ads

A few thoughts about the recently unveiled (and heavily commented) Digg's new ad format that makes ads "diggable" and puts them in the general news stream.

You know you're old when songs you listened to when you were a kid are being used to brand old fogey cars.

It's common for musicians of all ages to sell their music to advertisers. Beck and the Who have done it, as have Feist and the Rolling Stones. It's not just a crass sellout anymore, but rather crass marketing strategy: ads get heard more often than songs on radio stations, so getting into a commercial is just one of a menu of options that include inclusion in the soundtrack of a movie, or appearing in a teen drama on TV. 

by: Jonathan Salem Baskin

Did you know that a lot of oil tankers are floating just offshore from various refineries, filled to the brim with cheap oil, just waiting for prices to rise so they can get sold at a bigger profit?

by: Roger Dooley

Selling salty chips to guys isn’t all that difficult. As the classic Lay’s commercial noted, “You can’t eat just one!” Give a guy a chip, and before you know it the bag is gone. For women, though, salty foods are the snack of choice just 14% of the time. They prefer sweet snacks (25%) and, amazingly, healthier fare like fruits and vegetables (61%). Disturbed that women might prefer carrot sticks to potato chips, Frito Lay decided to get inside women’s heads. Literally.

by: Dominic Basulto

by: Dick Stroud

Research by YouGov, on behalf of Senioragency, discovered that 46% of older consumers are actively turned off by celebrities fronting ad campaigns, while only 11% of thought more positively. The remaining 39% were ambivalent.

I wonder why that is? There are lots of explanations and the research doesn’t appear to answer the question. My thoughts are:

by: Gary Hayes

Another selection of my items cross-posted from another of my original blogs, lamp watercooler.

The Ulitmate Mashup Launches - Sport, MMOG & Social Virtual World - 16 Oct 08

by: David Polinchock

by: Jonathan Salem Baskin

I've become a regular reader of Brandweek's peer reviews of ad campaigns.

Talk about a tough crowd. They hate pretty much everything they write about.

by: Jonathan Salem Baskin

So here we are, tumbling together into a recession, a Presidential election cycle, violent storms, and a host of other events that are, at best, distracting and, at worst, troubling...and some of the businesses that touch consumers most regularly (and intimately, next to doctors and shampoo makers) are blissfully detached.