Italian retailer Police has cast aside boredom and done something unique to find its next spokesmodel. With a very strange video in which a dude power-urinates all over the place, people are encouraged to submit their photo along with reasons why they are "younique." Others can vote for their favorites every two weeks until sixty finalists have been selected. Final selection by the retailer and its creative agency will occur in September. The winner will appear in the Be Younique 2010 ad campaign.
How Younique are you?
- The Consumerist has a list of the top ten ironic ads including Dutch Boy touting lead paint, James Dean promoting safe driving in a PSA and Union Carbide promising to build a new India.
- Want to win a trip to Hawaii? Enter Pacifico beer's Epic Adventure Photo contest.
- Did you know that you - yes, you - are killing YouTube. Why? because you are a cheap, greedy bastard.
- Want some free ideas? Bald Guy is giving them away here.
SEO? Say What? Yea, search engine optimization. Heard of it? No? Well if you haven't, you don't know much about online marketing. But that doesn't really matter because OneUpWeb does know that they can help those that don't.
So how does an SEO company talk about the mundane aspects of far-from-Cannes but more-meaningful-than-Cannes marketing tactics? It creates an eight chapter video, of course. And that's what How SEO Killed the Corn Farmer is all about.
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Imagine an "agency as family" meeting at your shop. Now imagine it taking place at the dinner table with your family. It might go something like this as envisioned by Please Feed the Animals' Erik Proulx:
"I've called this Proulx family meeting with some unfortunate news. As you know, we've just lost our main source of revenue - my job - so we had to make some tough decisions. Ben, as the eldest child you can stay but with 33% fewer meals. Clara, I'm sorry to say, your position as a child in this household has been deemed redundant. Since you were the last in, we thought it fair that Ben keep his position as Proulx spawn. However, because you have been here for 3 years, you qualify for a severance package, which includes placement assistance into a foster family. Feel free to use me as a reference. Really, I mean that. And thank you for all your cuteness and unconditional love. Best of luck."
Ah, the brutality of working in the ad industry.
So Advertising Age is all over agencies today for their use (or lack thereof) of Twitter. A destined to be classic quote from a Euro RSCG spokesperson reads, "We're developing our Twitter strategy and in the meantime want to hold onto the name. It's a Catch-22: You don't want your Twitter handle stolen, but you also don't want to start using it before you're really ready."
On the one hand, all well and good. No one wants to make a fool of themselves. On the other hand, this is not rocket science. Certainly it's easier for a random individual to join Twitter and use it any way they see fit. That, however, is not entirely the case for a brand, an agency or an agency representing a brand.
While the wonderful world of social media is, as everyone insists, supposed to be one gigantic, happy conversation, brands, because they are more than one person, need an agreed upon approach to using the medium. But that doesn't mean they have to over engineer it or have every last detail of that "strategy" in place before they dip their toe.
Why? Because you can't develop a "strategy" unless you know the medium and you can't know the medium unless you use it. Yes, it is a bit of a Catch-22 but the Catch-22, itself, is a Catch-22.
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Honest.This is just your average, run-of-the-mill potato chip commercial. You know. The one where a guy puts on a strange head contraption and begins to fantasize about women unclasping their bra, jumping up and down on a bed, dancing in a thong, playing with stuffed animals, sticking her tongue out at you and...getting an x-ray while wearing lingerie.
Yea, that kind of commercial. Nothing special here. Move right along people.
