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guerilla marketing
Top 5 Guerilla Marketing Mishaps
In the never-ending quest for free publicity, guerilla marketers have gone through great lengths to try to make a big splash. Many guerilla marketers will often concoct stunts that are risky or illegal to grab the publics' attention. Some stunts go over better than others while a few completely backfire. As a tribute to these foolhardy souls, WebUrbanist has put together their top 5 mishaps in guerilla marketing. The list, inside... More »
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Location-Based Cell Phone Ads Launching Soon
PC World has an overview of Loopt, which will begin testing location-based advertising via CBS Mobile in the near future. What's notable about the service—aside from the fun concept of triangulating location via cell towers—is that Loopt and CBS Mobile "seem to have made most of the right choices for privacy." That includes the service being opt-in instead of opt-out, and no personal data (such as account info or phone number) being sent back upstream. The targeted ads replace existing ads as well, so there's not a location-based spammy increase in advertising with the service. This is the kind of advertising we "like"—localized, relevant, and anonymous on our side of things. More »
polls
Absolut is running an ad in Mexico that some in this country are finding offensive because it favorably depicts our borders as they existed before the 1848 Mexican-American war. We're going to bite and talk about the ad even though it means that the advertisers win and America dies just a bit more.
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Is This Absolut Ad Cheeky Or Distasteful?
Absolut is running an ad in Mexico that some in this country are finding offensive because it favorably depicts our borders as they existed before the 1848 Mexican-American war. We're going to bite and talk about the ad even though it means that the advertisers win and America dies just a bit more.
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settlements
AT&T Mobility Agrees To Refund Money To Florida Customers & Pay $2.5 Million To State's CyberFraud Task Force
Florida's Attorney General scored a victory for consumers last week, when AT&T Mobility agreed to refund fees that third-party vendors snuck onto thousands of accounts under the guise of "free" ringtones, wallpapers, and text content. They also agreed to hand over $2.5 million to help fund the state's recently-created CyberFraud Task Force, to spend $500,000 for "consumer education on safe Internet use," and to start policing third-party vendors better and make sure all billed items are clearly described. More »
badvertising
Discover The Fairsley Difference!
This fake ad-battle from "Mr. Show"—a big city supermarket chain squares off against a naïve local grocer—perfectly captures a certain type of aggressive, scorched-earth advertising style usually reserved for political campaigns.
videos
Time Warner's Hilarious Verizon FiOS Attack Ad
advertising
Tivo Says E-Trade Commercial Was Most Watched Super Bowl Spot
Tivo has announced that E-Trade's talking, trading, barfing baby was the most watched ad by Tivo subscribers during the Super Bowl, followed by the Pepsi spot where Justin Timberlake got hit in the crotch, followed by the Doritos ad where a giant mouse wailed on a man eating chips. Tivo "sampled 10,000 households using anonymous, second-by-second audience measurement data" to come up with the rankings. More »
advertising
South Carolina will begin selling ad space inside their public school buses—11-inch strips above the windows are now for sale, and "Interested school districts get about $2,100 per month per bus."
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South Carolina Will Place Ads Inside School Buses
South Carolina will begin selling ad space inside their public school buses—11-inch strips above the windows are now for sale, and "Interested school districts get about $2,100 per month per bus."
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bad judgment
British Store Stops Selling "Lolita" Beds For Little Girls
Woolworths in London has pulled its Lolita bed from its online store after complaints from parents. A Woolworths spokesman said, "What seems to have happened is the staff who run the website had never heard of Lolita, and to be honest no one else here had either. We had to look it up on Wikipedia. But we certainly know who she is now."More »
advertising
These three hilariously morbid print ads are for Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Toronto, by Canadian ad agency ACLC. Although they're a couple of years old now, it's probably the first (and only) time we've ever seen irreverence brought to the eternally grim concept of funeral pre-planning—we're not sure any American corporation would have the cojones to try a similar tack.
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Great Ad Campaign For... A Cemetery?
These three hilariously morbid print ads are for Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Toronto, by Canadian ad agency ACLC. Although they're a couple of years old now, it's probably the first (and only) time we've ever seen irreverence brought to the eternally grim concept of funeral pre-planning—we're not sure any American corporation would have the cojones to try a similar tack.More »
groceries
Microsoft Testing Ads On Shopping Carts
If you buy groceries at ShopRite, you might start seeing special shopping carts with little monitors attached later this year, when Microsoft and MediaCart roll out a new loyalty program that tracks shoppers' purchases and displays targeted advertising while they shop. Ostensibly, the monitors will also provide useful information, such as the location of products within the store, access to recipes, and personalized shopping lists. We'll be curious to see whether any of these services are actually implemented in a useful way or are just used to disguise the advertising. More »
badvertising
Okay, we're just going to say it: calling men of a certain age "cheddar hunks" just sounds like they all smell like stinky feet. That's a table I want to stay far, far away from. Nevertheless, Cabot Cheese of Vermont has launched a new television campaign featuring Guzmán and his Stinky-Feet-Friends sitting around drinking beer and eating cheese. It's weird. And though we have always liked Cabot Cheese, now it's going to be hard not to think of middle-aged toes (and werewolves) whenever we go cheddar shopping. Urg. More »
Disturbing Cheese Ads With Luis Guzmán And His Fellow "Cheddar Hunks"
Okay, we're just going to say it: calling men of a certain age "cheddar hunks" just sounds like they all smell like stinky feet. That's a table I want to stay far, far away from. Nevertheless, Cabot Cheese of Vermont has launched a new television campaign featuring Guzmán and his Stinky-Feet-Friends sitting around drinking beer and eating cheese. It's weird. And though we have always liked Cabot Cheese, now it's going to be hard not to think of middle-aged toes (and werewolves) whenever we go cheddar shopping. Urg. More »
badvertising
Copywriter Mom Uses Her Advertising Powers To Humiliate Son Via Classifieds
Here's a perfect example of the power of the written word in advertising: Jane Hambleton's splashy classified ad to sell her son's car worked so well that now everyone knows she caught him with liquor in his car and sold it as punishment. More »
ad-supported models
New Downloadable Movie Book Tests Yahoo/Adobe Ad System
Remember the announcement in November that Yahoo and Adobe were testing out a new ad system inside pdf documents? (No? It only got 1,200 hits.) Well, they are, and the big question then was how Yahoo and Adobe would determine what sorts of ads were placed in the documents, and how they'd appear. Now there's a free (or rather, ad-supported) downloadable book—"200 documentaries you must see before you die"—that lets you test the new ad system out for yourself. More »
marketing
Ads For Gays Focus On Exactly What You'd Expect
Ad Guy #1: Okay, these gays have money. How do we get it?Ad Guy #2: They like wangs! And cross-dressing!
Ad Guy #1: Done! [They high five.]
Radar takes a look at eleven gayish ads that range from over-the-top crass to "Well, if you want to see it that way" coy. For the most part, since it's just another specialty demographic, the ads are no more interesting than the ones created for Ebony or Rumspringa! Magazine. A few, though, are head-shakers. Our vote for the most ridiculous: Air Canada's promise to shove an airplane up your butt. Because gays like that.
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online advertising
New Microsoft Patent App Provides "Enforceable" Ads That Can't Be Skipped
Last year Microsoft filed a patent application, published yesterday, that explains a method by which embedded advertising can't be skipped. From the application abstract: "Enforcing rendering advertisements and other predetermined media content in connection with playback of downloaded selected media content. Playback of selected media content is made conditional on acquisition of a playback token that is generated in response to playback of the predetermined content." More »
advertising
