This just in!! This "Reuters" story is one day late but apparently adland kills us all and is the cause of 1.6 million deaths each year. Apparently, a "runny farty residue" is one of the initial causes. Reuters reports, "Contact with, or even being in the proximity of adland is known to trigger acute bone liquification disease, chronic restless face syndrome, and a deadly soup of bacteria called gumbo that shoots out of your nostrils."
Hey, "Reuters," if you're gonna do the April Fool Day thing, at least date your articles properly:-) Kidding. Adland dated her story just fine.
After a goof six years ago which kept the iconic red umbrella with Citigroup as it spun off the Travelers unit, Travelers has won it back and has gone BIG (literally) in a new commercial celebrating the umbrella's return. In the ad, a man carries the gigantic umbrella back home and on his way does what good insurance companies do, helps people when they need helping. OK, so most insurance companies don't a shit other than making money but it's a nice sentiment at least.
Fallon Minneapolis did a nice job with the spot. It's elegant, well-produced an fairy tale-like in that big adventure movie sort of way. It's one of those ads that really doesn't look like it's actually an ad but at the same time, delivers its brand message beautifully.
Look! Look! Look! It's consumer-generated media! That's right. Step on over to Upromise's Tuition Tales (great name) for a glimpse at videos created by students seeking $25,000 to cover college costs. Over the past 12 weeks, a field of hundreds has been narrowed to ten finalist. The winner will be chosen by public vote. As an incentive, Upromise is offering every person who votes a chance to win a $50 gift certificate to Bed Bath & Beyond.
Now if only Upromise would remove the annoying control bar which floats over the bottom of each video, the fullness of every video could be more pleasingly appreciated.
Oh look. It's like the Infiniti launch commercials created by Hill Holliday (I think) with endless shots of flowers, trees, mountain streams, wildlife and other moody images but with a not so small difference. In this new Hummer commercial from Modernista (Hmm. HH and Modernista are both in Boston. Hmm), we also get flowers, trees, mountain streams, wildlife and other moody images but this time they're interspersed with shots of the Hummer...in case we, oh, forgot we were watching a car ad.
- Some guy's hoping for Million Dollar Homepage fame after having fallen prey to a Woot.com April Fool's joke by offering his Woot "bag of crap" to the person who wins a drawing he will hold tomorrow morning. To enter the drawing, people have to donate money.
- Creative Director Laura Sweet responds to David Pogue's article about marketer's adoption of "web 2.0" and offers a few tips.
- CAANZ wants your entries. New Zealand's CAANZ wants your submissions for its media awards and has a little commercial to urge you to do so.
- Copyblogger has the goods on how to create a "rock-solid tagline" that works.
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Anything launched on April Fool's Day is, by default, suspect which is why Brand-mates, a site on which people can share the brand they love with others, just doesn't seem quite right. A site where brand lovers can create relationships with the brands others love? Sounds like an MBA'd account planner got together with some Web 2.0 type to create this thing. Oh wait, that's exactly what happened!
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Just what is it about guys and bras? It's like the subject comes up and we're in high school all over again, snapping the bra of the cute girl sitting next to us in social studies. Oh yes, breasts make boys (and men) do very stupid things. Sadly (or maybe not), snapping the back of a girl's bra may be a thing of the past if this backless bra from Maidenform takes off.
Created by ABC American Inventor contestant Elaine Cato, the bra is getting a big creative and media push from VIA Group, which will launch campaign "This Feels Right" with the tag "Out with the old, in with the new." Media will consist of women's magazine's, outdoor and online.
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- The Economist takes No.1 in AdweekMedia's Annual Hot List, up from No. 10 last year -- the biggest jump on a list otherwise dominated by women's lifestyle titles.
- 33 percent of iPhone users are cheating on Steve Jobs with other handset makers.
- Advertising affects prescriptions more than science does. Hrm. *Checks medicine cabinet* Yeah.
- The Apple brand makes the biggest impact on global consumers. (Yawn.) Those most in need of brand refurbishing were Microsoft and the United States. Mommy, why does the world hate us?
- More than 90 percent of email is spam. By the way, the term "spam" was coined 15 years and 2 days ago.
- Kids love social networks. O RLY? Thanks for the insight, champs.
- Joffrey's, a coffee hub that launched a "beta" tasting program for bloggers, has released survey results on coffee trends in the blogosphere. More on that.
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That is, according to this new spot for Washington, DC. (Come on, sport. How do you resist two metaphors in one sentence?!)
In the spot, a mom throws open a giant scrap book and invites the audience into family-friendly DC, where power lunches become romantic rendezvous (with your own spouse!) and spy games are left to the kids.
The campaign, entitled "Power Trip," goes live today and replaces the old DC slogan, "An American Experience."
Even with all those tantalizing political euphemisms, I'd still rather see Orlando. Every major American city would be better off with a gigantic Disney theme park.
Here's a taste of the stuff on The Blue Sky Project, a promotional CD created by DDB, SF for Clorox. Some of the tracks were in Clorox ads, then extended to beef up the album.
50 percent of the price goes to Music in Schools Today (MuST), which brings music programs to low-income neighborhoods.
I was gonna say it would be hard to associate Clorox with any kind of music, mostly because I can smell bleach wafting out of the kitchen and there is nothing musical about it.
But The Blue Sky Project is calm and unpretentious -- an okay fit for the (slowly evolving?) household brand. I'm happy the agency avoided the temptation of using electronica or hip-hop. Getting people to listen isn't hard, as long as you avoid being something you're not.
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