My morning listening to Radiohead remixes

OK, so I re-used my headline from this week's Social Media Insider on this post because someone said they liked that headline. The entire purpose of this post is to point to that column. So go read it, already, wouldya? And for the record, I like the Thomas Dolby remix of "Nude" better than Radiohead's version.

Googling Mike Chapman, the new 'Adweek' editor

Like most Adweek watchers, I did a little Googling last night to figure out who Mike Chapman, the new editor, is. Not that I was expecting that I'd know who the new editor was beforehand—most of the usual suspects that I've been in touch with weren't interested in the job—which can be read either way. Either it's a good thing that Adweek went fishing outside of the usual pond, or they've gone so far afield—by not hiring someone with a strict journalism background, but what appears to be a data guy—that the whole enterprise is going to turn into a bunch of long-winded analyst reports and charts. If you remember Adweek as the magazine of breaking news and lengthy features by reporters who could actually write, that would be not so good, but we won't really know what this all means until it happens. OK, here's what I found:

—His bio on eMarketer (scroll down a bit).
—A panel he's set to moderate at Digital Hollywood in a couple of weeks.
—The announcement about him going to eMarketer from The Economist in 2005.
—A summary of a 2006 report he did about podcasting. You can buy the full report for only $695.
—What appears to be his bio as a member of the team at a Web 2.0 company called Simpatico Networks.

Couldn't find him on Facebook, but with a name like Mike Chapman, might be hard to find. (Trust me, as Cathy Taylor, I know).

The online component of that VW campaign

So, in case you missed it, VW is also running banners asking people to vote on what the people want as part of its new campaign. The current vote is about whether people want only one spouse or not, and, as of right now—despite intensive recent promotion about the joys of polygamy aside—the people want only one spouse. They have also voted "yes" to a long list which includes the following: "a colony on Mars," "the coyote to catch the roadrunner" and "political candidates to take lie detector tests." The supposed link here is that VW also gives people what they want, but coming from an old-school VW Beetle with a strong German accent, all I can think of is, well, Hitler—who wasn't exactly a man of the people. Maybe I think that way because my husband was a German major.

'Adweek' has a new editor

No details at this point, but I'm hearing the new person was announced internally, allegedly someone with a heavy data background. Watch this space for more info. UPDATE: OK, here's the skinny. The new editor, who will report to Alison Fahey, is a guy named Michael Chapman who has been most recently at eMarketer, but has spent more of his career at The Economist Group and its data-driven Economist Intelligence Unit. For those who think that Adweek is going to become a house organ for Nielsen data, there's your fodder. As for Fahey, she is becoming publisher/editorial director at Adweek, which has been known for awhile now. I've mainly stayed away from personally commenting about all of the comments made here and elsewhere about her management style. I'll leave it at this: I hope Chapman is a really, really strong personality, because in order to make any kind of imprint, he'll need to be.

An 'Adweek' interview with IMG's CMO

If you need a perspective realignment, you might want to check out the interview at Adweek.com with Robert Birge, CMO of IMG, who talks about the sponsorship deals and content production work the company does surrounding vents like Wimbledon and New York Fashion Week. And check out those groovy guy glasses! This is the first time I've noticed that the videos at Adweek.com are embeddable, which may be new. Good idea, at any rate, and something I don't think you can do at AdAge.com.

Alter egos are hot and AT&T's got some

Looks like there's a whole bunch of these alter ego commercials out there for AT&T. Here's one above. I had previously only seen this one. Beginning to wonder if alter egos are a trend, what with that Facebook app for Coke's Burn and all.

Say it ain't so, Copyranter

Copyranter hangs up his keyboard.

Adverganza's Monday morning picks, 04.21.08

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

From Advertising Age:

—BBDO's strange entry into the printing business.
—Matt Creamer takes a dip into the Venice Festival of Media.
—Millward Brown's annual list of the top brands. Tide makes it to no. 6.
—Olay for You now appearing at WalMart.
—Horror! Starbucks starts a coupon program.
—Account losses start Element 79 rumor mill.
—Layoffs at Campbell-Ewald portend GM's digital budget shift.
—Garfield says ads for the Alliance for Climate Protection are "99% sanctimony free," but that doesn't mean he likes them.

From Adweek:

—More on the return of live commercials.
—Trade publishers, including Adweek owner Nielsen Business Media, create their own online ad network.
—It's never too early to start the upfront.
—A huge, comprehensive upfront special report.
—ABC's Mike Shaw on how the upfront is changing, while not going away.
—Optimedia's Antony Young on how the upfront is changing, while not going away.
—The digital upfront, such as it is.
—A new branded entertainment venture, Filmaka, has some big backing.
—Is Y&R ready to roll?
—Barbara Lippert on the Electrolux appliances campaign featuring Kelly Ripa. Decides Ripa is a hot appliance who doesn't cook. You can see the spots here.


From Brandweek:

—Trying to make The Hulk hot again.
—Clorox goes green with its Green Works line.
—And now, the eco-friendly loyalty program.
—Insurance companies upped their ad spend a measly 6 percent in 2007.
—Are Crocs road kill?

From Mediapost:

—Pregnant and new Moms are patient zero for word-of-mouth about brands.
—Sony advertises about "knowledge transfer" which sounds sort of sci-fi to me.
—People who shop green are "gullible" and "confused." Great.
—Interpublic chief Michael Roth made $11.1 million in 2007, according to an AP calculation.
—100, um, redundancies at AOL's Platform A.
—Jeff Berman to be named MySpace's president of sales and marketing.
—Sprint was official wireless provider for the Pope's visit. Would be really impressive if he could text the guy upstairs.
—NBC will re-brand Oxygen. Would be funny if they renamed it too—something like Ozone.
—BIGresearch says automotive advertisers spend too much money on TV.
—Adweek's not alone. U.S. News & World Report to go to 36 issues a year.'

From The New York Post:

—Is Bloomberg LP looking to buy The New York Times Company? Via a Newsweek story.

From The New York Times:

—Marines try to recruit chicks.
—Gannett's earnings drop 9 percent in the first quarter.
—More on the rise of ad networks.
—Sports coverage in the controversial era of the blogger.

From The Wall Street Journal:

—What? Web audience tracking isn't perfect? Free.
—Macy's changes again, going local with its marketing. Free.

Here comes Advertising Week 2.0

Whether you think Advertising Week is a complete waste of time or a worthwhile annual event to galvanize the industry, the move to replace Ron Berger with Chuck Porter and Linda Sawyer as co-chairs is one sign that whatever Advertising Week will be in the future, it will be different. It's also one of the first signs that under new chief Nancy Hill, the names that have long led the industry are giving way to a new guard. Personally, in addition to making the thing more fun, I've long thought it would be great if the industry came out of the week having produced something—like banding together its skills together in service of a good cause—but when I posted that thought long ago (can't find the link), everyone found it so scintillating that no one commented. Maybe it'll stick this time. Another thought: delegate some of the programming over to two groups: 1) consumers, and 2) people in the business who are under the age of 30.

Oogling Google's performance

Kind of fun to see Google defy the worry-warts by posting better than expected results for the first quarter yesterday—profit rose 30 percent from a year earlier, and revenue rose 42 percent. What I've been wondering is whether Google's performance can be seen as a bellwether for the online advertising category as the country heads into a possible recession. The thinking has gone—at least from those with rose-tinted glasses—that online advertising will continue to expand in a downturn, because its accountability will make it a safer investment, but I remember a similar argument back in 2001, when the dot-com bubble burst. Instead, advertisers turned to the tried-and-true. Granted, the medium has come a long way in terms of proving its worth since that time, but on the other hand, to get back to Google, its revenue comes from the most accountable of online media. Will its success in an economic downturn, carry over to other forms of online advertising? Despite the soundness of the accountability argument, I think it's hard to say. There are still a lot of advertisers out there for whom digital media is considered edgy, making some retrenchment possible.

Wave your fingers at the Yaris

If I were doing moments of Zen like Jon Stewart, I'd definitely pick this video. It's an interactive ad for the Yaris that involves waving your arms and fingers around to interact with it. At least when I played it, there was no audio, making it even more Zen-like.

Stevie Wonder takes over commercial pod

OK, from what I can recall, Stevie Wonder started selling his tunes to commercials decades ago. Remember "I just called to say I love you" for AT&T. But it's not often that you hear two Stevie Wonder songs in the same commercial pod, as I did last night when watching HGTV. First some lame-o ad about leasing a Mercury using "Signed, Sealed and Delivered, I'm Yours" (that approach was pretty literal), and then "Don't You Worry 'bout a Thing" for color copying services at the UPS Store. Next thing you know "Livin' for the City" will be used to promote New York City tourism, even though it's about a guy who comes to New York, and ends up in the slammer.

Welcome to the new, silo-free Mindshare!

The big ad news this morning seems to be Mindshare's decision to get rid of the silos Interaction, in favor of being completely media-neutral. The shop will now be split into four disciplines: client leadership, business planning, invention and "the exchange" roughly translating to account management, media planning, creative and digital, and media buying. (Yeah, I know that's just the kind of knee-jerk interpretation that , including disassembling its digital unit, MindshareWPPMindShare is trying to avoid, but here at Adverganza, we like to dumb things down). The story in Mediapost deals with the thorny issue of what creative agencies do when media agencies also do a form of creative. "We think the ad agency has even a stronger role in the new process," Mindshare CEO Scott Neslund told the publication. Of course, Neslund isn't the first to share this sentiment, but what's interesting is that as power in the business has shifted, you never hear the head of a creative agency talking about how a media agency fits into its world—only the other way around.

What a chick thinks of the Dove campaign

The next iteration of the "Campaign for Real Beauty" is out and the male critics are pissing all over it like there's no tomorrow. Their main point is that this is commercialism masquerading as public service because Dove products and advertising don't always live up to the "real beauty" theme, or otherwise Unilever wouldn't be selling firming lotion. That argument isn't entirely lost on me, but as men aren't the target market for this campaign, let me go on a bit. The bottom line is I'd rather see this campaign out there than not out there. Going back a few years to the Dove "Evolution" vid, I remember seeing it making me feel a bit better at my lot as yet another woman who knows she'll never look like those who grace the pages of Vogue. Even though we all know that most magazines air brush the bejesus out of the photos of models and actresses (how 'bout that Vanity Fair cover of Madonna?), "Evolution" was an actual demonstration of it, and that made all the difference. I also have been known to breathe the occasional sigh of relief in seeing those Dove print ads of what Freddie Mercury described as "fat-bottomed girls," even though I'm not one of them. It's just refreshing to see bodies that are imperfect, when 99 percent of the media images out there project otherwise. Unfortunately, since Dove began running this campaign, it's not as though the rest of the beauty world has embraced the message—with the exception of Playtex—so if Dove wants to continue to carry the torch—even if, like the Olympic one, it's somewhat tainted—than it's fine with me.

A digital agency becomes lead agency

Cool to read yesterday that digital shop imc2 is now lead agency on the Mars Direct business, which includes My M&Ms and My Dove. That's right—it's the lead agency, not the lead digital agency. Even as digital moves to something closer to the forefront (let's not get ahead of ourselves, though), such assignments are still a rarity. Maybe a year or two from now that will be different. Of course, doing this makes the most sense for customizable products but, well, it's still pretty cool.

Here's the Burn Alter Ego group-critique

As some of you know, I asked people who read my Social Media Insider column over at Mediapost to join me in a group critique of Coke's Burn Alter Ego app on Facebook. You can read the result here.

Maxing out with VW's Max

As a public service, I'm running what I believe are all of the new VW spots, featuring Max, the talking VW Beetle. OK, this is from Crispin people. Discussing is mandatory.

Here's The Hoff:



Here's Heidi:



Here's Bobby Knight:



Here's Shawn Fanning:



Here's the one with the astronaut:

Zyrtec print ad clogging my head

Something tells me I shouldn't spend too much time today pondering this Zyrtec ad, and yet, I can't help myself. What, pray tell, does it all mean? Why would a person who had been waiting for Claritin to start working suddenly disappear? Is this an undocumented side effect?

Wieden finds harmony for Nokia

Above, the Nokia "Harmony" spot from Wieden + Kennedy London. I'm kind of liking it, though some are finding it creepy. It certainly stands out in the pack of cell phone ads that are feature-heavy, and there's something damn mesmerizing about all those flashing lights.

Elie Weisel hearts Maurice Levy

If you're still a person who reads TIME, you may have noticed that the magazine is asking influential people, which influential people they'd nominate for the TIME 100 list of influential people. Phew! In this week's issue we get a surprise: Nobel laureate Elie Weisel is nominating Publicis CEO Maurice Levy, saying Levy is, "an outstanding international figure in marketing and advertising and an influential personality at the highest levels of government and business. He is well informed, intelligent and warm." Tell that to Martin Sorrell.

Adverganza's Monday morning picks, 04.14.08

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

From Ad Age:

—Story which asks the question "Is Earth Day the New Christmas?" A bit overdone, no?
—Tina Brown, content aggregator.
—Does Microhoo make more sense than GoogYa? (Ha! I made that last one up.)
—Researching ads in stores.
—Being an Olympic sponsor gets dicey.
—Does your company need a chief blogger?
—VW makes its message uniform with a talking Beetle, I think.
—Bob Garfield on why dicks can never acknowledge that their dicks.

From Adweek:

—The good news: post-strike broadcast nets are up. The bad news: scatter prices are running 30 to 40 percent higher than in the upfront.
—Icrossing crosses the pond.
—Barbara Lippert on the plusses and minusses of Max.
—Joseph Jaffe asks if creative has had its day.

From Brandweek:

—Johnson & Johnson invites bloggers to Camp Baby. I wasn't invited.
—Most marketers CRM insights are CRaP.
—More women drinking tequila. Is this a good thing?

From Mediapost:

—Lots of Yahoo stuff. At this point, just wake me up when it's over.
—A social media agency called Ckrush.
—WalMart.com looks for more ways for its consumers to talk to one another.

From The New York Times:

—A new author who is everywhere: Al Gorithm.
—Tibet protesters started working on their protests seven years ago. Fascinating.

From The Wall Street Journal:

—Despite my bold prediction, so far Olympic sponsors aren't bailing. Free.

OK, finally done. Have a good Monday!

More on 'Adweek': no layoffs, not a lotta traffic

So, you probably heard by now that Nielsen Business Media laid off a bunch yesterday—around 50 people, though the company isn't confirming the specifics. I was more or less out of pocket yesterday and not up to my usual spelunking to find out more. Here's what I've heard, none of which Nielsen would confirm—there were no editorial layoffs at Adweek and Mediaweek, at least one at Brandweek and the Web editor's job at Editor & Publisher. (That was reported yesterday by Mediabistro's Fishbowl NY.) In addition, no open positions will be filled with one exception: the Adweek editor's post, which Alison Fahey is expected to vacate soon for a publisher/editorial director's role at Adweek magazine.

Given the news out of my former employer yesterday, it seemed a good time to see how the Adweek.com relaunch—which was unveiled on Feb. 4—has been going, so I checked in with Compete.com and Alexa to see what traffic they were reporting. What I found was troubling. The flat-to-down results are below, with Ad Age used as a comparison (granted that brand's mission is larger than Adweek's is, but the graphs look a little naked alone).

Here's what Compete.com has to stay on traffic over the last year:



And from Alexa over the last three months:












Whatever source you use, you'd expect to see a bump there, wouldn't you? Through a spokesperson, Sabrina Crow, who heads the marketing and media books, said, "For us in terms of the success of the launch, we were up in revenue and up in online subscriptions ... those are the metrics that count for us."

More musings on Pereira and O'Dell

Realize I missed yesterday's catch du jour in not posting about the new agency being set up by ex-AKQA execs P.J. Pereira and Andrew O'Dell that will serve both the digital and non-digital needs of clients. For the life of me, can't figure out why this concept is worth $30 million, even if, as the duo told The Wall Street Journal yesterday, the fact that most agencies have a bias toward one type of media vs. another is true. I mean, that's definitely true, but $30 million? Media-agnostic as the new agency hopes to be, getting so much seed money is very Silicon Valley. Tell me if this is a dumb idea, but I think a better start-up concept would've been to do this within a big holding company with lots of ready access to pissed off clients who need better solutions. Having a reliable stream of client connections seems like it's worth more than plain old money. Only problem there is—depending on one's idea of an end game—that eventually cashing out when you're an independent can be a much more lucrative move. It sure worked for Donny Deutsch.

Who will be the first Olympics sponsor to pull out?

Even though the Dalai Lama has come out in favor of Beijing's hosting of the Olympic Games, it still seems inevitable that some corporate sponsor will drop out of its Olympics deal soon. In the last few weeks, the Beijing Olympics brand has become a tainted symbol of a country that gets capitalism, but has a limited notion of human rights. The first Olympics sponsor that does this may not, in reality, be doing it for the right reasons—its biggest fear may be that its image, too, is being tainted—but someone is going to back out. It won't be an easy decision, as most marketers see China as their last, great commercial frontier but, in being viewed as a hero in other parts of the world, who knows what the bottom line benefits could be? (OK, folks. If I'm wrong about this, I'll call myself on it later.)

Soliciting ideas for OMMA social media conference

Hi gang. Today I'm using the blog as an idea generator to help me put together the OMMA Social conference, which I'm chairing in June. (In case you don't know, OMMA is part of the Mediapost empire and stands for Online Media, Marketing and Advertising.) It will be a one-day affair aimed at being the most up-to-the-nanosecond event centered around social media so, although I can't run the conference agenda like a democracy, I still want to gather as many ideas as possible as to who would be mind-blowing keynotes and what would be good, meaty panel topics. No PR pitches please. If you've got something you're really hot to hear about in social media, email me at cathyptaylor@gmail.com—would prefer your ideas travel privately rather than being put in comments below. Thanks.

When green cancels out green

Kinda ironic that in order to give me a reusable Target bag, Vanity Fair had to polybag the current "green" issue.

Allen Rosenshine explains it all

Long-time BBDO chief Allen Rosenshine is one of those people always worth listening to for his ability to float above the down-and-dirty technical aspects of the business and focus on the big picture. Thus, it's worth stopping by this video interview with him at adage.com. Rance Crain plays the interviewer, and he posits the theory that the reason General Motors recently said it would put about a third of its budget into online media was to save money. Not that GM doesn't need to save money, but I think a more accurate way to describe it is that the ROI of digital potentially makes it a better way to spend money.

White Gold is prolific

Whole bunch of new White Gold video has been posted in the last day or so. Mr. Gold, if you're not familiar, is the centerpiece of Goodby, Silverstein + Partners' new "Got Milk" campaign and is a fictitious heavy metal artist (oxymoron watch?) who owes his fictitious success to drinking. A video for the new song "Tame the Tiger" is above. You can also see five :30s here.

Latent trend: menopausal sexpots

For the second time in less than 24 hours, I've been confronted with a commercial that portrays the randy tendencies of menopausal women, for two different products no less. (Can't remember the first one. Think it started with a "V".) Now, I'm not saying that sex drive and menopause are mutually exclusive (not old enough to be in that demo yet), but what's a little odd about these commercials is that they tend to overplay the sex angle, as though once released from the possibility of getting pregnant, that's all gals think about. The second one, for a product called Estroven, takes place in a magical place called "MenopauseLand" and can be seen at this YouTube link. Side note: Why would BrandBuzz put this video on YouTube and not make the html embeddable? Educated guess: someone at the client is not getting this viral thing.

Adverganza's Monday morning picks, 04.07.08

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

From Advertising Age:

—Story about how Mark Penn screwed up Hillary Clinton's campaign. Little did Ad Age know.
—The difficulties of buying African-American media.
—Good luck trying to market Miller Genuine Draft.
—Company called Lotame tries a new angle on social media monetization.
—Nielsen's got competitors—lots of 'em.
—Obligatory MySpace enters music industry story.
—Carat's suffering digital transition growing pains.
—Digital talent coming from elsewhere.
—How old-fashioned—Sears campaign focuses on branding.
—Bob Garfield finds too much Vietnam in McCain presidential spot.

From Adweek:

—Closed Web chats are the new focus groups.
—Former VW CMO Kerri Martin opens company to help clients get good work out of their agencies. Whips not included.
—Close-up on Mark Figliulo, the man who would be Gerry Graf (sorry, I meant creative director of TBWA/Chiat/Day New York).
—Microsoft be damned! Yahoo continues to promote its new uber-ad platform.
—Coke's social media Alter Ego.
—Barbarian's Benjamin Palmer on the weirdness of global branding.
—Bob Greenberg on the parallels between TV and the ailing music biz.
—If you haven't heard it already, Michael Barrett is leaving Fox Interactive Media.
—Barbara Lippert notes that Christie Brinkley's face hasn't changed much in 25 years. Depressing.

From Brandweek:

—Procter & Gamble and Dell work at measuring branding in the Web.
—Kraft pouring $100 million into cream cheese-filled bagels. Wish they'd work on the quality of the bagels first, but I'm picky.
—Q&A with David Peacock, vp/advertising at Anheuser-Busch.
—Teen brand preferences haven't changed very much.


From Mediapost:

—Procter & Gamble running contest for Crest WhiteStrips in which consumers enter their smiling photos. The Mona Lisa ain't invited.
—AMC pegs upfront audience guarantees to behavioral targeting.
—Wanna watch TV online? Check out PrimeTimeRewind.com.

From The New York Times:

—Yahoo rejects Microsoft's bid again. Here's Yahoo's statement.
—Amazon feels pressure to go digital.
—BMW devotes half of its budget for the 1-Series to online media.
—Multiplex employees promote "Prom Night."

From The Wall Street Journal:

—Nielsen plans to buy IAG Research.

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.