William Shatner, who was in Riverside, Iowa shooting scenes for what he said claimed to be part of a new sci-fi movie called Invasion Iowa, revealed to the town Tuesday night the whole thing was a hoax.
Shatner and a Glacier Point Productions crew had been in Riverside shooting a reality series, set to air on Spike TV, about small town playing host to a Hollywood shoot.
"Everything in front of and behind the cameras was faked," Shatner said. "The only thing that was real is the love we have for Riverside."
Just so the townfolk didn't revolt, turning the whole thing into a horror flick, Spike TV producers donated $100,000 to the town and the cast a crew passed the hat to collect an additional $12,000 for the Riverside Elementary School Book Fund. Do kids still read? We don't know when the series will air but we do know Shatner can be seen on ABC's The Practice spin off Boston Legal with James Spader Sundays at 10 PM.
This week, Amy Coor's MediaPost Out to Launch column brings us new campaigns from Sears featuring ABC Extreme Makeover host Ty Pennington, Liz Claiborne featuring Sex and the City star Kim Catrall, Traditional Home magazine, Cottage Living, AccuWeather.com which partnered with AstraZeneca sponsoring WeatherHost, and Reebok Sweets.
Further confirming the lengths to which marketers will go to obtain awareness, and proving nothing in the news is unbiased anymore, an email leaked to Gawker reveals a New York FOX 5 fashion reporter's negotiation for payment from a fashion brand in return for favorably mentioning the brand in a segment to appear on Good Day New York next week. Sylist Susan Redstone told Mavi Jeans she'd feature the brand's jeans in a 3-4 minute segment in return for $750. We know there's "pay for play" stuff going on all the time but it would be nice to know that news is news and marketing is marketing, wouldn't it? Wait, we're marketers. Or course we wouldn't.
UPDATE: We contacted Mavi to get to the bottom of this and, while they admit being asked by Redstone, they assured us they did not, in fact, pay for any placement. Mavi's Michael Williams said, "We didn't or wouldn't pay for placement. We make a great product and don't need to pay for our placement."
PETA is airing a :30 version of it's Meet Your Meat video narrated by Alec Baldwin which contains footage of animals being treated horrifically for food production. Granted, any organization with a cause will find the most shocking imagery to make its case, this ad and the long version will make you think twice before eating animal products ever again. The ad will air on CBS affiliate WTVF in Nashville during the American Meat Institute Conference which begins today.
- If you are involved in pay per click advertising, you might want to know a recent study by Clicklab found fraudulent clicks can account for 50 percent of ad fees. Not good.
- Y&R has debuted its new campaign for Toys R Us in which a boy's mouth is stuck in the open "wow" position apparently caused by Toys R Us toys.
- Long time New York radio personality Scott Muni died last night at the age of 74.
- Toyota has placed a gigantic ad on the side of the Luxor hotel and casino facing Mandalay Bay for the Toyota dealers convention.
Reebok has launched an ad campaign called "Welcome to the Neighborhood" that mirrors the Big Brother reality series placing 11 NFL players in a house together. The campaign by Arnell Group and website (where you can view all the spots and out takes) by Zugara are promoting Reebok's Gridiron Classics and Team Apparel collections.
Beginning, September 26, the campaign will air during the 2005 NFL season on ABC, CBS, ESPN and the NFL Network. Print executions (ever wonder why we say "executions"? You have to wonder what people outside the industry think we are talking about.) will occur in Sport Illustrated and ESPN the Magazine.
In a very Un-PC move - but then again, America is the only country who has overdosed on political correctness - the Canadian Tobacco Manufacturer's Council has launched Mychoice.ca, a website promoting "fairness and civility" to the country's five million smokers. The site provides those who join the ability to rant about smoker's rights on message boards, take surveys, read up on the legal rights smokers can claim, contact politicians and access a map that shows where smoking bans are in place across the country. You go, smokers! I want my cancer stick!
As part of the "Impossible is Nothing" campaign, European football player David Beckham will appear alongside cartoon character Scooby-Doo in an animated commercial for Adidas to be launched October 1 across Europe. Beckham plays a mysterious character who gets unmasked by Scooby and his friends.
 Coke Classic Campaign As reported yesterday, ad hoc group "Double-think," made up of West Coast creative minds and headed by Madison Avenue vet Harry Webber has, today, unveiled a new conceptual ad campaign for Coke Classic. With Coke's marketing in turmoil, revenues in the toilet and many agencies currently vying for the business, Webber hopes Coke marketers will give this effort serious consideration.
On Madison AveNew, Webber writes, "Armed with a new dossier of global product and market info, our "Double-think" team worked on discovering and defining the powerful product-based, "Brand Character" inherent in Coca-Cola Classic. We went in to discover the prime motivator that will compel the current Coke Classic faithful into becoming active (as opposed to passive) brand ambassadors. We went in to uncover "who" rather than "what" defines the true personification of Brand Coke Classic" While a global brand, Webber argues Coke is uniquely American and has made that stand for something in the campaign which incorporates the tagline, "A Cool American." The campaign puts forth a set of unique personality qualifiers that defy categorization yet, together, paint a holistic picture of a unique individual that can't easily be slotted into a demographic bucket.
Predictably, many in the industry will slam this effort, not for any shortcomings it might possess, but because they didn't think of it first. We, however, think it's a brilliant step in the right direction.
It's fresh. It's not hip. We don't need anymore ridiculously hip-filled ad campaigns. We need advertising that identifies itself with the consumer. This campaign does that. It accessible. It's flexible. It's identifiable. It allows the consumer to step inside the campaign no matter who they are. View all the concepts here.
And the inevitable spoofs here and here.
It's always difficult to know what's acceptable and what's not from one culture to another. What seems harmless in one can be quite offensive in another. Danwei reports multi-national agency Leo Burnett recently apologized for an ad it created for Japanese Nippon Paint. The ad demonstrates the smoothness of Nippon Paint by showing a dragon which had slid down its post. In China, you don't mess with the dragons. They are sacred, cultural icons. Luckily, for Leo Burnett and Nippon, the ad never appeared in mass media but in the September issue of trade journal International Advertising. It appeared, oddly, as part of an article about Leo Burnett's global, multicultural creative talents.
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