According to this Craig's List job posting, a New York agency wants to hire a writer to post comments on blogs and message board as part of a "viral marketing campaign." If we are understanding the ad correctly, it appears the agency wants this person to seed blogs and message boards with comments as part of a marketing campaign. While these "planted" comments happen all the time, acceptance of or retaliation against depends entirely on how the efforts are conducted. If it's seen as schilling something in an inappropriate environment or using verbiage that's overly salesy, it'll be shot down the minute it starts.
One could argue this sort of effort is clandestine and should never occur. Others might argue it's simply another form of public relations playing its part to sway opinion. We'd hope this effort would consist of more than just panted commentary and include a blog or its own. Perhaps it will. The ad isn't clear on that point. Either way, the devil is clearly in the details on this one.
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- Advertising Age shifts into high Super Bowl gear with its Full Coverage section of Super Bowl Ads 2007.
- Google's quarterly profits have tripled. Funny how AdSense publishers' profits haven't tripled as well.
- BlogAds has introduced a new ad unit that receives part of its content from an RSS feed. New, fact, figures, product, info and basically anything can be fed into the ad unit in a continually updated manner.
- Yawn. Yet another Grounghog Day promotion.
AdJab's Chris Thilk told us a few weeks ago AdJab would be ceasing its operations at the t'end of January. Well, the end of the month is here and that last jab has been published. Four of the main contributors to the site, Chris Thilk, Tom Biro, Adam Finley and Bob Sassone leave their parting thoughts and send AdJab off into the good night. We're told all of its content will live on to be forever indexed by Google and referred to by those of us in the advertising industry.
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- Former Gawker Founding Editor Elizabeth Spiers, now founder of Dead Horse Media plans to launch several new blogs. One will cover organic living.
- Online ad spending is predicted to increase 18 percent in 2007 while media spend in other media decline.
- If you want the background behind those 20 websites Toy, New York created for OfficeMax, here's the video that recaps the project.
- Apparently, consumers aren't the only ones having trouble understanding a brand's positioning. In a recent Louws Management Corporation study, it was found just 1/4 could clearly articulate their company's brand positioning. Oops.
- Incumbent Riney is out of the Sprint Nextel pitch. Goodby, O&M and Y&R remain.
- Boobs and bikinis are now hawking coffee at coffee shops.
It seems no one wants to see the Kristen Bell Pulse movie so the studio continues to pump out ever more odd promotional websites. Sent to us by Proximity Spain and created by, according to the Policy section, production house DeAPlaneta, a site called I Want to See A Ghost (customized Adrants version here) resembles a blog with the first post urging readers to view a video. After viewing the video, the site is taken over with Flashtastic drama incorporating your name (if it was forwarded to you by someone). The site follows an earlier effort that "attacked" a person's computer with hundreds of IM windows.
It's fairly freaky and an impressive use of Flash to turn the site into something other than what it's supposed to be. After the Flashtastic drama subsides, the site then goes black, serves up more "shocking" imagery then reveals it's a promotion for Pulse which opens in Spain February 2. It's a nice effort. Even if the movie garnered poor reviews.
- Cynopsis reports, "The retransmission rights payments disagreement between MediaCom Communications and Sinclair Broadcast Group came to a head late Friday and into Saturday with MediaCom being forced to drop 22 Sinclair stations from its cable system in 12 states as of 12:01a January 6."
- Time Magazine is getting into the blog game with a site makeover, a news aggregator and topical blogs.
- Ecommerce hit the 4100 billion mark in 2006 and continues to charge ahead.
- Brands should know by now an angry mob of bloggers is something to steer clear of lest you want amplified what you intended to be hushed.
- Time says you are the Person of the year. Advertising Age says the consumer is the Agency of the Year. Jonah Bloom explains they really didn't copy Time.
- The free 411 services are catching on with advertisers. Aegon Insurance and Absolut are the latest brands to become advertisers on 1-800-FREE411.
- Heavy.com has closed on a second round of financing, $20 million from Polaris Venture Partners. The financing will be used to expand the network internationally.
Now here's an interesting way to promote your geeky tech blog. Find an attractive female friend, have her hold signs with witty tech double entendre's like "charlielive.com gives great ajax" and "charlielive.com bigger is better" and upload the images to Flickr leading unsuspecting viewers to believe Charlie Live is some sort of cross between Engadget and Fleshbot. It's neither and it'll only be of interest if you understand that ajax isn't a cleaning product when it comes to programming.
Packaging Girlhood lists the best and worst 2006 marketing campaigns aimed at girls and their sometimes less-than-savvy guardians.
Worst includes the Dora the Princess campaign for turning an educational show into a stock purveyor of pretty-in-pink stereotypes. The Bratz Party Plane with juice bar also made the cut.
We always thought Bratz' eclipse over Barbie apt. Barbie was inspired by a German doll named Lilli, actually meant for adult males. That our 21st-century improvement over the Nordic sex kitten was a multi-ethnic series of skanks with DSL lips just kills us.
The list for Best include the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty whose crowning glory was the oft-spoofed Evolution ad of '06, and the transformation of Super Mario's Princess Peach into an entity capable of making her own rescues.
So cheers to real girls who say no lip gloss and aren't afraid to stomp in puddles.
The Consumerist is hosting a survey to determine the best fake marketing blog for 2006. Contestants include McDonald's for its 4Railroads and Mcdmillionwinner flogs, Wal-mart for Walmarting Across America and Sony for All I Want For Xmas Is A PSP. Currently, Sony has the most votes for worst fake blog of 2006. Check out the survey and share your thoughts.
American Greetings, with help from B.L. Ochman, is running a blog ad campaign on 80 blogs to promote last minute holiday card and family letter ideas. Each of the ads, which can be seen on Cute Overload, Woman Diary, GetOutdoors and others, points to American Greeting example site such as this and this. The campaign is said to be doing extremely well. In fact, we know it is, we just can't tell you exactly how well.
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