Quick, Mr. Fantastic, download Dr. Doom's nefarious plans using our fast-as-lightening SBC DSL connection! Sure thing, Invisible Woman!
The date: July. The event: SBC and Fox Film give us the one-two sucker punch on marketing for the film Fantastic Four. It's only the second time SBC has gotten it's hooks into a major film, so we suppose it's taking this risk based on the success of past comic-book based films, but eh, whatever. Joint promotions are annoying and weird—I still can't get the bad taste out of my mouth every time I see a Cisco logo on 24.
"Hope springs eternal," says Arizona attorney general Terry Goddard to ABC News (I had to quote it. I had to). And where there's hope, there's marketing. Viagra is a hit, but why buy that when you can get an "all-natural" supplement to do the job? ABC reports that in the male-enhancement industry, a few promises go a long way. Bigger, fuller...ahem...41 percent larger. Yeah, we're suckers for growth, financial and otherwise. But there's not much behind the supplement success except for good marketing. One company spent over one million dollars a month, but they raked in $1 billion in the long run. Just remember, it's not about what's in the pill; it's what's on the packaging.
This is a very good ad. Stella Artois has a new campaign, mostly for the UK crowd I gather, because I haven't seen the spot on US television yet. Hopefully they hop the Atlantic and show them over here, because they're brilliant. The ad features a old-timey piano tinkle, while priests scramble around an frozen lake while a brother fetches the Stella. It's shot on grainy black and white film, giving it the authentic silent movie feel. Wouldn't television be better if we did away with those damn Coors Light ads and stuck to the artsy and absurd?
Thought your special little vibrating razor was making you look clean shaven and sexy, didn't you? Thought that it was worth the 14 dollar price tag, didn't you? Well, AdAge reports that the District Court of Connecticut thinks you're a fool. Because as it turns out, vibration does nothing for whiskers. And Energizer (Schick razors) is going to sue the G-beast for making it's take an unnecessary dive. Gillette ran its first ad for the M3 during the 2004 Super Bowl, undoubtedly causing sporting men everywhere to rush to their local CVS. Oops.
Posted Jun 2nd 2005 1:59PM by Kat Parr Filed under: Online
What do Eminem, Random House Publishing, and TBS all have in common? According to Adrants, they all have blogs. Of course, like all things profit-margin related, it doesn't stop there. Now a new blog network has been formed, called the Music Blog Network. (Does anyone else think that girl with the guitar looks a bit like Courtney Love?) Poking its fingers into the blogosphere, "spread[ing] the word about your new cd release, upcoming tour or video," MBN sells ad space on a variety of websites, including Stereogum and BehindTheLyrics.net. It's the internet equivalent of slapping your band's sticker on the bathroom wall of a club, except it costs a bit more money, and reaches...well, in the case of Sterogum, around 120 thousand web-surfers a day. Rock on! [via Adrants] [thanks, Paul C. of WIN]
A man opens the tailgate on his stylish SUV, and whoops! the giant egg he's trying to load rolls off, heading down an elevator, down an escalator, hopping a ride on a garbage bin, all the while the man running to catch it. These ads are part of AG Edwards' most recent campaign, designed by Carmichael Lynch, trying to zone in on the whole "nest egg" idea, and what fumbling idiots we are when we try to manage our money ourselves. My father, the not-better half of Ma and Pa America at TV Squad, thinks the ads are muck, but I have to politely disagree. They're an effective visual and, in the case of "Losing Control," cute and funny. Besides, even if my dad hates it, he can't seem to forget it, and isn't that what advertising is all about.
Note: To get to the videos, click on the second bar on the top right of the screen. It'll light up green as "Our Stuff."
Milk. It's unconstitutional. Oh wait, that's not the right slogan. In case you hadn't heard, a lower court ruled the 'Got milk' ad campaign unconstitutional because farmers we're required to pay for the ad (as a part of the Dairy Promotion Act). For small-time farmers, four-thousand dollars a year isn't exactly chump change. Still, it's hard to imagine any ad campaign featuring for the Official Drink of Boy Scouts unconstitutional (regardless of whatever jokes we adults make about the ads. wink wink). The decision has been appealed, of course, so we'll let you know what happens next in this high-stakes, down and dirty legal race!
Argh! Maybe you have this billboard in your city, maybe you don't. But it's sprinkled all over mine, and I can't stand it. Can we focus on the suggested image of dribbling hair, first of all? And the advertising team that decided a man pointing to a basketball would best illustrate your balding head should be fired and never allowed to create ads again. A scare tactic! That's what this is! Buy this shampoo before your hair dribbles out and your girlfriend dumps you because you don't look like Dawson from Dawson's Creek. Don't you men know that bald is back? Ever watched Smallville? Heard of Vin Diesel?
We should have predicted the Star Wars frenzy would spread far beyond the usual places. Star Wars toothbrush? Sure. Dark Side scratch game? Of course. Star Wars action figures, with real Wookie fur? You couldn't live without it. Darth Vader contact lenses? Umm..
Oh yes, they do exist. They popped up on one of our Cinematical Google ads (since all we do over there is bitch about Star Wars). Evidently, if you saunter over to Coastal Contacts, you can get Darth Vader contact lenses, or, if your tastes run to the Dark Side but not That Dark, you can get a pair of Sith contacts, which look very much like Darth Vader eyes, but for some inexplicable reason are twice as expensive.
Wow, I did not know this: Mary Kay's "official philosophy is 'God first, family second, and career third.'" Providence's Eyewitness News reports [via TV Tattle] that Mary Kay was slated to do a little product placement on ABC's hit series Desperate Housewives, but a Christian group protested regarding all the sex, lies, and ... sex. The firm agreed to stay out of the Housewives frey, and on the good side of their conservative demographic.
Metrosexuals, halt! Levi Strauss & Co. say that “real men wear no nonsense jeans.” None of this poofy tailored shirt and Diesel jeans, fellows. Other ads of note: MoveOn.org (who get noted quite a bit by AdAge) has a new bit called “Save the Republic,” based on Star Wars, but not necessarily a convincing piece of advertising.
The NBA wants to make room for commercial space on uniforms. NBA commish David Stern is pragmatic about the possibility, saying he doesn’t “doubt it will actually happen.” Hummer ads on the back of the L.A. Lakers? God save the sport.
Behavioral targeting is the new Google ad, at least if you look at the numbers. What is it? Well, for example: “someone who spent time on a financial site looking up mortgage rates could be assumed to be in the market for a new home, so they could be served ads from a mortgage company on whatever Web pages they visit.” Scary.
Nextel’s campaign to attract Hispanic customers worked. Now, 1 out of every 3 Nextel customer is Hispanic, and this is only the first year of the campaign. Ads focused on “interactive audiences,” targeting Yahoo en Espanol, the World Cup, and the network Telemundo.
AdAge reports that the FCC is trying to rid the airwaves of "fake news," the spots that show up on our screen in the form of pretend weather announcements, breaking news, and the scrolling "advertising disclosures" that whip by in seconds after a television show. Also on the blacklist are the so-called cooking shows (it slices! it dices! it makes your children stop crying!) that pay celebrities to appear and testify as to the product's amazing abilities. What AdJab would like to see is an end to the fake articles in magazines, which always come right in the middle of that really interesting article you were reading, and as you turn the page, you find you're suddenly reading about weight loss pills.
Exactly where does all the damn spam come from? Zombie servers! (Grrr, drool, drool, mmm, brains!) Earth Times reports that there's almost 350 thousand of these zombies around the world, created when a a virus worms its way into a user's system to send out millions of undetected emails. So here comes Operation Spam Zombies, a valient attempt to disconnect these zombified computers from the networks they so relentlessly harass. The Federal Trade Commision is in on it, and so are 16 other goverment agencies and 20 countries. Could this be the end of "Blow her away! All Natural Male Enhancements"?
Cinematical has the scoop on Japander's ad-watch of Hollywood celebrities hocking products a la Bill Murray in Lost in Translation. At the moment, Star Wars stars are the sought after commodity, with Natalie Portman and Ewan McGregor both filling Japanese TV screens. Portman engages in some various scenarios in a series aimed at selling shampoo, sliding past paparazzi and swordfighting, and McGregor flashes his trademark smile while getting crazy over coffee.
Our own Tom Biro thought the Firefox "viral" commercials over at funnyfox.org were pretty good, but AdLand's ad-rag thinks the cult browser's films are "predictable, boring, pointless" and not successful in terms of being a hot, pass-it-on item. Mark Kingdon from ClickZ agrees, and wonders, "Is Viral Overexposed?" while pointing out our tendency as internet animals to want to share, share, share that funny little item we saw with everyone in our address book—and we want to share it first, "Who wants to be second?" says Kingdon, but maybe we shouldn't be sharing the POZZ Firefox bits?
Quick, Mr. Fantastic, download Dr. Doom's nefarious plans using our fast-as-lightening SBC DSL connection! Sure thing, Invisible Woman!
"Hope springs eternal," says Arizona attorney general Terry Goddard to 
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Thought your special little vibrating razor was making you look clean shaven and sexy, didn't you? Thought that it was worth the 14 dollar price tag, didn't you? Well, AdAge reports that the 
What do Eminem, Random House Publishing, and TBS all have in common? According to 
A man opens the tailgate on his stylish SUV, and whoops! the giant egg he's trying to load rolls off, heading down an elevator, down an escalator, hopping a ride on a garbage bin, all the while the man running to catch it. These ads are part of 
Milk. It's unconstitutional. Oh wait, that's not the right slogan. In case you hadn't heard, a lower court ruled the 'Got milk' ad campaign unconstitutional because farmers we're required to pay for the ad (as a part of the Dairy Promotion Act). For small-time farmers, four-thousand dollars a year isn't exactly chump change. Still, it's hard to imagine any ad campaign featuring for the Official Drink of Boy Scouts unconstitutional (regardless of whatever jokes we adults make about the ads. wink wink). The decision has been appealed, of course, so we'll let you know what happens next in this high-stakes, down and dirty legal race!
Wow, I did not know this: Mary Kay's "official philosophy is 'God first, family second, and career third.'" Providence's 
Metrosexuals, halt! Levi Strauss & Co. say that “
AdAge 
Cinematical
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