Not to be outdone by Gap, News Corp’s MySpace has unveiled a new strikingly bad logo. The idea isn’t all bad. MySpace is about whatever you want it to be about. I get it. However, your logo should include, at minimum, your company’s name.
It shouldn’t be surprising that MySpace is trying *everything* they can think of to reverse their current traffic trend. But I’m not sure this is helping.
Amazon has launched the Kindle TV Commercial Contest. The creator of the best spot wins $15,000 in Amazon Gift cards. Not sure why they are spending so much money on this. They could have put the task on their own outsourcing Mechanical Turk platform and received 1,000 entries for $100.
Google’s new ad format is a banner text ad that contains an expandable map, click-to-call phone number and option to get directions. No word on exactly how many users have the necessary tech to see these ads although Google says its available on any phone with a “full Internet browswer” which includes all iPhones and Android-based phones. The best part is this tech is live now in ad words. Inside AdWords has full instructions on how to get started with the new format.
Slowly, it’s finally happening. The choruses of people predicting that location-based services are going to be the new hot shit(tm) for advertisers are beginning to not look like total losers anymore.
No one has cracked the impossibly difficult local nut yet but big name advertisers have made their way to this new frontier. And in some cases in surprising and interesting ways. Check out Clickz’s excellent write up on a campaigns from Olay on Booyah, Gap on Loopt, Starbucks on Brightkite, USA Today on Gowalla and Pepsi on Sticybits.
Adotas breaks down the search space for you. Basically Microsoft’s new Bing search is growing by leaps and bounds. Google continues to grow but at a decelerating rate. As for Yahoo, it’s still bad news, search volume is down 2% from 2008.
Newsweek has an interview with Jeff Bezos that covers how Amazon decides which markets to enter and the future of the Kindle among other things.
“It is [our] No. 1 bestselling product. It’s the No. 1 most-wished-for product as measured by people putting it on their wish list. It’s the No. 1 most-gifted item on Amazon. And I’m not just talking in electronics—that’s true across all product categories.”
AdWeek has an interesting article about American Apparel buying up YouTube longtail videos and matching ads against them. While not exactly a revolutionary idea it’s always great to hear about medium-size brands who understand online and use it to its fullest.
Best Buy is not standing down after inciting the “War on Christmas” crowd by wishing Muslims a “Happy Eid al-Adha” as pictured in the ad above.
The American Family Association, your favoritie anti-Semeitic, homophobic Christian advocacy group, has singled out the retailer for banning the use of “Merry Christmas” in advertising in the past.
Best Buy contends that they have and will continue to use the message “Merry Christmas” in their advertising.
George Packer in the New Yorker has written his take on the appeal of everyone’s favorite advertising soap opera, Mad Men. The attraction, Packer says, is in looking at our own society, not that long ago, with a completely different moral code. Things forbidden then, e.g. homosexuality and out-of-wedlock pregnancy, we are open about now, while they get to smoke inside, drink to excess and sleep with their secretaries.
Middle class American men were, in Packer’s words, little kings. And in Mad Men we get to watch these little kings at the end of their reign.
So this ridiculous Cocoa Krispies Box implies that eating sugary cereal will protect your kids from H1N1 aka Swine Flu. Obviously this is a dubious claim but the fact is, of course, that H1N1, while scary, is a only a minor threat to the well-being of America’s youths.
This fact did not deter USA Today from publishing an article resulting in Kellogg’s removing the claim from their box. Perhaps a compelling argument for self-regulation?
I’m reminded of this cartoon by xkcd which serves as proof that marketers will always find a way to irritate me via cereal boxes.
Agency Layoffs