While brands certainly don’t want people using their products, logos and other related imagery to create products of their, own, the hammer that Ford legal dropped on the Black Mustang Club seems a bit heavy handed. Recently the club…
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — CEO Joe Uva continues to make his mark at Univision Communications. More hires from the English-language networks will be announced today as Univision restructures its sales approach.
Looks like MySpace is working on a gaming portal. The URL for this page is games.myspace.com. This could be a hit if the games are less like the ones you can find on other casual game destinations (Yahoo Games, for example) and more like Facebook app games with a stronger social component to them. Social advergames on MySpace would also be an interesting ad channel.
There are plenty of Flash games out there for MySpace users to embed already, but I haven’t seen any that let you play with your friends.
Oh, and to the readers of this blog: I just got back from a vacation with no internet hook-up, but now we are back to our regular programming.
Also, this is the 2008th post on this blog since the beginning.
LONDON – Universal Music Group (UMG) has appointed Ad2One as the exclusive digital sales house for its portfolio of music websites, including the official sites for artistes Girls Aloud, Amy Winehouse and Razorlight.
According to The New York Times, Zagat Survey is for sale and may fetch as much as $200 million.
The Zagats, who met at Yale Law School, could not find a publisher for their annual Manhattan restaurant rankings guide in the early 1980s, so they began publishing it themselves and delivering copies to any bookstore that would stock them. They set up a publishing company in part to get tax deductions for meals.
The business has since expanded wildly with international guides in multiple languages and into new categories. The company also began making custom guides for corporations. For example, Walt Disney commissioned a guide for attractions at its theme parks and WellPoint, the health insurer, commissioned a guide on doctors in its network. In both cases, the rankings and reviews were completed independently of the companies that paid for them.
The article suggests that the media company would make a great acquisition for a carrier looking for a mobile content play. I can also see a credit card company wanting to buy this firm. Am Ex is already deep into custom publishing with titles like Travel & Leisure and Food & Wine.
To introduce Sony’s ultra light VAIO TZ, Los Angeles-based agency Ignited has taken the light-as-paper metaphor to heart with new print, outdoor and TV work, part of the brand’s ongoing “Like No Other” campaign. While we’re not sure we’d…
LONDON – Times Media has made four senior marketing appointments, boosting the team under recently appointed sales and marketing director Katie Vanneck.
NEW YORK – Justin Timberlake is to star in a campaign for Pepsi, set to break in the US during the annual ad-fest that is the Super Bowl.
LONDON – Tidalwave, the technology sector marketing agency, has launched an offshoot called Hurricane that will offer creative marketing services backed by web-based technology to B2B and consumer brands.
LONDON – Irish newspapers will report the geographical breakdown of their total circulation from this month, following an all-industry decision at ABC.
LONDON – A stockbroker that used high-pressure sales techniques has been fined £250,000 and is being forced to write to its customers and tell them how they can make complaints.
When we saw the beef industry’s new “Powerful Beefscapes†ads (left), they rang a bell. Then we remembered Nicolas Lampert’s “Meatscapes†(right), which we wrote about last May. The similarities are striking, with giant cuts of beef dominating meaty landscapes in both efforts. In our earlier piece, we even suggested (jokingly) that the beef council build a campaign around Lampert’s work. If that’s what happened, he wasn’t told about it. “I had not seen these ads until you brought them to my attention,†Lampert tells us in an e-mail, adding that, in his opinion, the ad work “borders very closely on plagiarism.†With Meatscapes, Lampert is commenting on the impact the meat industry has on the environment. Thus, he finds it odd that beef producers would embrace similar imagery. “What surprises me is why they would want to detail close-up shots of meat, as it has the potential to revolt the viewer,†he says. Read more about the campaign here.
—Posted by Tim Nudd
There were bound to be a few glitches when Chrysler decided to promote the 2009 Dodge Ram on Sunday by escorting a herd of Texas Longhorn cattle through the streets of Detroit. Things seemed to go pretty smoothly until Chrysler LLC vice chairman and president Jim Press tried to describe the revamped model’s benefits, just as some of the cattle started mounting each other. “The bulls want to see the trucks, they don’t want to leave,“ Press said as the romance began. “Oh, look at that. … Well, let’s not watch that.†Auto writers have praised Press for his ability to roll with the situation, but I think he missed a few good opportunities: “Here, watch what we’re gonna do to the competition.†“See? Dodge always comes out on top!†“Hey, looks like someone is playing John Mayer on the new Dolby 7.1 in-dash MP3 player!†Or, for maximum awkwardness, he could have just yelled “Ram!†into the microphone until it was over. Photo via The GarageBlog.
—Posted by David Griner
Best Week Ever’s writers must have gone on strike too, because there’s no other way their list of greatest celebrity beards would have seen the light of day. Inspired by Conan O’Brien and David Letterman’s strike beards, the list includes Cat Stevens and the dad from Family Ties—names on the tips of everyone’s tongues, of course—as well as Princess Vespa’s stunt double, who apparently had a beard, not that they provide a photo to back this claim. What’s worse, they call Home Improvement an “alpha-male†show, because nothing says “man of the house†quite like being a grunting idiot whose wife and kids always outsmart you (this came up while celebrating Richard “Al Boreland†Karn’s beard). And putting Bob Ross on this list when they should have saved him for the White Guy Afro retrospective is irresponsible. By the way, please don’t write a White Guy Afro retrospective.
—Posted by David Kiefaber
LONDON – Motorola has consolidated its £200m advertising account for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) into Ogilvy following a six-month review of its agency arrangements, Marketing can exclusively reveal.
Has it really been a year since Boston was held in the grip of terror by an ad campaign for Cartoon Network’s Aqua Teen Hunger Force? Some of the technology used in an outdoor promotion sparked a citywide bomb scare. Ah, memories. One of the “artists†who worked on the stunt, Peter Berdovsky (the guy with the dreads in the photo), “has embraced the notoriety he’s gained,†according to the Associated Press. “He’s incorporating it into his art and trying to use it to make a buck.†Berdovsky, aka “Zebbler,†sells prints of the hospital mural he and collaborator Sean Stevens (the guy on the left) painted as part of their community service. Ah, capitalism. Berdovsky calls himself the “Aqua Teen Terrorist,†adding, “I view media attention as useful to my potential success as an artist. Any exposure is good for me.†Sure, the media are playing into this genius’s hands with our continued coverage, but how else can Zebbler and the “Don’t Tase me†guy keep their 15 minutes ticking? (And that’s just their fame ticking, not a bomb. So relax, Boston.)
—Posted by David Gianatasio
Given that chimney sweeps and peppy commercial jingles are both quaint and outdated, it only makes sense that they’d team up for this ChimneySweepers.com spot. Along with being a rather annoying example of man’s inhumanity to man, this ad taught me how to spell “chimney†on my telephone keypad. A valuable life skill, indeed. When the time comes for me to call this company and yell them stupid about how I can’t get their song out of my head, I won’t waste precious time aligning letters to number keys.
—Posted by David Kiefaber
NEW YORK – Staff at WPP Group have donated more to US election candidates than any other British company, according to figures from the US Federal Election Commission.
Advertising Agency: BBDO, Berlin, Germany
Creative Directors: Armin Jochum, Toufic Beyhum
Art Directors: Toufic Beyhum, Armin Jochum
Published: November 2007
Faster than you think. Actros V8.
Advertising Agency: BBDO, Berlin, Germany
Creative Director: Armin Jochum, Toufic Beyhum
Art Director: Toufic Beyhum, Armin Jochum
Copywriter: Armin Jochum
Photographer: Tom Peschel
Published: December 2007
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