With rss-fed online banners, 33 topic-specific print ads, an online game, screensavers, television and an in-cinema game, MSNBC has kicked off an ad campaign with the tagline "The Fuller Spectrum of News" "which exemplifies the captivating journey and multiple perspectives of news, entertainment and information consumers explore on the site." Hmm. whatever happened to just reporting the news? Oh yea, everyone else does that. Marketing 101: product differentiation. Silly us. Anyway, SS+K created the campiagn, BEAM is handling online executions and Fuel Industries whipped up "Newsbreaker" the RSS-fed online and in-cinema game. Check out the creative here.
Kenneth Cole is having fun again. This time with AIDS. He's making AIDS fashionable. Well, sort of. Nothing like showing a hot fashion chic to attract attention and then slapping the tagline "we're all potential carriers" to repel with plague-like force. Oh wait. AIDS is kind of like the plague and even hot models can get it so we'll just shut up now and let Ken do his thing.
UPDATE: Even more Kenneth Cole idiocy. This time with weapons of mass destruction.
As kids we actually thought Kwik-E-Mart was a real but mislabeled place, and now Seven Eleven will make the mistake easier for the next generation to make by (possibly) gussing up 11 of their stores as Kwik-E-Marts.
The liaison hasn't been officially inked but it's part of a joint promotional effort for The Simpsons Movie. The tricked-out stores will include beloved Simpsons products like Buzz Cola, KrustyO's Cereal and Squishees.
This would be way funnier if Kwik-E-Mart rip-offs didn't already exist. As things stand, a chain of stores toting the name exist in Minnesota. Strangely, there is also one in downtown Pittsburgh. And while you probably can't get KrustyO's at these locales you can probably get Spooners, which can't be much better and boast an equally psychotic-looking mascot.
An Adrants reader sums up this Northwestern Mutual site perfectly, writing, "It won't make me buy their financial products but it's fun." Visit Wreck Your Worries, type in a worry and choose from four tools you can then use to destroy your worries. It was very theraputic but we'd agree with the reader. After we finished hammering away all our daily worries, we just left. Yup, we didn't buy any life insurance. Not a bit.
Looking over our shoulder as we wrote, our blowup Bob Garfield doll, standing stoically but mildly deflated from all the darts we've tossed while in the corner of our office, was heard saying, "Oh shut up Adrants! You guys are idiots! I know what you're all about! You'll do anything to piss people off with your lame-ass commentary!" OK. Sorry, Bob. We promise we'll read your Chaos Theory piece now. [Ed. To be clear, the real Bob Garfield didn't say this. He gets mad when you put words in his mouth so we thought we'd be clear on that point. OK? Good.]
Freelance Creative Gabe Chouinard is a consumer. Not just any consumer but a new consumer and he wants marketers to know this. As part of our random and completely irregular guest columnist series, Gabe authored a piece entitled "I Am the New Consumer" in which he summarizes many of the points we have made here over the years. Things are different. People are in control. Marketers and not. Things must change. Marketers must listen.
While change doesn't happen overnight nor should it, the tidal wave is approaching and every one of us ought to accept it and be prepared for that shift. In his article, Gabe mentions the pointlessly idiotic Flashturbation (our words) most marketers engage in when creating their facade on the web. Wouldn't it make more sense if the focus of a brand's external image actually included a free flowing, ever-changing conversation made up of people's comments and opinions of the brand and the company's reaction/response to those comments? That would certainly fair far batter than arriving at a site that's just a pretty picture and mindless marketing blather. Yes companies have blogs which help serve a conversational purpose but currently, they are off on their own and, for the most part, not an integral part of the company's face. That should change.
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We have a love/hate relationship with Candystand, whom we've reviewed so often we ought to be on their payroll.
We think they know it.
To fully leverage our weakness for time-wasting single-person games and sell us candy at the same time, they've come out with yet another such offering called Orbit Spherez. (Guess what candy they're pushing.) It merits a NSFW rating. Be careful.
Our only big beef: what's up with the laggage? We are not fans of laggage.
Since Jurassic Park we are wary of anything involving labs, dinosaurs and the promise of sex. But for some odd reason Schick sees this as the perfect formula for their latest slew of homepage-worthy marketing schemes.
We're experiencing unpleasant early 90's nostalgia with this Dino Hunters thing they're doing. The promo page assures the uncertain that "Comedy, sex and nasty ol' lizards abound in this free game about hunting dinosaurs" - and we don't know how or why that sells razors (the thought of running one blade, much less four, over gigantor scaly skin makes our stomachs clench) but perhaps it does.
The sex component is a burden mainly carried by the token ditzy blonde Candy. In a perfect world hot cartoon characters would be smart and not vapid because the point of being able to create is to correct the shortcomings of reality, yeah? No.
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Um, yea, like does anyone use Wite Out anymore? Like who would need it? It's not like anyone uses a typewriter anymore. A simple tap of the backspace key and you're good to go. Apparently, some people must still use the product as the company still advertises...and rather humorously in this recent campaign which has fun with with missing letters and such. Check it out here. Of course, the whole thing could just be some eager ad student's spec work.
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