Cats dig the Whiskas Web site

Call it “kitty porn.” A computer teacher from San Francisco writes to Whiskas’ ad agency, TBWA\Chiat\Day in Playa del Rey, Calif., that her cat, Boop, is addicted to the Whiskas Web site, which includes an interactive online feline that can be played with and fed. She has captured her cat’s craze in a movie (“Boop Meets a Virtual Kitty”) on her own site. “The reason we did the site was to get people involved with the virtual cat,” says Doug Speidel, ecd at Tequila, the integrated marketing arm that created the Whiskas cat. “We just never knew a cat would get interested in it. It looks he’s having a pretty good time. I hope it doesn’t affect his cat vision. We never imagined that a cat on a computer screen would be more interesting to a cat than the mouse.”

—Posted by Gregory Solman

Published on April 8, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Salad days for the cookie monster

Somehow, “C is for carrot” doesn't have the same ring to it. According to this story, Sesame Street's Cookie Monster is going to cut back a little on his cookie consumption and eat more fruits and vegetables. Apparently it's all part of the program's initiative to encourage healthier eating among children. We're all for that, but it seems like making poor Cookie suffer is a bit cruel. It doesn't seem like he's obese or even overweight (though judging from his googly eyes, he could probably use glasses); maybe he's one of those people/monsters who can eat whatever he wants and never gain a pound. As far as Muppet lore goes, this development could be as tectonic as when adults started to see Snuffleupagus (a bad day for imaginary friends everywhere). And in the annals of food lore, this might even rival Grimace's shift from shake-stealing Hamburglar cohort to giggling purple being.

—Posted by Aaron Baar

Credit: Richard Termine
Sesame Street® and associated characters, trademarks and design elements are owned and licensed by Sesame Workshop. © 2005 Sesame Workshop. All Rights Reserved.

Published on April 8, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (20)

Zen: Now part of a complete breakfast

So, you’re seeking a high fiber cereal *and* spiritual enlightenment? Rolled oats and old rotes rolled into one? You’ve found it in the latest cereal by Nature’s Path. It’s called Optimum Zen and it boasts the ability to bring “inner harmony.” It features ginger and cranberry bits, along with flax seed and many high-fiber crunchy things AdFreak can’t identify. Whatever they are, they are grown with “no sewage sludge on fields,” as noted on the box’s side panel. (And that, my friend, can only be good.) So we decided to try it. We swallowed our first bite cautiously, afraid we might fall into a trance or begin levitating as the kibble hit our stomachs. But we were fine, fine. We continued to eat our breakfast and read the box, which provided five minutes of blissful diversion from current events (good for anyone’s inner harmony). Now for the best part: The box, when turned upside-down, includes a secret message from the Dalai Lama. (We won’t tell you what he says—it’s a secret!) For added intrigue, the inside of the box features mysterious messages about organic food. What do they want to tell us that can’t be printed for all to see? Overall, Nature’s Path delivers a tasty combination of grains, roots and berries, all of which keep their appropriate textures in milk. Does it deliver inner harmony? No, not really. Nonetheless, we’re going back for more tomorrow morning.

—Posted by Celeste Ward

Published on April 8, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Great opportunity: A depressing job at JWT

CAUTION: Side effects of working at J. Walter Thompson’s Detroit office may include depression, dry mouth, ulcers and stress-induced hallucinations that, if you’re lucky, may inspire an award-winning campaign. A classified ad placed by the agency this week in Adweek touts creative angst as a perk with the headline, “Taking anti-depressants? Want to?” The agency is looking for a copywriter and art director, ‘but not necessarily a team. After all, depression is so much better when endured alone.” Appealing to the masochist inside every creative is a shrewd move, and should the lucky candidate grow to hate the job, he can’t accuse the shop of false advertising.

—Posted by Deanna Zammit

Published on April 8, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (5)

Beware any bewildering bewailing

As part of this Saturday’s ceremony at which the Church of England blesses their marriage, reports BBC News, Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles will acknowledge their “manifold sins and wickedness.” Now, we’re aware that some AdFreak readers tend to celebrate their own manifold sins and wickedness, but the prince and his bride will “bewail” theirs as they recite what the BBC describes as “the strongest act of penitence from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer.” This seems like such a good idea that we hope it becomes standard practice on all sorts of occasions. The advertising business, for example, could only win greater respect from clients and the public alike if agency CEOs bewailed their manifold sins and wickedness when they’ve lost an account. Clients might do the same when they fire an agency for having done precisely what they’d hired it to do in the first place. And while the financial transparency mandated by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act is fine, it still wouldn’t be a bad idea for a public company’s annual report to include a bewailing of management’s manifold sins and wickedness during the preceding year.

—Posted by Mark Dolliver

Published on April 8, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Profanity, special sauce, lettuce, cheese

Well, McDonald’s was asking for it, and they got it: A group called Gatbustaz has released a hip-hop song laden with Big Mac references—and laden also with sex, violence and profanity. Some of the tamer lyrics to “McGangsta” include: “Kinda feel like a sesame seed bun/Don’t we all/Wait, let me get my gun/Let’s make a McDonald’s run.” Though Gatbustaz appears to be a kind of Weird Al Yankovic of hip-hop (and the song sounds like it’s from about 1985), the song, currently circulating around the Internet, is still infectiously catchy. We doubt they’ll be getting any checks in the mail from McDonald’s anytime soon.

—Posted by Mae Anderson

Published on April 7, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0)

One Campaign video finally sees light of day

Bono’s One Campaign is finally going to get its allotted time on the airwaves. The organization—which is working to motivate U.S. citizens in the fight against the AIDS crisis in Africa and in helping the world’s poorest people—will air a 60-second video originally planned to air on the Oscars this Sunday on both ABC and MTV Networks, according to this release. Fittingly, its debut on ABC will be during an episode of “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” featuring a woman who has helped three of her adopted children face living with AIDS. The video, produced by @radical.media, incorporates people from the left, right and center, ranging from Pat Robertson to Brad Pitt (pictured gratuitously here), talking about the need to get involved. I'm glad to see ABC is finally airing the thing because its non-appearance on the Oscars was, quite frankly, disturbing. I'm on the email list for the One Campaign and try to support the organization in the modest ways that a harried working Mom can, and so was in the loop about its planned Academy Awards appearance. Its debut there had been touted not only by Bono in a speech he gave in February at the TED conference (upon winning the TED prize) but also in emails from The One Campaign. Then, the day after the Oscars, I got this perplexing email: “Unfortunately, despite repeated assurances, our ONE Campaign video was not shown during the Oscars award ceremony. We are all disappointed and concerned, and we are looking into why this happened.” In fact, one of my colleagues called over to ABC; after getting passed around for awhile, officials there never came up with an explanation for the video’s non-appearance. OK, enough talk of corporate mix-ups. While we’re on the subject of getting media time and space for what is probably the world’s greatest crisis, I'll shine the AdFreak light on something from that Bono TED speech that didn’t get nearly the press it should have, at least among the media people who can do something about it. TED winners get to make three wishes, which Tedsters—some of the most influential people in technology, entertainment and design—then try to fulfill. And one of his wishes was to get one billion donated media impressions for the cause by the time of the G8 Africa Summit in July. (That would be one hit for every severely impoverished person on the planet, BTW.) Hey, media people out there, there are less than four months left. Get moving and donate thy media impressions. Now, AdFreak will return to its regular snarky programming.

—Posted by Catharine P. Taylor

Published on April 7, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0)

McGriddles touted as hangover cure

So we saw the ad pictured here on the back cover of the current Rolling Stone, and the only conclusion we could come to is that McDonald’s is finally touting its breakfasts as the hangover cure they are—without explicitly saying so. Look at this thing! The guy’s got a reverse mohawk, stubble, and—though it might not be clear from the smaller version pictured here—bloodshot eyes! Then there’s the headline: “Bad night? Good morning.” We’re lovin’ it.

—Posted by Catharine P. Taylor

Published on April 7, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (2)

McKesson named king of bull-bleep

With all of the hype surrounding March Madness, you might not have participated in Manure Madness, the blog Fight the Bull's annual tourney to name a Shining Beacon of Business Idiocy, based on the verbiage of corporate America's newly-released annual reports, alternatively described on the site as, "the clichés, platitudes and truckloads of bull that grace some of the most expensive print materials ever destined for the recycle bin." Thirty-two of the Fortune 100 were picked for the competition, but in the end it came down to McKesson vs. Lockheed Martin, with the healthcare behemoth winning 55 percent of the online vote. By providing investors with such mind-blowing insights as "McKesson is well-positioned for growth" and "the forces for change are intensifying" voters obviously thought the company excelled at saying a lot without really saying anything at all.

—Posted by Catharine P. Taylor

Published on April 7, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Bring that radio spot back to life

For those of you whose radio scripts have been killed off before they saw the light of day, here’s a chance for resurrection. Radio ad agency Oink Ink’s latest “Dead Radio Contest” is going on now, with no entry fees and everything to gain. “Last time they ‘showed it around the office,’ your guaranteed-Mercury-winner came back as an Addy runner-up,” the Web site says. “Keep your dignity and most of your integrity. Enter your tortured-soul of a script in our 8th Annual Dead Radio Contest.” The winner gets his or her script produced start-to-finish, plus a trip to New York City or lovely Santa Monica, Calif. Last year’s winner, “Testing” for Miller Lite, by Greg Christensen of Young & Rubicam in Chicago, was selected from more than 1,000 entries. To get an idea of other scripts that had been killed, the site has an archive of past winners. Check out the horrible brat in the 2003 winner, “Babysitter.”

—Posted by Celeste Ward

Published on April 7, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0)