"No! No! No! No, it's not a clandestine promotion for the band Sick Puppies, " our intern yelled at us. "But, come one, a guy in a video with a sign that says Free Hugs roaming around in Sydney, Australia just hoping to brighten the world with nothing to gain from it?" we shouted back. "Yes you jaded idiot," screamed the intern, "Not everything on YouTube is trying to sell you something."
Not convinced, we stood up and asked, "What about this little gem on the Free Hugs website that says 'With grass root marketing tactics we promote products and ideas that are in line with our core values and the FREE HUGS message.'? I suppose that just means the products and ideas they claim to promote are love and goodwill?"
"Damn," the intern who was now jumping out of her seat bellowed. "You pompous, unfeeling know-it-all! Do you think the only thing every human being thinks about is getting the newest version of the iPod?" "Um, yes," we answered.
"Fuck you," she screamed as she turned and left, likely to go give someone a free hug.
 Recent speculation that Wal-mart and other big box retailers may stop using free standing inserts in newspapers is predicted to cause a giant stampede to the newsstand as the public realizes it can actually read a newspaper without having to wade through an inch thick pile of irrelevant advertising just to catch up on the status of Paris Hilton's ass flap or whether Dick Cheney still exists. While newspapers are said to be in a state of shock over the impending doom, many fail to realize people might actually agree to pay for their product, thus increasing circulation thus increasing ad rates thus increasing revenue, if they could actually find the editorial buried beneath that orgy of advertising known as the FSI. OK so that's cracked logic but, on the other hand, if newspaper publishers finally realize the importance of deodorant that costs five cents less pales in comparison to the important news of who George Clooney will date this week to foil paparazzi, this recent news might not be so hard to swallow. OK, that's cracked logic too but...oh forget it.
- Agency vet Scott G shares his views on agency diversity including his overhearing an agency exec tell a recruiter "No blacks or Hispanincs."
- Geico's back with another one of those caveman commercials.
- Bill Green from Make the Logo Bigger goes much further than our usually brief, pat hand slap offered marketers for their over reliance on consumer generated media and tells clients to take the handcuffs off their own agency's creative and watch what happens.
- Mark Cuban says anyone who buys YouTube is a moron.
- Advertising Age reviews Advertising Week and determines it's the booze that made it a success.
- Al Ries, weighing in a year later, thinks the name change from J. Walter Thompson to JWT is dumb.
- We liked Yahoo's Bully commercial. Predictably, Bob Garfield didn't.
- Clear Channel offers ad units that are shorter and shorter and shorter and shorter and shorter and...well...shorter.
 Dishing out some of the best diversity-related smack talk, New York City Councilman Larry Seabrook, in reaction to New York advertising agencies' failure to heed an invitation to appear at yesterday's minority-owned public hearings. said agencies "ran like chickens with their asses plucked clean." Well we all know agency folk are right up there with metrosexuals when it comes to trimming the privates, ass plucking is a new one on us. Agencies, advised by the AAAA's legal counsel, idn't show because they were told their earlier hiring arrangements with the Human Rights Council was enough to do the diversity trick. Like last minute preparations for a big presentations where "Fuck it. We don't need that. We'll just fake it during the presentation" is commonplace thought, agencies figured Advertising Week events would be a whole lot more fun than being grilled by a bunch of pissed off, pro-diversity city officials. Afterall, the Week's crucially important, all expenses paid, lavish luncheons and late night parties just can't be missed.
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If you're not going to use hot women in bikinis when you create your beer commercial masterpiece, the only other option, really, is to blow stuff up with beer cans. Reminiscent of the famed OutPost.com Gerbil commercial, are several videos on YouTube of a few guys who were paid by Milwaukee's Best to make a beer cannon that projects beer cans into objects in front of a target such as a television, a watermelon, a plant, mayonnaise, beef stew, eggs and other assorted items. Collectively, the videos have been viewed almost a couple million times on YouTube.
If you want to see all the vdeos crammed into one, there's a montage version set the the tune of Robert Wagner's The Ride of the Valkyries made popular in the movie Apocalypse Now. All the videos are on the Milwaukee's Best website too.
The Ambiguously Effective Idea that Just Won't Die is back and nebulous as ever. A stock called TMXO leaped 31% on September 5 after somebody sent out a GIF with one of those wildly appealing messages that you discover in your e-mail twenty-six times a day.
Apparently "stock spam" can artificially spike a stock by 4.9-6 for the average spammer. So why did TMXO do almost five times better? *Sigh* Because of subliminal advertising: that seemingly innocent GIF consists of four frames, only one of which is the message you think you see. The other three spout BUY BUY BUY BUY BUY.
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In a very un-TV network-like manner and in response to freaks like this who are offended any company would dare to promote anything on YouTube, NBC created a video called Bill the Promo Guy in which Bill asks viewers to understand he does the promos because the salary he receives for producing them puts his son through prep school and buys his daughter a horse. NBC has arrived. It gets YouTube. It gets the video response. It gets this groovin' social media thing. Ah fuck it, it's just another ad. But a good one. A really, really good one. Kudos.
Two makes a trend and and now it's official. Hot pregnant women are the new advertising hood ornament. Following the formerly reported ad for SEAT Altea car maker which featured a hot pregnant woman adorning the hood of a car, hot pregnant (photoshopped) women are now promoting Nova Shin beer. Or at least we think that's what they're promoting. It was odd enough to have a pregos Demi Moore and Britney Spears on magazine covers. Now we'll be seeing them in ad everywhere because, of course, pregnancy is a beautiful thing, right?
We knew it was coming. We knew it was only a matter of time. Well, now it's official. Anheuser-Busch, in February 2007, will launch Bud.tv, an online content channel with entertainment, news, celebrity interviews, comedy and sports and Bud Tube, a YouTube-like site whereby people can upload the usual consumer generated media type stuff. The brewer has invested 30 million on the project and content will come from Kevin Spacey, Vince Vaugh, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon-owned production companies as well as from the agencies that currently produce the brewer's advertising. With a February 2007 launch, it's likely we'll see Super Bowl spots promoting the launch - that is if the TV net doesn't see it as too competitive.
- Davis Freeberg sends us this long form commercial for TiVo called Blue Moon which is a 50's-style video explaining an important scentific discovery that turns out to be, yes, a TiVo.
- While we really like this new campaign for Florida's Commerce Bank which, in the TV spot, asks "When did you stop thinking you were a magician?" and other kid-related things along with images of kids that change to adults at the end of the commercial, there seems to be a missing transition between the innocence of dreaming in kidhood and Commerce Bank's assertion you can keep dreaming in adulthood if you bank with them. The work was created by Hispanic agency, The Lab thelabideas.com
- Put your Hispanic marketing caps on because the demographic segment is growing eight times faster than other other groups and will, this year, match the purchasing power of African-Americans spending over &800 billion.
- Arthur Schiff, the man behind the classic Ginsu Knife commercials as well as many other informercials died earlier this week at the age of 66.
- Debuting next week during the Come Out & Play festival in New York this month will be "kill them with kindness" game called Cruel 2 B Kind. The game assigns players one weapon and one weakness which consist of random acts of kindness which are to be delivered to other players who could be anyone on the street in the game zone.
- Maverick Media has created another Windows Live Messenger video, called Bottle, that points out the dangers of using old technology to deliver office messages.
- South African singer Verity is hoping record her album by pre-selling 5,000 CDs through a project called the Lucky Packet Project to finance the cost of recording the album. About ten percent of the revenue will go to the South African charity People Opposing Women's Abuse.
- OK, this Great Escape video for the PSP game Dark Mirror is just weird but it definitely reminds one to be sure which bed they slip into the night before.
- T-list is taking social media physical by selling t-shirts on which people can place thisr top five lists of bands, movies, places or any other list one might find on MySpace or any other social media site.
- Getting even closer to the day ads will be affixed to the back of church pews, the Boy Souts of America are now accepting brand sponsorship of its Scout Badges.
- While you may have heard of this stunt already, here's the video of UK artist Bansky "punking" Paris Hilton's new CD by buying copies, altering the cover sleeve's content and replacing her CD with an audio remox of her favorite and inane comments.
- A&T is hyping its online entertainment site Blue Room by airing, on September 10, footage from the Conde Nast Fashon Rocks pre-party featuring Elton John performing highlights from the songs on his upcoming The Captain and the Kid album.
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