Washington Post Co.'s The Root stands as an example of the "damned if you do and damned if you don't" risk some media companies take when launching products to target specific audiences, particularly black consumers.
Hi folks. I know David Burn said I’d be posting on here, and I’m finally doing it. Though I sincerely doubt anyone has been checking their AdPulp RSS Feed to see when Cathy Taylor was finally going to start doing some posting here, the moment is at hand, and, I admit, for this week anyway, it’s blatantly self-promotional. So here’s the topic: I got a call late last week from the 4As, seeing if I wanted to do an interview with incoming president-CEO Nancy Hill. My first thought in these instances is that they must have forgotten that I’m no longer at Adweek, but, then again, I know the 4As PR person Kipp Cheng well, so that wasn’t the case. Turns out that Hill wanted to include the blogosphere in the press tour, and so the 4As reached out to me. You can read her comments over at my blog. I promise not to be so self-promotional next week and enjoy the opportunity to post for a broader audience.
(TrendHunter.com) If you’ve ever dreamed of flying naked, you better head to Germany! A travel agency there is offering the first nudist holiday flights for vacationers who like to take the bare minimum when traveling.
OssiUrlaub.de will start booking a trial naked voyage this week which will leave from Erfurt in ea…
(TrendHunter.com) Nope, not a kitchen designed by NASA or by an OB-GYN. It was designed by a legitimate kitchen designer that works for Altera Design Studio. It’s called the Alight Kitchen. It has a built in oven to keep things warm and the temperature is displayed by bar codes. Four hollow plates spin like rings in …
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — If the theme of this year's National Association of Program Executives Conference is a change to the traditional broadcast TV model, than Jeff Zucker will be at the forefront of it. The NBC Universal CEO spoke at length in his keynote this morning of the developments that have accelerated these changes, most recently the writers strike.
FedEx is yet again appearing in the Super Bowl this year with a 45-second spot entitled “Carrier Pigeons”. Since 1989, the brand has made 18 appearences during the big game throughout the years. Some of their notable spots include “Apology,” “Desert Island,” “Bolivia” and the EMMY award-winning “Stick.” BBDO New York has been FedEx’s agency of record for more than 19 years and has produced more than 65 Super Bowl spots for its clients since 2000.
Throughout FedEx’s advertising history, their ad strategy has aimed to demonstrate the company’s reliability by sketching entertaining caricatures of the business world. These include: “Absolutely, Positively Overnight” – 1978-83, “It’s not Just a Package, It’s Your Business” – 1987-88, “Our Most Important Package is Yours” – 1991-94, “Absolutely, Positively Anytime” – 1995, “The Way the World Works,” 1996 – 1998, “Be Absolutely Sure,” 1998 – 2000, “This is a Job for FedEx,” 2001 – 2002, “Don’t worry, there’s a FedEx for that,” 2002 to 2003, “Relax, it’s FedEx,” 2004 – present.
But as it’s Super Bowl season, below you’ll find a list of FedEx’s Super Bowl spots from 1995-2007. Come back on Sunday or Monday morning to see their new spot airing during Super Bowl XLII! You can check out a behind-the-scenes video for “Carrier Pigeons” here.
Superadgrunts, click on the titles and/or images to see the spots.
Damn, eBillme jumps fast on a trend. An hour after we heard about the Subway/Quizno’s UGC-related lawsuit, eBillme jumped online and wrote a press release about the lawsuit in light of its previous Shopping Confessions contest and upcoming Valentine’s Day contest.
(TrendHunter.com) The HUGO by Hugo Boss show made quite an impression at Berlin Fashion Week on Sunday as it took off on the tarmac runways, creating a very surprising setting.
The Tempelhof Airport runways were transformed into catwalks to showcase a collection full of suits, skinny ties and tight turtle necks. Men…
Win or lose on Sunday, New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick is inarguably the most successful coach in the modern era, and it's not a fluke that he will be in Phoenix for the Super Bowl. He may have the personal flair of a lint brush, but what has made him so successful as a coach also would make him an excellent marketer. He has the three key qualities essential to excelling at the business of marketing: discipline, imagination and respect.
(TrendHunter.com) Mitsubishi will unveil their hot new Lancer Sportback, the Prototype-S in March at the 2008 Geneva Auto Show.
The sporty little five-door hatchback will offer not only a stunning design and but power too — 240 horse power from a 2 liter engine! The high res sketches were released today along with …
It’s not often both celebrities in a celebrity marriage are spokespeople for brands, let alone at the same time.
In the style of The Onion (except totally lacking in the gift of tact), writer Rick Murphy of the Independent’s “Low Tidings” column wrote an article called “Why I Should Be Our Next President,” credited to Yo Mama Bin Barack. (Can you say collective P.C. wince?)
There’s five days left until Super Bowl XLII, and we’re celebrating by firing up SuperAdFreak, our football-obsessed sister blog. Last year, we got 22 unlucky souls to live-blog the game. This year, we’re trying something different. We’re currently harvesting nutritious batches of daily Super Bowl ad links. And come Sunday, we’ll be attempting a live chat of sorts, with various industry experts who’ll forgo having actual fun at a Super Bowl party in order to inform and entertain you, our readers. Also check out Adweek’s special section dedicated to the Super Bowl. Between the two sites, you should get a well-balanced Super Bowl advertising meal.
—Posted by Tim Nudd
If you recall opening an attachment with the name Sex or Beauty in it, then the latter case is confirmed.
Earlier this month, security expert Fortinet said it detected a new virus called Beselo which targets Nokia Series 60 phones. The virus arrives as a multimedia attachment via MMS with the title beauty.jpg or sex.mp3.
Once opened, the virus installs itself on the phone and then automatically propagates itself by searching through the phone address book and sending up MMS messages with a copy of itself.
There are over one billion PCs in the world but two to three times as many mobile phones. And with faster mobile broadband speeds driving mobile Internet, it is inevitable that hackers will ultimately target their malicious software (malware) at the mobile phone as well.
For now, the numbers are still insignificant compared to PCs. According to the latest IT security threat report from Sophos, there are approximately 200 malicious software (malware) threats for mobile phones, compared to over 300,000 for Windows-based PCs.
‘The risk of being infected on a mobile phone is tiny in comparison,’ said Sophos.
Nevertheless, the mobile malware threat has grown steadily since the first mobile virus was discovered in 2004.
The first mobile virus was created by a company called Ojam which embedded a virus in its mobile game Mosquito which would send SMS messages back to the company to combat piracy.
In a Sophos web poll in November 2006, 81 per cent of business IT administrators expressed concern that malware and spyware targeting mobile devices will become a significant threat.
Ultimately the user is the most vulnerable. Just as hackers send ‘phishing’ mails to get PC users to reveal personal data on websites, they could do the same on mobile platforms.
With Google and Yahoo pulling out all stops to deliver good mobile Web browsing, it is only a matter of time before we get Symantec and McAfee mobile versions on our phones too!
Former Catwoman Julie Newmar, in an AdWeek ad, is looking for a spokesperson gig.
(TrendHunter.com) These little treats may look like pink lollipops at first glance, but trying to suck on them might not work so well; they’re soft as cake!
Cakesicles are actually easy to make; all you need is cake mix (yes, out of the box is just fine), lollipop sticks and pink candy melts for the coating. Choose…
Now here’s an ad that, shall we say, stretches the truth…oh just a wee bit.
According to The New York Times, Subway is inexplicably (as in pending lawsuit) pissed at Quizno’s because of some “derogatory” user-generated videos that depict Subway unfavorably. Must see to believe (scroll down to view the big offender).
In a keynote address to several hundred convention delegates, McGuinness, who has managed U2 since the band started, directly attacked the creators and operators of ISPs, saying, “I think the failure of ISPs to engage in the fight against piracy, to date, has been the single biggest failure in the digital music market.
“They are the gatekeepers with the technical means to make a far greater impact on mass copyright violation than the tens of thousands of lawsuits taken out against individual file sharers,” he said. “To me, prosecuting the customer is counterintuitive, though I recognize that these prosecutions have an educational and propaganda effect, however small, in showing that stealing music is wrong.”
McGuinness likened ISPs’ relationship to illegal downloading to a magazine filled with ads for stolen cars, one that also helped deliver them to anyone interested in having one.
“I’ve met a lot of today’s heroes of Silicon Valley,” he said. “Most of them don’t really think of themselves as makers of burglary kits. . . . [But] kids don’t pay $25 a month for broadband just to share their photos, do their homework and e-mail their pals.”
While also chiding record companies for not treating musicians equitably, McGuinness reserved his harshest words for ISPs. At the same time, he challenged them to step up to the plate to acknowledge that they have “a moral obligation to be true, trustworthy partners of the music sector. To respect and take responsibility for protecting music.”
After his talk, which McGuinness said has been posted on U2’s official website, the manager said that musicians have “too little power” to force such actions and suggested that if “ISPs won’t do so voluntarily, legislation may require them to do so.”
He said this was primarily his cause, not U2’s, although he prefaced his remarks by noting that “U2 always understood that it would be pathetic to be good at the music and bad at the business and [has] always been prepared to invest in their own future.
“We were never interested in joining that long, humiliating list of miserable artists who made lousy deals, got exploited and ended up broke and with no control over how their life’s work was used, and no say in how their names and likenesses were bought and sold.”
He also said he thinks a key change in the attitude of technology companies may come from Apple founder Steve Jobs’ new role with the Walt Disney Co., ABC-TV and Hollywood Records.
“His point of view may be changing now that he owns content as well as selling those beautiful machines that have changed our world.”
The MIDEM conference runs through Thursday and is expected to draw nearly 9,500 participants from 91 countries
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
