Most people have seen the picture to the right, where Cuban dictator Fidel Castro is seen recovering in his hospital bed, showing a recent paper to indentify that he is indeed alive after intestinal surgery. One of the most glaring items in the picture, though, is the Adidas logo that's on Castro's red, white and blue warmup jacket. It's a really obvious case of what sports uniform guru Paul Lukas would derisively call "logo creep," but it doesn't seem to be one that any athletic company would want to be associated with.

So how do the folks at Adidas feel about this picture? They're ambivalent, according to TheNew York Times. They're proud of the fact that they outfit the Cuban national teams, especially when they win Olympic medals or other international competitions, but they don't really seem concerned that someone much of the world thinks is evil is wearing their gear. "We don't really look at it as anything," a spokesman told the Times. "It's not a positive, not a negative."

The article goes on to talk about other cases of what they call "inadvertent product placement," like when Ford Bronco sales rose after O.J. Simpson rode one in his infamous car chase, and when Bill Clinton left Air Force One carrying a copy of The Economist.

As I mentioned on TV Squad earlier today, Google is looking to take a piece of the $74 billion TV ad market. The goal, according to CEO Eric Schmidt, is to create targeted ads to TV watchers, so they won't be wasting their time watching ads for products they'll never be interested in (think of the college students who have to endure all the Depends ads on The Price Is Right).

How they plan on doing it is a little unclear, mainly because they haven't settled on a plan themselves. It could be via a set-based web browser that shows ads that are based on your channel and web surfing. Or it could be some other kind of protocol. Either way, the company is looking for software engineers with experience with television technology, so they're getting ready to do something. If anyone can pull this off, it's Google.

[via Slashdot]

If it seems like you've heard more about this year's new fall pilots than at any time you can remember, you're not alone. Due to availability of this year's slate of pilots -- through screeners sent to people like me and my TV Squad colleages, DVDs available through Netflix, online previews, and illegal BitTorrent downloads -- more people than ever before have gotten an early look at the fall pilots. Media buyers are well aware of this, according to this article from The New York Times, and are advising their clients on which shows to purchase ad time based on how much each show is being talked about online.

According to one report, the most talked about shows are Heroes, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, Vanished, 30 Rock, and Friday Night Lights. Least talked about? Happy Hour, Standoff, Notes from the Underbelly, Big Day, and Help Me Help You (Big Day and Underbelly have since been moved to mideason to make room for another buzzworthy show, Ugly Betty).

Sometimes, an ad comes out that's just so understated in its humor, that it you end up remembering it better than ones that hammer you over the head with jokes. A good example of that is Ask.com's "Animals In Pants" ad.

In it, a research scientist is looking for a pot pie recipe on the web using Ask.com. He's using the site's "Binoculars" feature, which lets you preview a site before going to it. He loves it so much he says to his colleague, who's holding an orangutan in a pair of striped pants, "If you think about it, without tools we'd be just... you know..." to which a deep, kind of melancholy voice replies, "Animals in pants?"

It's the orangutan! But here's the kicker, and the subtle add-on that makes the add so much funnier to me: the scientist agrees with the orangutan, and we think the conversation is over, but then we hear the little guy say forlornly, "I'm hungry."

Awww. It's amazing how that one resignedly-delivered line makes me both laugh and feel sorry for this imaginary talking primate all at the same time. Will it get me to use Ask.com? Probably not. But at least I'm aware that it's there (and it's not called Ask Jeeves anymore). So at least they've achieved brand awareness. Now when I think of Ask, I won't think of a snooty butler, I'll think of a sad, hungry orangutan in pants. Nice going, Ask!

There are two ads out for the Hummer H3 that I don't quite get. One has a man who eats veggies and tofu buying an H3 after a meat-eating male sees him buying the light stuff at a supermarket, the other has a mom buying an H3 after some snooty mother and her kid cuts in front of her as she waits for the slide. Both ads are trying to say that buying an H3 will make up for some sort of inadequacy in your life. But I don't get it: how does buying a massive (not as massive as an H2, but still pretty big) SUV that will cost you seventy-five bucks to fill up twice a week going to make you feel better about yourself? Is that really the message Hummer wants to convey?

Seth Stevenson of Slate feels the same way; in fact, he goes on to wonder why Hummer would even endorse the commonly-held belief that people who own Hummers are somehow making up for their lack of... well, you know what I'm talking about. I mean really, at this point, Hummer just come out with a commercial that says, "If your package is small, we've got the perfect car for you!"

Oh, to see the ads: once on the Hummer site, click on the splash screen to enter the main site, then click on the "Hummer World" menu, then the item "TV Commercials". The ads in question are "Slide" and "Tofu".

I'm sure most AdJab readers have seen a variation of this ad: a young office drone bites into his ChocoStix, signing "I wonder what's inside?" as if he's in an off-key version of A Chorus Line. When he discovers that there's Oreo inside, he goes "It's Oreo! The inside tastes just like an Oreo!", then he starts belting out the rest of the tune. In one version of the ad, his office mates tell him to shush. But in the version of the ad below, all of his office mates join him a song and dance routine, complete with jazz hands.

I'm not sure how I feel about these ads. I kind of like this guy's warbly, off-key singing in Broadway musical style. But I'm wondering why they cast this floppy-haired "alterna-dude" in the role. Wouldn't it have been better to cast someone who actually looks like an office drone, not an actor uncomfortably dressed in a shirt and tie? One of the other office mates in this ad -- a redhead with a beard -- looks like another "alterna-dude" that, if he works in an office, it's probably not one that makes people wear shirts and ties (both guys would look very realistic if the office was at Google, for instance). Anyway, I think this is one of those ads that you love the first couple of times you see it, but gets irritating after repeated viewings. What do you think? Let me know in the comments.

I don't know what it is about those Chrysler commercials featuring DaimlerChrysler chairman Dieter Zetsche, but for some reason, I keep thinking that ol' Dr. Z isn't really who they say he is. I don't know whether it's because he's got that bushy moustache, or because he actually does a pretty good acting job (especially with his dismissive "Wiedersehen!"), but it just doesn't look like a typical corporate chairman or CEO is doing these ads. Think about CEO pitchmen of the past: even the most charming among them, like Dave Thomas of Wendy's and Lee Iaccoca, Dr. Z's most famous predecessor, were a little stiff and out-of-their-element on most of the ads, even if they had been doing them for a while. Meanwhile, Dr. Z looks like a natural. So, my ad-watching gut keeps thinking something is amiss, even though my brain knows that my gut is wrong.

I'm not the only one who feels this way. A marketing research study done by Chrysler dealers revealed that 80 percent of consumers thought Dr. Z was a fictional character instead of the company's chairman. Also, while 70 percent of TV watchers liked Zetsche, only 50 percent of radio listeners did. The other 50 percent couldn't understand his accent.

Either way, Chrysler sales are down 17 percent from last July, but that could be because Chrysler makes shoddy vehicles that guzzle way too many gallons of $3.50 gas. Just a hunch.

Those ads you see at the top of the AdJab page (and any blog from Weblogs, Inc.) are about to get a whole lot more animated. As I mentioned over at TV Squad today, MTV Networks has agreed to a deal where Google will distribute video clips of some MTV and Nickelodeon shows to web sites that use their AdSense service. The clips, of Laguna Beach, SpongeBob SquarePants, and the MTV Video Music Awards, will contain mini-ads, the sale of which will be handled by MTV.

If this trial works, expect to see more blogs and other web sites contain video-based ads instead of those quiet little Google ads they have now. Will it be more annoying? Sure. But I guess annoying is the wave of the future on the Web. Hopefully, these ads won't blare too loudly before users scramble to find the tiny "pause" button.

TV Week has news that Dell has signed on to be the first advertiser on CNN's new Exchange website. CNN Exchange was launched last week as a repository for viewers to upload homemade videos, audio, and photos of news events. Unlike other user video sites like YouTube, CNN staffers will vet every contribution for accuracy before posting them to the site.

What's unusual about the Dell deal is that, along with the "traditional" banner ads and sponsored polls, CNN will attach a 30-second Dell ad to the beginning of all videos, which is something that is usually not seen on sites with user-generated content. Those ads will start later this month; the banner ads are already up.

Everyone knows that CBS gears its ads on The Price Is Right towards the older crowd. But I've always wondered why they did that; judging by the studio audience, the show attracts college students as well as seniors. Anyway, it looks like the demographics extend to the prizes on the show, as they tend to give a way a lot of campers, RVs, and dinette sets. Because of this, sometimes there is a severe mismatch between a contestant and the prize he or she wins.

But this takes the cake. On this morning's edition of TPiR -- I think it was a rerun -- I just saw a college student win her very own... brand new... Rascal Scooter! Now, what in the hell is she going to do with that thing? Give it to her grandmother? Ride it between classes? If it were me, I'd probably have that thing up on eBay so fast, it would make the producers' heads spin. But I'm in a fun mood today, so I'll ask you, kind AdJab readers: what would you do if you one one of those things? Let me know in the comments.

I stopped drinking soda of any kind a while ago -- something a nutritionist said about the caramel coloring contributing to diabetes freaked me out. But I did try Coke Zero when it came out about a year ago, and it's tastes pretty close to real Coca-Cola, at least moreso than Diet Coke. The folks at Coke think so, too, hence their new campaign: Coke-ness. The implication is that Coke Zero has a lot of Coke-ness to it, hence it's safe to call it a Coke.

The new ad that's been circulating on TV lately demonstrates this in a pretty funny way. One friend asks "What are you drinking?" and the other guy says "Coke". "But the can says Coke Zero," says the skeptical first friend. Then the Zero fan launches into a funny tirade about not believing everything you read, most funnily pointing to a menu saying "World Famous" and doubting it, saying "Like people from Katmandu are goin' crazy about these calzones." I just like the quick banter of the ad; by the time you're done laughing at the calzone line, for instance, another funny line is right behind it.

The last line of the ad is really funny, too, but I won't spoil it for you; just watch the ad here and see for yourself.

We've all seen this commercial, aired at various times throughout the day: just a scene of a woman rubbing what looks like a big Chap Stick on her forehead and the sound of a woman saying "HeadOn: Apply directly to the forehead" three times in a row. It may be cheesy, it may annoy the hell out of you, but you remember it. That's why I feel the ad is unadulterated marketing genius.

Seth Stevenson of Slate's "Ad Report Card" feels the same way, and he breaks down why it's so brilliant in this article. In fact, he gives the ad for the homeopathic headache remedy an A+, a grade he almost never gives out (lots of A's, but no A+'s). By the way, Slate gives you an opportunity to see the ad in all its homemade glory.

Most of the time, the American Family Association's efforts to get advertisers to pull their sponsorship from shows the organization deems racy or obscene falls on deaf ears; after all, the companies like making money and most feel that the AFA is full of crap. But every once in a while, they hit their target.

Case in point: T-Mobile's CEO Robert Dotson wrote the association to tell them that the company is pulling its ads from all FX shows. The CEO, in response to the AFA's "Fed-Up With FX" campaign, watched the shows on the channel and decided they were too edgy and racy for his company, which markets a lot to families.

Granted, some of FX's wares lately have been on that razor's edge: Rescue Me recently had a controversial episode where Denis Leary's character rapes an ex. And Rescue Me, Nip/Tuck, The Shield, and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia are rife with strong profanities, sexual and scatological situations, and violence (hey, that's what makes those shows good, but that's just me...). Here's what I wonder about, though: FX has been airing shows like this for years now. Didn't anyone at T-Mobile have any clue about the content of the shows on FX? It shouldn't take a letter from the AFA to make an advertiser aware of where their commercials are appearing. My guess is that they didn't care until someone decided to protest. There's no outrage if no one notices, right?

Geico's ad agency loves to come up with ads that make people scratch their heads, laugh, then scratch their heads again. But at least they get attention. There are the gecko ads, of course. Then you've got the ultra-sophisticated cavemen, "Tiny House", and a bunch of other ads that have little to do with insurance but a lot to do with creativity. Now, Geico has put out a set of commercials where real customers recount their positive experiences with the company, backed up by the stylings of old-time celebrities like Charo, Little Richard, and composer Burt Bacharach.

The Charo and Little Richard commercials are OK... Charo does her "coochie coochies" and Richard does his best "rock preacher" schtick. But the Bacharach ad creeps me out a bit. In it, a woman recounds getting rear-ended by a Geico customer, and being converted to the company by her dealings with it on that accident. All the while, Burt is spastically singing random song snippets like "I got hit... in the reeeeaaaarr...." Let's just say that Burt didn't look all that... healthy during the ad. I tried Googling to see if he had any health problems, but I couldn't find anything. Does he always look like that when he's playing? Please let me know in the comments.

(And little did I realize as I Googled for news of his health problems that Burt now blogs at The Huffington Post. Hey, so do I! Jeez, they'll just let anyone blog over there, won't they?)

(I'm talking about me, of course, not Bacharach.)

Anyone who was watching Saturday's Mets-Cubs game on SportsNet New York were probably wondering why young Mets star David Wright was standing there in his uniform asking people to come to something called the "Salvation Miracles Revival Crusade." Apparently, this "Crusade" is lead by a faith-healer, Dr. Jaerock Lee, and will make a stop at Madison Square Garden this month. But usually anyone from a Major League team who would be promoting something like this aren't allowed to do so wearing the logos of their team, lest people think the team endorses the event. So what gives?

Apparently, the person who shot the ad had a press credential and used it to get Wright's "endorsement", which is completely against the rules. The Mets put out a press release saying that the ad has been pulled, and Wright has released a statement -- obviously written by the PR staff -- admitting his error and apologizing. Hm. It's too bad the ad won't be shown again; it seems like it would get a high "Unintentional Comedy Rating" from the likes of ESPN's Bill Simmons. Maybe YouTube has it...