Copywriting, branding and other mayhem.

The new Apple TV spot featuring Eminem sure looks like borrowed interest — borrowed from a spot for Lugz running shoes.

See a discussion of the remarkable similarities here at Adfreak.com The shoe commercial is from 2001. It is at this site, under Archives, Lugz, 01.

This makes me wonder is the commercial merely derivative or is there a sharing of talent somewhere — designer, or production company?

Why is it you never hear any of those classic songs by The Doors in TV commercials? The drummer of the group, John Densmore, simply won’t allow it.

Cadillac offered $15 million for “Break on Through” for a spot about one of its SUVs. Nope. Apple offered $4 million. No way.

Possibly all the remaining band members must agree. Whatever the voting rules, Densmore always votes thumbs down. The rest of the surviving Doors are not very happy about Densmore’s decisions.

According to AdTunes, once, in the 1970’s, Densmore allowed “Riders on the Storm” to be used in a Pirelli tire spot in the UK. He gave all the proceeds to charity. He says he felt terrible and that “Jim’s [i.e., Jim Morrison’s] ghost was in my ear.”

There’s a scarey image.

According to The New York Times, the Metropolitan Museum in NYC is opening a splendid Van Gogh exhibit. Unlike previous shows in the US which showcased his paintings, the new show displays 113 of Van Gogh’s 1,800 drawings.

While many artists did drawings as prelimary sketches for painting, Van Gogh often made drawings in his letters of paintings he had already completed, to show what he was doing. However, in one instance, detailed in the exhibit, he traced his drawing to set up the composition of a painting. (This is a rarity, as he usually painted freehand.)

In all, eight paintings are on display, each chosen for its connection to the drawings.

Many of these drawings and watercolors have never been exhibited to the public before. Moreover, because of the fragility of works on paper, it may be some time before they are shown again.

Staples has had a TV campaign for some time, saying “That was easy” as you use Staples and their “Easy Button” gizmo to help get your office work done.

Now, the idea of the Staples “Easy Button” has proven so popular they are actually selling them.

The button’s directions are “press often to relieve stress.” Somehow, it’s battery operated. The button in the TV spots does nothing, so batteries would seem unnecessary. Maybe the button on TV was a non-working prototype?

Luane Calvert, who brought a billboard to life in Times Square for CK One, has put on the world’s largest picnic in San Francisco, With free food for the first 500 attending, the picnic featured an almost 10,000 square foot red and white blanket. The festivities celebrate the opening of an Oakville Grocery in the city by the bay. Ms. Calvert’s company is Mixed Marketing.

There’s a peaceful town in England, Swaffham hometown of archeologist Howard Carter who discovered King Tut’s tomb, that’s had to put up with a lot from its most famous living citizen. He’s Michael Carroll, better known as the Lotto Lout, a petty criminal and long-term vandal, who has achieved the dream of a lifetime: he won 9.7 million pounds in the national lottery. At the time, that was $15 million, more than enough to finance his hooliganism. (He collected his prize wearing a house-arrest electronic ankle band!)

He has appeared in court more than thirty times in the last three years: for drug charges, vandalism of property including shooting ball bearings through shop windows, and generally being a huge nuisance. He is what the Brits call a chav: a person wearing gaudy jewelry and clothes and behaving in a corse, obnoxious manmner. Mr. Carroll must relish the term for he has painted “King of Chavs” on his Mercedes.

There are rumors that a chav reality show is in the works with Mr. Carroll as the star. Stay tuned.

Read more of the story in The New York Times.

In a recent issue of Wired magazine, Hitachi has an ad with a real drink coaster insert.

You have to read the back of the coaster to discover the premise. Use the coaster as a drawing pad to design a new great invention using a Hitachi hard drive as part of it.

Does anyone remember the placemat ads for Compaq computers back in the day? Does anyone remember Compaq ™? Hint: they merged with Hewlett Packard.

There’s a new survey out, conducted for Doyle Dane Bernbach in London, that says most Brits have never heard of blogging.

The survey asked taxi drivers, pub landlords and hairdressers — groups seen as followers of the latest trends — to identify common Internet terms. Seventy percent had never heard of blogging. (And a full 90% had never heard of podcasting.)*

How well does the Apple iPod ™ sell in the UK?

The results are seen as indicating that many people are not up with the latest web trends, and therefore pushing advertisers towards using the latest technology may be a mistake.

*Podcasting is downloading audio content — like a radio show — from the net to your portable music player — presumably an iPod ™ (from iPod and broadcasting) A blog is short for web log, an online journal.

In the why-didn’t-I-think-of this department is Alex Trew’s The Million Dollar Homepage ™. He made a blank webpage that’s divided into small squares like graph paper. All of it is for rent for Internet advertising space. It’s an online billboard.

Each 100-pixel parcel of his advertising landscape can be rented for $100. (I have read that it is “bought,” so the special appeal of the site may be its permanance. (In web time, I believe “permanent” is until the middle of next month.)

I just read the site’s own terms and conditions: he claims the pixel ads will be up a minimum of five years. Hmm, no links to offensive sites, no moving gifs: his whole money-making plan is sounding better and better.

The site ain’t pretty, but since its beginning on August 26th, it gets 50,000 unique visitors per day viewing the sometimes confettti-like banner bits. He claims his only advertising for the site itself has been emailing family and friends.

His ads are selling fast: there are about 190,000 pixels sold already with about 810,000 more to sell. By the way, he really did get a trademark for his Million Dollar name.

Maybe Nottingham University,where he is studying business management, should give him an honorary degree. He certainly seems to know an awful lot about conducting business on the internet already.

Now that Martha Stewart is out and free of house arrest, she is retaking the media.

I’m more of a pessimist: I really thought her conviction would put her down for the count.

But she has a new TV talk show and of course — who’s more Donald than Mr. Trump? — The Apprentice Martha Stewart. (I heard about the show before it started and I was certain it was a joke.)

I’m glad she’s back as the kitchen CEO, but maybe not so much in our face? Please?