VW Rock Campaign Gets Parking Ticket

Adrants reader James Gardner snapped this camera phone shot of a street promotion that's part of the currently running VdubRocks Volkswagen campaign. The vehicle in the picture was outside a guitar store on Boston's Boylston street and guitars were hooked up to the car just as they are in the ads. Noting the bright orange parking ticket on the windshield, the Boston Police Department didn't take too kindly to the promotion blocking the sidewalk.

Farley Interviewed, Restaurant Video, Yahoo Humbles

- Brandweek interviewed Toyota Group VP Jim Farley, named the publication's Grand Marketer of the Year, who shared his ideas on what Toyota is dealing with from a marketing perspective and how he plans to move the car maker's marketing forward.

- Moe's Southwest Grill has hooked up with ViTrue for a make your own commercial contest which will be hosted on Sharkel and on the restaurant's site.

- "I am not satisfied with our current financial performance, and we intend to improve it," Yahoo's Terry Semel said. "We are not exploiting our considerable strengths as well as we should be, and we are committed to doing better."

- With interstitial comes ons and embedded text ads, job sites such as Monster and others are implementing ever more intrusive forms of advertising to keep their business model afloat.

- Running for governor in Texas is a kinky business.

Alltel Wireless Campaign Continues Downward Spiral

The Alltel Wireless campaign, which began with the great concept of personifying competing mobile phone companies, continues it downward spiral with a second installment of its "mall geeks" cell phone company personification. Once again, the other companies try to get Alltel to end its MyCircle plan, this time with a bribe. It falls flat.

Nike Represents Motion With Solid Objects

Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam has done some nice work for Nike in its Team Nike ACG Fall campaign. The agencies blog explains the thinking behind the campaign made up of motion converted to solid objects representing that motion, writing, "The idea was to capture the fleeting beauty of their performance and turn it into something solid." You can see other ads in the campaign here.

Cox Sports Rebrands, Bobbits Appendage From Name

Perhaps because it's been the butt of dick jokes for so long or on-air personalities could no longer say "Cox" with a straight face, Cox Sports Television has neutered itself and will now be know as CST. Regional Sports and Network Head (yes that's his real title) Rod Mickler explained the change saying, "The updated CST has been designed to maximize the viewer's experience while offering the same reliable, entertaining and up-to-the-minute sports coverage our CST viewers have come to expect." The folks over at Priority PR apparently nixed an earlier quote in which Mickler may have said, "We don't know how Dick Butkus does it but we just can't stand one more 'Cox Excited Over Quarterly Revenue Explosion' or 'Cox Expands With Erection of New Office Tower' headline"

Dove Illustrates Why Perception of Beauty is Distorted

When we as an industry set out to create a beautiful ad, we tend to sometimes let our creativity and this thing called Photoshop run amock. Clearly demonstrating this penchant and fixation for beautifying everything in our path is this Dove commercial - created by Ogilvy Toronto and produced by Reginald Pike - in which an average looking woman is, first, subjected to intense physical makeover and then intense digital makeover turning her into the very familiar but very unreal woman we see gracing the pages of magazines and as subject matter for our advertising.

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Oprah, Bono Appear At Gap's (Product) Red Promotion

Michael Shostack was in Chicago today and stopped by the Gap's (Product_ RED) promotion at its store on Ohio and Michigan. He wasn't too impressed with the promotion reporting the throngs of people had but about five seconds to view celebs Oprah Winfrey and Bono from far across the other side of the street behind barricades. In the early Chicago cold weather today wasn't enough, that five second view was blocked by an army of red jacket-wearing Gap employees who lined up in front of the stores entrance, blocking what little view there was of Oprah and Bono as they made their way from their cars to the strore's entrance. Blocked view or not, Michael did snap a pretty good shot of the pair as they made their way inside, commenting Orpah looked very, very tiny. Check out his full coverage of the event here along with additional photos.

KISS's Gene Simmons Attends ANA Conference, Gets Interviewed

AdWeek's Alison Fahey, writing on the AdFreak blog, tells us about her experience interviewing famed KISS bassist Gene Simmons and how he's taken what was once just a rock brand and turned it into a successful global brand. Alison says there wasn't much tongue wagging and there was no blood spilled. All in all, a good interview.

Greased Interview Nets New Subway Tagline

One has to wonder whether or not Agency.com's Subway Video fiasco might not have turned out better if they took this tack when they did their man on the street interviews. At least they might not have offended that Amish guy Hassidic Jew. Oh wait, it wasn't the interviews that did it. They crucified themselves but whatever.

Adrants reader Nicholas Hall points out Will McKinley likes to go to Subway but he only goes for the Diet Coke. It's his "delivery method of choice for the precious elixir caffeine." He hates the food but loves to go to various Subway's throughout New York for his caffeine needs. The other day, as he was leaving a Subway, he was approached by a guy with a video camera and a microphone who wanted to talk to Will about his Subway experiences. Will offered that he might not be the best guy to talk to as he has no love for the place but the guy, undeterred, offered Will $5 and said, "I'll pay you $5 to say something good." So Will thought for a second, said sure, and decided to lie about hw much he loved Subway. Score one for that marketing organization.

Will didn't stop there. When asked his favorite thing about Subway, Will invented a new tagline for the place, "Subway is healthy, fast and cheap. Just how I like my women."

Infiniti Canada Has Bad Grammar

No doubt, we're the last people you'd expect to comment on English grammar so we're not going to. We're going to let Adrants reader Michael Scott take the floor and tell us about his efforts to try to get Infiniti Canada to correct the grammar he claims is wrong in this ad

Here's a copy of a plea I sent to [email protected] two months ago......and again today:

SUBJECT: Your "All that's missing ARE the wings" co-op newspaper advertisement

Please, pull the ad from your co-op kit and replace it with a corrected version........(or, alternatively, advise all dealers to stop running the print ad.) (The ad appeared in Tuesday, Oct 10th's National Post, page A6, over your dealer Woodchester Infiniti's name.)

If this ad is going to live on........the headline must be corrected to read, "All that's missing IS the wings."

In its current form, I'm sure you are repelling more potential buyers than you are attracting. (I know it throws ME off my lunch every time I see it!!)

The subject of your headline is the word "ALL"........not "WINGS". Therefore the verb "is" must be used to agree with the subject, not the PLURAL "are" as it now reads.

Apparently you don't trust me as a source of English usage. I wrote to you about this a couple of months ago as well as to your agency, but the ad continues to run in its gut-wrenching form.

Please consult someone at your ad agency who is over the age of 40 and who learned how to speak English back in the day when teachers cared and/or knew the difference between good and just plain WRONG.

So there, Infiniti.