(TrendHunter.com) You’ve probably seen people text at lightning speed, but did you know there are official competitions for text messaging?
While you could liken them to “texting Olympics”, the LG Canadian Texting Championship,…
LONDON – Online ad spend is likely to fall this year in the UK as the economic downturn bites, although the sector will still post double-digit growth year on year, according to a PricewaterhouseCoopers report.
Ah, PETA. Always milking an issue for all it’s worth. When it’s not putting celebrity breasts in its ads, it’s thinking up other ways to conscript mammary glands for the cause. Case in point: It just suggested to Ben & Jerry’s that it replace the cow’s milk used in its ice cream with human milk. The group probably figured that since Ben & Jerry’s is based in Vermont, that it might actually go for it. Well, Vermont can be pretty wacky, but less so than Switzerland, apparently, where a restaurant has actually started buying breast milk from nursing moms to use as a substitute for the some of the cow’s milk in its dishes. (Switzerland?! That sounds awfully Swedish to me.) A Ben & Jerry’s rep says: “We applaud PETA’s novel approach to bringing attention to an issue, but we believe a mother’s milk is best used for her child.” Even so, if they come out with a Mother’s Milkshake flavor anytime soon, I’ll pass.
—Posted by David Gianatasio
LONDON – Online business network XING is to take on rival LinkedIn with its first ever UK marketing campaign.
LONDON – Start, the brand, digital and marketing agency, has created the branding for private jet club Jet Republic.
LONDON – Platform A, the AOL division formed in June to bring together the media conglomerate’s various advertising businesses under one roof, is to launch an ad exchange next year, taking it into competition with Yahoo’s Right Media.
Smokers know they risk rotten teeth, blackened lungs and horrifying cancers. But how many of them want to face that reality via gruesome pictures on their matchbooks? Such tactics are common in Canada, Australia and elsewhere, but now New York City is getting into the act. As part of its “Eating you alive” campaign, the city’s health department is placing nasty images on matchbook covers and distributing them in the South Bronx, Harlem and Brooklyn. Of course, those are pretty tough neighborhoods, and a few crusty molars might not deter sales of Camel Lights. Some young smokers will find such placements “so gross, they’re cool” and start trading the things like baseball cards. I’d suggest adapting mousetrap technology for matchbooks and cigarette packages. See if people feel like lighting up after losing a few fingers. Ouch! Sure, it’s illegal now. But in John McCain’s America, who knows?
—Posted by David Gianatasio
LONDON – Deceased suppression service Mortascreen has secured a data feed from Experian that it claims will enable it to boost its reporting to cover 95% of all UK deaths.
(TrendHunter.com) Believe it or not, Sharon Stone is about to go on sale in a public auction by Heritage Auction Galleries of Dallas, Texas, on September 28, 2008. For real!
Hold your horses though, the Sharon Stone…
McCann Portugal created this anti-global-warming spot on behalf of Quercus, the country’s national nature-conservation association. The animation is nice and bleak, the piano music plaintive. But the science seems dodgy—will animals really start committing suicide en masse if global warming gets worse? (The tagline is, “If you give up, they give up.”) If post-apocalytpic movies have taught us anything, it’s that human folly usually brings great opportunities for wily non-humans.
—Posted by Tim Nudd
LONDON – Figleaves.com, the online lingerie retailer, has changed its logo and design to give it a more aspirational, high quality look and feel while still remaining accessible to everyone.
LONDON – Proximity Worldwide has promoted Reza Ghaem-Maghami, managing director of Proximity Paris, to the new role of global digital leader.
LONDON – The Queen has invited ‘Blue Peter’ to a birthday tea at Buckingham Palace to mark the 50th anniversary of the BBC’s landmark children’s programme.
(TrendHunter.com) Nothing makes members of the ‘traditional’ print media more angry than when a blogger gets a book deal, so when Christian Lander’s Stuff White People Like turned from a tongue-in-cheek blog to an actual…
Sure, you’ve seen this idea before, but that doesn’t make it any less effective. Check out the promo video for Wario Land: Shake It! in its entirety and see if you think it holds up. The game, which has a pretty fun microsite too, was released on the Nintendo Wii this week. Hat tip to David Berkowitz on Twitter.
—Posted by David Griner
LONDON – Media group Future has signed an agreement with Sony Computer Entertainment UK to create a weekly digital magazine available exclusively through the PlayStation Network.
LONDON – TNT has adopted a fresh strapline, ‘Sure we can’, to appear on all its marketing communications and company livery.
LONDON – Paramount Pictures International is promoting forthcoming film ‘How to Lose Friends and Alienate People’ with an ‘anti-social networking’ Facebook application.
LONDON – WPP’s MindShare has unveiled a comprehensive worldwide rebrand of its corporate identity, said to hail its next stage of growth, in a move that includes dropping its “s” to lower case when used in prose.
LONDON – LoveFilm, the online DVD rental service, has signed a marketing partnership with studio Lionsgate UK, kicking off the campaign with the box office release of ‘Righteous Kill’, starring Robert De Niro and Al Pacino.
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