Vera Wang Inaugurated HP First Lady

...for their The Computer is Personal Again campaign, anyway. The charming series that did right by Shaun White, Jay-Z, Pharrell and Paulo Coehlo finally got around to covering a woman.

But not just any woman - the Empress of Style! Guess Her Excellency grew out of that princess thing.

G4TV Pushes Ninja Show with Playground Pastime

G4TV just kicked off a promotional campaign for a show called Ninja Warriors, which is supposed to be really hot in Japan (where it is called Sasuke).

Entitled Rock Paper Scissors, the spot allegedly features actual Shaolin monks. We seriously doubt that because Shaolin monks don't douche around on game show ads; they sit in stone temples and crush bone with their minds. Anyway, the spots are very Kill Bill meets Bud Light.

72andSunny did the work, and there are three more videos to anticipate, slated for April's end - which would be about nowish.

Didn't ninjas go extinct in 2006?

Proper Dress Increases, CBS Goes Online, Holiday Squeaks

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Dressing properly pays off. USAToday.com's recent face lift has increased registrations by 380 percent.

- CBS has created an online distribution network for its programming. Outlets include AOL, Joost, Bebo, MSN Video, TV.com, Comcast, Brightcove, SlingMedia, Netvibes, Veoh. Programming will include with a 90/10 revenue split to CBS.

- BudTV ain't cookin'. Traffic has dropped 40 percent since its launch in February.

- Elana Centor sat down with Fallon copywriter Paula Maki Biondich to discuss her work on the latest Holiday Inn commercial in which bloggers and WiFi are celebrated. That squeak at the end? No idea.

- Verizon has jumped on the Adwalker train and is using the "human TVs" to promote its FiOS service.

Ads Drop Imus for 'Nappy-Headed Hos' Crack

After calling lady members of the Rutgers basketball team "nappy-headed hos" and "jigaboos" last week, advertisers dropped "Imus in the Morning" like the man was in flames. The list of the departed is long and includes P&G, AmEx, GM and Staples.

The displeased knights of valor at MSNBC dropped its simulcast of the CBS Radio show shortly thereafter, attributing the decision to maintaining integrity and not to the Arctic chill generated by pissed-off household brands.

What to expect from a guy who looks (and sometimes sounds!) like a Civil War relic? Sirius, you've just won yourself a new high-profile deejay.

TLC Goes CGM on Profundity Hunt at Market Value

If Youtube is the ultimate archive of self-exploitative human behaviour and ads are major persuaders in societal instruction, then it's only natural that at the crossroads we find Life Lessons I Learned the Hard Way.

This is TLC's feeble dip into the somehow unexhausted world of CGM. And guess what you win if your life lesson is the best? A chance for your ad to air on TLC, and ... wait for it ... $10,000. Yeah, that's the going rate for anybody whose exhibitionist camp gets an accolade from a big brand. (Observe examples 1, 2, 3.)

At this point we have little hope that video-whoring will go away anytime soon. That reality TV fad? Still going strong. Who'd have guessed there'd be a market for seeing anybody, not just celebrities, get gritty on camera?

Okay, aside from MTV.

NBC 18-49 Rating Plummet, Rovion Sucks, Creative Wanted, Adidas Tags

- Yikes. Reminiscent of that "where the hell did all the 18-34 men Go" trauma of a year of two ago, MediaWeek's Marc Berman reports NBC's adult 18-49 demo plummeted 24 percent to a 2.2/9 compared to last year representing the lowest since September 1991. Hmm. Ratings glitch?

- The Web Marketing Association has begun the 2007 Call for Entries for the 11th annual international WebAward competition. Check it out if you can stand the insanely annoying Rovion video that incessantly appears in the lower right hand corner of the site every time you visit. This is a technology that should get shot in the head. Along with in text advertising and PayPerPost.

- CreateAthon 2007 wants 24 hours of time from agencies to dedicate their time and talent to non profits.More info here.

- Kleenex has debuted a new oval-shaped package and a program that lets people design their own tissue box for $4.99.

- While it feels like the whole graffiti as advertising trend is so yesterday, apparently, it's still a thing and Adidas has launched a project whereby graf artists are tagging a New York subway car.

HBO Brings Sopranos Closer to Home

To promote their Sopranos DVDs, HBO gives us two spots entitled Pole and Hair.

Pushing the objective of "[Bringing] home the Sopranos -- permanently," spots include insider nods to the Badda Bing strip club and Paulie Walnut's skunky hairdo. They were directed by Harvest Films' Baker Smith for Venables, Bell & Partners, and edited by Phoenix Editorial & Designs.

Unless you're an avid Sopranos watcher you're probably going to be all "OMGWTFBBQ?!" That's okay, because that's part of why they're so funny. We often stare sadly up at our ceilings at night and wish we were born in the mob. Sure there's sporadic death and violence, but the mobsters' otherwise zany antics (oh, and piles and piles of black market money) seem to make decent compensation.

Ideocracy Brings Idiotic Non-Ads to Fox Ad Space

As of April 9 Fox aired its first non-ad-supported, non-promotional content, aimed at making commercial breaks more entertaining (and thus effective) advertising environments.

This all sounds lovely and nice but the result of this thought process is a series of 8-second bits starring a Greek-Lithuanian taxi driver named Oleg. Oleg is the pet project of Ted D'Cruz-Young, founder of firm Ideocracy, previously of Saatchi and Saatchi and BBDO.

Check out spots one and two. We're not that turned-on by them (dude reeks of Borat, except he's less funny) but hey, it's Fox, so maybe the world at large will sit riveted on their couches waiting for their next hit of the taximan-stereotype's confuzzling accent-ridden reverie.

Commercial Ratings Could Eliminate Awards Shows

If you look at it honestly, advertising's sole purpose is to sell stuff. Forget all that crap about brand building because it's all the same thing. You build a brand so it connects with people so they are more inclined to buy from said brand. Advertising's purpose is not, despite what many would like to think, about winning rewards or creativity. Clio. Cannes. ADDY. One Show. Create. Webby. ADC. Andys. Irrelevant. You disagree and claim the winning of awards helps agencies win accounts? Fair enough but wrong.

What if we lived in a world where we knew exactly how well received our commercials were the second they aired? Well, if Nielsen and the rest of the industry can get their shit together, we may soon see that world. Commercial ratings have been much discussed over the last few years but scant progress has been made. Some half assed solutions have been put in place and even more half assed solutions have been suggested. Who wants half an ass when they cab have full on booty? Yea, we thought so.

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MTV Blurs Ad/Content Line With New Programming Block

We'd have to see it to render fair judgment and we missed its debut opting instead for Survivor and John Hughes Sixteen Candles which unintentionally sucked us in as fast as people are leaving Agency.com but last night, MTV debuted its mixed up programming block. The block merges programming with advertising and intertwined them in a heightened fashion purposefully aiming to blur the line between entertainment and commerce.

MTV describes it thusly, "Interweaving show content and the commercial experience, MTV's Thursday Night Block will present continuous engagement for the MTV audience - where shows will merge into one another, and programming content will play in commercial time - throughout a continuous 2-hour block."

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