What started as an innocent Youtube lookalike contest has escalated to a hostage situation. Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report has been taken - to wild and crazy Canada! Read hostage letter and blog, which lists various against-my-will! atrocities being committed against Colbert at this very moment. These include getting eaten by the Oshawa General and meeting the mayor. Those Canadians don't mess around - Stockholm Syndrome, here he comes.
Release can be arranged if somebody grants his captors the rights to produce a legit Stephen Colbert Action Figure. We are fervently pro-action figure and would love it if all our media friends could stare encouragingly down at us with frozen smiles (kind of like in real life) from a way-high-up shelf over our desk.
Thank the creeptacular toy-loving folk at Happy Worker, and now let us take hands and pray.
Following its long running strategy of attracting men with the most powerful aphrodisiac, women, and its latest Bom Chica Wah Wah theme, Lynx, with help from the Lynx Mynxes, has launched Lynx Players and the Bom Chicka Wah Wah Rally - some kind of flirting contest. Anyway, it's all about bodacious babes and Florida sunshine. Oh, and, apparently, some deodorant gets sold along the way.
For their ongoing Want 2 B Square campaign (whose Boy Meets Girl video we're still fawning over), Scion throws out the last of its six worlds, The Beat. It's music-themed and contains a Dance Dance Revolution-type game, which we like but are ashamed of liking.
We've grown fond of Want 2 B Square and are even starting to think the xB's aren't bad on the eyes. But sentimentality aside, Scion has done a good job of using alternative forms of marketing and subculture inclusions to push the weird customizable vehicle. Which is more than what we can say for some.
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We have no idea what anyone would want with a Volkswagen Touareg hood without the rest of the car attached to it but that's the premise of a promotion the automaker is doing as a benefit for Feed the Children. Volkswagen will auction off two Touareg hoods that were signed by 40 athletes, musicians and actors during a Las Vegas Volkswagen Important People promotion in Las Vegas February 16-18 and during the National Basketball Players' Association Gala February 17. The auction began yesterday with minimum bids set at $500. Sadly, neither of the bids (one, two) have seen any action yet which, again, begs the question...who wants a hood without the car even if it does have a bunch of celeb signatures. Despite that, we have no doubt the hoods will eventually be scooped up.
We don't know what Mr. Rove was thinking at the Radio Television Correspondents' Association Dinner, but if hip-hop wasn't dead before he just shot it in the face. We'll never again be able to purge the memory of him jerking his hands from side to side and whipping out his cell-phone with knees bouncing.
Well, if we were part of the Administration we too would run with the strange, liberating sensation that comes with having nothing left to lose.
Youtube's 2006 video awards is over and winners are receiving a reception once experienced only by winners of MTV's VMA in the early '90's. The breakdowns follow.
OK Go wins Most Creative for Here It Goes Again, closely followed by Where the Hell is Matt? Why that deserves "Most Creative" we'll never know, but whatever. Apparently the universe awards gamers who dance and civil engineers who sing in equal measures of WTF.
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- George Parker says close-minded American marketers who buy into the ill-named American sport playoffs which assume America is the world should check out Cricket World Cup which, like football (the kind known to the rest of the world and not Americans), offers a chance to connect with fans the world over.
- New York's Z100 goes all consumer-generated with a new promotion that asks listeners to submit billboard and TV ideas which, if they win, will be shown in Times Square and aired on TV.
- New U.S. Post Office stamps get promoted with RD D2 mail box wraps.
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We all have to deal with vermin from time to time, but rarely do we have to fight them for our fried chicken, dolphin v. man-style. This is what patrons of a KFC in Greenwich Village had to do when a deluge of vermin ran a rampage across tables, chairs and trays.
Graham and Jamie fill us in on the story and include a clever little comic where PR guys (of course) save the day. Because in the end, tons of rats generate tons of press for KFC and "Customer Mania!" parent company Yum! as a whole. You just have to know how to spin it. No advertising is bad advertising ... right?
Australian arist Justine Cooper throws herself behind a drug-and-disorder parody show called Havidol: When More is Not Enough.
Havidol is for sufferers of Dysphoric Social Attention Consumption Deficit Anxiety Disorder (DSACDAD), or people who suffer from worry about life, tension, fatigue, aging, or stress. And we're not too sure how Havidol can help, but it does promise to increase your inclination to do spontaneous and exciting things - like jump off cliffs without restraints.
One testimonial reports, "I felt confident in myself and my relationships. I exercised regularly. I slept quietly through every night and awoke each morning feeling refreshed and ready to start a new day. I now know I had a treatable disorder." Thankfully for those in the dark, marketing for Havidol ain't shy - TV, print, outdoor and interactive work are accounted for, and we dig the Havidol merch. If only Zoloft made hoodies this hot.
Check out the exhibition info for Justine's show.
Imaginary disorders are stacking up as a wrist-slap to big pharma, but we wonder which will actually cross over into "Oh fuck, I really need help" land. Major drug companies, marketing mavens in their own right despite all the jokes we make about them, are notoriously clever like that. You know how it is: things start out as a joke, then spiral into serious real fast, and all of a sudden everybody's on Xanax.
To liven up the boring auto show and to provide some customized interactivity with an automotive brand, Mindflood along with experience marketing company George P. Johnson teamed to create some very impressive consumer experiences for Acura and Scion. We can remeber going to auto shows and thinking it was cool just to touch the car ans sit inside it. That's so yesterday. The Acura Interactive Oracles and the Scion Mix it Up Experience give people so much more to play with including complete vehicle customization, t-shirt creation and a complete interactive experience of the vehicle.
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