Anthony Sullivan, Matthew Lesko, and Tony Little star in ‘Informercial Madness’to promote MSN search. The online game/flash website is incredibly vibrant and makes you believe you are playing candy land with the informercial rejects. The website has random video commercials, product contests & prizes, and everything you click pops up randomly. Aside from that, a pretty horrible marketing turn for the infomercial folks and MSN Search.

“Matthew Lesko is here to screw up your search results!” (whiney Lesko impersonation).

Is that Mario and Luigi (chinese versions) I see? These little guys won’t be jumping out of plumbing pipes for you nor do they enjoy mushrooms to ‘make it to another level’. The dastardly duo are part of an Altoids campaign game in which you place packages of ‘toids against other packages to make transformations. It was a pretty boring game and the music blew but check it out if you’d like. Altoids Game

I was watching CNBC like I do everyday around 3 - 4pm (the only times I’m not hooked on caffeinated beverages) and noticed a campaign for Wal-Mart which seeks to brand the company as a high-end retailer (like that will ever happen). Hundreds of agencies and executives do what she allegedly did but who cares. She took the initiative to be different and rattle some cages. Isn’t that what marketing should be? If marketing didn’t cause controversy or build brand awareness and PR then what point of hiring a marketer would there be? Sure, marketers could do market research in their cute little cubicles crunching numbers from mall surveys alongside statistics graduates but what’s the fun in that.

Let’s examine this further. She is accused of having dinner with agency execs. She is also accused of taking rides in exec fancy cars. Who hasn’t been optimistic about a potential partner and changed themselves to be like their potential partners? She is also accused of accepting gifts from ad agencies to court the Wal-Mart account. Oh big deal. Our politicans do the same thing. Rememeber, our economy once worked on a barter system and selfishness and competition are just a fact of life. The moment you let your guard down and confirm to what society proclaims as ‘morally right’ will others step right over you and open a door to success.

Black Wu and Darren Cheung acknowledged that the Lego Ads are indeed fake and that they were made as a “personal trial to challenge creativity.” Discussing the ads creation, the pair said “”We got so carried away that we came out with the stupidest idea that upset a broad audience. This was obviously done without the knowledge of any of the Saatchi & Saatchi managers.”

The title says it all. I love how many people they got to drink in this commercial for Calrton Draught.

When TiVo first launched their company they tried to run a commercial on the major networks for their DVR service. When the studio heads got one look at TiVo’s take on their industry they immedietely banned the spot from ever airing. Since then TiVo has advertised mostly on the internet until Radio Shack helped them get TV spots this year.

A new promotional contest is being put in that could win you a role in an episode of “One Tree Hill.” The promotional contest will follow the increasingly popular marketing tactic known as user generated content. The CW Netowrk is teaming up with the Sunkist line of Cadbury Schweppes sodas and asking viewers to create and upload video entries in this very unsual contest. Entrants are encouraged to submit their video clips to the CWTV Sunkist website page. Consumers will be able to vote online for their favorite video clip on the website. It’s an example of 360 degree marketing and a grass roots campaign to involve the consumer from the most basic and comfortable level… their living rooms.

The “Sunkist Brings ‘One Tree Hill’ to Your Town Contest” was first promoted during the Nov. 29 episode with a commercial featuring Mark Schwahn, the executive producer who created the series. The commercial was repeated last night and will continue running until the contest ends Jan. 7.

As of yesterday, CW executives said, 370 entries had been registered, a strong response, considering that it took more than 10 weeks for the Doritos contest to accumulate its entries.

The Search Engine Journal reports that terrorists linked with Al Qaeda and Hezbollah are benefiting from Google Adsense ads and are stealing from Google advertisers by using click fraud programs which generate revenue for their operations. The new report claims that insurgent based networks use robot clickers called ‘clickbots’ which are automated programs that click on Gogle ads and change IP address over and over again. According to the report, this is how the Adsense hustle for terrorists works;

1. Groups set up blogs and sites that serve Google AdSense ads
2. Commit click fraud on those sites
3. Collect revenue from Google
4. Donate revenue to “charities” that funnel funds to terror groups

Google announced on Thursday that they have began beta-testing Google Audio Ads for their new radio advertising delivery system with a small group of high priced and premium partners from their Adwords advertisers says Reuters.

In Google’s Official Adwords blog, the company announced they will integrate the system with the recent acquisition of dMarc Broadcasting. The test ads have already aired but the company has not decided when they will launch the audio ads fully scale. “Google Audio Ads brings efficiency, accountability, and enhanced ROI to radio advertising by providing advertisers with an online interface for creating and launching radio campaigns. You’ll be able to target your customers by location, station type, day of the week, and time of day. After the radio ads are run, you will be able to view online reports that tell you exactly when your ad played,” Google said.

The images below are visual representations of how the Google Audio Ads will work.

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This placemat was developed by ad agency Publicis Salles Norton in Brazil for the Swahili African Restaurant in the United States. Swahili is an African Restaurant.

These ads were developed by Leo Burnett, Frankfurt. I love how they split the billboards in two to show how easily their knives cut through different types of animals and food.

These traditional glass bottle advertisements were brought to our attention by IBelieveInAdv. they were commissioned by Mother and developed by Airside. The tagline of the ads reads “Love” and written in Coca Cola style letters. The beautiful and very daring colors are reminiscent of the 1970s Coca Cola ad campaigns.

The latest advertisement campaign for the WWF (not the world wrestling federation) is being used to promote the organization’s website and get peopel to join the organization. The print advertisement uses pictures of animals which are pixelated to depict two things; first, the internet concept that people turn to the internet as a medium and secondly that small points are associated with the form and contour of an animal to represent strength. The survival of wildlife the most important thing for the WWF and these ads convey strength and agility of our wildlife. The tag line of the ads reads “Together, we are strong. Join Us.”

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UNICEF has recently launched a series of advertising campaigns which work to promote education amongst Muslim countries. The ad campaign is using very intense visual presentations to convey the message. The blue colored tears in the ads are used to depict the prevailing illiteracy rates among girls in Muslim countries where the women are willing to be educated but the social structure prevents it. The tag line of the ads reads “Don’t let our girls stay uneducated” and was created by Guzel Sanatlar / Saatchi & Saatchi in Istanbul, Turkey.

The cookie has crumbled and the new “Got Milk” marketing campaign in San Francisco has vanished. The bus shelters were made to smell like cookies to enduce people to go buy milk and cookies and satisfy their hunger. I was thinking a few days ago that homeless people would start licking the walls and I was right. City officials ordered CBS Outdoor, the company that holds the advertising contract for its bus shelters, to remove the adhesive strips Tuesday, just one day after they were put up as part of a “Got Milk?” campaign. Other critics argue that their allergies acted up due to the chemicals placed on the bus shelters (winter weather a better explanation?). The promotion only cost the “Got Milk” marketing campaigners $30 per shelter so the upset will not hurt them economically.