Is it just us or are the creative folks behind the Jessica Simpson Pizza Hut ad pulling one over on us? The copy, "These bites are gonna pop right into you" uttered by Simpson as she lears into the eyes of that horned up kid just can't help is feel there's some sort of sexual overtone going on here. Just what bites is she talking about putting into his mouth?
We didn't join the media circus surrounding the Oprah/James Frey "is it fiction or non-fiction" thing because, well, we really didn't care what yet another author had to say and how Oprah would heap praise until we found this little video poking fun at the whole thing. Watch Frey shake his ass and tell the story of how he liked to all of us in his book.
While we've been in the ad biz since before Loyd Dobler held that radio over his head in Say Anything, we don't pretend to have the knowledge or insight Ad Age Editor Hoag Levins or black-turtlenecked Ad Age Man-At-Large Bob Garfield possess, except, perhaps when it comes to Garfield's commentary on why the Rolling Stones are bad choice as a Half Time Super Bowl act. Calling the Stones "114 year olds" who have "been around since the early Jurassic period," Garfield can't seem to understand why the Stones are still relevant cavalierly claiming they "have one foot in the grave," their appearance in the Super Bowl is a "last surrender to commercialism" and they're on their way to "Hollywood Squares." Calling them a "commercialized pop act," Garfield is so out of touch with culture, he, in perhaps an apparent attempt to appear hip, can't seem to grasp that fact the Stones still are "hip."
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Conveniently, with just three days left and milking every last bit of publicity, GoDaddy today received approval to place a commercial in the Super Bowl this Sunday. It took fourteen tries but the fourteenth was the charm. GoDaddy CEO says the spot will appear as the second ad in the sixth break, likely at the end of the first quarter or the beginning of the second. A second position has been purchased as well.
GoDaddy has created a time line of its dealing with NFL with an explanation, screenshots and video for each of the 14 attempts. The approved version reallu isn't all that exciting or funny for that matter but, as always, Parsons promises an Internet-only version to be released Super Bowl Sunday.
Not realizing it was lack of advertisers instead of their religious whinings that caused NBC to cancel its Book of Daniel, The American Family Association is all hot and bothered again over Britney Spears' appearance on the NBC sitcom Will & Grace in which she plays a co-host during a new cooking segment called "Cruci-fixin's" on the show's fictitious TV network, recently purchased by a Christian TV network.
AFA Special Projects Director Randy Sharp blathered, "They would not be making fun of Mohammed or Buddha. It's almost sacrilegious. I wonder who is at the helm of NBC that they are not getting the message. NBC doesn't seem concerned that they are tanking because they are offending their viewers and running them off." Though it's in its last season, Will & Grace is hardly tanking.
In the works since last Summer, Miller, along with Spike Jonze and Y&R Chicago, has created six commercials featuring talking animals that mock all the animals Budweiser has used in its ads over the years. The "auditions" for the ads, which feature animals babbling on frustrated actor-style, can be viewed here. Who knows. Perhaps they'll appear in the Super Bowl.
Anheuser-Busch will use its Super Bowl commercial time to launch a direct-to-consumer network called "The Bud Screen." The network will offer all manner of programming, branded content and advertising delivered to the desktop or an iPod. The brewer intends the network to be long-lived and to eventually be named "Bud TV." We've said it before and we'll say it again, the middleman - the networks - just aren't needed any longer. When a brand or program producer can deliver content directly to the consumer, there's no need for the current TV network set up. Oh sure, big changes are years away but it's happening and it will continue to happen faster and faster as more brands and content producers realize they can have their own channel of distribution.
Calling it a first, CBS has announced it will make the hit reality series Survivor available for download from its site for $1.99 per episode. The episodes will only be viewable for a 24 hour period after purchase and we're told CBS will use some sort of digital rights management to prevent a downloaded video from playing after the 24 hour period. While other networks and producers are selling episodes outright for the $1.99 price, CBS, by asking a person to buy something for $2 and then taking it back a day later, isn't quite what we had in mind for this new on-demand world we're in. They'll call it renting. We'll call it a rip off, We'll stick with our ad-skipping DVR and our big screen TV over the laptop and a slow download.
In a commercial created by Dallas-based TM, Fabio will foist his romance novel persona upon us for Nationwide Insurance, the company's first Super Bowl commercial. The ad, which looks like a shampoo commercial, is replete with romantic cheesiness with Fabio dressed as a gondolier in Venice and over the top imagery of blooming flowers and white horses...all to sell insurance.
Entertainment site Heavy.com, last night, released 16 banned Super Bowl commercials that were intended (or not) by marketers to appear in this or last year's Super Bowl. Heavy.com Founder and Co-CEO said his site compiled the 16 commercials from the Internet and did not make any agreements with the marketers to show the ads. Have fun but, no doubt, you've seen them all already.
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