I dunno… I’d take clogs over a segway anyday

more at  CommonGate:Art

via | Art @ CommonGate 

Stavros kinda rulez. See his site for a definitive description of position art

From his blog:

“Look, I am happy!”

From Averblog:

Farfar is behind a new weird initiative launched by Nokia to promote its new N82 model. The concept is based on “position art”, which consists in creating works of art, by physically walking them, and then transferring it on to a satellite image. Basically it’s an art form that tracks your position using GPS.

via | Adverblog

a super-secret advertising research project in Australia has set up a test facility with mock living rooms where 3,000 people have been closely monitored as they are exposed to radically new kinds of TV commercials

via | AdAge

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/food_and_drink/article3353735.ece

The company hopes that the introduction of Pepsi Raw will compete for a greater share of the cola market from the leader Coca-Cola and at the same time it will capitalise on the growing consumer demand for more natural products.

…

Initially, Pepsi Raw will only be available in selected bars and clubs in seven cities — London, Manchester, Glasgow, Brighton, Birmingham, Leeds and Liverpool, although a wider roll-out is expected later in the year.

http://adage.com/article?article_id=124886

This guy kind of kicks ass…

Published: February 05, 2008 SAN FRANCISCO (AdAge.com) — AT&T has hired the Discovery Channel’s new-media guru, Chris Schembri, to oversee the allocation of its $3.3 billion annual media budget.

…

Last summer, in a deal with Verizon Wireless, he promoted Discovery’s popular “Deadliest Catch” by giving away free wallpapers, ringtones, bios of the risk-taking fishermen, show facts and sneak peeks, and even mobisodes. Mobile users also were able to participate in mobile polls and quizzes.

…

He also spearheaded a campaign last year aimed at boosting ratings for Discovery Channel’s “Future Weapons,” in which Microsoft gave away downloadable content for its Xbox game “Gears of War.” Ratings for the show reportedly were 60% higher than expected, especially given it was going up against the season premiere of Fox’s “24″ and the Golden Globes.

…

“I love innovation,” Mr. Schembri said.

…

I <3 innovation too my friend. Without it we would be in a world without bongs.

This website, Plan 59, has a ton of mid 1900s advertising illustration.

I think she thinks that jam is some sort of ram’s blood.

http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=123247

Published: January 22, 2008 NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — As magazine publishers are being asked to prove that the advertising in their titles actually drives sales, little analysis has been given to whether the creative executions of those ads are working. Ads must not only target consumers, but also persuade them to move closer to a purchase decision.

Image, per se, can often be enough to promote the start of a sale. But brand/product image is not built with pretty pictures or attitude alone; over time it’s built on a brand’s perceived superior performance. And in today’s competitive marketplace, image and price often are the only real separating factors. So if you don’t have a perceivable differentiating benefit, you better work really hard on image.

About the purpose of copy referring to a Korean Air ad:

Copy’s job is to focus the target market on the brand’s positioning and benefits (again). It’s important to avoid talking about how great you are (patting-oneself-on-the-back syndrome) but rather how great the brand is for the consumer. To support “We provide only the best quality and services whether it be on-ground or in-air,” show me or tell me how. Give me some permission-to-believe rationale for the claims. Just saying it does not make it so.

pretty good article…

http://adage.com/article?article_id=122803

With presidential caucuses set for next Thursday, candidates have bought every local spot in ABC’s telecast of the game on Des Moines station WOI-TV. That’s 10 30-second spots, some of which are being combined for 60-second messages.

…

TV-station and cable execs say candidates’ last-minute buys combined with the usual post-Christmas slowdown in other ad categories means far more Iowa TV spots are political ads. Even when nonpolitical advertisers do want in, in some cases federal requirements give precedence to the political spots, meaning some regular advertisers get pre-empted.

http://www.hemmy.net/2007/11/30/millimetres-matter/#more-1429

it’s a cellphone ad but these bugs get hit by tiny pies. just watch it

http://adage.com/article?article_id=122185

Dove’s viral video attack on beauty advertising has produced a surprisingly strong and enduring blowback against Unilever from activists, newspaper op-ed writers, bloggers and videographers who see it as hypocritical coming from the same company that markets Axe.

…

In an op-ed titled “A Company’s Ugly Contradiction” in The Boston Globe earlier this month, contributor Michelle Gillett said, “Viewers are struggling to make sense of how Dove can promise to educate girls on a wider definition of beauty while other Unilever ads [for Axe] exhort boys to make ‘nice girls naughty.’ … Unilever is in the business of selling products, not values, and that means we, the consumers, are being manipulated, no matter how socially responsible an ad seems.”

That blows. I actually did not know they made Axe. …. which i USE!!!! D’oh!

This is in reference to the viral video they distributed and I put on this blog:

http://aggregatemadbox.com/bloggregate/?p=44
or view it right here:

And here are previous AdAge articles on the topic:

http://aggregatemadbox.com/bloggregate/?p=82

http://aggregatemadbox.com/bloggregate/?p=148

And here is is a mashup of Dove and Axe as a video response to this news:

http://www.hemmy.net/2007/11/26/v-water-advertisement-animation/

Yay this is a cool animation. The bit about the double-decker bus is great. I wish I had a divine animator’s hand removing and redrawing obstacles for me.

XM is not something I currently subscribe to, but I think their ads campaigns are excellent. I just saw a new one while watching current.tv, but could not find the clip. It’s something reminiscent of a slaughterhouse, but it has normal people on a conveyor belt which moves them through a music playing machine. When they come out the other side, they have customized musical tastes and lifestyles. I think it is a commercial ad that supports the diversity of cultures. But the one I listed here also conveys that sentiment. Checkout the gold tooth at the end, ha.

XM obviously makes money by celebrating the diversity of music, but still it is something to be celebrated. What really is cool is when a new genre is invented as fusion genres inspired by existing genres. Off the top of my head I will say Ratatat is a good example of this with their fusion of hip-hip, rock, end electronic funk. Another obvious example is Led Zeppelin getting their sound from blues and rock.

It’s a shame when one genre gets ridiculed by another. I for example, like to mock the song “I Wanna Rock” by Twisted Sister because I am a jerk. Let me just pose this question: why wouldn’t he just rock instead of repeatedly exclaiming that he has inclinations of rocking? It just doesn’t make sense, people. But yeah that is bad because Twisted Sister does indeed rock – don’t base your decision on the quality of their music on that gaping hole in logic.

I am just saying that I enjoy the musicianship demonstrated by artists like Indian classical musicians including Zakir Hussein, Hari Prasad Chaurasia, Ravi Shankar, and Shiv Kumar Sharma as much as I enjoy good pop hooks & lyrics. Adult contemporary can shit themselves to death at an Oprah taping for all I care, but who knows, maybe I will enjoy that genre when I am dying or dead?

Right, anyway, rockon ad agency who did this ad.

http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=122089

Published: November 19, 2007 The writers strike has media buyers growing cautious about the efficacy of TV advertising in the weeks ahead and in the first quarter of 2008 — and mulling strategies for possible reallocation of marketers’ ad spending. The fourth quarter is an especially fraught time for marketers to not be able to count on TV as a reach vehicle, as many are pushing products for the holidays.

 http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=122092

Published: November 19, 2007 People who live near train lines find ways to adjust to the noise outside their windows. The first time a train passes, they can’t help but notice it. But by the 10th or 20th time, they’ve figured out how to ignore it. Consumers have begun to treat encroaching advertising just like those trains.

http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=122056

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — NBC’s late-night schedule may be the first real victim of the ongoing writers’ strike, with viewership among advertisers’ most-coveted audiences — viewers between the ages of 18 and 49 — down in the double-digits for both “The Tonight Show” and “Saturday Night Live,” according to media buyers.

http://news.awn.com/?&newsitem_no=21467

 Fox has decided to move forward on new episodes of FAMILY GUY without striking creator/exec producer Seth MacFarlane…

MacFarlane has been quoted as saying, “I hope they don’t do it” …

http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=121925

NBC Universal and News Corp. are the majority owners of online-video site Hulu, the better to burnish programs running on NBC and Fox. But that doesn’t mean rival networks CBS and ABC are being shut out.

http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=121862

Overall, network-TV comedy has an ever-shrinking audience — and sitcoms have an ever-shrinking share of prime time, thanks to cheaply made reality TV. As USA Today’s Bill Keveney recently noted, “The broadcast networks [are airing] fewer than 20 live-action, 30-minute sitcoms, about half as many as five seasons ago. … No sitcom has finished in the top 10 since ‘Everybody Loves Raymond’ in 2005.”

The article goes on to talk about how viral-videos are part of the problem as well as the writer’s strike.

Comedy, as Steve Martin says, is not pretty. But in a disintermediated economy, comedy with that kind of executive-suite overhead is, as a business proposition, not only not pretty, it’s hideously ugly.

http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=121924

The longer a writers strike continues, the more cause advertisers have to worry. The problem is few viable solutions seem to be in the offing.

…

“What the networks are doing is the obvious thing: They are trying to take care of the more time-sensitive advertisers, but they are very limited in what they can do,” Mr. Berger said.