Even before its release this September, self-appointed anti-gaffiti mouthpiece Queens Councilman Peter Vallone is trashing a new Atari video game, called "Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure," which features a young graffiti artist up against corrupt officials and rival gangs as he spreads his tag around the city. The game was developed by Marc Ecko, features the voice of Talib Kweli and tags from 50 graffiti artists including Cope2 who created the Time Magazine graffiti board.
In a letter to Atari Chairman Bruno Bonnell, Vallone, who is concerned that game and the graffiti tips it provides encourage vandalism, wrote, "You are personally encouraging children to deface neighborhoods, break the law and wind up behind bars. This is an appalling lack of responsibility on your part." Atari has not yet commented on Vallone's comment.
Uber-graffiti overlord Bucky Turco, founder of of Animal magazine, told the New York Daily News, "Marc Ecko and Atari are giving graffiti artists an outlet to do something legal. You'd think Vallone would applaud that as opposed to opposing it."
For all Vallone's complaining, all he's going to do is bring more attention to the game and boost sales - not exactly what he had in mind. Many times the very important communications strategy of just keeping one's mouth shut eludes so many. Of course, if Vallone kept his mouth shut, he'd be cannibalizing his primary strategy which is to build political awareness of himself.
Entertainment magazine, Giant, has introduced a feature that allows visitors to show or hide leaderboard banners on their website. The ads are served every time a page is viewed but can then be hidden. While some advertisers may not like this, a notion to consider would be the effect the physical act of clicking to hide or show the banner has on banner metrics.
Illustrating the life cycle of the average advertising professional, Hugh MacCleod of "cartoons drawn on the back of business cards" fame, has created a new cartoon, called "The Three Ages of Slavery," that clearly, but perhaps depressingly, depicts what the average person working in advertising can expect as he progresses through his career. There's no 50's or 60's cause, you know, after 49, all those ad people seem to disappear into other endeavors courtesy of ageism.
From Rob Lowe to Danny Glover to Kelsey Grammar to Lorraine Bracco to Julie Andrews to Cheryl Ladd, all the stars have jumped on the celebrity drug advertising train. Pulling in from $200K to $1 million, Hollywood stars have been schilling for drug companies since Jon Lunden promoted Claritan in 1988. Most of the ads these celebrities appear in, to skirt ugly disclaimers, don't mention the drug but simply point out possible symptoms and direct viewers to the drug maker's website. TNS Media reports these ads are on the rise, doubling to 4.6 percent of all TV drug ads placed from January through April 2005.
PlasticMoonRain reports the gigantic Olympic Clock in New York City's Union Square has begun counting down again as if New York City Olympic officials refuse to believe London was awarded the 2012 Olympics. Wishful thinking is one thing. Begging is another. Someone, please, rip this thing down! Of course, Circuit City is, for sure, loving the added attention.
Puppet Vision Blog points to another chapter in Virgin Mobile's Canadian "The Catch" campaign. This one, called "Billy the Finger," consists of a site with several videos in which finger act out various scenarios involving a shady cell phone salesman who attempts to convince Billy to sign up for one of those "bad" cell phone plans. The execution provides the viewer with the option to make decisions for Billy and view the various outcomes which include a trip to prison, a threesome, a hot cheerleader, circus acts, unintentional rear entry and finger burning.
The site is being promoted with fake "Wanted" posters in Toronto which don't mention Virgin Mobile but simply point to the Billy the Finger website which, as all viral-intended creations do, has a send to a friend feature which is labeled, cutely, "Finger A Friend." It's well done and amusing enough to create interest in checking out the various chapters of the story.
HBO has launched a new campaign in Latin America with the tagline "Si no fuera por HBO, no escaparíamos de la rutina (If it weren't for HBO, we would not escape from routine). The campaign, which consists of five (three of which can be viewed here, here and here) spots, shows a series of individuals having a bad day (a visit from auditors, a difficult legal case, a traffic ticket) but when they think of HBO, they realize life isn't so bad and there's always a way to get out of the routine.
The background music for the campaign is the David Bowie song "Heroes" which gets all aspirational. The spots are beautifully shot and, while HBO is certainly not going to solve all life's problems, the campaign does a nice job making a connection between powerful things that happen on the screen and powerful things that can happen in life.
The campaign was created by which worked with Trebejos Films. Future efforts along this vein are planned for the remainder of 2005 and into 2006.
Writing an opinion piece in Ad Age, Rance Crain says product placement may create a Bob Garfield-like chaos theory of its own. He claims that movie viewership and DVD sales may be down because people are sick of watching the increasing number of product placements within movies and games. He opines people are returning to traditional television viewership and that the infrastructure put in place to handle product placement and new media ad delivery may collapse upon itself as well as hurt advertiser's sales because the sell in a product placement is too soft.
TiVio, today, announced an upgrade for one million of its Series 2 users that will allow viewers to respond directly to long form ads which have been specially encoded to provide more information to the viewer upon request. To do so, TiVo will, with user permission, forward the users contact information to the advertiser. Oddly, the service appears to be put to use for the mailing of physical marketing materials where some form of on screen or online delivery would seem to be more logical and appropriate.
Madison, Wisconsin, a city that has long shunned outdoor and in-school advertising may, in the face of spending caps and citizen's unwillingness to pay more taxes, give in to the easy money made possible through advertising. School officials, while loathe to do so, are revisiting the possibility of gleaning revenue through school-based advertising. Madison residents have always snubbed their noses at advertising with Alderman Mike Veneer calling bus shelter advertising "gross" and ruinous the the city's ambiance.
Displaying complete insensitivity to the cities mindset or freedom to decide whether or not advertising is an integral part of the community, Adams Outdoor Advertising General Manager Chris Eigenberger says it's "humorous" that Madison residents hold their city to higher standards than other cities that allow more advertising and said, "That to me is just arrogance and not thinking properly." Hey, Chris, there's this thing called democracy. Heard of it? It has to do with people having a bit of choice in how they live their lives and how the communities in which they live operate.
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