Hasta La Creative!

The Thrity Rooms To Hide In Addition.

John and Tug talk with Master Jedi Luke Sullivan about his new book Thirty Rooms To Hide In, creativity and getting out of advertising. It’s a great Sunday afternoon chat with almost no cursing and only minorly bothersome mouth sounds.

Give it a listen won’t you?

And stay tuned. ‘Coming in August 2011: The American Copywriter Reboot.

Bushnell makes all kinds of yummy optics and cool electronic gadgets. From binocs, to laser range finders to GPS units to scopes to trail cameras. You know what a trail camera is don’t you? You attach it to a tree somewhere deep in the forest and it waits patiently until it senses movement. Then it clicks off a few frames. The idea is to photograph nature without all that human intervention stuff. Sometimes the results are pretty interesting. Like the photo of the raccoon who decided to take a ride on the back of the boar.

Now comes the report that Bushnell seems to be preparing to offer a cool million to the first person who can capture indisputable proof of the Sasquatch with one of their trail cameras. As noted, the Sasquatch is an advertising favorite and probably deserves a spot here.

In any case, a tip of the hat to our friends at Bushnell. The promotion is coming soon. The buzz is starting now.

Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails fame is offering his new record – free of charge – simply by going to his web site and downloading it. You can get the first 9 tracks for free, you can pay $5 for the entire 36-track cycle, $10 for the double-disc set, $70 for Deluxe Edition Package which includes the CDs, a DVD with everything broken out into multi tracks (for importing into ProTools I guess) and a Blu-Ray disc with everything in hi-def. Sheesh.

But that ain’t all. For all you NIN fanatics, you can get a $300 ultimate, super duper, sweet ass version. THIS JUST IN: Apparently there are a lot of fanatics out there since the 2500 run of the SDSAV is all sold out after just two days of release. By my admittedly rudimentary mathematical calculations, that put $750,000 into Rezor’s poket since Tues. Wowzers. And since there is no record label involved, that’s real cash for him. Nobody to take their piece. Again I say – Wowzers.

In other news, Big Head Todd & The Monsters are also offering their new record free on their site. I heard them on a radio interview talking about how they’re really a live band and just want to play their music for people. Again, label free, they are distributing their album for noting via the web. I went over there yesterday, signed up (they captured my information, good for them) and they sent me a link to download the album. Also saw that they’re coming to KC soon. Guess what? I plan to be there cause I like this record.

I now proclaim the traditional record company-band/artist model fully and most certainly dead. Trent Reznor fucked it like an animal this week. And Big Head Todd, well, let’s just say they aren’t feeling bitterswet about any of it.

If Santa didn’t stuff a boob job in your stocking, don’t despair, Biker Claus is still delivering packages.
Ladies, on Jan 12 and 13, you can come on over to the KC Bike Show and register to win a free breast augmentation courtesy of Wide Open Motorcycle Magazine. That’s right, their promotional giveaway is a FREE BOOB JOB (msrp $6000). Hells yeah!

Ralph Roades, publisher (I think) of Wide Open Motorcycle Magazine put up the billboards, hoping to increase his turnout. He figured a lot of women attending probably want to look like the girls in his biker magazine. Gail Worth, who owns a Harley shop in KC loves the concept. She thinks it’s “funny and clever” and says, simply, “Yoo hoo, go women.”

I think it’s pretty good, too. It certainly isn’t for everyone and will no doubt be held up by many as a terribly sexist move, but as we’ve said here at AC many times before, know your target, and speak directly to them. I’m pretty sure the biker chicks who are looking to fill our their leathers will be all for it.

Plus, just consider the balls, er, boobs it took to roll with it. Or jiggle with it. Whichever.

A while back I started to notice quite a bit of cool viral marketing going on for the next Batman movie, The Dark Knight. We’re talking microsites galore and massive user participation. On one microsite, users were asked to answer location-specific questions from across america to reveal a phrase. Then, after that, there was a chance to send in a photo of yourself dressed up as the Joker.

Today, over on FirstShowing.net, all of the previous viral marketing attempts have been chumped, big time. It appears that now the people behind this marketing campaign has taken their execution to a new level — physical items.

On December 3rd a new page appeared at whysoserious.com/steprightup with a hammer game and some teddy bear toys. Each toy had an address on it located in a number of cities around the US. The note on the game told people to go to that address and say their name was “Robin Banks” (get it, “Robbing Banks”) and they’d get something there. It was first come, first serve, and each location was a bakery. What they were given was a cake with a phone number written on it. Now here’s the best part: inside the cake was an evidence bag (complete with Gotham City Police printing) that contained a cell phone, a charger, a Joker playing card and a note with instructions.

If you’re not following along, the lucky few to receive the cakes now have a cell phone that someone will call at a later time. In essence, Warner Bros. is creating their own Joker army.

Damn geniuses.