(9 votes, average: 3.89 out of 5)

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Everyone who has taken the time to look at the sky knows how dull it is. In fact, it is so boring that people are trying to convince themselves that some clouds are shaped like animals, just to make the experience slightly more interesting. Thank god, this problem is going to be solved by the best thing that happened to humanity since the digital watch, the flogo!

Flogo’s, short for ‘Flying Logo’s’, are, well…, logo’s that fly. I must say that I’m really excited about this one. Imagine a (fake) cloud, shaped like the logo of your favourite brand, flying at an altitude of 20,000 feet above you on a beautiful summer day. If that doesn’t lift your spirit, I don’t know what will.
And the best thing is it doesn’t have to be a brand logo! It can be anything from a simple shape to a written message. So now we have the ability to get a message across to millions of people and they can’t switch it off. You don’t want to see it? Though luck! You don’t want your children exposed to my ideas? You better lock them up in a basement somewhere. Oh boy, I can’t wait to find out what religious fanatics come up with.

Seriously, I think that the inventor of the flogo should be flogged for this brainfart. I’m sorry, but the only logo I want to see in the sky is a yellow oval with the shape of a bat inside, the rest is just spoiling the view. So please, if you ever spot a flogo, stop buying the brand! Let the sky be the limit.

1 Comment »

Filed under: Funny, Informative, Weird

(4 votes, average: 4.5 out of 5)

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Here’s a challenge for you: For the next week document what you do online and how much time you spend doing it. The outcome may surprise you. The fact is that many online marketers fritter away more time online than they spend working on their businesses.

It’s tempting. It’s time consuming. It’s like tossing money to the wind.

If you’re not as productive as you’d like to be, take a step back and get very honest about how you’re spending and/or wasting your time. Let’s talk about some major time wasters and how you can stop stalling and start doing more:

* Checking e-mail. Many of us spend far too much time getting distracted by mail. Do you find that you go back and forth between “real” work and e-mail? If so, carve out a specific time each day to read and respond to important messages. Unsubscribe to junk e-mail so you won’t have to wade through it. If all else fails, log-out of your account to avoid the lure.

* Browsing websites. This is a real temptation for many of us. If you must do research, you can always Read more…

2 Comments »

Filed under: Informative

Update! This is the video.

Most people today don’t have a very long attention span. If you’re like me, you won’t think twice about zapping forward to the next tv station if you don’t see anything good for two seconds.

Most advertisers are aware of this and are reaching for bigger and better adverts, spending millions on famous actors and expensive computer animations.

Honda, or whoever they hired, came up with a better plan. Tonight at 8.10 pm local time, the British television broadcaster Channel 4 will air a live tv advert featuring 19 skydivers. The skydivers will have 3 minutes and 20 seconds of live “airtime” to form the words “Difficult is worth doing” while falling out of their plane.

Honda’s marketing director Ian Armstrong comments:

“More people are watching television than ever before. But things are becoming more complicated. People have to want to watch something, you can’t force them.

People will navigate towards the good stuff and ignore the bad stuff. We wanted to create something unmissable and what better way to produce something ‘must see’ than to stage the first live ad event on TV. It’s about creating talkability on a big scale, managing the risk and being seen as pioneers for it.”

A truly brilliant idea. I hope we’ll be seeing much more of this in the coming years. Unfortunately I don’t have Channel 4 on my TV. Will anyone that has tell me if someone’s parachute doesn’t open?

4 Comments »

Filed under: Brilliant, Weird

(6 votes, average: 4.83 out of 5)

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An English father is giving Nintendo a hard time because its Wii Fit game branded his daughter a “fatty.” Tabea Scott-King, a healthy 11 years old girl from Spalding (GB) told her parents she was going on a diet. When her parents asked why, Tabea said, “Because the game told me so.” The National Institute of Health’s BMI recalculated Tabea’s BMI and she seemed to be at the lower end of the ‘normal’ category for her current weight and height.

Wii Fit is a game intended for people who want to do their exercising at home. The game has many different activities to become or stay fit. The balance board, that is needed to do some of those activities, can also measure the player’s weight and calculate the body mass index. It tells the player whether he or she is underweight, normal or fat.

Tabea’s father: “Tabea is a healthy girl with an active lifestyle. She swims and dances every week. She is 92lbs and 4′9” tall and there is not an inch of fat on her, she is solidly built but not fat. She was devastated to be called fat and we had to work hard to convince her that she isn’t.”

And it’s not just concerned parents criticizing Nintendo Wii Fit, also obesity experts are warning that the program could lead to anorexia. They ask for warnings in and on the package of the game. So far Nintendo has refused to place a warning on the game, it has however apologized: “any customers offended by the in-game terminology used to classify a player’s current BMI status. Wii Fit is still capable of measuring the BMI for people aged between 2 and 20, but the resulting figures may not be entirely accurate for younger age groups due to varying levels of development,”

No matter what product a company launches, there are always some people offended, hurt or disappointed. But what did Nintendo do wrong? To motivate the gamers, they call people with a high BMI “fatty.” If someone is really a “fatty”, they already knew that, because their friends, neighbors, colleagues or mirror told them so in even stronger words.

Saying sorry is part of the marketing strategy though, and from “the customer is always right” point of view it’s understandable. But what if the costumer isn’t right? It happens. Companies shouldn’t be humble, respectable is enough. An apology is worth much more when it comes from a company that’s self-confident and rarely offers them. Let’s fight the inflation of apologies!

3 Comments »

Filed under: Bad, Commercial, Controversial, Informative, Viral

(7 votes, average: 2.14 out of 5)

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Anyone seen the latest Indiana Jones movie yet? I haven’t, but from what I hear it’s pretty crappy. I’ll still go see it, though; Based on the first three movies alone Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford are heroes in my book. so there’s hardly anything they can do wrong.

At least, that’s what I thought until this morning. Going through my daily dose of advertising news during breakfast, the toast I just swallowed almost came back up when I came across this clip.

Seems like mr. Ford’s recent movie has actually made him think it’s ok for him to show us how he waxes his chesthair. Very metrosexual and all that, mr. Ford, but please, how the hell did you or the guys at BBDO (the producers) get the idea that anyone’s waiting to see a 66 yeard old senior citizen with an earring waxing his chest?

Now, I understand that it’s hip to show your face in the battle against global warming and all that, but can you please just go drive a Toyota Prius? You can send Cate Blanchett over if you insist on showing us someone’s chest.

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Filed under: Bad, Celebrities

(8 votes, average: 3.63 out of 5)

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A car dealer, selling both used and new vehicles, is holding a controversial promotion to boost sales. Until the end of this month Max Motors in Missouri is offering anyone who buys a car the choice of $250 in gas or a free semi-automatic handgun. So far all buyers, except one Canadian, have chosen the gun. Sales have quadrupled, in the last three days they sold more than 30 cars.

General manager Walter Moore: “We did it because of Barack Obama. He said all those people in the Midwest, you’ve got to have compassion for them because they’re clinging to their guns and their Bibles. I found that quite offensive. We’ve got to shoot the coyotes out here, they’re attacking our cows, our chickens. We’re not clinging to nothing. We’re just damn glad to live.”

Moore is expecting his “Free Handgun” ad will draw protests. But not in Butler, about 65 miles south of Kansas City.” Everyone already has a gun there. Max Motors will hand the customer a certificate to get the gun after they passed a background check. The local police chief said there’s nothing he can do about it as long as the weapons aren’t handed out at the dealership.

I like innovative and controversial promotion, but this wouldn’t be my approach. I was wondering, is Walter Moore a trigger-happy idiot or a smart salesman? I would say a smart salesman. Why shouldn’t he try every legal method to sell more cars? Or like he says “down here, we all believe in God, guts and guns.”

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Filed under: Controversial, US presidential campaign, Weird

The AIDS epidemic has been overestimated, it has been slowing for nearly a decade now. AIDS remains a devastating public health crisis in the most heavily affected areas of sub-Saharan Africa though.

The latest estimates put the number of annual new HIV infections at 2.5 million, a cut of more than 40 percent from last year’s estimate. The worldwide total of people infected with HIV – estimated a year ago at nearly 40 million and rising – now will be reported as 33 million.

It’s obvious why anti-Aids organizations were overestimating it. Over the past decade, global spending on AIDS has grown by a factor of 30, reaching as much as $10 billion a year. For years, UNAIDS reports have portrayed an epidemic that threatened to burst beyond its epicenter in southern Africa to generate widespread illness and death in other countries.

I hope that some of the $10 billion will be spend on other and bigger health threats from now on. At least in the western world. Targeting students and social media users is not worth the money! Because beyond Africa, AIDS is more likely to be concentrated among high-risk groups, such as users of injectable drugs, sex workers and gay men. That’s not a preconception, that’s a fact.

Why I tell you all this? Well, this issue is bothering me for quite a while now and I had to get it off my chest. And a website I discovered gave me a reason to write about it. Thank you www.posornot.com

This website is an initiative from mtvU, a college network. On it you can guess, by looking at a picture and reading two lines about the person on it, whether someone is HIV infected or not. The outcome is moralizing and predictable. You can’t guess. Duh! How stupid does mtvU think their students are?

In my opinion, this is just another campaign targeting the wrong group to fight Aids! Spend it on campaigns against alcohol abuse, obesity, drugs and smoking instead!

4 Comments »

Filed under: Africa, Bad, Drugs, Informative

(8 votes, average: 4.13 out of 5)

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Does the name Cash Warren ring a bell? He’s one of the luckiest man on earth. Why? Because he is the fiancé of Jessica Alba and can use her for the promotion of his website. I envy him!

Jessica Marie Alba is famous for her role in The Secret World of Alex Mack, Dark Angel, Sin City, Fantastic Four, Into the Blue and Good Luck Chuck. But besides her acting in movies I don’t watch, she’s also AskMen.com’s number one on their list of “99 Most Desirable Women” in 2006, as well as “Sexiest Woman in the World” by FHM in 2007.

Karin, a regular visitor of PROMOpinion, told me about the Alba staring viral. Alba, 27, explains in the video how she was dared to one-up the effort of another blogger by gazing into her webcam for as long as she could without blinking. The video is part of a viral publicity campaign from ibeatyou.com, an online competition venture set up by Alba’s boyfriend.

She manages to keep her eyes open for one minute and 32 seconds. For most of us, being stared at by someone as gorgeous as Jessica Alba isn’t a daily event, so grab this opportunity!

Even though Jessica Alba has a pair of stunning eyes, she’s doesn’t make me blush. I’m used to be stared at. My friends tell me because I look funny, I like to think that I’m the male version of Alba…

1 Comment »

Filed under: Beautiful, Brilliant, Celebrities, Viral

Direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) has grown into a $4 billion industry in the United States within a decade. Since 1997, it has reached an annual growth rate of 20 percent and, though marred with controversies, is still very much thriving.

DTCA refers to the promotion of prescription drugs via mainstream media. Though prescription drugs by definition can only be obtained through a doctor’s order or medical prescription, a rule amendment has allowed pharmaceutical companies to advertise these medications directly to the public.

Read more…

2 Comments »

Filed under: External, Informative

Ever woke up in the morning with a gigantic hangover feeling sorry about some crazy thing you did last night? I know I have. But you wouldn’t expect professional advertising agencies to do the same. Looking back, some of those must be having a gigantic hangover from some of the stuff they did before as well. A top 5 of my favourite weird ads from the past (click on the images to enlarge)…

1. Puma

2. Camel

3. 7-up

4. Coca cola

5. Bradley

1 Comment »

Filed under: Bad, Funny, Old & New, Weird

In order to promote the 2008 edition of reality show Big Brother in Australia, advertising agency Marketforce came up with an innovative and unique Bluetooth SMS campaign. The campaign embodied the famous quote from George Orwell’s book 1984 “Big Brother is watching you” which is the essence of the show.

Networtk TEN, the host of the reality show installed Blue-tooth transmitters in twenty bus shelters around town. The transmitters automatically sent two anonymous messages to anyone within the range (few meters) who has Bluetooth enabled.

This is a great and very effective way of advertising. The receiver will give more attention to a customized phone message than to any other advertising method. So far so good.

But isn’t it just spam? Did the people at the bus shelters give their permission to receive messages like this? We are all used to spammails, though spam on a phone has much more impact, especially when it starts with the message “I’m watching u.” Besides that, I also wonder how many people have their Bluetooth enabled all the time…

I like new ways of advertising and customizing it is the future. Nevertheless this new method is too intrusive if you ask me.

With this Big Brother advertisement, advertising agency Marketforce is a serious candidate to win the Big Brother Award. Every year Privacy International and a growing number of affiliate human rights groups present those awards to government agencies, private companies and individuals who have excelled in the violation of our privacy…

3 Comments »

Filed under: Brilliant, Controversial, Picture, Weird