It must be after the advent and startling popularity of Jessica Rose, aka LonelyGirl15 of Youtube fame, that large scale advertisers are now seeking our small time video blogging. Both Amanda Congdon of Rocketboom and performance artist Ze Frank have sealed the deal with sponsorships from failing auto maker Ford Motor Company and domain name registration service Godaddy.com. This move shows an undeniable shift in marketing in a new target area. The deal between Congdon and Ford Motor Company will involve a sponsorship where Congdon will go on a road trip aimed at raising awareness for enviornmental issues.

Surely, Ford Motor Company will be looking to push their new line of high gas mileage engines and E85 capable cars and trucks. According to the Clickz Network, Ford will be pushing their new Escape Hybrid SUV vehicle with the campaign. The user generated blogs will expand later in the fall with a full fledged web site devoted to the project and allow anyone to submit videos with their cross country stories.

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Coolz0r , in collaboration with AdsofTheWorld, unveiled a series of new advertisements for Flirt Vodka running in Bulgaria last year. The sexy advertisements feature a variety of “sex sells” mentality including; a woman with bruised knees (kind of degrading), a whip cream and strawberry party just gone wrong, a bedroom that looks like it’s gone through an orgy, and a few more tasteful treats. The copy below reads “FLIRT - Keeps the memories” .Check out Coolz0r for more.

Starting today, domain names are being offered with the extension .mobi to trademark holders such as Microsoft, Nokia, and Vodafone. Critics of the .mobi domain say these new domains are going to cost corporations millions of dollars in fraud lawsuits when domain sitters buy up popular domain names with the new .mobi extension. Verizon Communications told the Financial Times that they only registered verizon.mobi to avoid others from taking it and attempting to sell it back to the company for a huge profit. Many web developers, such as myself, agree that the .mobi extension will not be useful and can only create trouble and panic across the web.

As mobile devices such as the Blackberry can already access websites with .com .net, .org extensions there is no real need for a .mobi other than for domain name sales companies such as GoDaddy to generate more revenue of the sale of the new extension. No one can yet agree on whether or not the .mobi buy out will become a domain and infringer’s omega of profits. However, I can agree that a tremendous amount of trademark conflict will arise out of the valuable new domain name extensions. It’s up to the community of the internet and how valuable views are on the .mobi extension by both developers and those who visit websites with a .mobi extension. Stay tuned!

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A website titled Savetz unveiled a huge collection of 75 years of Band Aid product packaging that is truely histerical. The man and his wife bought an old house in North Carolina and recently found hundreds of old Band Aid boxes stuff in a storage closet. He could do nothing more than develop a website and share these magnificent product packages with all of us. Click the picture below to see more of his impressive Band Aid product packaging collection.

Talk about truely innovative paper. I thought when Xerox developed paper that deleted itself that the company was going to make huge profits marketing this innovative product. Then, I checked out what the crazy people over in Japan were up to. The video below shows a type of liquid developed by a Japanese company that allows things to be submerged into it without getting wet. I’ve seen something similar here in America where someone would dip a cell phone or tv into a liquid and the electronic would be damaged but I never imagined that a liquid could be developed that could handle both ink and paper products. Check it out below!

Someday we might see American children turning into full fledged healthy looking adults. But for now, 16% of American children 12-19 are overweight according to the Center for Disease and Control and Prevention leading to many fitness clubs and health organizations fleeing for an innovative way to bring in our youth.

A company called Overtime Fitness, opening tomorrow in Mountain View, California aims to target this demographic and turn sugary rich coach potatoes into full fledged gadget dieters. The fitness facility features regular workout equipment, a study center filled with internet accessible computers, and a virtual reality dance game much like Dance Dance Revolution. There’s also a resistance rod which turns the real world of working out into the virtual world of entertainment. One game, called “Kilowatt Sport” is very similar to Madden 2006 for the Xbox. The game involves resistance training where if you lean against the equipments resistance rod you can break through tackles and break the defensive line. The only thing that still lingers in my mind is how parents will react when faced with a $60 per month membership fee?

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Here’s another example of how dumb advertisers can be. This commercial stand from the streets of a Russian City is an ad spot for writing materials. The stand was set up at the begining of the school year for Russian children. Something about the ad is just a little disturbing, what do you think?

It’s Sunday! Time to kick back and watch a video of a guy smoking a Hookah and blowing crazy good smoke rings. (Running Time 36 seconds)

Lynx has jumped up and became the very first advertiser in the United Kingdom (UK) to launch a ‘branded community’ on MySpace. As reported on New Media Age, the star of the stunt is Towelboy. Towelboy is the half naked star of the latest Lynx tv commercial spot. The Towelboy MySpace profile acts as a connection between MySpace and the Lynx homepage. Towelboy’s MySpace profile provides a very fun “Snakecharmer” game from Lynxboost.com to promote the “Stimulating shower gel” the company is selling which is practically the same as Axe. You can also play a few Towel Boy Videos on the page.

Co-author of the book Krazy Kid’s Food (2003) has an unimaginably large collection of vintage aged kids products. The set includes hundreds of product pictures of kids candy and goodies you might have grown up with and enjoyed as a kid. The kids products range from the 1950s - early 1990’s. Read

Some people confuse patents, copyrights, and trademarks. Although there may be some similarities among these kinds of intellectual property protection, they are different and serve different purposes. Here’s a quick refresher covering what they all are.

What Is a Patent?
A patent for an invention is the grant of a property right to the inventor, issued by the Patent and Trademark Office. The term of a new patent is 20 years from the date on which the application for the patent was filed in the United States or, in special cases, from the date an earlier related application was filed, subject to the payment of maintenance fees. US patent grants are effective only within the US, US territories, and US possessions. Read the rest of this entry »

This fold out Mac advertisement is insanely huge. For Mac lovers, it’s the center-fold of all center folds. The ad is another comparison of how the Mac and PC are different. For those with lazy eyes, I’ve went ahead and wrote down the largest paragraph of the ad.

� � � � �

Why you’ll love a Mac. Macs are designed from the ground up to work better than any other computer. And they come with everything you need to have more fun, right out of the box. Including iLife ‘06, Apple’s award-winning suite of software that lets you easily create photo books, websites, blogs, home movies and more. A built in iSight camera for video chats with your friends and family. Mac OS X, the world’s most advanced operating system that doesn’t suffer from all the viruses that plague PCs. And Intel’s latest chip, so everything runs faster than ever. Say hello to a better computer. Say hello to Mac.

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Developed by an Italian advertising agency, this airplane window advertisement is quite clever and effective. The ad spot was developed for the Fiat Idea, a mini MPV developed by the Italian car manufacturer Fiat. With a puny 1.4L 16 valve engine and only 95 horsepower, this little car will need all the clever ideas it can get. Click the picture below for a larger image.

Attention all marketing gurus and advertising players! Customer Relationship Management is here to stay and will be the driving force behind many of your most important marketing decisions.

SugarCRM, or Sugar Customer Relationship Management, will be pushing their software as a service market in order to increase visibilty. On October 5th, they’ll be telling the world in a live webcast titled “CRM: On Demand or On Site? Choose the Right Deployment Option.”

Although in marketing online I still contend that webcasts and podcasts are not yet large enough to drive huge sales, I do contend that marketing-geeks will be thrilled with the Sugar CRM webcast. Several promient customer relationship management software gurus will be in attendance for the webcast including; technology analyst Tim Clark, Sterling PCU’s GM of sales and marketing Christopher Edwards, and Sugar CRM CTO Jacob Taylor.

Some of the topics to be discovered in the live webcast include; ““Best practices for choosing an on-demand or on-site CRM system”; “16 decision points to consider when evaluating CRM deployment options”; “How leading customers are using CRM systems to better manage customers”; and “Two secret ingredients of any successful CRM initiative.” “CRM: On-Demand or On-Site?

A special thanks to our reader Auction Pixie who brings us a new misspelled ebay listings search tool. The website basically lets you type in any term (product or service) listed on eBay and find listings that we misspelled by the speller. The benefits of this are that 99% of eBay buyers will not spell their searches incorrectly and therefore the misspelled auction listings will have a very low price. If no one can find the auction with a misspelled listing, then no one will be able to bid on it besides you who’ll find it with Auction Pixie.

• The buck doesn’t stop there. Auctionpixie allows for the following really useful eBay management
• Automatically leave feedback for people who leave you a positive feedback comment. Define a set of messages and we’ll do the rest; it’s easy, secure and fast.
• Store up to 10 of your most favourite feedback comments per eBay account you add. We’ll then leave a randomly picked comment for every positive feedback comment you receive.
• Get instant email notifications when someone leaves you neutral or negative feedback.