NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — BusinessWeek is asking readers to populate a full double issue in August, following fast in the steps of Budget Travel, whose 10th anniversary issue was written and photographed entirely by readers, and This Old House, which just styled itself as "Your Old House" for a reader-generated issue.
MINNEAPOLIS (AdAge.com) — The big top came to the small screen last night, as NBC's "Celebrity Circus" became just the latest example of the networks working without a net as they try nearly every reality format to remain relevant during the summer. Indeed, the reality genre dominated, comprising 77% of prime-time programming. NBC, Fox and the CW ran all-reality slates; ABC ran two hours and CBS one.
DETROIT (AdAge.com) — Chrysler is driving back into Six Flags Theme Parks this summer in what's being billed as the amusement-park operator's most comprehensive deal ever with an automaker. Among other efforsts to showcase its vehicles, Chrysler bought a package on Six Flags Media Networks, an in-park platform with TV, radio, billboards, online and experiential marketing.
This old mug shot doesn’t do Rip Torn any favors. But it’s a little harsh to feature it in a commercial emphasizing the need to “get sexual predators off the streets.†Cincinnati city councilman Chris Monzel says he’s sorry for using the image in just such an ad, saying he meant to depict a “generic criminal,†not a specific one. (Torn’s mug shot was taken after a 2006 arrest for DUI, to which he pleaded guilty. He’s never been suspected of or charged with any sexual crimes.) Monzel publicly apologized to the actor by placing this ad in the Cincinnati Enquirer.
—Posted by Tim Nudd
– Global marketing guy Jeff Bell is leaving Microsoft. He’s held the post since 2006.
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Jeff Bell is leaving Microsoft after two years of helming global marketing for its interactive-entertainment business division, where he led marketing for Xbox and games for Windows.
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — In a first for the privately held, international home-products retailer, Ikea is serving as a marketing partner on Universal's forthcoming summer release "Mamma Mia!" The musical employs the hit songs of Sweden's Abba to tell the story of a girl hoping to discover the identity of her father on the eve of her wedding.
I’d never heard about Wenda Harris Millard before. My bad.
Thanks to Brian Morrissey at Adweek (and Catharine P. Taylor’s pointer) I now know better.
In a talk with Federated Media Publishing founder John Battelle at the Conversational Marketing Conference in New York yesterday, she said, “emotional creativity that has been key to building brands” is being overshadowed by “the cool efficiency of technology.”
“Technology is very important, but where many companies go wrong is when they think technology is the answer or primary solution to proving a business solution to a marketing problem,” Millard said. “The business of advertising is still a business of persuasion. Machines can’t make art.”
“I’m extremely disturbed at the commoditization of Internet advertising before we’ve had an opportunity to establish its value proposition.”
Millard is the newly named president of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia.
Did you ever watch the musical episode of Buffy? The one where people randomly leap into choreographed song-and-dance, betraying all their innermost thoughts and secrets, before bursting into flames?
What’s a group of poor, starving Creative Circus students to do when they find out they’ve just won Cannes Future Lions and really, really need to get to France by Monday?
Mischief NYC, a group of New York ad people and media mouthpiece Adrants, has announced its second monthly summer bash.
Steve Rubel of Micropersuasion has been hyping Friend Feed on his Twitter feed religiously. Now the two most recent posts to his blog are about how wonderful the service is.
Hi. My name is Steve and I suffer from Shiny Object Syndrome (SOS for short).
SOS describes the digerati’s never-ending obsession with emerging social sites. First came blogs. Then there was podcasting, YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Second Life and finally Twitter. Some stick. Others don’t. The key is to addressing SOS is to take a step back and look at the the consumer trends and potential business models.
My latest fascination is Friendfeed – a site that in one place aggregates your friends streams from across different social sites. Right now Friendfeed’s audience is paltry. According to Compete.com, it has 300,000 active users. Still, I believe that Friendfeed has the potential to become as big as Google.
I had to stop there. “As big as Google” is crazy talk. Sorry Steve.
I won’t even take the time to check the new shiny object out, so it’s hard to see how it might become indispensable to me.
For me, right now, it’s about determining which toys, or shiny objects, I can shed (Facebook), not about which new ones I can acquire.
Here’s something I’ve never seen before.
It’s unclear whether or not this is a joke but someone has placed ten Facebook profiles for sale on eBaby.
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Pond's is partnering with Universal Studios' "Mamma Mia!" (out July 18) for an extensive marketing campaign to cross-promote its Clean Sweep makeup-removal towelettes. Although the brand will not be integrated into the film itself, Pond's is attaching itself to virtually every other element of the movie's marketing.
Shot in Cape Town, South Africa – the commercial was made by Gordon Ray and Jamie Mietz of Ogilvy and shot by Greg Grey of Velocity Africa.
[via Cherryflava]
Hmm. Nothing like a good tube of Crest to gloss over the travesty of modernization at the cost of childhood play.
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