CoolzOr features a very interesting guerrilla outdoor effort by Oklahoma Truck Supply which placed a mock up of an 18-wheeler vertically in the middle of a field which, or course, makes it stand out like a bald Britney. Yes, it's stunt marketing but, to us, it works. If you have a field and a spare 18-wheeler (or a mock up of such), why not turn it into a promotion. And yea, yea, yea, before you jump all over us telling us this sort of thing's been done before, we offer this thought. If we only wrote about new stuff, guess what? There wouldn't be anything to write about because, as you well know, it's all been done before. Thankfully, some re-hashed ideas are better than others which, again, thankfully, gives us something to write about.
- Adland wonders if Gladys Hardy, an 88 year old woman with a MySpace site and who's called into Ellen several times in just some sort of marketing promotion. It sure smells of it.
- Fox Interactive Media Buys Ad Targeting Firm to Leverage MySpace Profile Data. Let's mine that data, guys.
- ABC is creating a spin off of Grey's Anatomy with the Addison Shepard character and Taye Diggs. This just does not sound right.
- MediaBuyerPlanner reports, "Shares of the two largest, publicly traded billboard owners, Lamar Advertising and Clear Channel Outdoor, have skyrocketed in the past 12 months, growing 36 percent and 43 percent respectively."
Just is case you aren't by now completely sick of the Aqua Teen Hunger Force Boston Terrorism media orgasm, Brandweek scored an exclusive (did you hear that? exclusive! damn, they're good.) interview with Interference Inc. Founder Sam Ewen whose agency was behind the placement of the moonite/litebrite (or whatever the fuck you want to call them) bombs...oops...guerrilla marketing installations. There's a tease of the interview here which basically reveals nothing we didn't already know. The full interview will be published in Monday's printed Brandweek and online.
For album "Year Zero," Nine Inch Nails sets fans on a scavenger hunt with a series of webpages predicting the future. One example is Another Version of the Truth, a picture of a seemingly gentler America. When you click and drag your mouse, the pastoral picture reveals a desolate wasteland.
The first of the sites was discovered by fans who put together a set of highlighted words on a tour shirt. After that a spiral of other sites were found with roughly the same end-of-the-world, fascist/religious theme.
The effort was orchestrated by 42 Entertainment, the mad geniuses responsible for the Halo 2 campaign that sparked a dramatic nationwide search for a princess trapped in cyberspace.
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Who knew there were companies created specifically to assist you if you find yourself in a position of irreconcilable differences with your business partner and the shotgun clause gets invoked? Well, thanks to Dentsu Canada, we know know of at least one: Argosy's Shotgun Fund. Since our friend over at Dentsu did such an eloquent job describing the work to us, we're going to let him do for you here.
Dentsu's Glen Hunt tells us, "OK. So you're a creative partner in a business, say, an Ad Agency. You've got a partner, say, a suit. He thinks it might be a good idea to churn out crap for your biggest paying client and resign all the other businesses that landed you a Clio, 2 lions and a couple of pencils last year. What to do? Invoke the Shotgun Clause in your partnership agreement, buy that smarmy prick out and send him back to his Mom and Dad where he developed small man syndrome in the first place.
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This is what it's come to. A guerrilla marketing campaign for a show no one had ever heard of and which caused a city to cry terrorism has now caused the CEO of the network that hosts the show to resign. Drudge has the resignation letter but because his flash links aren't permanent, here's the letter:
"To: Colleagues
From: Jim Samples
I am sure you are aware of recent events in which a component of an Adult Swim marketing campaign made Turner Broadcasting the unintended focus of controversy in Boston and around the world. I deeply regret the negative publicity and expense caused to our company as a result of this campaign.
As general manager of Cartoon Network, I feel compelled to step down, effective immediately, in recognition of the gravity of the situation that occurred under my watch. It's my hope that my decision allows us to put this chapter behind us and get back to our mission of delivering unrivaled original animated entertainment for consumers of all ages.
As for me, there will be new professional challenges ahead that will make the most of the experiences I've had as part of this remarkable company. Through my 13 years at the company I have found myself continuously in awe of the talented artists and business people surrounding me, from those who realize their vision in creating a cartoon to those who so brilliantly deliver the animation to viewers.
I will always cherish the experience of having worked with you. I appreciate the support that you have shown me. As a friend and a fan, I also look forward to seeing your best and most personally fulfilling work yet. Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, Boomerang and each of you deserve nothing less."
Spineless appeasement to overly sensitive reactionarys or appropriate response to the blown out of proportion event?
Women aren't much known for forgetting to wash their hands in public bathrooms (a lot of it is peer pressure, and hygiene) but the story may be different for men, who arguably may need it more than we do.
We're not generally huge hand-washing sticklers (it's good for the immune system, right?) but the psychological brainfuck resulting from this effort by Wash Your Hands may just change our dirty ways forever.
And if you couldn't already tell, we nabbed this one from Cool Hunter.
Today in New York City, street teams are handing out posters of Czech model Petra Zemcova and informing passersby they can meet her at Fortunoff jeweler's 5th and 54th store where she will be autographing prints of the poster between noon and 2PM. The event is part of a new Irwin Slater-created campaign which will include inserts in The New York Times, ROP ads in area newspapers, POP, direct mail and online banners.
This is the first work the agency has done for Fortunoff and the jeweler's first celebrity campaign since they first used Lauren Bacall beginning in 1980. The campaign is tagged "Give Passionately. Love Brilliantly." See two other versions of the ad here and here.
Adland chides Boston in a story about budget airline FlyMe which has taken to advertising on suitcases in Miami as a means of delivering its message, writing, "My first thought was, good thing this isn't Boston, since that'll probably bring up another bomb scare." Too true.
So, Pizza Hut's removed most everything we found unliveable about their Pizza Hut delivery guy effort on MySpace. This time around they're shooting for something innocuous and mild, changing their protagonist from a ridiculously self-absorbed tool to a fairly average gamer and HD lover.
The updated MySpace also includes Youtube videos that pretty much demonstrate how irresistible the guy is when he's got a box of pizza in his hands. Judging from the jump in friends (it's nearly doubled), the revamped MySpace is apparently slightly more palatable than the previous effort, but unless Pizza Hut plans on using the guy outside of MySpace in long-term ad campaigns or other guerilla efforts, we don't see it working much in their favour.
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