New ad campaign guns for Florida

Foreign tourists, please pay attention: if you feel like threatening a local during your American vacation, do it in Vermont or San Francisco. Anyone who starts trouble with a Floridian now may go home in a body bag. A new ad campaign from a Washington, D.C. gun control group is warning people about a law Florida Gov. Jeb Bush recently signed, giving the good people of the Sunshine State the right to shoot when threatened in public, just as they can do to protect their homes. At particular risk are travelers from abroad, because according to some, they are the people Floridians trust the least. The print campaign from the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence will run in U.S. and British magazines, and should the Brady group find itself with more money, publications in Germany, Japan and France. The law goes in to effect tomorrow.

—Posted by Celeste Ward

Published on September 30, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Do we want JetBlue joking around?

Anyone notice that JetBlue commercial that’s been running lately? You know, the one that features tongue-in-cheek interviews with JetBlue employees about customer service? It’s a mockumentary-type spot that tells TV viewers how JetBlue can “make your trip as easy as possible.” Employees talk with deadpan, no-frills honesty about how they help get customers get where they’re going. “When the plane is ready to board, I usually say something like, ‘The plane is ready to board.’ ” Another says, “A lot of people ask me what gate they are leaving from, so I tell them.” I appreciate the attempt to lend humor to airline advertising, and the tone works wonderfully for JetBlue’s alterna-air personality. But the timing seems awfully unusual to me. Consider the opening line: “We take off, fly around for a while, and then we land. Somewhere else.” The spot was on air last week, hours after a New York-bound JetBlue flight was stuck circling around Southern California with malfunctioning landing gear. A day later, another JetBlue plane had problems with its wing flaps. Will consumers ignore the irony, or will they see it as validation that JetBlue is not a serious airline? I’ve flown JetBlue many times, and as much as I love the blue chips and the DirecTV, when it comes to flying, I’ll take boring over buffoonery.

—Posted by Eleftheria Parpis

Published on September 30, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (3)
Filed under Parpis

Maybe Kate has a master plan

It’s been more than a week since Kate Moss’ apparent nose-powdering led to the abrupt end of her contract with suburban-edgy European clothing chain H&M. Until now, AdFreak has been mystified as to how the media-savvy 31-year-old model could have allowed herself to be caught on film. Then it hit us: In true “no press is bad press” fashion, Miss Kate’s indiscretion may be one of the most brilliant marketing moves of her career. According to Thursday’s Brit press, Kate has checked into an Arizona rehab clinic for a 30-day “medical treatment and therapy” program—a healthy, positive first step for a woman used to running 18-hour days on little more than nicotine, caffeine and even stronger stuff than that. Sure, it’s sad that she’ll be separated from her 3-year-old daughter for a few weeks. But she’ll also be away from her no-goodnick boyfriend, pasty-faced Libertines musician Pete Doherty, whose whiny behavior and well-documented heroin habit are both harmful and passé. Even better than the promise of regaining her health? The possibility of reconnecting with mortified brands. Kate has managed to dominate the media like she hasn’t since breaking up with Johnnie Depp a decade ago, and that’s made H&M the biggest winner of all. How many Americans had even heard of the chain prior to last week? Note to H&M marketing execs: We hear Courtney Love is available.

—Posted by Randi Schmelzer

Published on September 30, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (3)

Chicago ad folks are wild and crazy too!

You may have inferred from our earlier post that Milwaukee ad people have the Midwest cornered when it comes to racy behavior. If so, we thought we’d set the record straight by introducing you to this photo from Monday’s Fluid Battle of the Ad Bands III, showing two exuberant members of the Happy Endings, the band from JWT in Chicago. It’s hard for Milwaukee to upstage Chicago for long.

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Photo: Rob Bennett

Published on September 30, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0)

And now let's talk about me

Bon Jovi and Tony Danza didn't make it into most Advertising Week speeches, which could be one reason they were, for the most part, dry and uninspiring affairs. Samsung marketing chief Peter Weedfald, however, broke the mold earlier this week at the OMMA Conference during Advertising Week. Unruffled by eMarketer CEO Geoff Ramsey consistently mistaking his name, Weedfald came with his own video introduction set to The Who’s “Teenage Wasteland,” showing Samsung products and charitable endeavors, interspersed with video of Weedfald. The keynote speech ran 15 minutes over its allotted time, and was a tour de force of high-level vocab —“sinecure” and “promulgation” got a couple of mentions—and interesting takes on Samsung’s Web strategy. One statement that raised more than a few eyebrows—including those of Google vp of sales Tim Armstrong—was the revelation that Samsung does not buy any search advertising. (Armstrong later slipped Weedfald a business card after they appeared jointly on a panel.) Then, the video came back out, a four-minute affair set to Bon Jovi’s “It’s My Life,” (OK, the company has done work with the band) with more cameos by Weedfald, including a shot of him appearing with an oversized check for charity on The Tony Danza Show. (The shot pictured here is from another delivery of an oversized check—he's the guy in the middle of the back row.)

—Posted by Brian Morrissey

Published on September 30, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Filed under Morrissey

Those crazy Milwaukee ad types

We haven’t written much about Milwaukee’s ad club, known as United Adworkers Local 208, primarily because we didn’t know they existed. We may check in with them more, though, as we hear they are experts in public urination and breast flashing. As the story goes (and this comes from club president Jeff Ericksen of BVK, who swears it’s true), the Adworkers had to switch venues for their annual golf outing this year after being booted from their favorite spot, the Fire Ridge Golf Club in Grafton, Wis., for behavior that included excessive drinking, on-course urination and reckless golf-cart driving (one accident evidently left a guy unconscious). Oh, and something about female broadcast producers taking their tops off. Pleased as punch with themselves, the Adworkers used the expulsion as the basis of this year’s invitation, which features the headline: “There are over 50 golf courses in the Milwaukee area. Thank God.” They also created signs like the one shown here to post at every hole on the course. (Another one in the series reads, “No use of flagsticks to simulate your ‘wang.’ ”) We wonder if this is par for the course for this club, whose motto is, “Creativity is king. Politics are crap. Beer is yummy.”

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Published on September 30, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (1)

What was this advertiser smoking?

Another rule of thumb: If you want your billboards to stay up in a small Wisconsin town, don’t put enormous images of marijuana leaves on them. A law office in Weston, Wis., seeking to help people facing marijuana charges, forgot that rule. Three of its billboards featured huge pot leaves, along with the text, “Use of a controlled substance can restrict your liberties.” After criticism that the boards glorified marijuana, they’ve been taken down. “I think to drive down Schofield Avenue in the village of Weston, a community that prides itself on being safe and drug-free, it’s a little daunting to see that big marijuana leaf staring back at you,” the village administrator says.

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Published on September 30, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Lamborghini promo too rich for us

Even though Grand Central Station has become the staging area for tons o' promotions, it was a little surprising to find two 2005 Lamborghini Gallardos—one orange, one black—in the terminal's great room the other day on either side of the iconic clock. (Top speed: 192 mph; 0 to 60 in 4.2 seconds.) They're prizes in the 2005 Columbus Week Raffle being sponsored by a non-profit outfit called the Columbus Citizens Foundation, which runs New York's annual Columbus Day Parade and has a "commitment to preserving the rich Italian-American heritage and supporting a range of philanthropic causes."  Winning a Lamborghini! Cool! So we picked up a flier from one of the Foundation's helpful representatives. Oh, wait ... there's a catch: each raffle ticket costs $1000 and only 300 tickets will be sold.

—Posted by Catharine P. Taylor

Published on September 30, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Einstein teaches Germans how to smile

Albert Einstein, Ludwig van Beethoven and Katarina Witt are all starring in a new campaign—to lift the spirits of the apparently depressed German populace. The campaign, which carries slogans such as “You are the miracle from Germany,” (just a tad stilted, no?) comes as the country grapples with massive unemployment and “political deadlock” following the Sept. 18th elections, according to this story. The man who organized the effort—Bernd Bauer—explains that Germans tend to be more pessimistic than some other nationalities and, basically, need a campaign to tell them to cheer up. Nice idea, we guess, but what's this line from the campaign, which claims “A butterfly can start a typhoon”? We know, having Googled it, that this ridiculous attempt at trying to make the point that anyone can make a difference is part of the belief system of chaos theory. Which, as you might have guessed, is only a theory. And not the kind of thing to boost the morale of what is probably a pretty skeptical populace. Still, we’re all for happiness. Let a smile be your umbrella, Germany!

—Posted by Catharine P. Taylor

Published on September 30, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (5)

Jon Stewart goes to town on magazine editors

Those looking for a pithy quote about advertising from last night’s “Laughing Matters” panel with Jon Stewart had to settle for Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter’s thoughts on Google. “I read recently that Google is making as much money off advertising these days as the top four newspapers combined or something,” he said. “Well, I’ve used Google a lot, and I have never, ever remembered any ad I ever saw on it.” The supposed theme of the evening, sponsored by the Magazine Publishers of America and part of Advertising Week, was humor in magazines. But insights into that weren’t exactly flowing, either, as Stewart settled for a broad, comic approach to interviewing the four editors—Carter, Jim Kelly of Time, Kate White of Cosmopolitan and David Zinczenko of Men’s Health. Mostly, this meant being mock contemptuous of them, when he wasn’t appearing actually contemptuous. He asked White and Zinczenko to confirm that their magazines are simply repositories for product placement. He ribbed Carter about his Paris Hilton cover and Kelly about how Time is constantly finding Jesus. And he asked Zinczenko why Men’s Health is “so gay” and why the guys on its cover always seem to have just showered or are about to shower. (Zinczenko didn’t help himself by saying things like “Fit is the new rich” and “We worship at the altar of our readers.” He also evidently prepared for the event by typing the word humor into Bartlett’s, and he farce-ishly quoted both Marshall McLuhan and Freud on the subject.) Eventually, the floor opened up for questions, and Stewart wound up telling the auditorium full of magazine people that print media is simply “not relevant” (in terms of driving the discourse, he later clarified). He got a better reaction when asked what his favorite magazine is. “I enjoy Juggs a lot,” he said. “You know, gigantic tits are the new rich.”

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Photo: Steve Maller

Published on September 30, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (6)

iPod nano commercial is parodied

Micro Persuation and TUAW point us to this humorous spoof on iFilm of the new iPod nano spot. Instead of “1,000 songs. Impossibly small. iPod nano,” we are enticed with “10 songs. Impossibly heavy. Macintosh Classic II.” (See the original nano spot here.) While we’re at it, here’s a link to a page of Apple parody commercials (mostly), including the classic Will Ferrell spot that ran only at MacWorld Expo NYC 2002.

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Published on September 29, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0)

A truly amateur night at the Apollo

So let’s talk about the train wreck that was last night’s Advertising Week’s Amateur Night at the Apollo Theater. I assumed, as did many in the ad industry, that Advertising Week had reserved the famed stage for a contest among advertising executives—and only advertising executives. Sadly, that was not the case. Not only did last night’s industry performers “compete” amidst genuine Apollo amateurs—Billie Holliday, James Brown and more recently Lauryn Hill got their starts there—but they were on stage next to the contests’ “Top Dogs,” who are amateurs that had already won two Apollo contests. The theater’s notoriously brutal and finicky crowd booed the first two industry performers off the stage before settling down, inexplicably, for a magician and scantily clad Mambo dancers. Among the other ill-conceived show stoppers were Juan Valdez, whose donkey was led on stage without him and McGruff the Crime Dog, who was quietly accepted—though an attempt to show one of his film strips faced technical difficulties and the ire of an impatient crowd. The Pillsbury Doughboy and Kool-Aid, both of whom bounced along to the music from balcony perches, didn’t draw any disrespect, but when they were trotted into the hallway during intermission, most theater-goers sauntered up to the theater’s own 8-foot “Tall Man,” leaving Pills and Kool in the cold. I arrived at the Apollo Theater excited just to see a show at the legendary house, but I left at intermission, shaking my head at the culture clash I had just witnessed. Amateur Night at The Apollo Theater is about authentic, unvarnished talent taking the stage knowing full well that their ego might take some lumps. It is not about polished ad types foisting their focus-grouped “icons” on an annoyed crowd who paid good money for a show. It seems the organizers of this event, sponsored by MTV and Levi's, should have first considered the ad industry’s golden rule before elbowing their way into this contest: Know your audience.

—Posted by Deanna Zammit

Published on September 29, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0)

A sneak peek at ‘Superman Returns’

A teaser trailer is out for next summer’s Superman Returns movie, directed by Bryan Singer, whose credits include The Usual Suspects and X-Men. The trailer is very cool, and according to the always excellent Movie Marketing Madness blog, the film is likely to be pretty good, too. The MMM post reads, in part: “It occurs to me that DC [Comics] is now doing with its comic characters just what Marvel did four or five years ago. Take a director that is talented, give him a story to create and work with and let him make an actual movie, not just a commercial for action figure tie-ins. Marvel did it with X-Men (Bryan Singer) and Spider-Man (Sam Raimi) in 2000 and 2001, respectively. Now DC has done it with Batman Begins (Christopher Nolan) and will do it with Superman Returns (Singer, poached from the X-Men franchise) and then Wonder Woman (Buffy creator Joss Whedon).” Reaction to the teaser poster, meanwhile, has been mixed. Some think it’s classic; others say it’s boring.

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Published on September 29, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (3)

Gap.com shoppers freed!

We wish to officially announce that the Gap.com site, following at least 26 days of being all or partially shut down, is now open for business. Give it a spin, as remember, all of the redesigned Gap, Inc. sites are supposed to revolutionize the e-commerce business. Tell us what you think.

—Posted by Catharine P. Taylor

Published on September 29, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (4)

How to improve the Advertising Week guide and Web site

While it’s top of mind, thought we’d offer a few highly subjective suggestions on how the two main compasses for Advertising Week—the official guide and the Web site—could be improved next year. (It’s not an easy job trying to organize dozens of events into a user-friendly format, and we tip our hats to anyone who would take it on.) But here we go. First, we think the guide needs a table of contents, and even more desperately, an index. As it stands, you never know where you are in the guide until you’re there. Users should be able to, say, consult the index to flip directly to the panel where their boss is speaking. On the Web site, event navigation needs to be easier. As it is now, you can find some events more quickly using Google than you can advertisingweek.com, mostly because the official site doesn’t offer a search box. Visitors can click on a bunch of boxes to have the calendar re-sort, but that’s a pretty clunky way to find something. Lastly, the scrolling events box is still showing events from days one, two and three, which are events under the bridge, as they say. OK, we’re done now.

—Posted by Catharine P. Taylor

Published on September 29, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (2)

Come one, come all, to whatever you want

It speaks to the “we never saw a conference we didn’t like” mentality of Advertising Week that yesterday’s troika of events at the Marriott Marquis turned into one big, rolling conference—by the end of the day, people were intermingling under the banner of any, and all, of the organizations holding events there. We spent most of the day at the Word of Mouth Marketing Association’s daylong confab (that’s WOMMA for the uninitiated), where Jupiter Research analyst Gary Stein, moderating a panel on “How WOM Changes Advertising,” (WOM stands for word of mouth) took tongue-in-cheek potshots at competitor Forrester Research, which was holding its Consumer Forum 2005 downstairs. But late in the day, we spotted Forrester analyst Jim Nail at WOMMA—sans registration tags—boldly asking questions of one of the late afternoon panels. As for our part, after WOMMA wrapped up, we wandered into a cocktail party on the very same floor sponsored by Adweek competitor Mediapost (we originally thought it was a Yahoo! party, honest), that was wrapping up its OMMA conference and awards (that’s for Online Marketing, Media and Advertising, no relation to WOMMA, or to the MIXX Awards—sponsored by Adweek and the Interactive  Advertising Bureau—which were held the night before). Well, you get the idea. And if you don’t, we’ll forgive you.

—Posted by Catharine P. Taylor

Published on September 29, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Georgia messes around with its slogans

It’s hard to write a state slogan that everyone likes. It’s much easier to confuse and annoy people with lines that suck. (Witness the stink raised recently by opponents of Kansas’s new slogan, “As big as you think.”) So why would a state like Georgia, which already has a solid, recognizable tagline in “Georgia on my mind,” try to add a second one, “Put your dreams in motion,” to the mix? Folks in the Peach State seem rightly jittery about the development, even though the original line will still be used. (This is also the new logo shown here.) And the state’s top tourism guy, Craig Lesser, isn’t helping very much. How will the two taglines work together? “We’ve bifurcated [the message] into an invitation and a thank you,” Lesser says. No wonder people are nervous.

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Published on September 28, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (5)

Would you want to be a Stephen King character?

In August, we brought to your attention the First Amendment Project’s eBay auction fundraiser, in which people could buy the right to name a character in novels or stories by popular American authors. To be thorough, we are now reporting back on the results of the auction. Not surprisingly, bards with the most commercial appeal raised the most cash. Pam Alexander of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., shelled out more than $25,000 for the right to name a character in Stephen King’s novel Cell after her brother, Ray Huizenga. (Hopefully Ray will not be chopped into little pieces or buried alive in the book—or be the one doing the chopping and burying, for that matter.) King also inspired the most bids, 76. John Grisham raised more than $12,000, and Nora Roberts racked up more than $6,800. The literati did their part, with Dave Eggers’ offer raising almost $5,500 and Michael Chabon pitching in with $6,000. Whose ego took a beating? Short-story writer ZZ Packer raised the least, just $520. FAP is still collecting its donations but says it raised “safely over $90,000.” Not a bad haul.

—Posted by Deanna Zammit

Photo: WENN/Newscom

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

Which is worse, obscene or annoying?

This morning’s Advertising Week session on branded entertainment and the FCC had plenty to keep clients and their agencies awake at night. The usual suspects—food (obesity), indecency (Super Bowl), violence (children), pharmaceuticals (too much), alcohol (youngsters)—were paraded for the listening pleasure of an audience already worrying about the alleged impending death of traditional advertising. Which raised a question: Why is this Republican administration, which advertisers had every reason to believe would be more hands-off than Clinton’s, so active in the area of ad regulation? Ed Thomas, a chief engineer at the FCC and a technology policy adviser at lobbying firm Harris, Wiltshire & Grannis in Washington, suggested this answer: “What is really driving this is that advertising is starting to become annoying.” So, there you have it. Be less annoying, and the FCC will go away. Problem solved!

—Posted by Jim Edwards

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

Seth Godin’s tips for spotting tech heads

Seth Godin, the sound-bite-friendly former Yahoo! exec and author of Unleashing the Ideavirus, has consumers pegged when it comes to tech gear. Delivering the keynote speech this morning at the Word of Mouth Marketing Association conference in New York, he explained that early adopters are people who subscribed to TiVo when it came out and now are busy downloading stuff to their Linux machines. Laggards, on the other hand, “are the people who still have a ‘12’ flashing on their VCR.”

—Posted by Catharine P. Taylor

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

News flash: Creativity is important!

Get seven agency CEOs in a room, have them talk about creativity and what you get is—a cure for insomnia! Yesterday’s New York Times CEO Summit, part of Advertising Week, featured Ron Berger of Euro RSCG, Linda Sawyer of Deutsch, Ken Kaess of DDB, Rosemarie Ryan of JWT, Brendan Ryan of FCB, Karen Francis of Publicis & Hal Riney and Rich Stoddart of Leo Burnett. The main question was, how important is creativity today? They all agreed—surprise!—that it is very, very important. Berger pointed out that “the compelling nature of what we have to say has declined quite a bit” because “there’s more parity” between competing products. Quite.

—Posted by Jim Edwards

Photos: David Berkwitz

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

Paul Lavoie wouldn’t say no

Disdain for the pitching process was a major theme at Tuesday afternoon’s “New Kids on the Block” panel, part of Advertising Week. It’s what you’d expect from a panel consisting of execs from Taxi, Anomaly and StrawberryFrog. But apparently, even these guys occasionally entertain the thought of (just about) giving ideas away. Asked if their shops would agree to be paid a measly $100,000 to give some ideas to troubled Ford Motor Co., Anomaly’s Jason DeLand and StrawberryFrog’s Scott Goodson both said no. But Taxi’s Paul Lavoie (shown here) piped in brightly: “Well, I’m a whore. We take it case by case.” Unfortunately, as long as Taxi continues to handle Mini, that example will have to remain hypothetical.

—Posted by Catharine P. Taylor

Published on September 28, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (4)

Those pesky Advertising Week phobias

At the National Advertising Division’s Advertising Week conference at the W Hotel on Tuesday, NAD staff attorney Jennifer Fried began her presentation on trends in ad disputes with this anecdote: She had a dream the night before in which she was giving her presentation. “It just turned absolutely ugly,” Fried said. First, everyone was booing. Then “it turned violent. You were all pelting me quite viciously with jelly beans.” So, she warned the audience, “keep your hands down, and no sudden movements.” Her talk went off without a hitch.

—Posted by Jim Edwards

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

Everybody loves Martin? Maybe not

At the first Dynamic Duos presentation on Monday for Advertising Week, BBDO CEO Andrew Robertson couldn’t pass up the opportunity to poke a little fun at his old boss, WPP Group CEO Martin Sorrell. (Robertson worked for Ogilvy & Mather in London in the 1990s before joining Omnicom’s AMV BBDO London.) Robertson was showing the audience at the Time Warner Center the Web site that BBDO’s @tmosphere designed for the new Motorola Rokr phone, which features iTunes service for subscribers of Cingular Wireless, a BBDO client. The site, makemedance.com, enables users to click on a figure and make it dance to a genre of music. Robertson had a headshot of Sorrell grafted atop one of the dancing figures, saying he had always wanted to see the man dance. Activating the command, Robertson barked “Dance, bitch!” as Sorrell gyrated across the screen. Hilarity ensued.

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Photo: Graham Trott

Published on September 27, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Filed under Martin Sorrell

Jack Nicholson loves Maurice Lévy

They didn’t skimp on introductions at Charlie Rose’s interview of Maurice Lévy on Monday afternoon. Willam Baker of PBS Thirteen WNET introduced Rose. Yahoo!’s Wenda Harris Millard introduced Lévy. And then Rose further set the table by recalling a July 2004 interview he filmed with Lévy at his office in Paris. Months later, in Los Angeles, he ran into Jack Nicholson, who brought up that interview. “The French advertising guy—I thought it was great,” Nicholson said. Before responding to Rose’s first question (“Where does Aegis fit in this grand scheme you call Publicis?”), Lévy took a stab at humor, poo-pooing the source of the compliment. “Kim Basinger, OK. Or Nicole Kidman, fine. But Jack Nicholson? Who cares?” he said, before adding, in his sometimes broken English, “Just kid.”

—Posted by Andrew McMains

Photo: Allan Tannenbaum

Published on September 27, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (1)