Firing your agency can be pain free!

Just received a link to a site called dearagency.com, which I think is a promotion for an agency in Portland, Oregon called Citrus. It's great. Just go to the URL, answer a few questions, and the site will generate a letter to your current agency that breaks up the agency-client relationship. Great Friday time-waster or agency-firer.

Clip with Keith Richards. All you need to know.

Posting this just because it's Friday and Keith Richards is never not funny. At any rate, The Rolling Stones, pimping for their new movie, are the first in a YouTube program called Living Legends, where the YouTube audience gets to ask questions of uber-famous people. But what-evah. In this clip, Richards appears at the keyboard and sitting on a toilet.

Run, don't walk, to this Adidas site

My Internet connection is very slow today, so I haven't been able to really access this Adidas site. But it's probably worth checking out because Adidas tends to get online media. The site, "March is a Brotherhood" is themed, obviously, around the NCAA tournament with sub-sites for seven (yes, I said seven) teams that were picked by Adidas "as the most likely teams to win the NCAA men's championship." (Hmmm do they know something we don't?). At any rate, there's a lot team-centric content here including blogs from the coaches, team chants and gear and a feature called "Call from Coach" that can be sent to friends. Via Omnicom's EVB.

This contest could get very sticky

In the latest YouTube CGM contest, Post-It Notes is running a "One million uses and counting" contest, which today, anyway, is on the home page. (Beware, YouTube is very glitchy this morning, or is it my Internet connection?) Yes, you can submit your very own video of how you use Post-It notes. In my YouTube travels, though, I found the video above, of the Diet Coke/Mentos guys doing finding an interesting use for Post-It notes.

Doesn't this video sell all the wrong products?

Still think this campaign does more to sell Glaceau VitaminWater, Geico car insurance and the Thriller rerelease than it does Sobe LifeWater, but what do I know? I just blog here. Nice takeover of every square inch of Times Square though.

Social Media Insider column feels the Burn

My latest Social Media Insider column has just been posted. C'mon click over there and discover how you, too, can be one of Coke's lab rats.

On the other hand, Modernista doesn't get it

By now you must know that Modernista has gotten boatloads of publicity over its non-Web site Web site which simply refers people to what others are saying about them online. So, Brian Morrissey at AdFreak this morning reports that not only did Modernista "steer" its Wikipedia entry, but that company founders Lance Jensen and Gary Koepke wouldn't wow anybody with their Web 2.0-o-city. Now, Brian tweets that Wikipedia has posted the following on its Modernista page: " The website for this company obscures our logo with their own, and may lead the viewer to believe that Wikipedia serves as their homepage provider. This is not correct. Wikipedia has no affiliation with Modernista and has requested that Modernista cease this use of our website. Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia written from a neutral point of view and does not endorse nor condemn Modernista, but is opposed to being used as a promotional mechanism in this manner for any third party." No one said this Web 2.0 thing was gonna be easy, you know.

Fight breaks out over who owns magenta

The path to this post is circuitous, but it speaks quite eloquently to the power of social media. To recap: I was trolling Facebook this morning when I saw that Crayon founder and man-about-social-media Joseph Jaffe had swapped in a new picture, which you see here--a pretty magenta square with the words "T-Mobile Sucks." So, I followed a link on Facebook to a note from Joseph which says the following: "So as it turns out, apparently Deutsche Telekom/T-Mobile thinks it owns the color "magenta" and sent this nasty notice to the folks over at Engadget Mobile (page 1; page 2)." It reads in part, "The color is plainly used in a trademark-related way on this website to highlight the headings of different postings." Of course--quadruple duh!--Engadget fought back by at least temporarily going magenta, and other blogs have done so in solidarity ... the movement even has an official logo. Needless to say, it's magenta.

Ad haikus sum the biz up nicely

There's someone in Ohio who writes poetry about advertising here, but if there's one example of ad-lit that strikes my fancy it's the ad haikus over at The Renegade Agency Confessional. They run on Fridays. Here are some samples:

On account executives:

Remember to smile.
Give 'em the ol' shuck and jive.
You have people skills.

On casual Fridays:

Choked with ties and skirts
I'm dead inside til Thursday
Friday: air it out.

Some of the best, though, can be found in the comments, where other contributors to the blog think up more haikus around the central topic.

Madonna--commercial whore or smart business woman?

Madonna didn't stop with Sunsilk. To grease the skids (dirty hair pun!) for her new album, "Hard Candy," she's also signed deals with Vodafone and Fuji to use their commercial dollars to promote her album. The Vodafone deal lets the company's customers listen to the album pre its late April release. In this story, Madonna's moves are presented as extremely shrewd, which they are. But there's also that perception in the marketplace that if Madonna does this it's smart, whereas if it's some other artist it's selling out. Hey, did you hear it's an imperfect world?

Those Canadian Club ads actually work

Kind of humorous to see that Canadian Club's retro campaign, which uses lines like "Your Mom Wasn't Your Dad's First" has actually worked, though it makes a certain kind of sense since it's so different than other liquor campaigns that it stands out in a crowd. According to Ad Age, case volume increased by 4.4 percent in 13 weeks. Here's to being politically incorrect.

Orbit spot features Madagascar, booger breath

Maybe this Orbit ad has been airing during NCAA basketball, but since I haven't been paying attention, I don't know. It was just posted to YouTube, and, in that dorky Orbit way, is a hilarious send-up of trash-talking between two male cheerleaders. Best lines: "Kiss my Madagascar, fanny-pack!" and "Why is our fuddy-duddy cheerbook missing, booger-breath?" Alright!

Circles: the new navigation device

This post was supposed to be about Cramer Krasselt's "Engineered Mischief" campaign for Porsche, its first since getting the account. But then I literally stumbled upon the navigation at the "Engineered Mischief" Web site and discovered that the navigation is eerily similar to the BFD Builder for Domino's created by Crispin, Porter + Bogusky. Separated at birth.

Fallon's sequel to the Cadbury "Gorilla" spot

Here's the sequel, "Trucks," to last year's "Gorilla" ad for Cadbury. As with its predecessor, it features an unbeatable soundtrack: Queen's "Don't Stop Me Now" which accompanies the action—airport vehicles having a drag race on the runway after the last plane at night leaves the airport. There's also the rather thin connection between the brand at the end and the rest of the commercial, though perhaps I'm taking my advertising too literally these days. Via Fallon London, whose home page, for now, has the ingredients it took to make the commercial. It's already spawning remixes, such as this one, which mashes up footage from the commercial with the BBC's coverage of the disastrous opening of Heathrow's T5 terminal last week.

Working at Goodby tougher than it looks

Video invite to Goodby, Silverstein + Partners 25th anniversary party featuring the aged Jeff Goodby and Rich Silverstein. From the looks of this, amazing Goodby could outlive Hal Riney. Via AdFreak.

Adverganza's Monday morning picks, 03.31.08

Wherein I scan the Monday morning headlines so you don't have to:

From Advertising Age:

—Jeff Goodby, official Hal Riney biographer.
—Bob Garfield on Hal Riney.
—Hal Riney on Hal Riney.
—Sony and Home Depot can't wait for you to get your tax rebates.
—Magazines going green, in name at least.
—And Coke's green torch relay.
—Travelers reopens its red umbrella.

From Adweek:

—The Economist tops the Hot List.
—Sony to distribute movies via mobile phone. Somewhere, David Lynch is shaking his head.
—Intel makes its engineers available for a chat.
—How all that gesticulating brands presidential candidates.
—The dismal sales behind the Mitsubishi review.
—In a world of free downloads, bands turn to corporate sponsors.
—Digital agencies do all kinds of things besides client work.
—Mark Wnek on why Geico ads are so great.
—Will Young & Rubicam's Mark Figliulo be the new Gerry Graf?
—Safran to distribute content over Microsoft's xBox live.
—Barbara Lippert on Nike's Sparq campaign. To see the campaign go to YouTube.

From Brandweek:

—Watch out. Here comes big chicken.
—New technology should help the loyalty card business.
—Q&A with John Brody, big marketing honcho at Major League Baseball.

From Mediapost:

—ZenithOptimedia revises its ad spending forecast: down with North America and Western Europe, up with Internet.
—Ouch. Newspaper revenues down 7.9 percent in 2007.
—The Radio Advertising Bureau restructures to do what else? Get more ad dollars.

From The New York Post:

—The exercise-oriented Wii Fit should be stateside by late spring.
—Yahoo launches Shine, a Web property devoted to the allegedly under-served 25 to 54 female demographic.

From The New York Times:

—The down-lo on the HuffPo.
—More on agencies and marketers attaching gizmos to your head to see if you liked an ad or not. In other words, neuroscience.
—Glamour discovers what it's like when good bloggers go bad.
—The NAD doesn't like those Wal-Mart ads about saving $2,500.

From The Wall Street Journal:

—U2 signs with Live Nation. Free.
—Ad agencies begin to tighten their belts, by making huge gestures like not sending so many people to Cannes. Subscription required.
—American Express discontinues its fob. Subscription required.