Morning Media Menu: Jan. 7

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Once again, TVNewser’s Steve Krakauer invited us comment on the advertising perspective of a few different stories from Mediabistro’s morning news feed. Today we joined Krakauer and Fishbowlny contributing editor Glynnic MacNicol, who is wicked smart. It’s only 15 minutes, during which we talk about HBO winning the presidential inauguration opening ceremony, Dr. Sanjay Gupta potentially becoming the next surgeon general, and Israel’s clamp on journalists entering Gaza.

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More:Morning Media Menu: December 30

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Angry Whopper Bites Back.

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Fast on the heels of its unscrupulous Whopper Virgin campaign (and the melodramatic responses it inspired), Crispin Porter + Bogusky introduce us to Burger King’s Angry Whopper.

The Whopper Virgins Got Their Aid … But Who Will Serve the Perrier Virgins?

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A Humanitarian Lion supporter produced a video riffing off Burger King’s Whopper Virgins campaign, where documentarians engage Third World inhabitants in hamburger taste tests — and incidentally pop their hamburger-free cherries.

Anne Hathaway and Kate Hudson Assault Website

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Wait, there’s a website underneath all those ads?

Puma Celebrates 60th With Past Masher

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Upload your photo! Change its size and position! Alter the skin tone! Mess with Saturation! Toy with brightness! Meddle with contrast! Choose a body style! Pick a hair style! Slip on some glasses! Accessorize! Save it! Share it! Add to gallery!

Charmin Half-Asses Casting Call Campaign

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In the last full week of December, Charmin launched what appears to be the beginning of a casting call campaign for a new bear mascot.

Brits: Celebvertising Means Agency Ran Out of Ideas

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Oh how we love the English. What other group of people can so effectively insult something while at the same time sound as though they’re lauding it? Check out this video (which wasn’t embeddable) from the BBC programme ‘Working Lunch’, during which author and advertising expert Hamish Pringle talks about celebrity endorsements in advertising.

Our favorite part in this minutes long clip is when one of the show’s hosts says inquisitively, aren’t celebrity endorsements a sign that the ad agency has run out of ideas? Pringle says yes, but very coolly notes that when the message is delivered successfully and sales increase, it doesn’t really matter.

Still, can’t help but love how the host takes celebvertising down a few pegs.

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Organ Donors, Faux Sci-Fi Ads, Israel Tweets, NYT Sells Out to Cash In

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– The New York Times is pushing front page display ads. It’s hard times, yo; deal with it.

Penis Cake Advocates for Fantasy Trophy Firm

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A wee Brooklyn-based shop called Fantasy Trophies (“Hand-made trophies worth bragging about”) has launched a YouTube campaign, “Bragging Rites,” that consists of nine videos which get progressively more retarded.

TechCrunch Depresses Everyone

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TechCrunch co-editor Michael Arrington has spoken with lots of people whose content-based Web sites rely on display advertising dollars, and they all say things will suck in 2009. The story was so compelling and fact-driven that the Washington Post picked it up.

Hunh. Try this quote on for size.

“Just how bad will it be? I’ve heard estimates of 30%&#15180% revenue drops over the next three months from companies that serve a variety of content (games sites, tech news, celebrity news, political news, etc.),” said Arrington. “The median pessimism point is around 50%. The people I’ve spoken with work at large public companies and small one-person blog shops. Absolutely no one I spoke with said they expect an up quarter.”

Well, that notion goes without saying. Let’s just hope we don’t revert to hellish pop-ups and all that to offset the loss. Come on people &#151 get out your spinning signs!

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More:Political Ad Spending hits $2.2 Billion in 2008

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Hulu Makes Gains On MySpace

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Nielsen is reporting that YouTube is still the number one video site. Number two? MySpace. Who is number three and moving rapidly up the ladder? Want to take a guess? That’s right. Hulu. MySpace clocked 244 million streams to 20 million unique visitors in November, which is the same as their October numbers. Hulu brought home 221 million streams to about 7.5 million unique visitors last month, an increase from 206 million videos. The site is serving more videos to less people, but still… that’s impressive.

I wonder what the time spent on each site is, especially for MySpace versus YouTube. Naturally, you would guess that Hulu is logging more face time with consumers considering their content is episodic or full feature length videos.

NBC/Fox owned Hulu has recently made some updates to their functionality. Users can now embed content across multiple platforms and soon, content will be accessible from anywhere in the world. Jason Kilar, the CEO of Hulu, recently told Mediapost that his focus is not on competing with iTunes for pay downloads, but providing instant access to content for consumers:

“I absolutely believe the streaming business is and will be a bigger business than content downloads. The main reason is that it’s instantaneous and people are spending more time being connected. The notion of downloading heavy files to a device that takes up a lot of space is something that had value several years ago when we were not connected all the time. So, the bigger opportunity for users is to focus on the streaming part of the business.”

Okay, so don’t expect to be paying $3.99 to own Iron Man anytime soon. The man has a plan and he’s sticking to it.

More: TNS Vs. Nielsen: We Ask The Questions To George Shababb

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‘Embrace Your Grace’: It’s Bad, Just Not the Bad it Hoped to Be

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TNT has launched Embrace Your Grace, an online community/promotion for season two of Saving Grace.

Vivienne Tam Gets Into Nuddies to Serve Whims of Would-Be Fashionistas

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Vivienne Tam and fashionista/paper doll site Stardoll have partnered to bring virtual couture to a seething throng of 9-17-year-old girls. (17? Really?)

Stamp Out Fun Where It Lives — Right in the Pancreas! Or the Liver.

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Roller skates + ethnic noisemakers = Extreme Clothing Volatility. That’s one life lesson I learned at NOLAF (the National Organization for Legislation against Fun), our latest source of advertainment.

Hey, Kids! Fight Smoking with Sampled Beats.

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If you’re a big fan of songs from the Sunny Side of Truth campaign, you’ll be pleased to know you can now mash them up through a new Truth project called “ReMix.”

University Of Phoenix Allies Itself to Bloggers

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Awhile ago, The Economist published an article about digital nomads, a growing class of workers that aren’t anchored to an office.

Twitter, Twitter, Twitter!

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Word has it Twitter might buy Summize, a really useful Twitter search tool.

‘Smart Show’ Returns for a Second Season

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With a bitty boost from Digitas, the Holiday Inn Express launched the second season of The Smart Show, a semi-dorky, sponsor-heavy web series about business travel.

PFEEZ! Counters Ebay FEES! with Free Promotion

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A handy-dandy rule of thumb: avoid using a service whose name sounds exactly like “Fees!” (exclamation included).

Arbeitskreis Vorratsdatenspeicherung: Fingerprints

Arbeitskreis Vorratsdatenspeicherung: Fingerprints

Brief:
Since the beginning of 2008, a new law gives the German federal government broad access to stored telephone and Internet data — including e-mail addresses, length of call and numbers dialled — for a six-month period. The private initative “Arbeitskreis Vorratsdatenspeicherung” called for a class-suit against the new law. But how can you make people believe how many traces they leave when surfing the Web?

Solution:
Though widespread discussions in the press, most users don’t realise what kind of data and to which extent they leave behind when surfing the Web. A special program visualises the digital fingerprint of every user. The fingerprints lead the user to a landing page and to special browser for anynomous Web surfing.

Results:
Being launched just in 2008, the “Fingerprint” project may be able, to fuel the discussion about privacy in the Internet and raise awareness for the issue. The sheer number of 30,000 participants that joined the class-suit of the Initiative at the German Constitutional Court clearly demonstrates the public interest.

Advertising Agency: NORDPOL+ HAMBURG, Germany
Creative Director: Ingo Fritz
Claudius Gerstner, Nordpol+ Hamburg
Art Directors: Dominik Anweiler, Mark Höfler