USATODAY: The force is already out in force as the May 19 debut of Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith nears. Consumers are being flooded with Star Wars-themed TV commercials, print ads, soft-drink promotions, video games and “collectible” action figures and toys. But “buyer beware,” warns Jeremy Beckett, author of The Official Price Guide to Star Wars […]

Trendwatching.com: Who likes to wait? Help consumers overcome boredom and throw in some empathy as well! Last year, Senseo Coffee Machines installed coffee machines at a number of Dutch bus and tram stops, offering waiting passengers a cup of fresh brewed coffee. Perhaps not the most spectacular TRYVERTISING stunt ever, but ten times more relevant to consumers than a billboard […]

CNet: Be prepared for such moments to become a regular occurrence, thanks to a new service that inserts dynamic ads into video games. After several months of beta testing, New York start-up Massive is set to launch its in-game advertising network on Monday, with support from several major game publishers and mainstream advertisers such as Coca-Cola and Intel. In-game advertising […]

NetImperative: Carat Interactive in the US has launched a new practice dedicated to using blogs as an advertising medium. The practice will focus on three key areas including: planning and buying ads on blogs and blog networks; “blog initiation”, which is thought to be a contract blog operation; and blog monitoring, which will track comments on key brands throughout the […]

PSFK: You see some pretty girls pulling their designer-label bags down the plane’s aisle these days and you just assume that they must be a fake. The bags, not the girls. Probably. The world is flooded with fakes and we know that it’s all but impossible to tell a real item from the fake. But now, Dutch design boutique Mind […]

Clickz: Starburst launched an aggressive U.S.-based mobile marketing promo on Friday as part of a new integrated campaign. Grey Interactive and mobile marketing partner ipsh! are behind the cross-carrier effort, which follows a relaunch of the MasterFoods candy brand. The new identity promises “More Juice. More Burst.” Last week, MasterFoods began distributing the first of 100 million Starburst packs with […]

Trendwatching: Mass advertising is dying. Experienced consumers couldn’t care less about commercials, ads, banners and other fancy wording and imagery that is forced upon them, so let’s move on to more interesting ways of igniting conversations between corporations and consumers. We recently spoke about CUSTOMER MADE and NOUVEAU NICHE as powerful alternatives to archaic marketing thinking, but those concepts don’t […]

USAToday: “Heat-resistant coatings,” “high-temperature adhesives” and “machinable ceramics” aren’t even in the same league as “Britney Spears” when it comes to popular Web searches. But for Aremco Products Inc. of Valley Cottage, N.Y., they’re golden. That’s because the customers for Aremco’s high-temperature coatings and adhesives are typing those words into search engines such as Yahoo! and Google. To make sure […]

Netimperative: Mobile marketing company Hypertag has launched a wearable version of the infra-red and bluetooth tags previously used in interactive poster advertising. The wearable Hypertags will be aimed at field marketers, enabling them to send content direct to consumer’s mobile phones from a fully portable interactive tag. Hypertags are short-range wireless devices, which send information to mobile phones via infra-red […]

PRNewswire: Just when you think you’ve seen it all in the world of marketing, listen up – HALLS Fruit Breezers lets you hear it all too! Tattooing advertisements on body parts is old news, but the newest wave in creative branding is loud and difficult to miss…at least if you live in New York City with Floyd Hayes. HALLS Fruit […]