A perfectly rational reaction to the end of the world if you ask me.

Creative, Economic Meltdown

I’m loving this promotion for The Economist in Dallas, TX. Three mechanical bulls labeled Real Estate, 401(k) and Stock Market were setup in in inflatable rings with “How long can you stay on?” printed on the side along with The Economist logo. This execution is pitch-perfect for The Economist and for Dallas, TX.

Creative

What a waste of effort. Glad these media companies don’t entertain these right-wing nuts and their tired theories despite the down economy. Of course Snopes has got the real dirt.

Industry News

As more and more companies try to make “viral videos” a part of their marketing budget YouTube gets flooded with more and more uninteresting viral video failures. A&E successfully managed to buck this trend with a bunch of gold pants in a new promo for Hammertime starring, you guessed it, MC Hammer. This is what Imrprov Everywhere would look like if trained dancers showed up to their events instead of nerdy New Yorkers.

Creative, Trends

File under obvious but saddening: John Mangelaars, Vice President of Microsoft’s Consumer & Online International (COI) division for Europe, Middle East and Africa, said that his employer isn’t counting on an online ad growth for a few years. Mr. Mangelaars attributed part of the slow to increased efficiency,

“A lot of laziness has gone away. If marketers are reaching their goals with [their current budgets], why would they spend more?”

Economic Meltdown, Industry News

Digg has plans to roll out a new ad format that they are calling “Social Ads.” The new format looks very similar to regular user submitted stories and can be voted up or down by users. The move comes at a time when many voices in the online advertising industry are talking about the abysmal performance of display advertising, especially on social websites.

Google has been been rewarding their advertisers based on performance for some time with their Quality Score. Facebook introduced ads that look largely identical to user generated content but it hasn’t been enough to make the site profitable.

It will be interesting to see how users react to the new ad formats, no doubt those who run social websites will be watching the experiment closely and with great hope.

Trends

Mitsubishi Motors New Zealand is offering a free goat with every Triton sold before August in one of the more interesting auto promotions this year. Whether or not the free goat promo actually appeals to New Zealand’s farmers this is one hell of an idea.

wtf