We all have to deal with vermin from time to time, but rarely do we have to fight them for our fried chicken, dolphin v. man-style. This is what patrons of a KFC in Greenwich Village had to do when a deluge of vermin ran a rampage across tables, chairs and trays.
Graham and Jamie fill us in on the story and include a clever little comic where PR guys (of course) save the day. Because in the end, tons of rats generate tons of press for KFC and "Customer Mania!" parent company Yum! as a whole. You just have to know how to spin it. No advertising is bad advertising ... right?
- Now here's an ad that really reaches out and touches you.
- Oh God. All we need is another meaningless marketing buzzword that capitalizes on yet another new trend.
- Just in time to comment of CareerBuilder's idiotic "firing" of its agency comes this Forrester report which claims marketers love to place blame on agencies but can't back it up with any sort of "failure metrics."
- Heineken has $70 million to spend but it's unclear who they'll spend it with.
- Starbucks' CEO laments some of the streamlining changes he's made and ponders its affect on the brand.
- What? Again? Starcom nabs Advertsing Age's Media Agency of the Year nod.
- Joe Jaffe is finishing his follow-up to "Life after the 30-second spot", titled "Join the Conversation: How to engage marketing-weary consumers with the power of community, dialogue and partnership and he needs your input for a survey he's doing on Conversational Marketing that will be a topic in the upcoming book. He's looking for brand marketers to complete the survey. Lend him a hand.
- Furniture retailer Levitz has signed on as a major sponsor of HomeTeam, the nationally syndicated weekly TV show that helps people become homeowners.
It seems $50 million dollar marketing decisions can now be made on the basis of winning or losing a newspaper's ad popularity contest. Yes, that's right. CareerBuilder has placed its account in review because its ads did not make a top ten appearance in USA Today's Super Bowl ad poll, a tiny survey based on just a few hundred people with absolutely nothing to do with whether or not an ad affected sales.
Cramer-Krasselt President Peter Krikovich is pissed. Livid. Dumfounded. And steaming mad and tells Advertising Age he responded to CareeBuilder's opening a review based on the poll by asking, "You have to be fucking kidding me, right?" The agency has resigned the account and will not participate in the review.
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For Dov Charney, who's bowing out of American Apparel in pursuit of his own manifest destiny, office life has been a source of both business and pleasure.
Short of being a lumberjack or Chuck Norris, Dov Charney is a king among men. Dov Charney:
* Masturbates regularly in front of reporters
* Gets freaky with colleagues (thanks, Jewlicious)
* Pushes American Apparel's squeaky clean clothes with skanky adverts
* Still manages to position American Apparel as an ethical business that pays good wages and poses no harm to overseas workers
While Julie Roehm fights for footstools over in Pariah-ville, she must be shaking her fist at what Dov got away with over the course of his career, also behind the guise of a similarly apple pie all-American style company.
Granted, American Apparel ain't all sex, and it isn't the first brand to use R-rated tactics to pull in a fickle demo.
Are we looking at a double standard? And double standards aside, is America just too uptight about this sex stuff?
It was only a matter of time before Wrigley's Candystand, whose candy-tagged games get progressively better, would start testing waters in real gamer territory.
Candystand and Wii just joined forces in a bizarre cross-branding where Wii web games are peddled on Candystand and Candystand is totally accessible through the Wii browser.
The relationship isn't exactly low-key - within 24 hours of launching on Wii's Internet Channel, Wii.Candystand.com drew 6000 visitors and a ton of positive reviews. That is, according to Scott Tannen, Wrigley's director of global digital marketing.
This is the first branded site to link to the Wii browser, which will definitely get competitors sniffing at the door to be next in line. Candystand's content offerings are also formatted for television instead of computer monitors.
Kudos to Wrigley for creating a series of branded offerings that seem able to stand alone in gaming world. It hasn't been an easy trek, considering Candystand was first introduced in '97 - building this kind of recognition takes time. Just ask Target.
We still harbor doubts that our Socom buddies would be deeply impressed to hear we destroy the competition on Altoids Sheep, though.
We thought the Microsoft Butterfly was kind of nifty. The guy in the BlackBerry suit? Not so much. Giant plush costumes are so deceptive in their frozen state of cheer and rarely work outside Chuck E Cheese and college football fields, where they can be ridiculed at leisure by their own peers.
The requisite BlackBerry Mascot MySpace, as if we care.
Why? Why? Why? Why do brands launch these massive campaigns, spend all this money and make ads that don't say a thing about what the company does? Are there people in agencies that still think "branding" without meaningful substance works? Apparently, not after one of those day-long, mind-numbing vision, mission, essence, position self-serving mind fucks. After that, they're all sipping the Kool Aid without realizing the consumer wasn't in that meeting all day and has no idea what the hell the resulting brand messaging is trying to convey.
Sure, this Mobius award winning Bart Domination campaign for Kaiser Permanente will certainly force the company's name into the conscious and subconscious mind of everyone within eye sight but will they walk away having any idea what the company does? Oh wait. Yea. There's this thing called the Internet. Oh wait. There's no URL in the ad. Oh wait. There's this thing called Google. It helps you find stuff. Oh wait, Kaiser's name is impossible to spell. Even if one does find their way to the site, it doesn't even tell you what the company does. Not until you click in several levels or visit the far more helpful Wikipedia listing. And yes, we have heard of Kaiser Permanente before and many people in California, where the campaign is running, have as well but that's not the case with most other marketer's that go this route.
So why? Why? Why make your potential customer work when you only have a split second of their time? Why paint pretty pictures that are devoid of commercial messaging. This isn't art. It's advertising. Wallow in the beautiful non-descriptiveness of this campaign here (PDF).
Oh, and the explanation for why those tree trunks and their copy look fake: "Apparently the photos taken of the installation were not very good and someone thought they could be improved by photoshopping the copy that was on the pillars onto the already poor quality photos."
The next time you're in the grocery store walking down the soda aisle and your six year old daughters asks, loudly, "Daddy, what are hooters" for all nearby shoppers to hear, you had better quickly blame Hooters, the restaurant chain, lest you be stared down by fellow shoppers who wonder exactly what sort of language you teach your child at home. As you turn to your daughter and tell her quietly so other shoppers can't hear, "Well, honey, you don't have to worry about that for about six years. We'll talk about it then," an internal debate suddenly overwhelms you. Oddly, you can't seem to reconcile why hooters are on the shelf in the grocery store when they're usually attached to females and supported by a bra. Or, wait, are hooters just owls?
Suddenly, you forget why you're in the store in the first place. You take your daughter out of the cart, leave the store, walk to your car in which your wife is waiting and blurt, "Honey, your daughter wants to know what hooters are." Your wife stares at you and wonders how in the world a conversation about hooters would begin in the middle of a grocery store. Oh wait. The whole point of this story? Hooters is now selling Hooters-branded soda. And creating embarrassing moments for all.
It's no secret that the US's slow divorce from oil dependence is a transition frowned upon by some. But to joke about it? Publicly? Quel faux-pas.
That's why we dig Toyota Prius' ballsiness. This ad, put together by Saatchi & Saatchi in Poland, throws an ice breaker into the discourse. It doesn't make the Prius any prettier, but it certainly makes the brand more appealing.
Something about the sheikh's despondent expression brings to mind those sad westerns in which ways of life get torn asunder, and natives cruelly displaced, by the new guys in town. Oh sheikh, don't mourn too long for the past. We'd pat your shoulder, but we probably wouldn't recognize you through the tinted windows of the gold-encrusted Hummer.
We suspect Levi's puts its design cash toward licensing fees for the awesome songs they use in ads that keep us trying, year after year, to find a cool pair of Levi's jeans, even if history tells us this will never happen. Lame denim fits aside, the ads are sensory pop art.
We love -- love -- the Dangerous Liaisons ad for their 2007 line. At first we thought it was the usual booty-call striptease bit, because we've seen that gimmick a thousand times, but as the spot wore on we realized something more interesting happening.
In the Bartle Bogle Hegarty masterpiece, a couple undresses to reveal layers of decades suggested in clothing, demeanour, style and even background noise. It moves fluidly from the rough-and-tumble 19th century workjean years to 2007's waifish verge-of-tears emo period. All to the haunting and playful tune of "Strange Love" by Little Annie Bandez.
Time for another futile trip to the flagship store.
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