Once the bane of advertising for its ad skipping feature, TiVo, will redeem itself in the eyes of marketers with a new feature set to launch next March. Tivo will introduce a feature whereby advertisers can purchase a billboard which will appear on screen when a user fast forwards through an ad. The billboards will allow advertisers to make offers and link to other ads, most likely residing in TiVo's Showcase - home for long form commercials. If a viewer opts in to the ad, their personal info will be sent to the advertiser enabling further direct marketing.
While advertisers will rejoice over the introduction of this feature, a consumer revolt is likely to occur. Upon introduction, TiVo gave consumers control and now it is taking it back effectively having tricked consumers into buying a product that will now serve to more finitely market to them. It will only be a matter of time before hacked products arrive eliminating all TiVo functionality aside from its hard drive based recording abilities. While we are sure patents are in place, an enterprising manufacturer could make a killing offering a simple TiVo-less "ad free" hard disk recorder. But, at least for now, the control pendulum has swung back to the advertiser.
An English woman (not pictured) in need of money to pay her college tuition placed an ad on eBay auctioning off 15 minute fondling sessions with her 32C breasts. Being english, she, of course, offered tea and snack along with the fondling session. Predictably, eBay wasn't amused and killed the ad claiming it broke the site's erotica ban. This site, however, does not have an erotica ban. Prior to cancellation, bids for her boobs reached $334.
Two teams mirrored after the 60's sitcom Gilligan's Island, will go head to head in an elimination-style reality series called The Real Gilligan's Island set to air November 30 on TBS. Former Baywatch babe Nicole Eggert plays one of the Gingers and model-actress Rachel Hunter plays the other. The rest of the cast is made up of unknowns who will compete following themes from the original show.
So BMW's Mini Cooper did the whole robot car thing with help from Crispin Porter & Bogusky. Now it's Citroen's turn. The UK French car maker has created an ad which transforms a Citroen C4 into a pop star dancer The :30 spot was created by Euro RSCG London and Justin Timberlake's choreographer, Marty Kudelka who performed the dance while wired to a bunch of computers which copied his moves. The moves were then converted, using 3D animation software, into the moving car parts. In the spot, the car/robot grooves to Jacques Your Body (make me sweat) by electronic dance-pop outfit, Les Rythmes Digitales. The spot can be viewed here. Thanks to Adrants reader Rick Bruner for the point.
Joining the growing number of advertising focused weblogs is VNU big boy AdWeek. The staff of Adweek including Ann Mack, Simon Butler, Tim Nudd, Alison Fahey, Jack Feur and others began posting to AdFreak yesterday and plan to use it to expand coverage of what is already offered in AdWeek. Current posts range from coverage of Mucinex's disgusting logo, the WTA's ad campaign with Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova and how hurricanes help Pop-Tart sales.
The tone of AdFreak is decidedly unlike the straight reporting found in AdWeek. It's as if the chains of the editorial desk have been removed from the writers. It will interesting to watch it's growth unfold and to see how content is divvied up between AdWeek and AdFreak. Afterall, there's a subscription model to protect over at AdWeek and decisions will have to be made as to what to offer for free versus paid. The more intriguing question though for AdWeek is whether AdFreak eliminates the need for AdWeek. Already, two days content of AdFreak is of more interest than years of AdWeek's editorial which consists mainly of agency review announcements, campaign launches, mergers and personnel changes.
OK, OK. We give in. We'll write about this. Even though we saw it already, our inbox needs a break so here's the deal. Tiring from the all the Subservient Chicken copycats (alright, there weren't really any), we opted not to cover this much hotter version of the "tell me what to do" marketing microsites. But now you've made us do it. At this site, called Virtual Bartender, for beer enthusiast, beer.com, you can boss a hottie around to your heart's content. She'll take her shirt off for you and typing "show me your panties" gets a good result as well. And yes, she has a Pamela Anderson-like pillow fight too. Have fun. Drink more beer.
Revlon EVP Chief Marketing Officer Stephanie Klein said the company's recent Deutsch created ad campaign is "increasing purchase intent and brand imagery" but has failed to increase sales. For that reason, the cosmetics company has informed creative agency Deutsch its contract will not be renewed and that an agency search will be launched. Deutsch is welcome to participate but, as history tells us, retaining the account is unlikely. In a blow to fans of beautiful and expensive brand advertising that is more concerned with featuring well known celebrities than persuading consumers to buy, Revlon has seen nothing but drops in sales and share price.
Aquent and the American Marketing Association has launched MarketingSalaries.com, a site with a 70,000 survey base providing marketers insight on salaries for various positions, levels of experience and location. It's always good to have some persuasive data when having the salary conversation but visiting the site for the first time is a bit freaky.
Once past the very lifelike head shots of people peering out from the site with their heads turning and their eyes blinking as though they know work should be getting done instead of gold digging for a higher salary, the site provides a pay dirt motherlode of salary information.
Ad industry publishing institution Ad Age has come to the rescue of consumer demographics magazine American Demographics saving it from obliteration. The editorial focus of American Demographics will be rolled into Ad Age as a regular feature in its online and offline publication.
Recently launched AudienceMatch from behavioral targeting firm Tacoda allows advertisers to buy, through bidding, into a network of websites and target using the pay per click model. Tacoda CEO Dave Morgan explains the whole thing to iMediaConnection's Roger Park in this interview.
|
