Entries Tagged 'Copywriting' ↓

After the recent Herbie Fully Loaded movie loaded its viewers up with product placements, you have to wonder how much is enough.

According to one industry source, insidebrandentertainment.com, placements in primetime TV has been zooming. Over the last two quarters, placements have been growing at a rate of 100% per year.

Have you seen those work-at-home TV spots, the annoying ones that require you to watch the commercial and read the url, because the address is never given in the voice over? The numbers the give on the site for the “home-based busineses” are ridiculous, $10,000 a month, $20,000 a month. Huh?
The spokespeople are good — upbeat, but not cracking up from the overpromise in the copy.

OK, lately they do say the website in the voice over. (The website address keeps changing. One step ahead of the law or just tracking which commercial or which time slot worked better?)

I fearlessly went to the site expecting some snake-oil pitch about the amazing profits to be made in real estate or mail order. Instead, the site simply asked me for my contact information. I gave it to them, slightly edited.

But here’s the kicker. That’s all that happened. They assured me they would be in touch. The whole site is two pages, apparently. There are no jillion dollars per month promises, either, just general talk about the joys of being your own boss.

So the whole thing is trolling for addresses, street or email. Very creepy. Read an expose of all the details of this source of fresh meat for someone’s spam campaign here.

There’s a series of hilarious print ads running for Budweiser Light. In one of them, the problem of what to do when you realize your favorite brew is too good to share, and frankly, too popular.

One ad provides a clever label fix. If it’s the last Bud Light in the fridge at a party, just attach the “Prune Wine Cooler” labels to the Bud longneck bottle.

In another, if your friends have left work early to start enjoying Bud Light, there’s a Bud way to fix that, too. Just leave the provided note with its already smudged phone number, explaining that you had to run out.

There’s even one that will remedy the long line to the ladies’ room by clever mislabeling.

There are more interactive print ads in the series. Take a look at them.

There is a story on a blog that Japanese advertisers — worried about the effects of Tivo on their TV commercials — have influenced the Japanese government to ban fast forwarding through commercials. Read the details for yourself.

Apparently, skipping commercials is a violation of Japanese copyright law. (Washington, are you listening?)

I personally find I am more aware of the products being advertised when I fast forward. I watch the screen intently to catch the resumption of the program. (Not that I am aware of the commercial content, just the advertiser.)

Mosey on over to Adland.com and the see the popular classic Budweiser commercial that is the one of most viewed beverage commercial in their vast TV archives.

Basically, some lizards are trying to decide what went wrong with their audition, because they didn’t get the Bud job.

“Louie, frogs sell beer, ” says one lizard, summing up their competition. And judging by the success of this frog campaign, it’s true.

There’s a new spoof of the current Paris Hilton Carl’s Jr. TV commercial.

To me, it demonstrates what good sound track can do to improve anything: bad costumes, bad dance routines, or even bad casting.

The spot advertises Accolo, a recruitment company.

One version of the real Paris burger spot is pretty riveting, too. It’s an “internet only” :60 version. Washing a car never seemed this spicy before.

Product placement has reached its zenith in the new Disney movie, Herbie Fully Loaded. If you want to max out on product placement, just make a movie about some part of life that’s filled with logos.

Like a NASCAR race.

NASCAR, of course, needs many sponsors for each racing team, because keeping a race car tuned and in spare parts is expensive.

But the movie — rather than using Cola Cola brand X placements — jumps right in and has so many products prominently featured I couldn’t count them all.

Tropicana ™ Orange Juice, Nextel ™ the sponsor of the climactic race, Bass Pro Shops ™, Linsey’s Goodyear ™ cap. Heck, BPS gets mentioned in the dialog more than any other brand. It’s one of the sponsors of Herbie racing team, so its logo is in maybe half the shots. (Hmm, I could use a Green Glitter Flavored Bass Jig.)

Oh yes, there’s Home Depot ™, Cheetos ™, Pepsi ™, UPS ™, DuPont ™. The list is almost endless. And the Lohan character’s getting a job at ESPN ™, which is owned by the Disney company.

There’s a New York Times article on all this brouhaha. According to the Times, the movie’s producers needed NASCAR’s cooperation to make the movie and that meant commercial ties galore. It is NASCAR, folks.

If you have kids who like Ms. Lohan or VW Beetles, you can see the movie and experience all those products first hand.

By the way, Volkwagen did not have a product placement deal. If you listen really hard you’ll notice that there is no mention of VW ™ or the Beetle ™ by name in the movie. (VW declined to make a deal because the Herbie model of Beetle is no longer made.)

All this sponsorship has brought out some negative reviews, even according to an industry blog. In fact, one reviewer comented that whole movie looks like a race car driver’s uniform.

I agree. I like product placements in movies. After all, didn’t E.T. eat Reese’s Pieces ™? But this is really overkill, especially in a movie where’s little to watch except those logos and Ms. Lohan’s curves.

They’ve even coined a new word for it: Blogvertising.

This was the buzz at the ad:tech Chicago 2005 panel that discussed blogs as a new medium for marketers.

Shawn Gold, president of WebLogs Inc, said that blogs provide more “targeted eyeballs” than other forms of digital media. He said as well that ads below on the fold on blogs do better than ads above the fold, unlike traditional media like newspapers. He said than weblog ads perform as much as ten times better than banner ads.

BlogAds founder Henry Copeland said that blogs give power to the individiual instead of big media. (Don’t run for office without a multitude of blog writers on your side.)

David Lawrence of Online Tonight said that podcasting was even more involving than blogs because it was like stream of consciousness advertising. Mr. Lawrence is the host of two nationally sydicated radio shows. By the way, hios own podcast is heard by more than 40,000 people every week.

Wait! Remember George Orwell?

See more details at AdRants.

A Dutch ad agency, 180, has created an arresting new spot for Adidas soccer gear. Called “The Impossible Game” it is reminiscent of The Matrix, fighting on high steel, and maybe a dash of Harry Potter’s Quidditch contests.

Steel girders are the lines of the “air field” in the soccer game. Slip off the girder and you’re toast.

If the visuals don’t hook you, the sound — like clashing sabers — will.

You can read about the spot and watch it at Adland.

Ad-rag.com has a total hoot post about the similarities btween dangerous cults and ad agencies: the veneration of the cult leader, the honesty within the cult and deception toward outsiders, the central focus of the cultists on the cult to the exclusion of everything else.

The cult gurus are “charismatic, determined, and domineering. They persuade followers to drop their families, jobs, careers, and friends to follow them.”

Sounds exactly like every we-are-creative shop I’ve worked in. (But the alternative, just-another-job approach is way too bland. The “Oops, 4:45 gotta go” shops are no fun.

The whole analysis is a little overdone: are ad agencies really concerned only with “recruiting new members” and “fund raising?” Is fund raising in the cult analogy the same as making money? Agencies that don’t make a profit won’t be around too long.