The New York Times: Nintendo of America will offer free wireless Internet access for its Nintendo DS portable game system at McDonald's restaurants. Customers will be able to play select DS games with other players around the world. McDonald's offers wireless Internet, or Wi-Fi, access to laptop users for a fee in 6,000 restaurants nationwide, but the free Nintendo arrangement will permit the DS machines to play …
Online Ad Sales Red Hot
USA Today: Internet giant Yahoo — locked in battle with Google and Microsoft over who will dominate the Web — said Tuesday that the red-hot online advertising market helped boost its quarterly revenue 47% over last year. "The results highlight the power of our brand," Yahoo CEO Terry Semel said in a conference call with analysts. The company reported earnings of $253.8 million, or 17 cents a share, on revenue of …
Go Somewhere With Your Agenda
AGENDA INC.™ is looking to hire talented researchers, account planners, strategists, bloggers and videographers for contract work on a range of upcoming projects. Please send information, resumes, including experience and typical day / week rate to work@agendainc.com. …
Commercial Alert Doesn’t Like All The Buzz It Hears
Today, Commercial Alert, an organization that keeps an eye on excessive commercialization, today sent a 6-page letter to the Federal Trade Commission requesting an official investigation into the various forms of "buzz marketing" that have appeared in the last several years. Commercial Alert’s letter urges the FTC to thoroughly investigate Proctor & Gamble’s Tremor, which has enlisted about 250,000 teenagers in its …
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Consumption And Production
Danah Boyd has been thinking about the practice of remixing, or repurposing, content (something we do a lot of here): A huge part of the identity process is to consume culture, mix it and personalize it, and share that with our friends because it has identity implications. Why can't we consume for identity, for culture, for life? Why can't we recognize that remixes are active consumption where we've made culture …
Luxury Brands Rub Indian Ruler Wrong Way
Web India 123: Irked by Cartier watches and Gucci glasses, Congress president Sonia Gandhi has asked party colleagues not to flash their wealth and not to waste tax payers' money. The stern warning went out from her office recently after she noticed that some party leaders who called on her were sporting expensive luxurious items and travelling in luxury cars. A Congress source said Gandhi was visibly irritated and …
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Bud Tries To “Private Label” Beer Pong
The Gainesville Sun: This past summer, Anheuser-Busch unveiled a game it calls Bud Pong. The company, which makes Budweiser, is promoting Bud Pong tournaments and providing Bud Pong tables, balls and glasses to distributors in 47 markets, including college towns like Oswego, N.Y., and Clemson, S.C. Bud Pong may soon expand into more markets, said Francine Katz, a spokeswoman for Anheuser-Busch. "It's catching on …
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Smart Guy Speak
Brand strategist, Marc Babej, speaking with Tom Asacker last week: Conventional branding wisdom assumes that “emotional” and “rational” are somehow mutually exclusive, or opposed. That’s a false dichotomy. In reality, the two are very much intertwined. Save for a few image-driven categories, an emotional connection is the result of delivering against a tangible – call it “rational” benefit. By any standard, mileage …
