What started as an innocent Youtube lookalike contest has escalated to a hostage situation. Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report has been taken - to wild and crazy Canada! Read hostage letter and blog, which lists various against-my-will! atrocities being committed against Colbert at this very moment. These include getting eaten by the Oshawa General and meeting the mayor. Those Canadians don't mess around - Stockholm Syndrome, here he comes.
Release can be arranged if somebody grants his captors the rights to produce a legit Stephen Colbert Action Figure. We are fervently pro-action figure and would love it if all our media friends could stare encouragingly down at us with frozen smiles (kind of like in real life) from a way-high-up shelf over our desk.
Thank the creeptacular toy-loving folk at Happy Worker, and now let us take hands and pray.
This time last year Jonathan Schoenberg of TDA Advertising & Design conducted a guest lecture in Boulder, CO and smashed the disruptive cell phone of a student with hardly a pause in his sentence. Naturally, somebody recorded it.
The video is startling but not nearly as exciting as the one of the UCLA student getting repeatedly tased. Even so, in 12 months it's made multiple public TV and news cameos on ABC Nightly News, MSNBC, CNN and O'Reilly Factor, not even counting appearances in New Zealand and Canada. To date it straddles nearly 3 million views and is the 16th most-discussed video ever.
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- Maytag gets new repairman.
- Spin Thicket points out some "truly horrific" CGI in this Sleep Center of the Southwest commercial. Quite horrid, indeed.
- kirshenbaum bond + partners announced today that Creative Director Joseph Mazzaferro has been named Partner.
- Cynopsis reports, "Showtime's premiere of The Tudors drew a 869,000 total viewers on Sunday night at 10p, and another 404,000 for its 11pm airing, marking the pay-TV network's biggest premiere night in the past three years. Showtime currently has 14.5 million subscribed nationwide."
- Google has launched Website Optimizer, a tool website publishers can use to determine which combination of page elements perform best. As will all Google products, it's free.
- On the heels of Google launching its TV buy bid system, DoubleClick - which may end up being bought by Google - announce it will develop a digital marketing exchange for buying and selling online inventory.
Well here it is. The result of the internal Publicis New York memo warning employees not to act like pompous ad dudes but rather like adults since New York Magazine would be snooping about the office for an "Office Life" photo essay. So, enjoy. Bathe in importance of information such as who plays video games with whom, who drinks together and who likes smoothies. Oh come on. Seriously. Don't make fun of it. This is really important news. After all, no one cares what's going on in Iraq these days.[Ed. Oh shut up you idiot. Stop making fun. Can't an industry based on creating pretty pictures to sell stuff get equal time?] OK, sorry. Besides, some of these Publicis people are cute!
- Chicago Tribune writer Steve Johnson thinks the U.K.'s Favorite Website Awards is the best online awards site out there.
- The Runaway bride is now an ad campaign for the Albuquerque, New Mexico Police department.
- The Web Marketing Association has announced its call for entries for its 11th annual WebAward Competition which judges website development against peer sites within 96 industries. The deadline for entry is May 31, 2007 and the competition Website is www.webaward.org.
- MDC Partners is merging Kirshenbaum Bond + Partners with Margeotes Fertitta Powell.
- Cisco is sponsoring the redesign of Slate's forum, The Fray. Forum members will have the opportunity to make design and feature suggestions and vote of potential designs.
- Goodby gets goodies in the form of $1.2 billion dollars worth of Sprint Nextel business.
- Patron Tequila gets slapped for using sexual imagery and innuendo to sell its wares.
What's going on in agency land these days? Is it just us or has everyone else noticed the plethora of accounts being through into review? Now it's Johnson & Johnson throwing their $3 billion global media buying and planning behemoth into the ring for agencies to fight over.
You just never know where the weirdest stuff is going to come from in our whacked industry but an agency in Cleveland you've probably never heard of, Brokaw, has done a stellar job at unleashing weird in this video celebration of its 15th anniversary.
For all you Boston area ad agencies that want to put your work in front of focus groups on the cheap, Bernett Research is offering a 20-30 minute focus group for $1,000. The reason they're doing it is to promote their new Seaport facility. Stacy Graiko is putting it together and if you are interested, you can contact her here: [email protected]. There. We've done our good deed for the day.
Sears wants better "efficiency and effectiveness" in its media buying and, apparently, incumbent MindShare and MEC Interaction aren't delivering. A review for the $780 million piece of business will be opened. Aiming to complete the review by second quarter, the retail giant has not named the consultant that will handle the review nor the names of any considered agencies. At this point, Sears' creative agency Y&R Chicago seems to be on safe ground.
Multicultural firm Burrell Communications Group conducted a study on current perceptions of Black History Month (February). At least 79 percent of those researched agree future generations should understand African-Americans' historical struggles, though the message of honouring these struggles doesn't resound as strongly for younger generations as in previous ones.
Black youth also have a different picture of black challenges, believing issues of racism and oppression are more covert today. They focus more on financial empowerment, battling crime, and educational advancement, and prefer for Black History Month to highlight current African-American accomplishments and issues.
63 percent of respondents also think companies' participation in Black History month helps enhance their image and are more likely to buy products and spread hype for those that tote black achievements.
So maybe Nissan's onto something. But we doubt it.
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