. This group has been able to "step" in class and are now an entirely new audience to market to. The second trend dubbed, Online Oxygen, refers to the 600 million consumers worldwide who crave online access. They will do anything to get it and cannot live without it. The growth of broadband and wireless access continues to grow at a healthy clip. Intel is making this shift even easier by adding its 'Centrino' chip to over half of all new laptops in the next quarter. The 'Centrino' chip has specific wireless abilities. Additionally, the number of "hot spots", or wireless access points will grow from 9,700 this year to an estimated (IDC) 118,000 by 2006. Click on the links above to read more about each of these trends. Weblog Designer NeededI contribute to another weblog that focuses on online advertising. We are looking for a designer who is familiar with weblog design and has knowledge of the MoveableType publishing platform. We intend to redesign the site, among other things, and are looking to designers to assist with that. If you are, or know anyone who might be, interested in this, please contact me here. Reader Involvement Index Puts 'Real Simple' At TopThe Involvement Alliance has put together an index to reflect reader involvement with magazines. Three measurements are used to determine the index: average reading time, percent 4 out of 4 readership, and percent citing magazine as favorite. The data is pulled from MRI. The indexes are then mapped against a particular demo. This particular index report looks at how magazines index against women 25-49 and women 25-54 with kids. [via MediaPost] The Gay PUMA AdHere's another ad that pushes the limits. The PUMA ad was fake. This one is real. Although, all someone would have to do is add a little "white stuff" to this ad and would be just as "interesting" as those PUMA spoofs. This is an actual ad for Patrick Cox Shoes that appeared in the U.K. magazine, i-D. The advertising standards body, a group that monitors ads for "decency" in the U.K., has banned the ad from running again as it was deemed to cause "serious offense" to people. Patrick Cox responded by explaining that ad really isn't all that offensive because, after all, the two men are wearing jockstraps that "made penetrative intercourse impossible". If you have to explain an ads "decency" with that kind of explanation, then you have to wonder about it in the first place.  Thank to Ad-Rag for this. Razor Magazine Separates Itself From the Competition "There's no middle ground for the 20-something past his frat-house years but not yet at the point where he's going to be buying those suits. We embrace success and independence in a way that is, hopefully, mature and thoughtful. When you're 19 years old, maybe you need an article on '20 ways to bring a woman to orgasm.' But when you get towards the end of your 20s, hopefully you're a little beyond that." That's what publisher, Richard Botto, in a MediaPost article, wants us to realize about Razor Magazine. It's not part of the Maxim, FHM category yet it isn't part of the GQ, $3,000 suit category either. While the magazine does continue to drench it's covers with barley clothed women, Razor's articles are quite a bit more serious than your typical lad mag. "We don't buy into the prevailing thought that men are mental midgets who are incapable of reading a 5,000-word article," Botto says. "People buy magazines to be entertained, and I'm not saying that other men's magazines aren't entertaining. But I think there's a place in the market for a magazine that aims substantially higher." I think this is a good place for Razor to be. Men will always be men and will always want to see beautiful women wearing next to nothing or nothing at all. That's just part of our biology and that's not going to change. However, men do actually posses levels of intelligence and a thirst for knowledge beyond knowing the ever changing bra size of Pamela Anderson. So, if a magazine can show me sexy women and contain intellectually stimulation articles, I'm all over it. Ramp Magazine Gets a Makeover Ramp Magazine, the magazine that "recognizes that a man�s world expands beyond beer and beautiful women", is getting a face lift and an editorial refocusing according to publisher, Richard Amann. "[The laddie mags] do what they do really well - why try to emulate that?" he asks rhetorically. "But there's a void once that reader ages a little bit, and that's where we want to be. We want to be the first into that unoccupied space." So, does that mean that there will be no bikinis and cleavage? I didn't think so. [Via MediaPost]
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