Grocery Store Uses Body Parts to Sell Produce

While we know there's all sorts of metaphors for human body parts and the selling of such parts, we don't seem to recall seeing a grocery store liken it's produce to body parts in quite this particular manner. In these ads, asparagus, pears, bananas and, yes, melons are compared to the various body parts one might envision when thinking about such produce.

Fiat Partners With Google Earth For Olympic Contest

Adverblog points to an online game created through a partnership between Google Earth and Fiat to promote the car makers Sedici SUV. Players use Google Earth to search the snow-covered terrain at Turin for points indicating four hidden Sedici vehicles and a pass to the Ferrari 360 Experience, a travel package that includes a Ferrari plant tour and test drive. Players can only win the car if they live in Italy, France, Great Britain, Austria, Switzerland, Greece and Spain.

Parents Get Another...Really, It's Different This Time...Parenting Mag

While parents may not need yet another parenting magazine, advertisers, apparent;y do. With close to 70 pages of advertising, including a double gatefold from Hasbro, Disney Publishing Worldwide, on February 14 at a newsstand near you, is launching Wondertime, a magazine "designed to help moms understand how children are learning and growing." Hmm. That sounds like the premise of just about every other parenting magazine out there but no matter. I'm sure you know a freaky, over-involved, over-protective, over-coddling, over-concerned parent or two who just loves to suck this stuff up.

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Escape From Room Game Promotes Harrison Ford Movie

To promote its new Harrison Ford family-man-in-peril (does he do no other?) movie, Firewall, Warner Brothers has launched Inside the Firewall, a site created by Pod Digital which introducs a game in which the player has to find his way out of a room using available clues. Apparently, the game's getting alot of buzzz in forums with players exchanging clues and hints. Us? We're just going to go see the movie to see how Harrison gets out of yet another one of his messes.

Pherotones Slaps Campaign All Over Gawker

Perhaps we're just noticing it or perhaps it just occurred but those silly folks over at Pherotones have, apparently, kicked off a roadblock buy on Gawker, slapping their ad banners all over the front page of the gossip site. McKinney Silver is behind the campaign and some have opined it may have to do with their client Qwest or maybe Tom Cruise has just them to create an offshoot of Scientology. (Bertram, that's a joke)

Anheuser-Busch to Launch Network

Anheuser-Busch will use its Super Bowl commercial time to launch a direct-to-consumer network called "The Bud Screen." The network will offer all manner of programming, branded content and advertising delivered to the desktop or an iPod. The brewer intends the network to be long-lived and to eventually be named "Bud TV." We've said it before and we'll say it again, the middleman - the networks - just aren't needed any longer. When a brand or program producer can deliver content directly to the consumer, there's no need for the current TV network set up. Oh sure, big changes are years away but it's happening and it will continue to happen faster and faster as more brands and content producers realize they can have their own channel of distribution.

CBS Offers 'Survivor' For Download Then Takes It Back

Calling it a first, CBS has announced it will make the hit reality series Survivor available for download from its site for $1.99 per episode. The episodes will only be viewable for a 24 hour period after purchase and we're told CBS will use some sort of digital rights management to prevent a downloaded video from playing after the 24 hour period. While other networks and producers are selling episodes outright for the $1.99 price, CBS, by asking a person to buy something for $2 and then taking it back a day later, isn't quite what we had in mind for this new on-demand world we're in. They'll call it renting. We'll call it a rip off, We'll stick with our ad-skipping DVR and our big screen TV over the laptop and a slow download.

Eggs to Become Billboard Space For Advertisers

While we've seen food-engraving advertising before, Advertising For Peanuts points us to EggFusion, a company which hopes to etch millions of messages on millions of eggs for millions of advertisers for millions of dollars to reach millions of consumers. It won't be long before PETA does a roadblock buy and every egg in the country is emblazoned with "Murderer! Don't Eat This Egg!"

Fabio Alert! The Buff-Chested One To Do Super Bowl Ad

In a commercial created by Dallas-based TM, Fabio will foist his romance novel persona upon us for Nationwide Insurance, the company's first Super Bowl commercial. The ad, which looks like a shampoo commercial, is replete with romantic cheesiness with Fabio dressed as a gondolier in Venice and over the top imagery of blooming flowers and white horses...all to sell insurance.

Experts Recommend Other Ways to Spend $2.5 Million Super Bowl Budget

We all know spending $2.5 million on a Super Bowl spot is, well, not always the wisest marketing move but thankfully, we've got experts who know how better to spend $2.5 million. iMediaConnection has gathered 28 marketing experts who give us a bit of insight as to what they might do had they $2.5 million to spend elsewhere. You'll love AOL EVP Michael Barnett's completely self-promotional "spend it all on AOL" approach to answering the question. But you'll seriously love Word of Mouth Marketing Association CEO Andy Sernovitz' suggestion that the $2.5 million be spent to train customer service reps to be helpful, polite and sincere. Amen.