As we've done semi-hypocritically several times before, we've both celebrated and called into question the use of sexual imagery in advertising but we've always done it from our perspective: a guy's perspective. One the one hand, we'd love to see every ad feature a sexy woman. On the other, it becomes numbing, research says it doesn't work and we know it's less than kind to the portrayal of women. None of that matters. Well, it does but guys aren't the only ones viewing advertising and our opinion is only one half of the story. For true insight on how sexually laced advertising, much of it using racy female imagery to target females, affects the other half, women, give this Business Week article a read. It's written by those who are at the center of this issue: teens and young woman. It's their take on this that's more insightful than the drooling's of male ad slut.
If you happen to work as a grocery or retail store clerk you might find yourself checking into a hospital for dizziness or a mental institution for insanity all caused by being forced to revolving ads on the conveyor belt in front of you. In what is certainly one of the more blatantly disgusting forms of ad creep, EnVision Marketing Group, which patented the idea, is rolling out ads on the conveyor belts of 52 Cincinnati-based Kroger grocery stores.
Like a kid gleefully plastering every square inch of his bedroom wall with posters of Kelli Garner, EnVision CEO Frank Cox gushed, "Conveyor belts have never been on anybody's radar screen for marketing. But a store with eight to 10 checkout lanes, well, you're talking about 100 square feet of wasted ad real estate." Indeed. But what about all that food covering up the ads, Mr. Cox? Perhaps Cox should start calling hospitals to place ads on the ceilings of patient's room. Now there's a captive audience.
Not that it's likely we'll ever see women like this in an actual Home Depot but It looks like someone took our advice of of three years ago and went ahead and turned that Benny Benassi "Satisfaction" video into an ad by slapping the Home Depot logo on it along with some price and item graphics. It would certainly heat up Home Depot's image but, for some reason, we think they'll pass of this one. Get your jiggle-fest here.
- The Environmental Working Group is taunting McDonald's Toy Hummer Giveaway with a site that protests the promotion.
- Freeload Press has come to the aid of college students and will publish over 100 ad-supported text books free of charge.
- Ariel thinks "old men" can't get it up which is why they "erect blogs instead." Hmm.
- Here's yet another one of those anti-cute spots for the Dodge Caliber. This one features cute cuddly things not quite displaying a lot of attraction for the vehicle.
- Production company Indelible has completed some work for Mac lips gloss in which Sandra Bernhard goes on and on and one and..well...on about her lips.
Apparently, some cyclists think touching the ground is beneath them. In this Fiat Palio spot sent to us by B.L. Ochman, a driver gets irked by a cyclists behavior but, in the end, exacts a satisfying revenge.
Claiming the campaign "demonizes black male sexuality" Black Gay Men's Leadership Council Treasurer says an AIDS ad campaign featuring a black man in cross hairs currently running in Philadelphia scares people rather than urging them to go get tested. The ad has been pulled from the city's buses, the campaign's website and posters and post cards have been pulled back.
Tango magazine in concert with Yahoo Personals has created a contest called Big Moment which seeks moving stories from its readers in four stages of love: looking, married, taken and engaged. Four winners were chosen based on an essay and will be featured in four upcoming issues of the magazine as well as on the publication's website.
The Big Moment story of first winner Cheryl Walenta, a single 26-year old woman and Lutheran minister living in Chicago, is chronicled in the September-October issue. Walenta was facing a new chapter in her life after she ended a comfortable but not compelling relationship and was making a move to Houston to pursue a summer internship. Tango will track the adventures of Walenta via a bi-weekly dating blog on Tango's website.
As the PR rep who sent us this info suggested, "cue the Manilow music..."
Dear Casale Media,
Please stop serving insanity-inducing, seizure-causing pop unders. Please stop usurping people's decision to block pops by circumventing their browser's pop blocking mechanisms. Please stop foisting crap on us like a pointless Coke versus Pepsi taste test. And Coke, Pepsi, do you really want your brand portrayed in an ad unit that is more maligned than a telemarketer call? Casale, you are huge. You have the biggest booth at every ad:tech show. Surely you have revenue streams other than those that cause people to want to convert themselves into digital 1's and 0's, climb inside their computers, travel through the Internet until they find your ad servers and kick the shit out of them until the words "pop under" and "pop up" are now longer in their vocabulary.
OK. Now that YouTube has awoken from its hangover, we can now take a look at that Coke Grand Theft Auto commercial. Click. View. Wow. We like it. Nice messaging in an environment that's usually filled with nothing but negativity, depravity and buffoon-like idiocy. Kudos to Wieden + Kennedy for...ok, cue the cheesy music...showing everyone the world doesn't have to be the apocalyptic place it's usually portrayed to be. There's a different side of life. The Coke Side of Life.
As part of a comprehensive, many million dollar campaign for local search engine Yell.com, AKQA, in a first they tell us, created bus sides on 25 buses that use GPS to change the advertising message based upon the bus's location. The approach aligns perfectly with Yell.com's business premise: to deliver local information relevant to one's location.
The agency also created bus shelters which display a map of where you are and allow you to search for things such as cafes, shops, health club, etc. bas upon the location of the bus shelter. While this seems like a very logical use of technology to further a marketing strategy, AKQA was the first to do it which is, perhaps, why this agency wins so many new clients and awards.
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