The incredibly intelligent and insightful Jeff Jarvis writes an extensive piece about the importance of keeping government out of media and out of the business of censoring speech. It is utterly wrong, completely unconstitutional, and fundamentally insulting for the FCC, both parties in Congress, and the White House to think that they should protect us from ourselves and have the ability to fine companies and citizens millions of dollars for uttering even one word. According to the FCC, we are ruined and corrupted by: 1. Fart sounds.
2. Titanium tits.
3. Whipped cream.
4. F words.
Who do they think we all are, their children? And who do they think they are, our parents?
We love getting tips from our readers and this one especially caught our attention. Submitting a new Apple iPod commercial, the sender wrote, "I'm not sure if this is worthy of publishing... it doesn't involve boobs, sex, or smarmy ad execs, but it is interesting." We pondered for a moment over whether that was a compliment or insightful commentary into our questionable editorial morals. We thought for a moment and accept both gleefully as fair comment.
That said, Apple has partnered with U2 to promote its new single, Vertigo by creating a iPod silhouette ad with Bono and the silhouettes doing their usual gyrations to the tune of U2's new creation.
Ford is using imagery of Steve McQueen, who died in 1980, in a new television commercial for its Mustang and other new vehicles. In one version of the spot, McQueen is seen stepping out of a cornfield as he did in the movie "Bullitt" and into the Mustang. The commercial is part of a third quarter, $200 million effort to promote the new Ford Five Hundred, the Freestyle and the Mustang.
The campaign will break this Sunday with the Steve McQueen ad airing in November.
SEGA has launched a viral campaign for the European launch of its Football manager 2005. The video shows a gentleman farmer on the English countryside watching his dog herd sheep. Suddenly, it turns into a game where the gentleman farmer turns into a coach and begins screaming at the dog for his poor herding performance. Predictably, its raised the ire of animal lovers. Viral agency ASABAILEY is seeding the launch, its first for SEGA. The ad was produced by Maverick Media and directed by Seamus Masterson, for SEGA Europe.
Seeded in two versions, the first comes complete with language befitting a football couch and is being seeded as "The Banned Country Sports Video" and targeted to the 18 - 30 online gaming crowd. A second, softer, yet still funny version has also been seeded to a younger, more "morally conservative" audience.
This past weekend, Hilary Duff's new movie Raise Your Voice tanked leaving Hollywood scratching its head figuring it had a sure thing.
"The young female movies are almost impossible to figure out right now," one studio marketing executive said. "The girls are just rejecting the young female movies. They are a fickle segment of the audience, and it's pretty hard to figure out who is going to go to these movies."
Trying to identify tween trends is not an easy task. In fact, it's almost pointless. Trends move quickly enough in older demos but with tweens, trends last for periods of time far too short to capitalize on, especially for a Hollywood movie that takes a year start to finish.
Hollywood's worst enemy is a successful movie. It creates an imperfect definition of what consumers want and is then beaten dead with sequels and copycats that are far behind a trend before the camera even roles.
A better strategy would be an original idea. Yes, we know they're in short supply and hard to create but go on, give it a try.
ANIMAX has created a series of webisodes and a website for the Starlight Starbright Children's Foundation. The "Coping with Chemo" shorts are aimed at helping teens cope with the physical, emotional and social impact of cancer and chemo treatment. Mixing storytelling and humor to communicate serious messages, the animated shorts reach out to teens using their language. Having survived Cancer, we're a fan of this sort of thing.
Underscore Marketing CEO Tom Hespos writes a thoughtful and detailed article outlining how agencies are creating the very thing they claim to have no part of: malicious and underhanded placement of advertising on consumer's computers. Referred to as Malware, this software causes much of the agonizing "advertising attacks" many users experience while online. Much of the advertising that makes it to Malware is supplied by the blind media buy. This is a buy made by buyers through lead generation companies where an agreed upon number of leads are guaranteed but the sites on which the ads will appear remains secret. The advertiser nor the agency knows where all the ads will appear. This practice allows the lead generation company free reign over the tactics it uses to obtain those leads. Hespos explains most of the ads placed through blind buys end up on sites no reputable advertiser would ever want to appear. By allowing these blind buys to occur, the ad industry itself perpetuates the existence of malicious malware (and other forms of online crap-ware) which so completely debilitate a user's online experience that it threatens to shut down the entire online advertising medium.
Hespos also offers suggestions on how our industry can work towards crapping on the crapware vendors, leaving them high and dry and the online advertising industry in much better shape.
Higher click throughs and low out of pocket costs are driving some advertisers to weblogs writes B.L. Ochman. "Advertisers including Paramount Pictures, The Wall Street Journal, and The Gap are successfully reaching niche audiences for a fraction of the cost of traditional advertising and a handful of bloggers are earning six-figure incomes from their blogs. Why aren't more advertisers and bloggers getting together? Fear, ignorance and the knowledge that a lot of pioneers got shot."
With their low cost, niche focus and more personal tone, weblogs are well positioned for a media landscape controlled more and more by consumers who have increasing methods of filtering the content they consume. The growth of weblogs has also been fueled by RSS (Really Simple Syndication) which is a method of publishing weblog content out to personal newsreaders and news aggregation services increasing readership.
- CMP Media's TechWeb Network today announced the first annual Best Independent Tech Blog Readers Choice Awards.
- Brian P. Moss, a senior editor at the New York Daily News, has been named editor-in-chief for Metro U.S. Moss has been a reporter or editor at the Daily News since 1980, serving most recently as deputy Sunday editor.
- Boston's J. Winsper & Co. has landed the Unica Corporation account and will break a newly developed brand campaign in mid-October.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Bill Gates said what many have said for some time now - the current broadcast television model is dead. Acknowledging the changes brought on by Tivo, On Demand and Microsoft's own Media Center, Gates says content delivery will change dramatically. "The ideal for many content people would be that they just put their content on the Internet and then they have a direct relationship with the viewer," Gates said.
"That model for low-volume content is the future."
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