(TrendHunter.com) Pro skateboarder Bob Burnquist may have a 30-year career under his belt, but one skate park will never lose its luster–the Mega Ramp he completed in his Southern California backyard.
At eight stories…
NEW YORK – Acxiom board member Jeffrey Ubben, who had previously led two failed takeover attempts for the data management firm, has stepped down from his role.
John Gerzema, Chief Insights Officer, and Ed Lebar, economic consultant, at Young & Rubicam want you to know that consumers have been “falling out of love” with brands. Really? Do you really need anymore bad news on this Monday morning? Apparently, you do. Their new book, “Brand Bubble: The Looming Crisis In Brand Value And How To Avoid It” is a study in consumer perception and valuation of brands.
“While Wall Street has been bidding brand values ever higher, consumer perceptions toward brands are substantially eroding… Financial markets think brands are worth more than the consumers who buy them,” the authors said in the LA Times.
Gerzema and Lebar have coined a new term called the “brand bubble,” which they say is bursting as we speak. It’s apparently a $4 trillion bubble, too. As the financial markets have been driven into the ground, so goes brands. The thesis is that there are only a handful of great brands left, which people trust and respect and love. The rest of the brands? They’re fucked.
“These stellar brands are becoming fewer in number… We found an increasingly smaller number of brands accounting for a disproportionate share of the [stock market] value being created.”
Oh! And there’s another new term – “brand energy” – which makes it debut in the their book. They claim to have discovered a new “creative life force.” Uh-hunh. What “brand energy” really means is the principle that brands need to continuously innovate and focus on forging a good rep with consumers.
Whew. Okay. That’s all shit you knew just packaged under the auspice of fear. Okay. Okay. The world is still turning.
More: Advertising Terrorism: Honda Has Got To Love It
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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media
LONDON – A tour operator is capitalising on the public’s positive reaction to moving its call centre back to the UK by running a regional promotion.
According to Ad Age, if packaged goods marketers want to reach busy women, they need to do it online.
Microsoft, Mindshare and Ogilvy & Mather have been studying women they call “digital divas.”
Let’s examine some of their findings:
“There are women we found who actually have standing orders with Amazon for their toilet paper,” said Beth Uyenco, global research director at Microsoft.
Shopping for laundry detergent, toilet paper or diapers are the three items women in the study hated shopping for most.
Graceann Bennett, managing director-strategic planning for Ogilvy & Mather/Chicago, said, “One of the things [marketers] can do for some of these busy women is take something off their list.”
(TrendHunter.com) October 2008 was dominated by Sarah Palin and election fever, although a couple classics headliners like Britney Spears and Madonjna also wiggled their way into the Top 50.
Sarah Palin made the list…
LONDON – Five has reacted quickest to the furore around Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross by commissioning Zig Zag Productions to produce an hour-long documentary called ‘Russell & Ross: What the F*** Was All That About?’.
LONDON – Toshiba will tomorrow unveil a new website which is navigated by drawing rather than scrolling to highlight the electronics company’s philosophy of ‘Leading Innovation’.
How many arms does it take to screw in an environmentally friendly light bulb? In this Unscrew America spot, the answer is one, and it belongs to Zack and Miri Make a Porno star Elizabeth Banks. But she has eight backups on hand, so to speak, in the form of perhaps the most adorable and disturbing special-effects octopus ever created. John Lutz of 30 Rock does a good job voicing the creature, whose gestures and facial expressions are priceless. Still, I wanted to pet and kill the thing at the same time. According to the client, the goal is to show nature directly thanking people for helping to reduce energy consumption and protect global ecosystems. And yet, the octopus rudely shoots ink (“mostly,” he cheekily informs Banks) onto the carpet at the end of the spot. So, nature “thanks” us by polluting our environment?! I’m hitting Legal Sea Food for calamari tonight, just to teach “nature” a lesson.
—Posted by David Gianatasio
LONDON – Marks & Spencer is to launch a clothing line aimed at women aged 45 and older in response to a customer panel of women who claimed their needs were not being met by the store.
You’d think advertising would be the last thing to come to mind after putting on a Frank Zappa album, but this old Luden’s Cough Drop ad from the 1960s proves otherwise. Zappa supplied the soundtrack, which sounds like someone hyperventilating into a kazoo, and he apparently then got the animator to film 14 hours of footage for his direct-to-video movie Uncle Meat. I’m not sure who got the better end of that deal, because one might not exist.
—Posted by David Kiefaber
LONDON – Lewis Hamilton could be about to knock David Beckham off his podium as the UK’s highest earning sports star, following his one-point triumphant win at yesterday’s Grand Prix.
LONDON – With two ads breaking away from the pack, time is running out to vote in our poll for the funniest ad of all time.
LONDON – BSkyB is in talks to acquire the UK business of broadband provider Tiscali in a £450m deal after Carphone Warehouse abandoned its interest in bidding, according to reports.
LONDON – Digital agency Steel has won a competitive 10-way pitch, involving UK and European agencies to redesign the SeaFrance website.
Brunner’s self-consciously retro ads for Willow Creek Hearth and Leisure put the company’s hot tubs in a frisky ’70s context. See the ads here. One poster shows a hairy, dripping, masculine chest (I think it’s a dude’s, but the ’70s could be confusing) and the headline, “Because you can only fit one woman in a Porsche.” Another ad features ample cleavage (almost certainly female, probably not “real”) with the text, “Lowers sperm count to the average male range.” If that’s not naugh-tay enough, there’s the poster above. The work is rendered in unsubtle period fonts, colors and grainy photocompositions. With that much action in the tub, I just pray the water’s chlorinated.
—Posted by David Gianatasio
LONDON – MTV Networks, owner of such TV channels as MTV, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon, has partnered with MySpace to trial new ad technology that essentially allows content owners to profit from piracy.
LONDON – Virgin Atlantic has sacked 13 members of its cabin crew for insulting customers and criticising the airlines safety standards on social networking site Facebook.
LONDON – Camelot chief executive Diane Thompson is to become the non-executive chairman of RadioCentre, the industry body for commercial radio.
LONDON – Daily Mail & General Trust, the owner of the Daily Mail, is considering making a bid for the Independent and The Independent on Sunday, according to newspaper reports.
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