We reported in March on GoDaddy's decision to bring their account in-house, despite an avalanche of P.R. resulting from their big breasted Super Bowl ad. I finally saw one of the direct TV spots, produced in-house, over the weekend while watching the Tour de France on OLN. The spot, which features a screaming DJ, is horrid. Good thing GoDaddy has some of the best pricing in the domain name registration game. …
Piers Poo Poos
Englishman, Piers Fawkes, visited London recently and came away unimpressed by the staidness evident in British ad circles. There are a few folk in the UK who are very switched on, I grant you, but a lot of agency people I met in my short visit were rather bemused by PSFK and IF. Although blogs are championed by the Guardian newspaper - an important media read - the British marketing community seems to be dismissive …
Mixing Media
New York Times: With its long reliance on talk formats and call-in programs, radio was arguably the first open-source media form. Now a new Public Radio International program, "Open Source from P.R.I.," will test whether the collective intelligence permeating the Web can make not just loud radio, but smart radio. Not only does the program pull from unfiltered voices and opinions found on blogs, Open Source uses its …
Wireless Companies Use Too Much Fine Print. In Other News, Scientists Declare Earth Is “Round.”
Has Catherine Zeta-Jones been lying to me this whole time? From Ad Age: New York's Department of Consumer Affairs is suing three wireless phone marketers for violating the city's consumer protection law. Acting Commissioner Jonathan Mintz, in a suit filed in New York Supreme Court, charged Nextel Communications, Sprint Spectrum and T-Mobile USA, with deceptive advertising and is seeking maximum fines as well as …
Putt-Putt
New York Times: Putt-Putt is not a generic name for miniature golf. It is the brand name of a company that builds and franchises a particular style of miniature golf course designed specifically to make competitive putting possible. For something that sounds as if it was named by a child, Putt-Putt has a surprisingly grown-up creation story. The first Putt-Putt course was designed in 1954 by Don Clayton, a …
High Praise For Randomness
Rohit Bhargava, of Ogilvy PR has some great things to say about the power of randomness. What makes random such a powerful marketing tool? …
Phishing Wreaks Havoc With Banking Industy’s Online Strategies
Boston Globe: It was any banker's worst nightmare. Shortly after Wachovia Corp. sent an e-mail inviting recipients to go to a new log-in page as a result of its merger with First Union Corp., some savvy customers swamped Wachovia's call center to inform officials that criminals apparently were attempting to steal the financial information of Wachovia's customers through a bogus hyperlink. One problem: The e-mail was …
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Information Overload
An ad can never say it all. Of course, clients often want to break this cardinal rule, because they have so many important (to them only) things to say. Thanks to Flickr user, Fachtopia for the image. …
Pigs Endure Logo Treatment
Yahoo: Pigs tattooed with the logo of French luxury brand Louis Vuitton rest in a farm in the rural area of China's capital Beijing July 14, 2005. The pigs are owned by Belgian artist Wim Delvoye, who has a staff of local farmers and tattoo artists raising sows to use them as canvases for skin art. According to Time, Delvoye's controversial art seems perfectly aligned with Europe's current indigestion over what it …
Not Your Grandfather’s White Bread
Ad Age: Bread marketers are launching a variety of new whole-grain white breads in an effort to cater to the latest health trend while also catering to the tastes of the vast majority of consumers who don't like the taste of whole-grain bread. Interstate Bakeries is launching a whole-grain version of its classic Wonder Bread dubbed "White Bread Fans 100% Whole Grain." The variety launches this month in six U.S. …