Need a guide to today's Super Bowl ads? USA Today has one (broken down by brand name). As you can see, A-B has nine spots running during the game. That's over $20,000,000 in jacked up CBS airtime. …
Super Bowl Losers Second Life in Sierra Leone
What happens to the t-shirts of the team who loses the game tonight? That's easy. They get shipped care package style to third world countries. The New York Times sheds light on this uniquely American brand of philanthropy: The other set of championship gear — the 288 T-shirts and caps made for the team that did not win — will be hidden behind a locked door at Dolphin Stadium. By order of the National Football …
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A ROBOT TYPES IN ALL CAPS
GM will introduce Robot 2407 on Sunday during a 60-second Super Bowl slot. Yesterday the automaker debuted a 30-second preview on YouTube. But the inanimate object found "his" voice on the internets over a month ago. Here's "his" first post from December 30th. ROBOT 1397 THINKS I AM CRAZY FOR STARTING A BLOG. HE SAYS THEY ARE "SO HARD TO KEEP UPDATED." LATER FOR THAT. AFTER WATCHING EVERYONE ELSE HAVE FUN I WANT TO …
Black Gold Has More Luster Than Gold Gold
Sometimes a company succeeds and advertising has nothing to do with it. Instead, market conditions, political favors and an insatiable appetite for their product create wealth on a scale that is hard to fully comprehend. ExxonMobil is such a company. According to USA Today, ExxonMobil earned $39.5 billion last year, making it the most profitable year by any company in history. That figure is 13 times greater than …
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$300, 15 Minutes Of Fame, And One Night In Jail
The Boston Globe shares more details about the two guys arrested in Boston and how they came to be involved: In a State Police report, investigators say that Berdovsky told them he met a man in Brooklyn last November who asked him to participate in a "promotional stunt" and steered him to Interference. The company promised to pay Berdovsky and Stevens $300 each to install 40 of the signs around Boston. A marketing …
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Jeff Chester Talks About The “Brandwashing” Of America
For a new podcast on Radio Talent Zoo, I interviewed Jeff Chester, the director of The Center For Digital Democracy and the author of Digital Destiny: New Media And The Future Of Democracy. Telecom companies, The 4A's, and other organizations are continually lobbying Congress to relax rules and regulations that control the media. Jeff works the opposite site, advocating legislation that protects consumers from …
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AKQA Sells Majority Stake To Well-Heeled Money Men
The Wall Street Journal (paid sub. req.) is reporting that San Francisco interactive-ad firm AKQA has sold a majority stake to private equity firm General Atlantic LLC. While there's nothing new about an agency acccepting large wads of cash for a partial or full buy out, there is a unique twist to this transaction. AKQA Chief Executive Tom Bedecarre said, "The best solution was to work with someone who is not in our …
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Julie Roehm Talks To BusinessWeek
This whole, uh, sordid affair, is a huge cautionary tale for anyone thinking of leaping into a new job. BusinessWeek has a good story detailing how things began--and ended for Roehm during her tenure at Wal-Mart. As fall approached, the deadline for the agency review was looming. On Oct. 15, Wal-Mart finally settled on one of Roehm's top picks, DraftFCB (IPG ). At the time, both Roehm and agency chief Howard Draft …
