What do two people working in the marketing and advertising business do when they marry each other? They rent a baseball stadium, negotiate sponsorship deals with 1-800 Flowers, Spirits, Harlem's Grandma's Secrets, Wedding Plaza and Red Carpet, print 8,000 sponsor-branded wedding programs and hold a press conference to promote the whole thing. That's exactly what Long Island radio station sales manager Caroline Fischer and consultant Dave Karpen did for their upcoming wedding at the Brooklyn Cyclones stadium in front of 8,000 people. Now that's how to pay for a wedding!
kirshenbaum bond + partners along with Tool of North America director Sam Cadman have created a new PSA campaign for Collaboration to AdoptUsKids, a cooperative agreement between The Children's Bureau, Administration for Children & Families, the US Department of Health & Human Services and the Adoption Exchange Association. The four spots focus on human imperfection to let prospective parents know they don't have to be perfect to adopt a child. The spots can be viewed here, here, here and here. They're good.
Kevin Faddis points us to yet another odd Zambia-based Harvey Tiles billboard which reads, "A roof without HARVEY TILES can't make your mind free the same as sex with a baby can't cure HIV/AIDS." Initially, one might react to this buy saying...oh...WTF but there's a reason behind the choice of words on the billboard. The man who wrote the copy explained on an ESPN site saying, "There is a myth some people believe that if you have sex with a virgin, you are bound to be safe from AIDS. It's a rumor that started up here about a year ago. And then they started bringing people in to the police because they had been sleeping with babies. The slogan is to remind people not to sleep with babies. The owner sells tiles and, at the same time, he educates people."
OK, then. Gross but, then again, it's a different world in Zambia than it is in many other parts of the world and if it takes a shocking headline like this to stop people from having sex with babies then we say "good job" Harky Tiles.
You know, all you designers really ought to be testing your Flashtastic creations on a "normal" computer with the cache turned off. After all, most people who will visit your site won't have reloaded the thing a million times thereby having it readily and speedily available for viewing. For example, this site for Pepsi called MyDaDaDa which capiltalizes on the song, took agonizingly long to load. And once it did load, it never worked smoothly. Apparently, you can send the song around to your friends, watch ads, put the song and wallpapers on your phone, send a pre-recorded message to a friend, get screensavers and upload your own videos to the site. None of it worked well. Of course, it could just be our crappy laptop. Oh yea, the whole thing wraps itself around the World Cup Football craze.
Well, we were going to tell you about this Folgers commercial that FishNChimps thought was way too happy happy but the Folgers site took too damn long to load. Humorously, the load page of the site says, "A website dedicated to making your mornings more tolerable. Not this morning, dudes. Speed up your site and then maybe, just maybe we'll watch your stupid spot.
We love when we get little tipster emails from people that say things like "Thought you should check out this new site..." and "Viral marketing at its best" because, inevitably, it's not and we relish the opportunity to squat down and dump all over it like a 400 pound slob who's just had an enema. This, unfortunately, is not one of those times. This viral, and we do call it viral because we're sure it's been paid for or influenced by The Coffee Bean, follows the antics of three roommates as they terrorize a fourth who is a mascot called Mr. Ice Blended for West Coast-based The Coffee Bean.
The site, Masot Roomate, has a bunch of videos that show the guys pulling various pranks on the mascot from attacking him on the job, impersonating him, placing his hands down their pants and mascot mascotnapping him. Without fail, all the guys have MySpace profiles which look like they were all recently created and, for the most part, all have the same friends. In another section. Another section of the site, called "5 mascots we wouldn't ever fuck with" explains why the Kool-Ais Man, The Fruit of the Loom Guys, Grimace, McGruff the Crime Dawg and The San Diego Chicken are off limits. Only an unleashed creative type would obsess over these icons and write such lines as, "I spent my formative years with my junk cradled in the safe confines of their white cottony briefs" about the Fruit of the Loom Guys.
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We'd like to offer an apology to Bob Garfield. In a piece we wrote yesterday about a CoBrandiT video that featured footage of Bob doing an interview with CoBrandiT that included outtakes shot prior to the actual interview, we mis-stated Bob knew he was in on the joke when, in fact, he was not. He had made some comments, in jest, while defining word of mouth prior to the beginning of the actual interview. Bob says CoBrandiT used those comments without his knowledge and he thought those shooting the video worked for WOMMA and not for CoBrandiT. We respectfully apologize. Though, we still think the video was hilarious. Rather than incur further wrath, CoBrandiT has taken the video down and placed an apology in its place. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.
New mobile service provider Helio, with help from StreetVirus and Alt Terrain, has launched an influencer marketing campaign consisting of in-venue pop up stores, a print magazine, a blog and sponsorship of local artists. The in-venue stores include a mini-lounge and employees are given Helio phones. Each store receives free ad space in the Helio magazine and become an exclusive retailer of the devices.
The artists sponsorship provides artists with hard-to-come by public mural space to showcase their work, financial support for their gallery shows, exposure in the Helio blog and the print magazine that is nationally distributed, and artists are provided a Helio phone of their choice. For a new company without a lot of money and one whose services appeal to the social networking needs of tweens, teens and twenty-somethings, Helio has headed in the right direction with this influencer marketing approach. You can see some of the artist's work here.
We just don't have the time to read all these faux/character blogs that brands seem to think people will find really cool but Shannon over at glossy doesn't like this one from Bacardi called Better Than Beer. There's a lot of weird stuff on the site including videos of a guy biking into a banner for no apparent reason, and old lady in a hair salon and a three breasted woman. The blog is written by "Dave" who says Bacardi keeps his fridge stocked with Bacardi Mixx as payment to write about his life. And yes, the whole thing is to promote Bacardi Mixx.
As part of promoting the Austin City Limits Music Festival, Project D.U., an AT&T blogger-powered portal and branded RSS reader, is hosting a blogging contest that awards the winner a free press pass and pass for a guest to the three day event. Held in an area where WiFi is not available, AT&T will provide service, finally lending, perhaps, some truth to those Blogging Delivered outdoor boards that ran a while ago. Any music blogger that isn't already part of the Project D.U. network of bloggers can submit writing samples to be considered here.
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