What’s new in the world of deadvertising

Back in the spring, we wrote about Costco’s travel urns (shown here), which are useful if you need to scatter a loved one’s ashes far from home. Today, in a timely Halloween blog post, CMO magazine’s Constantine von Hoffman gives us a refresher on the broader subject of death and marketing. Among the topics he touches on: ads on coffins, coffin-themed promotions, college-themed caskets, sponsored funerals and ad campaigns for death-scene cleaning companies and pet cemeteries. It reminds us of that campaign a few years ago by Acclaim Entertainment, which claimed to be paying grieving families to advertise videogames with tiny ads on their relatives’ headstones. That turned out to be hoax.

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Published on October 31, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0)

‘Fortune’ readers don’t envy Jon Stewart

For its Power Issue, Fortune magazine got straight to the point and came up with a list of 25 People We Envy Most. The list includes Jon Stewart, Anderson Cooper, Richard Branson and Bob Costas. For a little extra fun, you can play the Do You Envy Them? Or Not! game online. Voting thus far suggests that 26.6% people are envious of Jon Stewart, and 73.4% are not. Stewart, of course, probably won’t find out about these results, as he almost certainly doesn’t read Fortune.

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Photo: Steve Maller

Published on October 31, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0)

120 reasons to buy a new Passat

We figured we’d stop by the VW site to check out the 15-second short films for the 2006 VW Passat this morning and were annoyed to be confronted with a survey before we could actually gain access to that part of the site. (Confession: surveys make us feel cheeky, so even though—sadly—it’s nowhere even close to true, we told the survey that we were currently in the market for a 2006 BMW 5 Series.) The films, overseen by Arnold Worldwide before the account was taken over last month by Crispin, Porter + Bogusky, now number about 45 or so, and will eventually total 120. They were produced by an outfit called Brand New School. So are they any good? The one pictured here (no. 83) featuring a Beavis and Butthead-style approach to describing the car’s horn, was funny in a juvenile gross-out kind of way, but we think the overriding strategy of the site is this: if you put 120 films online, a couple of them should be capable of going viral.[UPDATE: A reader informs us that, some, but not all, of the films was produced by Brand New School.]

—Posted by Catharine P. Taylor

Published on October 31, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (6)

Don’t be a flop like these NBA rookies

Few characters in the sporting world are as comically sad as the promising NBA player who turns out to be a complete bust. Just ask the Knicks. Sony devotes a new Web site, Don’t Be the Next, to three such players—Billy Joe Cuthbert, Jason “Sweet Money” McDaniels and Sergei Vogavich—to promote its newest PlayStation 2 title, NBA ’06. The players are actually fake, but the bios, humorous videos and Cuthbert’s yellow headband are painfully recognizable. NBA ’06 has a game mode called “The Life” that puts you in the shoes of an NBA rookie. “Make the right moves and you’ll be working your way to the top of the league,” says the promo copy. “Don’t, and you’ll be working the nine-to-five in some dead-end job like Billy Joe Cuthbert, Jason ‘Sweet Money’ McDaniels or Sergei Vogavich.”

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Published on October 31, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (15)

Apply to work at Google ... if you dare

As expected, Google has doctored its logo for Halloween. As not expected, the company is using the logo as the jumping-off point for a recruitment ad for sales execs in today’s New York Times which asks the question, “Are you scary smart?” and resorts to other Halloween metaphors describing Google as “an almost spookily entrepreneurial environment” and so forth. To apply, people are told to go to Google and type in the keywords “scary smart” where they’ll see a list of positions. If they are still interested they can send their resumes to scarysmart@google.com.

—Posted by Catharine P. Taylor

Published on October 31, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (1)

A tale of two Donalds

Although most people in advertising would never mistake Donny Deutsch for Donald Trump, Daniel Gross at Slate has taken it upon himself to clear up any confusion about which “blowhard, narcissistic, tough-talking, celebrity businessman-turned-media-creature with monosyllabic Germanic last name" is which. For a compare and contrast on the duo’s fashion faux pas, “number of times mentioned in the other guy’s latest book” and so forth, click here.

—Posted by Catharine P. Taylor

Credit: CNBC

Published on October 28, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sorrell finds Murdoch in a panic

WPP Group chief Sir Martin Sorrell may have Internet-related investments of his own, but when it comes to Rupert Murdoch’s investments in cyberspace, he finds the News Corp. chief  “panicking,” according to a speech he gave to Europe’s Internet Advertising Bureau conference “Engage 2005.” According to a story in The Guardian (you have to register, but it’s free), Sorrell said, “[Murdoch] must have been panicking because he even said he might hire McKinsey to help him out with his strategy.” Since July, Murdoch’s News Corp. has bought Intermix, owner of myspace.com and IGN Entertainment, among others. This does not mean, however, that Sorrell is blissfully unconcerned of how changes in media are affecting traditional media companies. "Saying, well, the next generation, my kids, and my grandkids, are going to have very different media consumption patterns is a little bit of a cop-out. It's actually happening now," he said.

—Posted by Catharine P. Taylor

Credit: Graham Trott

Published on October 28, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Alan Ball shifts from the dead to the undead

Six Feet Under fans disconsolate after the conclusion of that fabled series can take solace: Alan Ball is developing a vampire show for HBO. Ball, who eons ago worked at Adweek magazine, has agreed to develop an hourlong pilot based on the Southern Vampire book series by Charlaine Harris (Dead Until Dark, Living Dead in Dallas, Club Dead, and Dead to the World). Hopefully the pilot episode will take a page from Six Feet Under’s book and have creepy vampire commercials. 

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Published on October 28, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Daniel Lyons has no love for bloggers

Hot on the heels of Neil French declaring his own “death by blog,” Forbes has published a not-too-flattering take on the blogosphere as its Nov. 14 issue's cover story. Daniel Lyons, author of the piece, cuts to the chase in his lead: “Web logs are the prized platform of an online lynch mob spouting liberty but spewing lies, libel and invective.” Yikes, I have a feeling this can’t end well for Lyons. He weaves together a portrait of bloggers not as pajama-clad socially awkward men living in their parents’ basements, but as cutthroat vigilantes, willing to stoop to any low to smear enemies, real and perceived. Lyons warns companies of the evils bloggers can perpetrate to their businesses, citing Kryptonite’s experience with bloggers’ role in exposing its faulty bike locks. (Interestingly, IntelliSeek’s Pete Blackshaw, one of the biggest proponents of consumer-generated media, pours fuel on Lyons’ fire, saying bloggers “are only going to get more toxic.”) Like most things in life, blogs and bloggers are a messy mix of quite good and quite bad, with big stretches of the aggressively mundane. My guess is Lyons has an axe to grind because he’s tangled often in the past with the passionate open-source world. Early reaction from bloggers has been rather negative,though no sign of the type of organized intimidation campaigns peppered throughout his article.

—Posted by Brian Morrissey

Published on October 28, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (4)
Filed under Morrissey

Can music wash away consumer cynicism?

If music can tame the savage beast, what does it do for a cynical consumer?  There are a few campaigns, regardless of the companies or products being sold, that have excellent scores. Take for example BP’s “On the Street” campaign in which random people are interviewed about their thoughts on oil companies. After seeing these spots dozens of times, it is hard to recall one word that any of the interviewees said. (Save for one woman, who says asking someone to give up their car is like giving up chocolate. “It’s just not gonna happen,” she predicts.) But what stands out is the dreamy music at the end. Then there are the Walgreen’s “Perfect” spots, with some of the same kind of music and soothing voiceover, which can send the viewer into a hypnotic trance. Are there any others I missed?

—Posted by Celeste Ward

Published on October 28, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (1)