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America's Freedom Begets Idiocy in Advertising AdPulp gives us good reason why America is such a great country. Or not. And why all this wonderful freedom we have doesn't always stop us from acting like complete idiots. Oh but wait, this is a car dealer commercial. Now it all makes sense. Meth Will Indeed Give You the Cleanest House on the Street In a way, it's the job of a PSA to cut through all the glitzy ad noise and deliver a more crucial message - one that protects families from abuse, unprotected sex or drugs, for example. But on their noble mission to maintain the status quo, sometimes an overzealous PSA can just scare the shit out of some of us, and completely confuse everyone else. This musical meth ad first appeared over 10 years ago (we're guessing). We were terrified of it as kids. (Consider the nightmarish effects Requiem for a Dream might have had on impressionable teenagers, then compress it into a :30 spot.) The ad came up in conversation yesterday with our landlord, who was in the middle of a cleaning spree. He remembered the ad immediately - then, perplexed, said, "It was about meth? You mean the drug?" "Uh, yeah," we answered, to which he exclaimed, "Oh my god! All this time I thought it was about a cleaning agent." Long pause. He somberly added, "The commercial didn't really make me want to buy it, though." Hanes: Need a Little (Agency) Help Over There? Selling underwear is usually a no-brainer for some companies. You make it sexy, you make it provocative, you dress it all up and get some pretty people to trounce around in it, or - worst comes to worst - you find really fruity mascots, like Fruit of the Loom. We can't think of a major underwear brand that fails to be interesting in the same way that Hanes does. And this isn't a recent thing. They've always kind of sucked. Joost: Fast Adopting All the Crap It Left Behind It's been a few months since we first landed the chance to try out Joost, and by now we're in a fairly decent position to review the offering that either puts television to bed, or marries television to its longtime nemesis, the computer. Cool things about Joost: * The occasional brand-spankin'-new music video Now onto the meaty stuff. Camel No.9 Attacked, AustinIMA Launched, 'The Ten' MySpaced - The American Legacy Foundation and 45 other groups have written a letter to RJ Reynolds asking the company to take Camel No. 9 off the market claiming it is "nothing more than a veiled attempt to sell more cigarettes to girls and young women." - The film The Ten is getting MySpace play courtesy of Special Ops Media. - The Advertising Softball World Series has launched a new website introducing its 25th silver anniversary tournament party that will be played out this October 7-11 in Las Vegas. - Austin has launched its first intractive marketing group, the AustinIMA. To celebrate the launch, the organization is holding an event next Thursday. Roy Spence and Yvonne Tocquigny along with speakers from Austin Ventures, nFusion, Sicola Martin, and T3 will address the group. - Disney's Family Fun and Wondertime have reported ad page increases of 28 and 61 percent respectively. - Imus may return and so may some advertisers. Like this is s surprise. And Ironically, Imus See Reinvigoration Our favorite post Civil War relic Don Imus is back after reaching a settlement on Tuesday that frees him to get back on air at a new station, four months after calling the Rutger women's basketball team nappy headed hos. "He's more valuable now than before the controversy," says founder Michael Harrison of Talkers magazine. "He was such a focus of media attention for so long that his career has been reinvigorated, and he's in a position to sort of reinvent himself -- to make himself more pertinent and even more interesting." Racist slurs spouted by major media figures are indeed demonstrably interesting. Consider our other buddy Mel. Well hell, if nothing else, maybe Nike will get another campaign out of it. Dentist Drill An Understatement in Orangina Commercial When someone sends us some "virals," which by itself a complete non-sequitur, we usually hover precariously over the delete button but this "viral" from Romania sparked our interest enough to watch it to completion. If you've ever had dentist office fears and enjoy over-the-top horror references, you just might like this commercial for Orangina. Language Barrier Causes Alien Attack At first, we were ready to cast aside this little online "game" for Steape Travel Translators but the more we clicked, the more we laughed. Who knew French dining could be so humorous? Who knew translation was so important to getting a good meal? Who knew ordering desert could result in an alien attack? Indeed. Coke's 'Happiness Factory' Does Second Life Press Play Brentter has the full story on Coke's Weiden + Kennedy-created Happiness Factory film which made its "global premiere" in Second Life yesterday. The three and a half minute film (oops, sorry. we're drinking the Kool-Aid here)...um...commercial follows the travails of a Coke factory worker who travels across Happiness Land in a quest to get the factory working again. We passed on the story yesterday since anything remotely related to Second Life makes us laugh...uh...sorry. We should have said "take less seriously." After dumping millions into Second Life six to 12 months ago, didn't marketers conclude it was a waste of money? Call us callous but YouTube has greater reach than SL by far. Oh but, oops. The vid is on YouTube also...with a whopping 434 views. Hmm. Oh the Horror! GoDaddy May Forgo Super Bowl 2008! Bob, Bob, Bob. What are we to do? What will we have to write about come Super Bowl 2008 without GoDaddy drama? If we can't highlight your GoDaddy girls and the seemingly insurmountable obstacles over which you hurdle to get your spots on the air, what's a poor Adrants editor to do? Oh sure, there will be some other dude who tries to propose to his girlfriend during the game. No doubt, there will be another slew of consumer-generated crap to slap around. And, of course, there will be another Snickers Kiss-like shocker to leave those without the humor gene aghast. Robert Goulet might even make another appearance. And let's not forget those skeevy direct to consumer commercials about old men who can't control their bladder. Or robots who commit suicide. Or scandal courtesy of CareerBuilder who will fire Weiden + Kennedy after their spots fail to place in the USA Today Super Bowl Ad Poll. 
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