Hasta La Creative!

There’s a huge market for people willing to part with cash for a little bit of gaming immortality. (Why this is, we’re sure we have no fucking idea.)

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — CBS Corp.'s newest venture outside the TV business involves an ad-supported website devoted to streaming pop music.

The One Show Interactive 2008 Call For Entries

If you don’t deserve an award, who does?

Enter now at www.enteroneshow.org

You work with new media because you understand how to build a connection to your audience. You champion interactivity not because it’s trendy, but because it is the fastest way to make this connection. You and your team are pushing the limits of technology and you haven’t found the boundaries yet. Your work needs to be seen and it merits recognition.

read more

For its BudBowl.com campaign, Budweiser is letting Super Bowl audiences vote on each of its ads as they appear, via text message. Teasers added.

What do you want to be when you grow up? We've all asked it of our friends, our children, ourselves. But have you ever asked such a question of your agency? Whether you can answer that question may well forever define you as an agency struggling to compete or as an agency that plays with — and often bests — the big boys several times your company's size.

CHICAGO (AdAge.com) — America may run on Dunkin', but Dunkin' runs on Will Kussell. As the coffee war with McDonald's heats up this year, the privately held doughnut chain has tapped Will Kussell, 49, as president-chief brand officer. He spoke to Ad Age about what's ahead for the $4.7 billion chain.

LONDON – The Trainline, the online train ticket booking company, has appointed Vizeum as its media agency to help reposition the brand.

Kansas City Star takes a look at Lee Jeans, a firm that ended its 18-year relationship with Minneapolis-based Fallon. The account is now at Arnold in Boston.

Lee is centered on a pull, not a push, strategy. In other words, the consumer dictates needs and Lee fulfills them.

Lee president Joe Dzialo said the company has undertaken extensive research to understand its customer, research that includes large-scale quantitative analysis and one-on-one interaction, including asking consumers about purchasing intents before and after trying on its jeans.

What Lee came away with is that its customer demands mostly middle-of-the road clothes with a bit of style that are reliable but that most importantly resolve a litany of fit issues confronting its customers’ ever-changing — and often challenging — body shapes.

For instance, many women the company queried complained of jeans “gapping” at the back. So Lee now has a line of jeans that have a wide yet discreet elasticized band in the back. There’s also a line that includes a panel in front that provides a slight pull-in effect.

For both men and women, Lee and other brands have added a “stretch” element to their jeans that “give” at key points, although Lee marketing vice president Liz Cahill said men’s products are positioned as being “flexible.”

“You can’t say ‘stretch’ to men,” Cahill said.

I’m taking note of this story, primarily because we often read about and talk about how companies need to improve their product and that better marketing flows from there. Lee could be a case study for this idea.

LONDON – Pathe has put user generated content and social media at the centre of its marketing campaign for Jack Black’s new film ‘Be Kind Rewind’, which tells the story of friends who recreate Hollywood blockbusters.

LONDON – Accenture is boosting its media services expertise after striking deals to acquire two digital marketing companies, Memetrics and Maxamine.