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GoDaddy Builds Super Bowl Buzz, Clothing Will Be Minimal

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AdJab's Chris Thilk and Tom Biro sat in on the GoDaddy press conference which, they report, was held basically to appease media who are clamoring for some big scoop when all that's happening is, as GoDaddy CEO Bob Parsons has said all along, is Super Bowl business as usual. GoDaddy, like any other Super Bowl advertiser would (or should) do, is simply trying to get as much buzz as they can prior to the game and insure that buzz lasts long after the game is over as it did last year. Last year's big-boobed strap-slip spot, by the way, worked to the tune of generating $11 million in media value and increasing the company's market share from 16 to 24 percent.

In the call, Parsons riffed about the difficulty his spots receive which he said amounts to a form of censorship emanating almost entirely from one organization, the Parents Television Council. Parsons also said all the hullabaloo is basically pointless. GoDaddy will create whatever it wants and place it on its website for all to see. The Super Bowl spot, again featuring Candice Michelle dressed very much unlike a beekeeper according to Parsons, will simply be a tease for the unedited version. Once again, GoDaddy is maximizing the PR angle to great benefit.

Thilk and Biro plan to hypothesize about what we'll see from GoDaddy in their spot. Since GoDaddy likes to poke at pop culture, perhaps they should take a stab at the celebrity anorexic ugliness trend and, with Candice Michelle, prove once and for curves are, indeed, better than no curves.

by Steve Hall    Jan- 5-06    
Topic: Super Bowl 2006



Bare Navels Not Good For Everyone But Good For Oranges

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While today's fashion dictates its slaves adhere to the bare midriff/navel commandment, the unfortunate side affect for the rest of us is some navels shouldn't even be exposed no matter what fashion dictates. For fresh fruit shipping company Florida-Citrus, this isn't a problem. A new commercial from new agency Tangelo Ideas makes this point quite clearly in a new spot for the company.

by Steve Hall    Jan- 5-06    
Topic: Commercials



Photographer Says Advertising Has Its Perks

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South African photographer JoNo Nienaber posts some of his work on Flickr and yesterday he posted an image he shot of a woman wrapped in frilly white bed sheets and commented for all who wonder why advertising, at times, can be so much fun, "another day in the ofice... hardly work when you're shooting this!" How true and not to mention all those media interns as well.

by Steve Hall    Jan- 5-06    
Topic: Agencies



PETA Says Don't Free Parakeets

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AdJab points out some of PETA's recent overbearing animal protection stupidity stating PETA registered a complaint over a Samsung X200 mobile phone ad in India which shows two kids letting a parakeet out of its cage. We'll give you a minute to utter your collective "Huh?" OK? Done wallowing in the obsessive meddlings of an uptight organization that think all animals should live in a posh Park Avenue Suite? Good. And now for the rest of the story. Oops, that's some other guy's line. Anyway, it seems you need some kind of permit to use parakeets in an ad. AdJab humorously solves the whole problem by suggesting creatives, in the future, just CGI the little guys in thus avoiding all manner of PETAmania.

by Steve Hall    Jan- 5-06    
Topic: Strange



Yellow Pages Joins The Living With New Syndicated Ratings Service

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In what some might assume, incorrectly, to be an effort to save a dying medium, Yellow Pages publishers have banded together in support of a new syndicated third-party measurement system called Yellow Pages Market Reporter. The service is backed by ten Yellow Pages publishers and has signed up 12 agencies. The service is based on research done by Knowledge Networks/SRI across 75,000 Yellow Pages users in 125 geographic areas. Perhaps the research will prove prematurely prevailing wisdom wrong and find Johnny still needs that fat Yellow Pages book on his chair to reach the table.

by Steve Hall    Jan- 5-06    
Topic: Yellow Pages



We Interrupt This Program to Bring You...Self Promotion

Self-promotion is for losers unless, of course, it's yourself you're promoting so we, unabashedly, will share with you that Adrants has received a complimentary nod from MediaPost's MEDIA magazine along with Adjab, Adverblog, AdPulp and Freshglue. We like to noteriety and the company and love what author Liz Tascio had to write about Adrants.

"Written by marketing expert Steve Hall, this blog ranks as one of the superpowers, lauded by Forbes, Advertising Age, and the Wall Street Journal. Hall sets the tone with a kitschy martini glass in the banner and cheeky posts, and offers brief, savvy hits on innovative campaigns, industry news and research, and a little dish. You always feel like you've learned something, and that it was fun. Hall also collects weird marketing arcana - like the fact that Clark, Texas, changed its name to 'Dish' in exchange for free cable."

We're just going to bask in all that adoration with a mid-morning martini. Why don't you all grab one too because without you, there'd be no Adrants martini glass in the first place. Many thanks to all.

by Steve Hall    Jan- 5-06    
Topic: Announcements



Winding Road Car Commercial Gets 'Winterized'

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The camera zooms in. It zooms out. It pans across. It love's it's subject. It adoringly tries to make...oh screw it...it's just another winding road car commercial. That's probably what visual effects company A52 thought when LA agency Team One asked them to "winterize" a previously shot commercial for the 2006 Lexus IS. Explaining the strategy, Team One Executive Producer Jack Epsteen said, "We have a long history of relying on A52 for complex visual feats and in this case, we felt that tapping into the company's artistic expertise to add snow effects to this spot would be an interesting way to back-up the 'Why live in one dimension' tagline.'" See the work here and wallow in a full regalia of HD resolution, digital-matte, CGI, camera tracking data, geek-speak.

While digital manipulation is nothing new, we'd say A52 did an excellent job making winter look like winter. We wonder how much better it might have looked if the original work was a bit more inventive than "another winding road car commercial." Although, with almost every car commercial following this exact approach, there's got to be some very convincing research out there indicating this is the approach to take. Anyone care to share?

by Steve Hall    Jan- 5-06    
Topic: Commercials



OMG! Another Advertising Email Newsletter Launches!

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Oh, good God, not another daily email newsletter about marketing and advertising. Yes, BrandWeek has joined the fray of daily ad news pushers, upping its frequency from weekly to daily. We're not sure the industry is ready for yet another Inbox-clogging newsletter. Nothing against BrandWeek but they just might be unlucky recipient of the great "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore" industry-wide email unsubscribe movement of 2006.

There's just way too much duplicate news out there. We know. We subscribe to every advertising-related newsletter there is drinking in each and every publisher's take on the day's news. We don't do it because we like killer frequency in our daily news consumption strategy. We do it for you, loyal readers, so you don't have to suffer the indignity of having to read 13 versions of the same story from 13 different sources 13 different times each day. There's only so much news any given industry can genetrate and there's only so many different twists to the same story that can be applied.

more »

by Steve Hall    Jan- 4-06    
Topic: Publishing



Oxygen Gets All Sexy On Us

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It happens to the best us us. We come up with a great idea. Get all high and mighty about how we're not going to be like everyone else. We promise not to sink into the gutter and use all the tired, old tricks to attract attention. We vow to be virtuous and laud ideals and intellectualism over insipidness. Then it happens. No one watches us. No one's heard of us. Our primary competitor towers over us and we are lost in a sea of television stupidity. Do we continue to stay the course? Do we try to beat them? No, sadly, we throw in the towel and join them.

After playing second fiddle to Lifetime for so long, Oxygen just can't stand it any longer and is pulling out the trump card of last resort: sex. Rather than rise above the misty-eyed success of Lifetime with higher brow offerings, Oxygen network has joined the titillation crowd with offering like "Talk Sex With Sue Johnson" and its new series, "Campus Ladies," a show that will somehow make the scenario of middle-aged, suburban women going back to college and frolicing with undergrad hotties funny.

more »

by Steve Hall    Jan- 4-06    
Topic: Cable, Opinion, Trends and Culture



Super Bowl Advertisers Gear Up

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As we move closer to advertising's Hall of Fame, Super Bowl XL, the list of advertisers planning to participate in the advertising extravaganza is beginning to build. According to a CNN article, CareerBuilder will be back this year although we don't know if the chimps will be. Gillette will make an appearance of two to promote its new mega-bladed Fusion razor. Anheuser-Busch, Pepsi and GM will have several spots in the game. GoDaddy is, reportedly, working with ABC to reach an agreement on just how racy the internet host can be.

by Steve Hall    Jan- 4-06    
Topic: Super Bowl 2006



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