Caffeinated posts from a copywriter/adgrunt. I write about advertising, design, astronomy, cooking, and pretty much anything else that strikes my fancy, including random bits of reference info for work purposes. You may also know me as 'that other gal' who helps run Adland. | make contact | RSS Feed | ATOM

Friday, August 31, 2007
[ Strange popular songs from Germany and Japan ]

+Well, it's Friday before a long weekend here. Here are two disturbing clips from neatorama.com I came across today.

Apparently the current rage in Germany: the Gummy Bear Song


And in Japan this strange song is all the rage: Oshiri Kajiri Mushi (or the Butt Biting Bug).

Labels: culture, watch

Tuesday, August 21, 2007
[ MyCuppa ]


+Lovely! More info here.

Labels: coffee, creative, design, food, fun

[ A-B gets watered down ]

+Anheuser-Busch is extends its water/non-beer distribution.

A month after Anheuser-Busch announced an equity stake in an Icelandic water bottler, the St. Louis-based company has announced another agreement with a water company that continues to extend A-B's reach into non-alcoholic beverages. This time, the beverage is a nutraceutical line called Borba's Skin Balance Waters.

The deal gives the beer maker nearly worldwide (excludes Japan, Australia, Singapore, Indonesia and Dubai) distribution and marketing rights to the product as well as to Aqua-Less Crystallines, a powder form of the drinkable skin care line.
[snip]
"Adding the [lines] to our portfolio allows us to participate in the emerging nutraceutical beverage category," says Dave Peacock, vice president of business operations, Anheuser-Busch, also in the statement. "The Borba line of beverages provides innovative and highly profitable products for our wholesalers and retail customers, while expanding our business into high-growth beverages beyond beer."

Labels: adgruntie, branding

[ More Angus ]


+Apparently the trend for fast food joints is Angus. Now McD's is expanding what was a trial in So.Cal for their Angus Third Pounders.

There's a minisite at angusthirdpounders where you can get a coupon, give feedback and check out the three varieties of burgers. Shame they couldn't get their arrows to line up to what they are pointing to in their graphics.

Labels: ad news, adgruntie, campaign, promotion

Friday, August 17, 2007
[ OBIE winners ]

+Since I'm playing catchup, I just checked this out. Outdoor winners of the OBIEs can be viewed here and Best of Show is here - going to BBC World Voting Campaign created by BBDO New York.

Labels: ad award, adgruntie, outdoor

[ This and That for a Friday AM ]

+From Time, Why We Buy The Products We Buy.

From the NYTimes, Now, the Clicking Is to Watch the Ads, Not Skip Them.

The proliferation of portals dedicated to advertising as entertainment could mean the trend is already peaking, just as cover articles in magazines about a stock market boom are often followed by plunging indexes.

“I don’t think it is so much about putting entertaining commercials on the Web as it is about brands providing immersive experiences for consumers of which entertainment is a component,” said Mr. Jacobs of MRM, whose agency recently won praise for musical Webisodes for Intel, directed by the humorist Christopher Guest, which are appearing on Web sites like youtube.com and itgetseasier.com.

The responses to a survey this week on the Adweek Web site (adweek.com) suggest that advertising as entertainment is still a work in progress.

As of yesterday afternoon, 13 percent of respondents agreed the portals were “great fits for the current pop culture,” while 43 percent called them “too limited and doomed to fail.” The remaining respondents, 44 percent, agreed with a statement that they are “complete wild cards; let’s wait and see.”

50 "Greatest" Local Commercials

MadMen site features ad legend interviews

8 ways to drive a graphic designer mad

Labels: ad news, adgruntie, branding, campaign

Tuesday, August 07, 2007
[ Proof of the power of branding ]

+ A study done recently showed anything made by McDonald's tastes better, according to preschoolers.

The study powerfully demonstrates how marketing can trick the taste buds of young children.

Even carrots, milk and apple juice tasted better to the kids when they were wrapped in the familiar packaging of the Golden Arches.

The study had youngsters sample identical McDonald's foods in name-brand and unmarked wrappers. The unmarked foods always lost the taste test.

"You see a McDonald's label and kids start salivating," said Diane Levin, a childhood development specialist who campaigns against advertising to kids.

Study author Dr. Tom Robinson said the kids' perception of taste was "physically altered by the branding."

Labels: ad news, trends

[ Tequila aimed at women ]

+ Marketing Tequila to Women - Oh pah...are they going to make their packaging all pink and crap? :(

ith the $3 million launch of inocente, the company plans to position tequila as an upscale alternative to vodka for women ages 21 to 34.

"Tequila has always been marketed as this bastion of maleness," says Bruce Rekant, president of ITBBC. "But our research found that 49% of tequila drinkers are women, who are totally ignored by tequila marketers." So inocente, sold in a "sexy bottle that looks like a vase," will be marketed like an upscale fashion or fragrance brand, he says, using out-of-home ads located outside strategic stores, such as Dolce & Gabbana.

He estimates that women probably consume between 75 and 80% of their tequila in mixed, margarita-like drinks, "but there are plenty of young, affluent women out there doing tequila shots, too. It's just a fun, celebratory drink." Inocente is all natural--hence the name--and triple-distilled, which makes it smoother.

Labels: adgruntie, branding

Wednesday, August 01, 2007
[ Working with DeNiro ]

+ I guess you don't direct Robert DeNiro.


(via BrandFlakesForBreakfast)

Labels: adgruntie, agency, commercial, watch

[ New biz all about the stunts ]

+ Agencies pulling stunts to win clients. It's not new. Heck, throughout college and beyond I heard stories about the ways people tried to get the attention of creative directors through stunts. If people feel that it is how you get business then it's not at all surprising that it's how they will go about getting clients as well.

When they heard that La-Z-Boy was looking for a new ad agency, executives at RPA bought one of the company's recliners, trained a Web camera on it and took turns sitting in it, declaring that they wouldn't leave it empty until they got a meeting. They spent Super Bowl weekend in the gold-colored chenille chair and won the $35-million La-Z-Boy account.

For ad agencies pitching prospective clients, "the bar just continually gets higher," said David Smith, creative director at Santa Monica-based RPA, who pulled a 10-hour overnight shift. Stunts "help you get noticed and stand out from the pack."

In the old days of a few years ago, Deutsch LA, one of the region's biggest and oldest agencies, would spend six figures on a pitch and blow the competition out of the water, Deutsch President Mike Sheldon recalled. Now, he said, it's routine for an agency to shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars simply to get a client's attention.

What changed? For the advertising industry, most everything. There's been a steady shift away from time-honored ad channels -- TV and radio, print publications and billboards -- to digital media. And there's a growing pack of fresh-faced agencies with unconventional attitudes and approaches that are giving established shops a run for their money.

The field is so crowded that the big agencies are going after accounts they used to scorn, and spending a lot to win them. These days, "clients' demands require more expenditure," said Don Just, a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University's Adcenter in Richmond, Va.

And more gimmicks. Jos Anshell, chief executive of Moses Anshell agency in Phoenix, bought dozens of summer sausages with the idea of sending them to potential clients with cards saying, "This is the last baloney you'll ever receive from us," but the meat went bad before he could dispatch them.

Labels: ad news, adbiz, adgruntie, agency