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Twitter vs. Yammer, STD E-Cards, Mac/PC Face-Off, Meghan McDreamy

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- Marvel's soliciting the YouTube community for the best comic-inspired costumes. Get dressed, flip your camera on and keep your videos down to a minute. Beyond licensing an entire suite of heroes and villains to Hollywood, I guess that's one way to stay relevant.

- Got VD? The decent thing to do would be to tell everybody you slept with, so they can check if they have it too. But don't sweat it too much; this is the digital age! Send those hutches an e-card. (Thanks Adrants reader Candace.)

- Not quite The West Side Story, but it's Macs and PCs, so almost the same thing.

more »

by Angela Natividad    Oct-22-08    
Topic: Cause, Consumer Created, Online, Packaging, Political, Strange



Meijer Brings Headless Horseman to Waking Life

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Last Friday a headless horseman galloped eerily across Chicago's building facades. The night marauder rode for four hours between the Loop and Wrigleyville.

Who woke him up? Meijer, which gave people a chance to win $1000 if they texted the company directly upon seeing the apparition. Flyers were distributed to prime people for the sighting; and whenever the van projecting the Horseman stopped or idled in traffic, the horse would rear its hind legs and flash the message: text Meijer for a grand.

A purported several hundred texts arrived over the course of the four-hour campaign. Dubbing it a success, the street team plans to repeat the work this Friday in Cincinnati.

by Angela Natividad    Oct-22-08    
Topic: Good, Guerilla, Promotions



Advertising Community Site AdGabber Hits 6,000 Members

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Today, the 6,000th member joined AdGabber, a Ning-powered community site for the advertising industry. Created and managed by Adrants, the site offers all the usual social networking goodies such as photos, videos, forums, groups, events, jobs, blogs, profile pages, news feeds, commercial and all kinds of other networking goodness.

If you're in the ad business, you should be hanging out at AdGabber so you can find out what everyone else in the industry is doing and then copy it...uh...get inspired and motivated to create your own masterpiece.

more »

by Steve Hall    Oct-21-08    
Topic: Announcements, Social



So, Like, I Heard BBDO Only Hires D-Cups. Hey, Why Don't You Go Check?

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To promote the Li Yue Long Men Young Creatives Competition, BBDO/Shanghai is using this :45 video to spread the weirdest rumour: that all its female staff members are D-cups.

Finding three young D-cups in all of Asia is a feat, which alone made the video worth watching. I also like the effect the cheesy music had on this slow exploration of the Shanghai office. It made all that leering look less ... leery.

more »

by Angela Natividad    Oct-21-08    
Topic: Agencies, Industry Events, Racy, Strange, Video



Tooth Rag Gets Star Treatment

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Somebody* just alerted me to a dentistry publication called Dear Doctor - Dentistry & Oral Health. Its president and publisher, Dr. Mario Vilardi, aims for the magazine to wax the common sense of Dear Abby, coupled with the vapid gawk-appeal of People.

Toward that end, each new issue sports the distinctive pearly-whites of a star.

It isn't immediately clear how deep we get to dive into the mouths of people we idolize on television. Deliciously sordid details, like the number of cavities they had as children, or shots of them in head gear, will probably not grace the pages of Dear Doctor. So I'm not sure what else to say about this, aside from, hey, I guess star power can serve any interest.

more »

by Angela Natividad    Oct-21-08    
Topic: Celebrity, Magazine, Strange



Fortify's Golden Server Offers Cups Full of Witty Geekisms

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Having worked in the segment for quite some time, I can attest to the boredom of working on business to business ad campaigns. There's only so much speed and feed bullshit you can take before your head explodes...or you go out and hire a big breasted floozy, a dude in a tuxedo and layer on an endless supply of metaphors and double entendres.

more »

by Steve Hall    Oct-21-08    
Topic: Games, Good, Online, Racy



Who Knew Libraries Made Babies, Assisted Ascension of Everest

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Here's a series of ads for The Alberta Library which tells us just how powerful informative and motivational books can be. Aiming to show just how much influence a book can have on a person's life, both positively and negatively, four scenarios are played out to humorous effect.

Created by Rethink Vancouver and produced by Holiday Film, the commercial's directors commented on the work, saying, "We were both attracted to this job because neither of us can read, and we thought this would be a good excuse to go into a library for the first time. We loved Katie and Chad's scripts, they were simple and quite dark, and reminded us how libraries can lead you down the road to ruin, but then get you right back on track. It was our idea to use real actors in all four spots, instead of CGI characters used in most library commercials."

Um, right.

by Steve Hall    Oct-21-08    
Topic: Campaigns, Commercials, Good, Strange



UK Girl Group Girls Aloud to Join Nintendo Campaign

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Along with Julie Walters, Fern Britton, Harry Redknapp, Boyzone's Keating and, yes, Star trek's Patrick Stewart, UK girl group Girls Aloud will appear in a new Nintendo Karmarama-created campaign for the Nintendo DS.

Nestle grabbed the musical group earlier this year for an appearance in a Kit Kat commercial. Girls Aloud will appear in a series of commercials for Nintendo with the first breaking next week.

by Steve Hall    Oct-21-08    
Topic: Campaigns, Celebrity



Brand Value Missing, Razorfish Returns, CMOs Angry

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- The majority of senior marketers - 55 percent - lack a quantitative understanding of brand value at their respective organizations, according to the results of a new Association of National Advertisers Interbrand survey, announced over the weekend at the ANA Annual "Masters of Marketing" Conference in Orlando, Florida.

- Now that Avenue A/Razorfish has rebranded as, simply, Razorfish, the required new agency website is up and running.

- Cadbury Gorilla gets yet another spoof.

- Hmm. Old client Akamai is getting into the ad business with the launch of Advertising Decisions Solutions, a behavioral targeting solution.

- Yawn. CMOs are angry with agencies and ad networks. This is a new sentiment?

by Steve Hall    Oct-21-08    
Topic: Agencies, Research



MySpace Music Promotes Artist Individuality

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MySpace Music, which went live in late September, is running a print ad campaign composed of artists and some of their favourite playlists.

At left is an ad featuring Moby, complete with link to his MySpace site. The text, presumably hand-written by The Man Himself, gives us the skinny on Moby's New York playlist.

Also see "Songs to Come Down To," a handwritten playlist by Kings of Leon, and "Music that My Friends Wrote" by Jenny Lewis.

Sedate, distinctly cool and in keeping with the network's indie band community feel. This is the first time MySpace has stepped beyond its borders to advertise. But hey, this is also the first time major labels have been willing to help foot the bill.

by Angela Natividad    Oct-21-08    
Topic: Brands, Campaigns, Magazine, Poster, Promotions, Social



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