I have never been camping. I never want to go camping. I enjoy vacations involving fluffy beds, shopping, delicious restaurants, and preferably a beach of some sort. There is little about a tent, mosquitoes, extreme heat (or cold) and RVs that interest me. Is my camping aversion a racial thing? I want to say no, but… it’s certainly not a long shot to suggest such a thing.
Ask the folks at the National African-American RVers Association. The small group of black (with some Hispanic and a few white) campers is trying to introduce the joys of camping to non-whites. It’s an uphill battle. The organization has little money to advertise or recruit new members. But participants have a lot of theories about why black people are less likely to enjoy camping.
Surprise! That clever YouTube video featuring a guy perfectly pouring a Coors Light from a can to a glass was actually produced by Coors Light and its agency Avenue A/Razorfish (owned by Microsoft), not brand-devoted fellas with a video camera.
The spot on the left has been viewed over a two hundred thousand times, which means it’s reached its viral effect, and now it’s kosher for Coors to tell all about the videos, which comes on the heels of Levi’s “pogo pants” spot, and a slew of others.
But lest you think this is the end of these pseudo ads, there’s a suspicious Stella Artois that’s been seen over a half million times. CONTINUED »
Watching last night’s So You Think You Can Dance premiere left us with two questions: 1) Why did producers so devilishly try ripping our hearts out with auditions from dancers who were either near-blind or so overweight they couldn’t catch their breath, but wanted so badly to impress others?; and 2) Why the hell does such a popular show, now in its fourth season, lack the type of American Idol-style sponsorships that make this franchises so hugely profitable?
Those unbranded green cups on the judges’ table are getting tired; Simon, Paula, and Randy have been drinking (water) out of Coke cups for years.
Doesn’t PepsiCo want in on the action? Doesn’t Coke have a few more bucks to promote its Dasani water? Surely Starbucks is exploring new opportunities?
Then came news that Dance has, actually, scored two huge sponsors.
Neither of which fit particularly well into the show’s format. CONTINUED »
After the success of M&M’s personalization effort that let customers stamp any (brief) message on their candies (someone sent us a few bags of these), they’re going one step further: Allowing customers to upload photos to its website and have someone’s face printed on the little, yummy, addictive, OMG we want some now chocolates.
And while they may have stolen the idea from birthday cakes, this isn’t M&M’s first user-generated stunt. CONTINUED »
This adorable video featuring some of your favorite cereal characters (Cap’n Crunch, Tony The Tiger, and, uh, Raisin Bran’s sun) trying to make it through group therapy is a cutesy throwback to the good old days, when Toucan Sam could do blow in private and Frosted Mini-Wheat was just your everday bi-polar snack.
Oh look. It’s Lacoste’s futuristic look at what the future of tennis will look like. Happy 75th Anniversary, Lacoste. Your dementia doesn’t look a day over 74.
Sure, The CW’s ratings may have lost 28 percent of its 18-34-YO demographic, but it’s not not the network is sitting idly by and letting Gossip Girl walk to the plank into obliteration. They already turned off episode streaming on their website, and now they’re trying a new gimmick: If you watch the show live, you’ll have a chance to win swag! CONTINUED »
Did you happen upon a herd of cows around NYC yesterday? Or a group of Segway riders? It was all part of a marketing campaign for Fringe, the new Fox sci-fi drama from J.J. Abrams that took over NYC yesterday, the same day the show was announced.
Starring Joshua Jackson and debuting this fall, Fringe focuses on a weirdo research scientist, his son, and a FBI agent who connects them.
So what’s behind the publicity stunts? CONTINUED »
Taking in another $50.6 million at the box office, Paramount’s Iron Man chugs along with blockbuster status. (We finally saw the movie this weekend. The Sunday evening showtime sold out.) The domestic total now comes in at $177 million, but that’s not an accurate picture of the total revenue the flick is pulling in.
You would’ve been a fool not to notice the rampant corporate sponsorships in the movie, from the Burger King sandwich that Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark just had to have, to the hot Audi cars, like that R8, that all the good guys were driving. (We might be wrong, but all the villains were driving Chevys, or something equally lower profile.) And that scene on the highway, where cars were crashing all over the place as Iron Man faced off against his foe? How convenient, then, to see only an Audi SUV brake just in time to escape crashing (those anti-lock brakes!) and then speed off to safety (0-60 in two movie-seconds!). There’s a microsite, if you’re into that sort of thing.
Nicole Kidman, with child, was dumped this week as the face of Chanel [MC], though she still holds on to the Guinness record for earning the most money per minute, with her 30-second $3.71 million Chanel No. 5 advertisement. Replacing Kidman is someone 11 years her junior: the twenty-nine-year-old Audrey Tautou, who is French, like the fashion house, and an Oscar nominee, to her predecessor’s Oscar winner status. Tatou’s deal is rumored to be worth over $8 million [DM], which is nearly what Kidman’s standard $20 million movie price tag has been reduced to, thanks to The Stepford Wives, The Invasion, and The Interpreter.
The Stoli Hotel, a press-happy pop-up hotel that officially opened last night at 330 West Street at Houston, is also, officially, a clusterfuck.
We’re told last night’s opening, with DJ Juice, which played host to any number of simultaneous events and was graced by the presence of Chace Crawford and Jason Lewis, was “terrible,” a “clusterfuck,” and a “disaster,” according to various attendees. “The crowd was so crazy and lists were fucked up so I left,” says one. “My friend went in and turned around and left. Said it was awful.”
Expect more of the same, since the Stoli Hotel be headquarters for a number of coming events. Among them: CONTINUED »
These two ads are new spots from Absolut Vodka, which are paired with a TV spot labeled “Dissection,” which they hope pushes the message that the brand’s infused flavors, Pear and Mango, are as naturally a part of the flavor as the distilled vodka itself. The ads are part of Absolut’s “In An Absolut World” worldwide campaign, which replaced the “Absolut _____.”
But if you’re a consumer of gay media, the message Absolut is trying to send is a little different. CONTINUED »
As MTV enters the upfronts fray, pitching advertisers on its awesome new slate of reality sludge involving MySpace celebrities and stereotypes of black men, it’s also trying to bait ‘em with a new ad scheme: “podbusting,” a buzz word that translates as “ads that mimic actual TV programming to confuse the viewer into not TiVo-ing through your pitch.”
“We’re looking to redefine the commercial experience,” says John Shea, MTV and VH1’s integrated marketing head. Adds Dario Spina, Shea’s counterpart at Comedy Central and Spike: “We want to blur the lines between the commercial breaks and the entertainment content.”
Brill! How else to keep the kids’ waning attention span but by fooling them into thinking an ad for McDonald’s is actually a Justin Timberlake music video. Oh, wait.
Okay, so this isn’t entirely new, but MTV’s brands do plan on upping the ante by about a million. CONTINUED »
Picking up where Slate left behind in the racy Disney marketing photos – newsworthy thanks to Miley Cyrus! – TMZ.com Googles “Shanghai Zhenxin Garments Co. Ltd.,” the Chinese company behind the ads, and puts together a whole gallery of tweens prancing around in naughty lingerie.
Clarifying speculation that Jennifer Lopez would continue pimping out her children post-People magazine with her new TLC show, manager Simon Fields insists the new series “is not a reality show. It’s a show that will track the creation, production and eventual launch of a new fragrance. Jennifer will appear in a creative, entrepreneurial capacity and will absolutely not feature her children and family life.”
Oh good, glad we made clear the new show would be … an informercial.
What do you do when you’re an environmental blog – uber-concered about being green, saving the planet, controlling climate change, saving the ice caps, and ensuring a better tomorrow – and you’ve got a new paperback, about living an eco-friendly lifestyle, to promote?
Kill trees by printing out scores of postcards and mailing them around town.
In the coming weeks, JetBlue will unveil a whole new ad campaign that will try to take your mind off the fact that they are no longer a discount carrier, their seatback television screens are often broken, and, as happened on our redeye flight this weekend, “non-stop” flights between Burbank and JFK may actually include a stop over in Salt Lake City.
So goes the ad campaign: No longer will you be flying on JetBlue; you’ll be jetting. They’re classy-ing it up, up in here. New slogans include “Thanks for not flying on JetBlue,” “Happy jetting,” and “Flying is for pigeons.”
And as one JetBlue staffer writes, gate agents and flight attendants will be forced to utter these phrases to the flying public. CONTINUED »
With BitTorrent leaks threatening to ruin the debut of Hard Candy from Kabbalah documentarian Madonna on Tuesday, she’s releasing the album early on MySpace. Beginning today, fans can stream all 12 tracks of the release. Naturally, the publicity push comes with a formal announcement, with the most hideous description of Madonna’s sound ever. CONTINUED »
“Barack Obama often talks about the grass-roots nature of his candidacy, but he may be running the most successful stealth marketing campaign by a presidential candidate ever.
“Since the fall, pro-Obama street art has popped up all over the country, primarily in urban areas such as New York, Chicago, Seattle and LA.
“In several cases, the Obama campaign has been directly responsible - although it has very carefully kept plausible distance, for the purposes of “street cred” and obeying the law. (Graffiti, of course, is illegal).” [NYP]
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