MarketingVOX: Creative outsourcing firm Aquent launched an online “reality show,” pitting five designers against one another to create campaigns in several specific fields. The work will be shown online and judged by the public, winnowing down the numbers to get to the one designer best able to tickle the fancies of the web visitors. The Studio Smackdown will run through […]

PSFK: Call it lifestyle marketing. It’s not enough for a company to just sell you a product any more. The goal, today, is for you to live the lifestyle any given product is supposed to represent – and for that company to create and cater to that lifestyle. The Toronto Star says, “It’s a major shift from designing advertising campaigns […]

BusinessWeek: How do you convince teens to buy your highly caffeinated, $2-a-can soft drink, when hundreds of other brands are jockeying for shelf space? Skip normal TV ads, for starters. In a field continually littered with new entries, each trying to out-extreme the other, small energy-drink companies are pursuing increasingly audacious marketing tactics. Bridge jumping, a rocket launch, and even […]

BusinessWeek: At a hip singles bar in Las Vegas earlier this year, attractive urbanites were busy typing messages into their cell phones. But messages like, “Who’s the hottie at the end of the bar?” weren’t just going to friends — they were being posted on a giant video screen as part of a promotion at several events organized by Anheuser-Busch […]

Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Soon, that Starbucks latte in your hand won’t just be a cup of coffee. It will be a talking point, the latest Starbucks idea coming to a corner near you. Starbucks will begin printing quotes from various contributors — be they actors, economists, philosophers or kings — on all of its coffee cups in North America, beginning early […]

The Cincinnati Enquirer: Coca-Cola North America was looking for an innovative way to market its new Hi-C Sour Blast juice boxes. These weren’t just any old juice boxes, but the lunchbox drink of choice for millions of schoolchildren each day. The Sour Blast has a sour candy-coated straw that gives a burst of pucker-up flavor before that sweet Hi-C finally […]

Adverblog.com: Buongiorno Vitaminic has created a pan-european campaign to promote the new Piaggio NRG Power. The initiative will run in Italy, France, Germany and Spain with the aim of driving traffic to the site www.nrg.piaggio.com and then building the NRG Community. Young users who sign up in the site receive the possibility of downloading free music. There is also an […]

Netimperative: As its name implies, people have to be outside their homes in order to be exposed to posters, tube ads and other outdoor media, whereas – mostly – online consumption and interactivity takes place behind closed doors – either in the home or the workplace. The apparent lack of compatibility between the two mediums is compounded by the fact […]

Tech Digest: Want to see the TV being credited as the world’s most advanced? Vivadi’s Saturn is on display in Harrods right now. The plasma TV comes with a 46-inch screen, a DVD recorder and a 200GB hard drive recorder (admit it, you’ll never watch all those shows you record on it). The hard drive comes with a 14 day […]

Influx: Advertisers looking for alternatives to conventional advertising are starting to experiment with the concept of brand television, one step beyond product placement. However, there are a few cultural and financial barriers preventing the early efforts from achieving success. Orange, the UK wireless brand, has been one of the first, developing a music show for ITV. The idea was suggested […]