On the hunt for NZ's Burger King babes

Thanks to my former colleagues at AdFreak for at least finding a picture of New Zealand's Burger King bikini babes, whose ads were considered "soft porn" and just pulled from the airwaves. I tried mightily last night to find a copy of an actual commercial, but alas ... Tonight, I went to the Burger King New Zealand site after reading this story about how BK had launched a site asking for input on its next set of New Zealand commercials, but if it exists, it certainly wasn't located on or near the BK site. I did however, find this picture advertising the New Texas Bacon Double Whopper--complete with what looks to be bikini babes-- which somehow comes closer to passing the "soft porn" test when you see how the burger rocks back and forth when you're on the site. Well, go see it, while you still can.

Can A-B really distribute Bud.TV content?

Anheuser-Busch has gone on the record with The Wall Street Journal this morning about the future of Bud.TV (it's free WSJ content), and I'm sure I'm not the only one who remains a skeptic. Seems the folks at A-B discovered that people are into shorter form content (as in one minute films as opposed to six minutes films), and further that people like social networking, which will now become a component of the site. Bud.TV will also aggregate video from elsewhere, and, in addition, hopes to disseminate its content to places like YouTube. But there's one problem here that A-B may never be able to bypass—as we know, various and sundry attorneys general have had a lot of problem with the Bud.TV site, coming down on it for lax age-verification tools and so forth, so disseminating Bud.TV content to other sites seems like a no-go, particularly since much of the content is so clearly branded Bud.TV (as in the clip "What Girls Want" above). This has already been happening by the way. At least on YouTube, someone by the name of SideLot, who mostly posts Bud.TV content (with a sprinkling of Axe and other frat-boy fare), has been posting for awhile. Since there are no age-verification tools on the sites Bud would disseminate to, it shouldn't be long before someone stirs up the pot.

Now Doritos lets you name the flavor

You could call this campaign consumer-generated naming—Doritos bought the home page of YouTube to launch a contest asking people to submit names for a new flavor it is calling, for the time being, Doritos X-13D. The 45-second commercial posted here, in which a cooking show host says nothing more than blah, blah, blah while mugging for the camera, could be a bit shorter—we get the point! But the contest, on the other hand, is a bit ingenious since it obviously drives people to go out and buy a bag of product before giving it a name. The video has gotten about 325,000 views on YouTube since launching last Thursday, though, given it's on the home page, isn't necessarily that high a number. I guess.

Hilton, Lohan alcohol sponsorship updates!

In drunken young female celebrities news, Australian beer company Bondi Blonde has apparently placed print ads in newspapers here asking if it can sponsor Paris Hilton's jail time by sending her to Australia. Lest you think this is just another publicity stunt, Paris helped pick Ms. Bondi Blonde 2007 earlier this year—the evidence is here in this picture I lifted from the Bondi Blonde Web site. Meanwhile, that other drunken young female celebrity has had the sponsorship of her 21st birthday party dropped by Svedka vodka. Now, Svedka has never been overly impressive in the advertising category, but given how companies that sell alcohol have to bend over backwards to please the regulatory authorities, was it really smart to sponsor her party in the first place given that she'd already been in rehab once, at the ripe old age of 20?

Ford tells users how to escape boredom

Ford seems to have launched a new campaign under the banner, "Boredom Hurts," which also has a connection to Flickr. That's where I saw this graphic first—as part of a thin strip at the bottom of the Flickr home page, carrying the message: "The evidence is here. A menacing Boredom epidemic is currently spreading across the globe." Because I have an advertising blog, I clicked on it and was led to an explanation of how to join a Flickr group focused on pictures of, well, boredom. Another link, to "10 Principles for a Boredom-Free Life" shows a massive picture of a Ford Escape, which I guess explains everything. If you're not too, um, bored with this whole concept, you can also go to boredomhurts.com and look at a guy named Colin sitting in a hospital gown, who is—you guessed it—suffering from boredom. I've seen better efforts, but I suppose I've seen worse too.

Check out the Sony OLED

Saw on Adweek's creative newsletter that the video above was the most linked to video for May 26 (per Nielsen BuzzMetrics), even beating out Rosie O'Donnell vs. Elizabeth Hasselbeck. It's for the Sony OLED, and even though the audio is in Japanese, and I've no idea what the O in OLED stands for, it's way cool.

Adverganza's Tuesday morning picks

From Adweek:

Can’t we all just integrate?
The upfront lasting until Labor Day? Truly, the stuff of which nightmares are made.
Are agencies starting to advertise themselves again?
Adweek’s take on Bud.TV—it’s the dissemination, stupid.
Barbara Lippert on Nikon’s “Picturetown.”

From Ad Age:

Democrats are better at Web 2.0.
Unilever discovers baby boomers.
Matchup made in mass media heaven: “Idol” vs. Super Bowl.
Bob Garfield agrees with me on that Wendy’s wig.
Matthew Creamer's week without TV, memorialized on video.








From The New York Times:

The FTC begins a preliminary investigation into Google's planned acquisition of DoubleClick.
Another twenty questions from Stuart Elliott, concluding with an obligatory caveman reference.

From Mediapost:

AOL is said to be hiring former AT&T marketing exec John Burbank as its new CMO.

From The Wall Street Journal:

Feature that explains the growing business of online ad exchanges (subscription required).