- Cynopsis reports, "High School Musical 2 premiered on Disney Channel on Friday night and drew in a record breaking audience of 17.2 million viewers, according to the Nielsen preliminary fast national ratings." The kids do like their HSM.
- If you think the CxO Insanity has progressed to buffoonery "WorldNow announced today that advertising sales veteran Adam Gordon has joined WorldNow's Local Media Network as Chief Revenue Officer, National Ad Sales."
- Diesel's up to something again.
- Mini gets even..."minier"?
- We once said wipe your ass with this ad. Now, apparently, all you have to do is use up all the toilet paper.
- "Facebook surfers are costing Australian companies billions of dollars a year in lost productivity." Oops.
OK, this is just gross.
For most people working closely with the internet, it's almost laughable to think somebody out there is still falling for schemes where a company is updating its databases and "needs" your username and password.
But apparently people still do. It happened to a friend and Adrants reader, whose Gmail account is now being used to send urgent messages demanding financial aid via wire transfer for her dire-straights "husband" in Nigeria. We were like, "What, she got married? And the guy's trapped in Africa? And he uses Western Union?!"
Thankfully there's help - like that promised by this banner ad, which claims it will check if your credit card has been compromised if you'll just tap your card number and expiry date into the boxes.
We're sure a couple hundred people fell for that one, too.
For some odd reason MySpace has gone all super-pink on our asses. This bamboozled us so we dug deep to work out what was going on.
Oh right, it's all part of that Cherry Coke contest, for which they've found a winner - a cat (yeah, you read right) named Pouncer.
To honor said winner, for all of today (and hopefully not tomorrow), it's not just MySpace.com; it's Pouncer's MySpace.com. Courtesy of Cherry Coke.
Options to molest your MySpace page in equal cherry-soaked fashion are available here.
We don't know why we're surprised or even confused, considering MySpace has always been open about its willingness to sacrifice a consistent aesthetic scheme to the highest bidder.
The first time we saw this video of Filipino inmates dancing to Thriller, we remember thinking, "... Dude, how were 1500 inmates at a Cebu prison coaxed into a coordinated syncopated jamboree?"
We didn't have long to wonder. Security consultant Byron Garcia, the force behind it, isn't exactly shy. With a near-comical audacity, Garcia uploaded the video onto YouTube himself, along with a shit-ton of other coordinated nightmares, including I Will Follow Him from Sister Act.
more »
We were on Discovery News reading an article when we were interrupted by the presence of a really ugly "scoop n' poop" advergame for Wild Hogs that expanded, didn't contract and opened the website when we pushed the "close" button.
We'd say that the type of ad a site chooses to populate its real estate is kind of a big deal. And while a film like Wild Hogs is probably within Discovery News' parameter of family-friendly fare, it would have been nice if somebody had tried it out beforehand or at least seriously considered its placement - in the middle of a story about King Nebuchadnezzar? Come on!
For pure amusement it seems, Heineken has released DraughtKeg, a site on which you can upload your face to a futuristic robot who will then appear on the dance floor grooving to pseudo-futuristic dance music. It's all very retro...in a futuristic sort of way. And it's to promote their new, uber-cool keg that's, apparently, really, really better than your standard keg.
Let's imagine ourselves sitting in on the Publicis Modem Berlin Cameron (sorry, our PR rep mis-spoke. The campaign was created by Berlin Cameron. Modem handled online work and subcontracted out the creation of this website to Brothers by Choice) concepting session for this piece of work.
AE: "So you all saw the thing. It is pretty advanced for just a keg of beer, right?
AD: "Futuristic, even."
COPY: "The thing looks like some sort of mini-robot."
AD: "I got it! Robots. Beer. The future. A party. A robot dance party!"
AE: "Um, what about Svedka's robots?"
COPY: "Who gives a shit. Ours will be way better because...ooo...I got it...we'll let people upload their heads to the robots! All that social media shit, you know."
AE: "Uh, Trailer Crashers did that."
AD: "Dude. It's ALL been done before. It's not like you expected an original idea, right?"
AE: "Uh, I guess. Hey, just make it look cool OK? Like the music and shit. And make sure you show the fucking product!"
COPY: "Dude, we aren't idiots."
AE: "OK. I know. You rock. I need it next Thursday."
AE/AD/Copy: Three way fist-bump
Here's a distraction that's sure to derail your workday. In the interest of going simpler, Candystand gives us Jetboost, a game where all you have to do is make the little jetpack-wearing man jump as high as he can.
Each level lasts just a few seconds, which strangely makes you want to do a bunch. Oh, the marketing magic of bite-size.
Addictive. But then again, shiny objects usually are when you have something more important to do.
Keep the volume down if you're in your cubby hole -- er, cubicle. To note, we've long since stopped noticing what candy is advertised - but, foreseeing this, Candystand since began forcing users to sit through a short ad while the game loads. Those clever candy peddling rogues.
Selling underwear is usually a no-brainer for some companies. You make it sexy, you make it provocative, you dress it all up and get some pretty people to trounce around in it, or - worst comes to worst - you find really fruity mascots, like Fruit of the Loom.
We can't think of a major underwear brand that fails to be interesting in the same way that Hanes does.
And this isn't a recent thing. They've always kind of sucked.
more »
It's been a few months since we first landed the chance to try out Joost, and by now we're in a fairly decent position to review the offering that either puts television to bed, or marries television to its longtime nemesis, the computer.
Cool things about Joost:
* The occasional brand-spankin'-new music video
* The occasional good show
* Throwback television (remember Ren and Stimpy? Hell yes)
Now onto the meaty stuff.
more »
- The American Legacy Foundation and 45 other groups have written a letter to RJ Reynolds asking the company to take Camel No. 9 off the market claiming it is "nothing more than a veiled attempt to sell more cigarettes to girls and young women."
- The film The Ten is getting MySpace play courtesy of Special Ops Media.
- The Advertising Softball World Series has launched a new website introducing its 25th silver anniversary tournament party that will be played out this October 7-11 in Las Vegas.
- Austin has launched its first intractive marketing group, the AustinIMA. To celebrate the launch, the organization is holding an event next Thursday. Roy Spence and Yvonne Tocquigny along with speakers from Austin Ventures, nFusion, Sicola Martin, and T3 will address the group.
- Disney's Family Fun and Wondertime have reported ad page increases of 28 and 61 percent respectively.
- Imus may return and so may some advertisers. Like this is s surprise.
|
