Yesterday, CareerBuilder.com announced its intent to advertise during the 2006 Super Bowl. It is the first company to make such an announcement. CareerBuilder.com's reports its 2006 marketing strategy will include national outreach and grass roots promotions in local markets. It will include primetime network and cable television, local radio, print, interactive and stadium ads. The campaign will be complemented with advertising support from the more than 130 newspapers, 48 television stations and Web sites of owners Tribune Company, Gannett and Knight Ridder.
And, yes, those chimpanzees will be back.
Ad Age reports Trojan plans to air its condom ads during prime time rather than the usual fringe and late night dayparts. Trojan CEO James Craigie promises the ads will be tame and safe for all dayparts. It's unclear whether the networks have yet accepted the ads.
While we are highly doubtful Burger King or Crispin Porter + Bogusky officially had anything to do with this, the prominent display of Burger King in this white boy rapper video, called F'ing Yo Mom's in the Ass, is certainly worth noting. Burger King gets considerable screen time in this video which is just weird enough to get passed around virally as it already has having shown up on CollegeHumor. The Whois site registration info is not hidden leading one to perhaps believe the site is legit, then again, we're talking about CP+B here who would never register a site blindly - a telltale sign of marketer involvement.
Given the subject matter of the video and the rest of the CD's content, it would be very surprising if Burger King actually had any involvement with its creation. Then again, stranger things have happened and marketing isn't what it used to be. Perhaps it really is just a couple of dudes having fun. Perhaps not.
 Money Shot, Butchered When Tiger Woods made that famous 16th hole shot, leaving the Nike golf ball hanging on the edge of the cup, swoosh visible for two long seconds before dropping in, the ad industry speculated wildly over over how Nike would turn this moment into a commercial. Well, three weeks passed, nothing was released and the industry gave up hope. In the meantime - actually, the day the shot occurred, Joe Jaffe, pointed out this perfect opportunity for Nike and created a spec spot on his own. Simply and without un-necessary editorializing, Jaffe's version illustrated the miraculous moment and ended quietly with "Just do it." It took a fantastic sporting moment, which needed no additional explanation, and commercialized it beautifully.
While all had given up hope Nike would take advantage of this moment, a Nike-created spot finally emerged a week or so ago. It was about as timely as that Bud Light Super Bowl spot making fun the previous year's Janet Jackson nipple slip. Did it really have to take that long for client and agency to get their shit together? The spot, using the same imagery from the famous day and interspersed with black screen/white type banal messaging, closes with a lame, inside joke about how Woods should have, at least, landed the ball in a way that made the Nike logo more visible.
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Likely fearful of the less than upscale brand perception associated with Sears and Sears' recent purchase of Kmart, Nike has decided to stop selling its shoes at the mass retailer. Nike, apparently. does not want to associate it self with downmarket Sears. Some say it's a good thing and will allow Nike to continue as a hip, premium and expensive brand. Others, such as Sterling Group President Debbie Millman think it's not so smart saying, "It is surprising and incredibly short-sighted of Nike to pull their sneakers from Sears. This would have been the perfect opportunity to leverage the idea of a 'specially designed' sneaker for the retailer in an effort to capitalize on the current design-led economy we are living in, which is a good part of what is currently differentiating Target."
Ad Age's Jonah Bloom makes a solid argument why Miller should not retire its High Life man in favor of beer commercial dejour. Bloom says the campaign aligns more closely with the realities of beer drinkers and is a welcome offset to the metrosexualization of everything else. While bidding farewell to the campaign, Bloom hopes Wieden & Kennedy can replace it with something just as good.
Once upon a time, when a toilet bowl needed to be cleaned, there was a simple plastic-handled, nylon brush that, when combined with a bit of cleaning fluid, would do a perfectly good job removing accumulated body waste. Now, marketers have seen fit, as they have with floor and counter top cleaning products, to produce and market throw away cleaning brushes that, while certainly less disgusting than the old permanent brushes, just make more trash to throw away, filling landfills, already bulging with all the other throw away products invented, seemingly, to make life easier but, in actuality, contribute to the destruction of natural resources.
In the face of that, Clorox and SC Johnson are fighting over who can manufacture more trash-generating toilet brushes better and faster with SC Johnson taking issue over claims made by Clorox which SC Johnson says denigrates its product. Apparently, SC Johnson was miffed over a Clorox commercial which poked fun at SC Johnson's "papery version of a toilet brush" and showed it blowing away in the wind while claiming the Clorox brush was preferred 3 to 1 over the SC Johnson brush. That claim was based on, according the National Advertising Division of the Council of Better Business Bureaus, flawed methodology. Clorox, ultimately, pulled its ad. Kinda makes that old, stinky, permanent brush seem a bit more hassle-free.
To resuscitate itself, Estee Lauder has signed a deal with uber-designer Tom Ford to create a line of Estee Lauder branded fragrances as well as a Tom Ford brand. Estee Lauder Brand President hopes Ford can do for his company what Ford did for ailing Gucci, turning Gucci around from near bankruptcy to a $4.3 billion powerhouse. WPP Group's JWT will be on hand to help.
ANIMAL, a Manhattan-based publishing, marketing and media company developed an Absolut ad that comments on the controversial planned sale of the West Side Rail Yards for $700 million. ANIMAL Publisher Bucky Turco explains, “I basically sent this mock ad to Absolut to try and get ANIMAL on their radar in regards to doing creative work and cool events.”
Absolut, however, was not amused and ANIMAL received several irate emails. One stating bluntly, “take me off your mailing list,” and the others to the effect that Absolut does not accept outside solicitations. Turco explains the reasoning behind the ad, “In addition to getting Absolut’s attention we wanted to comment on the sale of the West Side yard. $700 million for 14 acres on prime waterfront in Manhattan? That’s the best we can do?”
Well, at least now, with Google Satellite, everyone can make ads like this.
It would appear McDonald's efforts to get rapper's to mention their brand in songs has paid off, or backfired depending on one's opinion, in the form of a Gatbustaz song, entitled McGangsta, dedicated solely to all things McDonald's. With the usual intestine busting beat and profanity-laden lyrics, the song certainly mentions McDonald's but, likely, not in a manner of which McDonald's would approve. In one of the song's verses, after telling the window attendant to "shut the fuck up," the rapper proceeds with:
I tell you what I want
Beef patties' what I want
Big bum's' what I want
Great bitch is what I want
Big mac, fuckin big macs
I like big macs like a ho likes big dicks
shove one in their move, they damn are lovin it
As if to call attention to the idiocy of McDonald's paying rappers to mention their name, this song ends with the artist calling McDonald's, we think, motherfuckers. If this is, in fact backlash, McDonald's may wish they'd never considered this program.
UPDATE: Commenter are suggesting we've all been had and that is was an April Fool's joke. Not a big surprise.
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