DDB London and Tribal DDB have created a real-time live game for the launch of Monopoly's revamped anniversary edition, Monopoly Here and Now. People all over Britain will be able to compete against each other playing Monopoly live on a life-size playing board - the streets of London. The company hopes thousands from all over the country will play this life sized game of Monopoly, with London taxis as their playing pieces, controlled via GPS technology. The live game launched on June 20 and will run for one month.
To play the live game, players register at www.monopolylive.com, choose their piece, represented by a London taxi, and decide where to spend their 15 million capital. Each taxi is Monopoly-branded and fitted with a GPS transmitter, using security technology, so that its location is known at all times.
The taxi drives around London, picking up and dropping off passengers as normal, and the player pays out rent as their cab passes properties they don't own, and receives rent in turn when other cabs pass areas that they do. There are daily and weekly prizes to play for, and the grand prize is winning your mortgage or rent paid for a year.
 To promote its new Range Rover Sport, Land Rover has launched a website called, "The New Rush," which launches you into a night time cityscape complete with nightclub and mysterious people on the sidewalk. All of this, of course, is interspersed with touch points that explain the vehicle's features. While we think this an engaging and information filled experience, one Adrants reader thinks there's a drug overtone to it writing, "...it appears RUSH is some sort of red light district type nightclub with all sorts of party-goers hanging out front and a blinking red R florescent sign. Also, when you roll your mouse over one of the couples, a conversation bubble pops up that says, "What lines." Now being a bona fide drug researcher, I can assure you that this can have double and triple meanings especially since this creative relies more on heroin based sensibilities then cocaine ones." We've retired from the drug scene so we'll have to leave it to those in the filed to offer further comment.
The campaign is also supported by outdoor pointing to the website.
Sports by Brooks founder Brooks has the perfect life. He's combined sports and hot women into a popular website about sports and, well, hot women. Sports by Brooks also hosts sporting trivia events weekly. This summer, he's on tour, along with the SbB girls and will hit New York tonight at the Overlook Lounge; Boston June 25 at Crossroads Irish Pub and Washington June 28 at Hawk n Dove. Brooks has mastered the art of promoting a business with beautiful women. It's all tastefully, yet tantalizingly done and, if you like women, we guarantee your eyes will pop out of your head and you will drool uncontrollably. OK, well figuratively, at least. Currently, Denise takes our breath away.
 We've Come A Long Way While we all might get a chuckle or two out of watching a bunch of women dressed in bridal gowns digging for cash inside a wedding cake in the middle of Times Square, female copywriter, Veronica, writing on her A Big Fat Waste of Time weblog, thinks WE's Bridezilla and its promotional campaign degrades women and portrays them as brainless gold diggers. Aside from that fact that's the point of the show and there'd be no show if the brides didn't act like that, Veronica writes, "Sure those kinds of women exist in the world. There are a lot of Black guys in jail, too, but I think we reached our quota on those kinds of movie roles a long time ago, don't you?" She hopes the whole thing wins the AWNY Grand Ugly Award.
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In a recent ad campaign, diamond giant De Beers has modeled their advertising after Botticelli. The ad currently appears in the July issue of Town and Country. It appears as a spread with this image on the left hand side. For fun, the full Botticelli image is here. Thanks to Adrants reader Christopher Peterson.
Writing on his weblog, "Wouldn't that be ironic? A promotion intended to bring in new customers, actually causes customers to leave," Jodster describes a TD Canada Trust "EasySwitch" promotion that rewards new customers with a free iPod Shuffle. Jodster points out this promotion, like many others, penalizes those who are already customers because they are ineligible for the prize. While these customer base expansion campaigns are common, at times, they can be interpreted as discounting, for no good reason, a person who has been a loyal customer for a long time. Perhaps, marketers in situations like this should consider creating an equally compelling offer for existing customers so they won't leap to the the next best offer that pops up.
As Howard Stern prepares to make the switch to Sirius Satellite Radio, his contract with E! Entertainment will end in nine days according to reports in The New York Daily News. E! will retain broadcast rights for all previously recorded Stern shows and another broadcaster may step in to take over the television broadcast
Adrants reader Morris Adamowitz sent us this video which features a guy who claims to be a writer for CBS's CSI. In the video, he drones on about his writing inspirations, how he has to learn the latest techniques in forensic science, do meticulous research and sometimes, take the work home with him. In this case, literally, as he nonchalantly grabs a dead guy off a slab, carries him to his car and brings him into his house all while continuing to drone on about his work.
Whether this is an authorized viral or not, it really doesn't matter. It's good. It works.
UPDATE: It's all real. See comments.
CityRag points out the potential millions of dollars in free advertising Starbucks gets when celebrity photos catch the stars sucking down their favorite blend of java. From Britney to Mary-Kate and Ashley to Madonna to Jessica and Nick, the Starbucks logo and products gets some extensive exposure and celebrity brand association. Check out the gallery of celeb/Starbucks shots here.
Today, Snapple attempted to break the existing Guinness World Record for the "World's Largest Ice Pop" by building a two and a half story, 24-feet tall, 5-feet wide and 5-feet thick, 20-ton kiwi strawberry-flavored, edible Snapple on Ice pop in New York City's Union Square. Unfortunately, it's a bit hot today for anything to stay frozen for long so there's Snapple juice running all over union square north. Reportedly, it stinks to high heaven and the cops have been called in as well as the fire department. The Guiness Book of World Records was there but all they got were pictures of melted Snapple all over the road.
Our man on the street, Bucky Turco, reports "a very angry, but cute promotion girl who was supposed to tell people to 'watch their step' as they cross the Snapple river instead was telling me, 'Cant you ask me before you take my picture.' My response, 'can you not wreck my streets with a big smelly ice dildo?'"
See the insanity here in our photo album of the event.
UPDATE: Brilliance prevails from the mouth of Lauren Radcliffe, Snapple spokeswoman on the scene, who told Newsday, "Maybe we should have done it on New Year's Eve."
And, just so it's clear who reported this story first :-)
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