As loyal readers know, it's be a long, long time since we've had reason to cover anything related to Britney Spears what with her recent transformation from pop goddess to tabloid trailer trash. But, perhaps, now there's reason to bring Britney back to the pages of Adrants by noting a group of Spears' fans has launched a site called DivorceKevin, a site calling for Brit to dump dancer/hubby Kevin Federline. Sure to provide gossipists plenty of schadenfruede, SoftPedia reports the front page of the site contains two pictures of Spears, one pre-Kevin and one post-Kevin that clearly illustrate her fall from grace. An opening statement on the site reads, "Welcome to the home of the anti-Kevin movement. Are you sick of seeing the train wreck that is Britney and Kevin? Sign the K-Fed Up Petition, grab your Divorce Kevin gear and help Britney remove the boil that is Kevin from herself and her payroll!"
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From RocketBoom's rocket boom to Jeff Jarvis' Dell Hell to the growth of podcasting to Forbes' anti-blog article to innovative blog PR and advertising to the exponential growth of the space, Intelliseek CMO Pete Blackshaw takes a detailed look at how weblogs affected the world of marketing and advertising.
Brandimensions today announced the release of a new research report that captures the share of online discussion and sentiment generated by viewers of the Fall season's new television shows on major networks. Brandimensions searched over 150 million Internet sites and approximately 395,000 sources pertaining to the television industry, ultimately analyzing 6,497 relevant consumer comments posted online between September and November 2005 and specific to the season's new television shows. Findings conclude CBS retains its Best-in-Class position among all networks, based on its combination of online discussion share and high viewer sentiment. Additionally, NBC recorded the highest average sentiment for all new shows with the No.1 ranked My Name is Earl contributing greatly to the overall audience appeal of NBC shows.
In Belgium, an outdoor campaign is hoping to educate people about Fois Gras, that fancy sounding fatty liver dish. Apparently Fois Gras is made from the enlarged livers of ducks who are force fed in captivity so that their livers dramatically expand. The campaign was supposed to run in 40 major Belgian railway stations but the railway company refused the posters because they are "too shocking" according to one news report. Here's a second image.
Refreshingly casting aside the holier than thou attitude most marketers spew forth when dealing with less than family-friendly topics, Virgin Mobile, after every other marketer dumped her, has decided to hire Kate Moss, place her in a TV spot and poke fun at celebrity's public images. Unfortunately for those of you hoping to have a cocaine snorting contest when the ad airs December 20, you're out of luck unless you live in the United Kingdom, the only place the ad is planned to air. Here's the spot.
Basically ramming a dagger in the back of buzz marketing firm BuzzAgent, word of mouth marketing firm BoldMouth has launched with a ferociously negative view of buzz marketing practices. Mincing no words, the companies press release reads, in part, "Real word-of-mouth marketing is about sharing advice as well as product and service recommendations. These informal and typically person-to-person dialogs should not to be confused with 'buzz marketing' that is nothing more than an attempt to artificially engineer a referral by offering incentives so that "agents" make recommendations on behalf of an organization." Ouch. Dave Balter might have a bit to say about that back stab.
As if gleeful in his attack, BoldMouth Founder Todd Tweedy said, "Word of mouth is an operational principle that organizations can pursue and model to increase loyalty and ultimately revenue that creates a customer-centric approach to marketing. Disguising a commercial as a person and having these 'agents' share commercial messages on an unsuspecting audience with misleading 'buzz' tactics simply creates more ad clutter and puts brands in unnecessary danger. It's time to put an end to buzz marketing."
Somehow this all seems very counter productive to the growth of a nascent advertising practice but the verbal warfare that will undoubtedly follow this release will be charmingly amusing to watch.
Bud Light, perhaps in a nod to what we can expect from them during the Super Bow, has launched Ted Ferguson: Under the Helmet, a website featuring a slice of life look at Ted Ferguson, Bud Light daredevil, an every-man's stunt man. You never know where these things are going to go but, well, this doesn't seem that interesting. That said, it is pretty comical watching the guy treat listening to his girlfriend as an excruciatingly difficult stunt to accomplish. Perhaps this is one of those campaigns that needs to be "given legs" upon which to "blossom."
Always everywhere Bucky Turco reports Microsoft has made a Union Station station domination buy for XBOX 360. Turco reports the ads have a "Jurgen Teller-ish for Marc Jacobs" look and that some of the ads carry the "Jump In" Tagline.
Having been relentless pummeled with "seriously, our approach is different" press releases, I guess we're just going to resign ourselves to riding this million dollar homepage trend-let to the bitter end. In yet another version of the I-can't-believe-I'm even-writing-about this topic, Will Barden has launched a company called Pixel Banner Ads which move the million dollar homepage concept from website to web banners. Yup, we're now going to see pixel banners all over the web. Pixel Banner Ads act as an intermediary between publishers and advertisers just like any other ad network by providing publishers connection with advertisers and an eighty percent share of ad revenue. Currently pixel ads are selling for $10 which gets an advertiser exposure across seven websites no one's ever heard of.
Wandering wayfarer Bucky Turco, as Gawker refers to him, spotted a sign at the 1st Avenue L Station in New York City which contains the email address fthemta@gmail.com. Cute.
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