Iacocca Gets Jiggy With Snoop Dog

Hoping to help us forget the not so smashing Jason Alexander version of the new Chrysler Lee Iacocca spot, the car company has paired Iacocca with Snoop Dogg in an ad set to air this weekend. With the usual old guy/young rapper dude culture clash, the post hopes to appeal to those under 40, many of whom have no idea who Iacocca is.

Weatherman Games Own Stations Neilsen Ratings

The Media Drop points to a story which reveals WBRZ-TV weatherman Pat Shingleton participated in Nielsen diary rating during May, a very big non-no in the ad biz. In an attempt to minimize the situation, WBRZ President Richard Manship said, "I don't condone this, but this is one ratings book out of 800, so let's not call it a threat to the whole ratings system. This is not going to throw the Earth out of orbit or anything." So...it's OK to overbill a client because they'll never notice? Oops, wait, they did notice. Behave, people!

Manisms and Hot Women Sell Milwaukee's Best

MediaPost's Amy Corr has gathered together a few recent campaign launches in her Out to Launch column, one of which proves beer marketers haven't left scantily clad women as seducers...uh...sellers of its products. A new campaign for Milwaukee's Best (yes, they do need all the help they can get) has launched on TV, print, an on the web with the tagline, "Brewed for a Man's Taste." Taste in what, you ask. Taste in "finely tuned" woman apparently. The website has all the usual male stupidity such as an ogling game in which a man must avert his eyes from his best friend's girlfriend's cleavage but if that's not possible, the site also provides wallpaper and downloads of finely Photoshopped models to ogle on the privacy one's own computer screen.

While the site reinforces man's neaderthal tendencies, the commercials, which feature proverbially manly men acting proverbially unmanly, are actually quite funny and not far from reality.

James Lipton Does DCShoes Commercials

Spoofing his persona and conducting mock interviews with DC Shoes athletes, James Lipton appears in 18 commercials for the apparel and shoe company. The campaign, created by LA-based 72andSunny, is airing on MTV, MTV2, ESPN and ESPN2. Along with Lipton, skateboarder Danny Way, BMX rider Dave Mirra, motocross rider Travis Pastrana, snowboarder Travis Rice, surfer Bruce Irons, and street skateboard icon Rob Dyrdek appear in the series.

The spots, shot semi-unscripted, are just odd enough to be engaging bringing together two, seemingly, unrelated entities from very different backgrounds making for a funny, culture-clash campaign. The spots can be viewed on the DCShoes website.

HBO Launches Latin American Campaign

HBO has launched a new campaign in Latin America with the tagline "Si no fuera por HBO, no escaparíamos de la rutina (If it weren't for HBO, we would not escape from routine). The campaign, which consists of five (three of which can be viewed here, here and here) spots, shows a series of individuals having a bad day (a visit from auditors, a difficult legal case, a traffic ticket) but when they think of HBO, they realize life isn't so bad and there's always a way to get out of the routine.

The background music for the campaign is the David Bowie song "Heroes" which gets all aspirational. The spots are beautifully shot and, while HBO is certainly not going to solve all life's problems, the campaign does a nice job making a connection between powerful things that happen on the screen and powerful things that can happen in life.

The campaign was created by which worked with Trebejos Films. Future efforts along this vein are planned for the remainder of 2005 and into 2006.

TiVo to Offer Extended Advertiser Information

TiVio, today, announced an upgrade for one million of its Series 2 users that will allow viewers to respond directly to long form ads which have been specially encoded to provide more information to the viewer upon request. To do so, TiVo will, with user permission, forward the users contact information to the advertiser. Oddly, the service appears to be put to use for the mailing of physical marketing materials where some form of on screen or online delivery would seem to be more logical and appropriate.

Pauly Shore Panders to Idiots to Promote New Show

Pauly Shore, who, other than a recent appearance on HBO's Entourage, appeared to be dead, is launching a new show on TBS called Minding the Store and is promoting it by offering a dollar to the first 250,000 viewers who don't find the show funny. Of course, to get the dollar, the viewer has to send a self addressed, stamped envelope making two way postage $.74 rendering a net return of $.26 which only an idiot would bother doing. One the upside, this might be the best joke Shore has ever told and the Post Office certainly isn't complaining.

CBS News to Launch Broadband News Network

In a move that ackowledges the shift in news consumption from TV to the web, CBS News has announced plans for the launch of a 24-hour, broadband news network which will become the centerpiece of the network's news delivery platform. The new CBSNews.com site will include broadband video, a weblog, called "Public Eye," written by Vaughn Ververs and on-air reporters will produce online segments throughout the day.

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Nielsen to Interupt Viewers Every 42 Minutes

We are so glad we work in the advertising industry which, gleefully, keeps us out almost all survey databases and out of Arbitron and Nielsen survey pools. Especially since Nielsen will now be interrupting Nielsen people meter users every 42 minutes, reminding them to register their viewing. Previously, interruptions would occur only when the channel was changed. Isn't advertising a wonderful thing?

Lee Iacocca Returns to Chrysler in Ad Campaign

Lee Iacocca, who uttered Chrysler's tagline, "If you can find a better car, buy it," in 61 commercials during his reign as turnaround CEO for the troubled car company, is returning as pitchman in a set of new commercials. The deal calls for Iacocca to appear, initially, in three spots with compensation in the form of a Chrysler donation to Iacocca's diabetes research foundation along with $1 for every Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep sold for the rest of the year.