SEO Firm Launches '26 Week Plan' for Internet Marketers

Think of it as Purple Internet Marketing's 12-step plan for online marketers. Except with more steps. The big premise: "A website isn't a marketing medium."

Wait, what?

"A website," the founders argue, "is a catalyst to marketing opportunities."

Ohhh.

But don't take our grimace for it; see trusty testimonials from people like you!

Crispin Scores $300M in Microsoft Business. Hrm.

Crispin Porter + Bogusky, the cats that gave us our two most recurring nightmare monsters (him and him), just won the privilege of promoting Windows products to consumers.

The budget was undisclosed, but Advertising Age pegs it at upwards of $300 million. In '06, Microsoft spent $1 billion in measured and unmeasured US marketing, so it's obviously got cash to burn like mad.

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Wait a Sec ... Open Your Mouth Again.

Coke Zero's throwing weight behind tongue-piercing parlors in Brazil. Seriously.

Shops in Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Porto Alegre and Salvador are giving free piercings to people that agree to take a picture with a fresh new Coke Zero stud. Coke's calling the concept advertasting. (Not to be confused with this.)

See TV spot with talking tongues that for some reason are bitching out a bewildered-looking eyeball with legs. It (hopefully) helps if you speak Portuguese. The shop responsible: Espalhe Marketing de Guerrilha.

method Ravages Mother Goose to Find Bathroom Buddies

You know method: people against dirty? We love how their ad copy is always a little provocative, but not so saucy that you can point fingers and go, "HEY, that's DIRTY!"

We opened our emails this morning and found ourselves face-to-face with this promotion for method's latest "Bathroom Buddies": le scrub + little bowl blu. (You know, like your favourite song!)

Suddenly tag-team toilet cleaning time seems ... sexy. And strangely mod.

Sprint Quick-Fixes Out of Kindness ... or Total Brand Negligence

Sprintcuts, a handy-dandy Sprint campaign, gives tips on how to quick-peel a banana and dry nail polish in a blink.

The campaign leads people to Waitless.org, which shares other somewhat-productive tips on "time rebates" that are supposed to leave you with the sense that Sprint = time savings.

We've actually seen this spot, Instant Baby Soothe, a few times on either Hulu or ABC.com. We thought it was cool, but until this very moment we had no idea whose ad it was. Which would actually be helpful, because then we'd know who to blame when our relatives "WTF?" us as we carry their spawn to a nearby sink.

Big-ups to Candace for sharing.

Wait For It...Wait For It...Wait For It...Oh, OK. It's A French GQ Spot

Maybe it's just us but we're not sure we'd stick around the entire two minutes just to find out this commercial is for the launch of French GQ. Aside from the fact we did stick around (after all, that's what we do here) and we knew it was for GQ going in (because we were told). Now, we get that some brands like to do the tease/lead-up-to-the-joke thing but this commercial just goes on and one and on and on and one...and on...with the same joke over and over and over and...well, you get the point.

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Incredible Inc: Punny, Less Incredible

Incredible Inc -- which is angling for that vintage comic book feel reeeeally hard but totally missing it -- is a promotion for Xerox's ink printers. Observe how the superheros have been subtly clothed in standard print cartridge colours: cyan, yellow, black and magenta(ish).

Objectively lame.

Inspirational Gashapons Promote Artist-Centric Shopping Mall

For Delay No Mall, a shopping center that supports artists, Leo Burnett/Hong Kong gave away 5000 creativity-sparking Gashapons in Causeway Bay.

"Gashapon" is the word for those toys that come in eggs. (Off-topic, do L'eggs count as Gashapons? It didn't occur to us until just now how weird it is that women can buy stockings out of gigantic plastic eggs.)

Anywho, the Gashapons contained plasticine mushy stuff that people could use to create something on the fly.

The street team then took the pieces back and instantly had 5000 creative ideas. Like this seahorse.

Neat. If you're planning a Silly Putty Sculpture Jamboree. (Which we're kind of hoping Delay No Mall is.)

Want Some Spider with that Sweet Corn?

Arg! Get a load of this print ad for the Travel Channel.

And gross! Watch the spot with the cow heart vending machine.

The funny thing is, something about the slogan -- "One man's weird is another man's wonderful" -- makes us hungry.

The spots were composed by the very weird, slightly wonderful Moroch.

Kaleidoscope Group Unlocks Secrets to Multi-Faceted Femme

Having fielded studies, interviewed researchers and read "over 50 books" (!!!!) about marketing to women, Hoffman York has launched Kaleidoscope Group, a girl goddess think tank.

The website greeted us with an actual kaleidoscope of women and some Lilith Fair music that stimulated the growth of our leg hair follicles.

The group coined what it calls the "Time Zero Effect," which posits that even one negative element in an ad to women will blow your brand out of her periphery. (0x0=0. Get it?)

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