- Miller is looking at five agencies after exiting Crispin: Saatchi, Y&R, Mother and two unnamed agencies.
- On July 16-17, youth-focused YPulse will host a conference called The 2007 Mashup which will cover all aspects of youth marketing.
- Hadji Williams gets a nice review for his book, Knock the Hustle: How to Save Your Job and Your Life From Corporate America.
- Copyranter dug up an old pro-asbestos ad that touts the material's fire-retardant qualities and features an image of The World Trade center. Particularly prescient is the ad's headline which reads, Whenthe fire alarm went off, it took two hours to evacuate New York's Trade Center."
- Mr. Clean has launched a consumer-generated effort and is offering $10,000 to th person who creates the best 60-second ad. Nothing like getting what would normally cost about $100K for a tenth of the cost.
- In Belgium, you can Rent A Wife. Actually, you can rent a lot of stuff.
We'd have to see it to render fair judgment and we missed its debut opting instead for Survivor and John Hughes Sixteen Candles which unintentionally sucked us in as fast as people are leaving Agency.com but last night, MTV debuted its mixed up programming block. The block merges programming with advertising and intertwined them in a heightened fashion purposefully aiming to blur the line between entertainment and commerce.
MTV describes it thusly, "Interweaving show content and the commercial experience, MTV's Thursday Night Block will present continuous engagement for the MTV audience - where shows will merge into one another, and programming content will play in commercial time - throughout a continuous 2-hour block."
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The slightly-more-considerate cats at Wired inform us that yesterday marked the birthday of Dean Kamen, born in 1951, holder of over 440 patents, and inventor of the first portable insulin pump at the blooming age of 25.
On a more contemporary note Kamen is the inventor of the Segway -- you know, that zany fat-wheeled thing that was going to replace walking and is now the transport of choice for security guards and theme park attendants.
Few can put significant contributions to the betterment (or at least the leisure) of mankind to their names. And even after the Segway crack, we really, really do mean that. So happy belated April 5th to the Pied Piper of Technology (don't look at us -- Smithsonian magazine said it first).
The Economist was a 2006 Print Ad winner at the London International Awards for this sparing scratcher. The agency responsible is Ogilvy & Mather, Singapore which, judging by the Levi's Copper programming-throwback microsite they did, has a flair for the basics.
We dig a sparing and direct message and thought of tossing in an insinuation of nostalgia-laced laziness just for kicks, but decided we'd hate to be buzzkills for this method. Advertising could use more of it. Plus, the bold red block is growing increasingly synonymous with The Economist, which can't hurt them any.
Though if we were an ad firm working for The Communist, we'd be kind of pissed.
In case you don't experience enough anxiety, discomfort or outright panic in your life, check out these spiffy duds by the InsideOutside project. Depending on your settings the clothing "heats up or cools down uncomfortably" if you come within shooting range of something you'd rather avoid: pop concerts, alums of rival schools or CCTV farms, for example.
Because while the iPod has been a Godsend in terms of tuning out immediate environment, it doesn't help us avoid things we dislike that haven't quite hit our line of vision yet.
We should really just ensconce ourselves in bubbles. Made of steel.
The cool thing about True.com is that their campaigns are racy, generally consistent and immediately recognizable. Those three components are kind of a big deal when you're trying to brand build.
There once was a time when Match.com was cool, but they've since run in a thousand confusing directions. We were surfing around this afternoon when we came across their latest shot in the dark.
This guy invites you to stare. Then he turns around and starts talking to you. Like, out of the ad, to you. Then he goes, "What are you waiting for?"
We looked around. It wasn't 2 AM. We weren't between scenes in a Lifetime movie. There was no local-singles 800 number to dial. And we were confused.
For client Abe Books, the March Hares of Rethink, Vancouver literally rethink the notion of the stodgy rare-bookery. Tagline: "If you can't find it here, it doesn't exist." Imagery: highly unlikely works of fiction and non-fiction, including Everything You Wanted to Know About North Korea, But Were Afraid to Ask.
We dig Abe Books because we recently used the service to land first-eds of Don Marquis' impossible-to-find Archy and Mehitabel, a series of poems written by a sensitive cockroach who types at night (in low caps because he can't hit Shift and reach for another button at the same time!) and his moody feline friend Mehitabel, who believes she was once Cleopatra. Can you think of better lit? We didn't think so.
The fine Balendu has more images from the same campaign.
Once again, ridiculous over reaction has occurred, this time over a Publicis-created Toronto Blue Jays spot that shows two kids having a pillow fight which designated hitter frank Thomas then joins and whacks one of the kids off the bed with a pillow. The Television Bureau of Canada, a watchdog for Canada's private broadcasters would not approve the spot to air. Blue Jays VP of Marketing sums it all up saying, "I think we are taking ourselves a little too seriously if we're saying a pillow fight cannot air because it's viewed as too aggressive, or Frank's too big versus a small child."
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Tired of lies, bored with Nader and irritated by the '08 POTUS-race-cum-Myspace-popularity-contest?
Vote for 10-year-old Susie Flynn who, in the still-pure well of her heart, promises "every child in America will get the health insurance he or she deserves" if she wins.
Campaign videos and petition available on-site. Little Susie is taking war chest funding from the spin-docs at Fallon, Minneapolis on behalf of the Children's Defense Fund, who want to build awareness about the child health care crisis in the US.
In a small but recent victory for the Susie party, Congressman Bobby Scott introduced HR 1688, The All Healthy Children Act, to provide all children and moms-to-be with health care access, including the 9 million uninsured kids out yonder. Brava. Government dosh is better spent pushing swings than picking cat-fights in the East.
Chicago's Flow Creative has whipped up a fun campaign for what sounds like a seriously mundane business, Chicago Board Options Exchange which has fun with clown surgeons who don't know how to operate and boxers who think oven mitts will do the trick. This is one of those campaigns that only makes sense if your in the financial industry. Otherwise, when you hear the close of the clown spot which says "when it comes to options, there's no substitute for CBOE." you'll just respond by asking, "Huh?"
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