We knew it was coming. We knew it was only a matter of time. Well, now it's official. Anheuser-Busch, in February 2007, will launch Bud.tv, an online content channel with entertainment, news, celebrity interviews, comedy and sports and Bud Tube, a YouTube-like site whereby people can upload the usual consumer generated media type stuff. The brewer has invested 30 million on the project and content will come from Kevin Spacey, Vince Vaugh, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon-owned production companies as well as from the agencies that currently produce the brewer's advertising. With a February 2007 launch, it's likely we'll see Super Bowl spots promoting the launch - that is if the TV net doesn't see it as too competitive.
Boston interactive marketing agency FUSEideas has created an online game for Boston.com's promotion of the Brigham's Ice Cream Scoop campaign which offers coupons for free ice cream to those that play the online game. Running from September 12 to 17, the game will also incorporate a "Vote for the Wildcard" flavor which will then be served on the last day of three Scoop promotion. The game itself calls for players to move ice cream cone, Coney, from side to side on the screen and catch as many scoops of ice cream as possible.
Saddened to be left out of the whole social media photo tagging Flickr-fest, Shake Well Before Use tells us Google has launched Google Image Labeler. The new feature, in beta as all new Google products are, pairs people who use the service with another person, shows them images over a 90 second period, asks the pair to tag (label in Google parlance) the images and then awards points when the two use the same tag to describe the image. Since Google spiders images across the web without human interaction, the only thing it has to go on when responding to an image query is the filename and image title which don't always do the best job describing and categorizing an image. It's not clear whether the earned points get people anything other than a place on the point chart but if the program works, Google Image search will be greatly improved and, perhaps, enable better keyword ad placement.
- Davis Freeberg sends us this long form commercial for TiVo called Blue Moon which is a 50's-style video explaining an important scentific discovery that turns out to be, yes, a TiVo.
- While we really like this new campaign for Florida's Commerce Bank which, in the TV spot, asks "When did you stop thinking you were a magician?" and other kid-related things along with images of kids that change to adults at the end of the commercial, there seems to be a missing transition between the innocence of dreaming in kidhood and Commerce Bank's assertion you can keep dreaming in adulthood if you bank with them. The work was created by Hispanic agency, The Lab thelabideas.com
- Put your Hispanic marketing caps on because the demographic segment is growing eight times faster than other other groups and will, this year, match the purchasing power of African-Americans spending over &800 billion.
- Arthur Schiff, the man behind the classic Ginsu Knife commercials as well as many other informercials died earlier this week at the age of 66.
- Debuting next week during the Come Out & Play festival in New York this month will be "kill them with kindness" game called Cruel 2 B Kind. The game assigns players one weapon and one weakness which consist of random acts of kindness which are to be delivered to other players who could be anyone on the street in the game zone.
- Maverick Media has created another Windows Live Messenger video, called Bottle, that points out the dangers of using old technology to deliver office messages.
- South African singer Verity is hoping record her album by pre-selling 5,000 CDs through a project called the Lucky Packet Project to finance the cost of recording the album. About ten percent of the revenue will go to the South African charity People Opposing Women's Abuse.
- OK, this Great Escape video for the PSP game Dark Mirror is just weird but it definitely reminds one to be sure which bed they slip into the night before.
- T-list is taking social media physical by selling t-shirts on which people can place thisr top five lists of bands, movies, places or any other list one might find on MySpace or any other social media site.
- Getting even closer to the day ads will be affixed to the back of church pews, the Boy Souts of America are now accepting brand sponsorship of its Scout Badges.
- While you may have heard of this stunt already, here's the video of UK artist Bansky "punking" Paris Hilton's new CD by buying copies, altering the cover sleeve's content and replacing her CD with an audio remox of her favorite and inane comments.
- A&T is hyping its online entertainment site Blue Room by airing, on September 10, footage from the Conde Nast Fashon Rocks pre-party featuring Elton John performing highlights from the songs on his upcoming The Captain and the Kid album.
- NBC has launched Star Tomorrow, its first exclusively online series in which competitors will vie for singing career and people will vote online to influence the competition. Part of the program is the Versa Lounge, named after sponsoring Nissan Versa and an inside look at the program.
- After Starbucks pinged a few employees with a free iced coffee offer and urged recipients to forward the offer to a friend, the coffee giant canceled the offer because it spread too far and stores were giving away too much free coffee. Not a bad problem to have.
- Announced earlier, EA has put its technology along with Microsoft's Xbox Live service will serve changing (versus static) ads to players of the game Need for Speed Carbon.
We have no idea how long this has been around but Adrants reader Steve Poland tells us he saw a text ad on Google which read, "Help save the crab. Gil the MySpace crab lost his job. Sign the petition to get him back." The ad linked to SavetheCrab, a site that pleads for people to sign a petition so Gil can get his job back after having been fired for apparently saying "I pinch" too many times in Honda Element commercial which can. of course, be viewed on the accompanying MySpace page. Eesh.
Hoping to maximize Ryan Seacreast's apparent addiction to reviewing daily Google Alerts about himself, Kaitlyn Wilkins tells us online celebrity fantasy league Fafarazzi has posted it's desire on it's blog. Through the wonders of the blogoshpere link-fest and Google's documenting of it, Fafarazzi hopes Seacreast, when reading his Google Alerts, will see the Fafarazzi plea and mention it on any one of his many shows from America Idol to his morning show on KISS to his varios interviews on Extra and other media outlets. Stranger things have happened.
Instead of display of anger and the slashing tires in this promotion for the Gangs of London game, we get a literal version of what the English like to says when they're mad, "piss off." SO that's it. Watch it. That's all there is to it. The video was created by Maverick Media.
The Hilton sister who didn't film herself having sex for the world to see, otherwise known as Nicky, has signed a deal with E! which, in return for promoting the hotels on it's networks, will place network programming throughout Hilton's Nicky O hotels. Elevators will be equipped with an E! news ticker and the networks Live from the Red Carpet will air in the hotels bars and restaurants. Computers will be infested with the E! Online homepage and the network will, of course, be available in all guest rooms.
From our Israeli friends Keta Keta who brought us Make Love, Not Terror; Make Love, Not War; Holy Virals (Hetro and Gay) and more (all of which you can view on their site), comes this video promoting the word's first Jewish social network., Koolanoo. In the video, there's the usual ogling men do when a woman drops her robe and struts alongside a pool in a bikini but when one guy realizes she's wearing the star of David as he is, he feels obliged to enage in some protective action.
