July 2009

One giant leap for publicity? A Utah-based company has patented technology it says will take advantage of the vast advertising space that is the moon's surface, using robots to carve promotional messages in the lunar dust.

Moon Publicity has opened bidding at $46,000 for advertisers to reserve one of 44 visible regions. Of course, it's still unclear who owns the moon, and how the company will get its robots there, or keep them from choking on the abrasive dust or malfunctioning in the extreme temperature of space. Minor details.

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Susan Krashinsky writes about marketers who revive ancient (by ad standards, at least) creative during tough economic times. In Created, she reports on New York Fries' campaign to celebrate its 25th anniversary. In Noted, she has some sad news: "The National Advertising Benevolent Society (NABS), which gives financial aid and counselling support to Canadians in the marketing and communications industry, is getting more calls than ever before." Finally, Krashinsky brings us an American Idol-style competition to crown a star kitten who'll appear in an ad for Royale bathroom tissue.

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Because it's Friday, something fun.

National Public Radio's 404/Not Found page made me smile, and reminded me that there are tons of creative ways marketers can transform this essential Web site feature from cold and bland to cute and engaging.

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Ever try one of those "if you liked Item X, you might also like Item Y" functions on a retail Web site? I've never found that they work especially well for me ("Are you serious? Item Y? Puh-leese!")

I guess I'm not alone, because a number of online retailers are looking for ways to improve their recommendation engines.

Among them is Netflix, which decided to crowdsource the issue by running a contest that kicked off in October 2006 and closed last Sunday. The winner, writes the New York Times, was required "to improve the movie recommendations made by its internal software by at least 10 percent, as measured by predicted versus actual one-through-five-star ratings by customers."

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A unique exercise in product placement has backfired on 20th Century Fox.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the film studio paid a high school student to plug its movie I Love You, Beth Cooper by mirroring a scene in the flick.

"The movie opens with an unassuming valedictorian using his graduation speech to proclaim his feelings for the most popular girl in school. Fox and its consultants hatched the ruse to recreate the scene at a real high school before the film's July 10 opening, say people familiar with the matter, in hopes of creating online chatter about the way the movie supposedly
inspired copycats," the WSJ writes.

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Dustin Rideout is the Director of Marketing for I Love Rewards, the leader in results-driven rewards and recognition solutions. I Love Rewards has developed innovative web-based programs for top employers in North America, delivering sustainable and highly measurable employee and sales incentive programs. Prior to joining I Love Rewards, Dustin held various digitally-focused posts both on the agency and client side, most recently at Wunderman and Research In Motion. Dustin has been privileged to work on digital strategy for such notable companies as Microsoft, MSN, Rogers, Kraft, Nokia, BP, and RIM.

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Today on Media in Canada's Web site, Melita Kuburas provides a detailed close-up of the state of fashion magazines in Canada. And you know what? The news is actually pretty good.

For its upcoming September issue--traditionally the largest recipient of ad dollars for any fashion and beauty magazine-- "Fashion...closed at 196 pages this year, only slightly thinner than last year's 206-page book," Kuburas writes. Meanwhile, "Elle Canada, which last year was 242 pages, is running at 216 pages this year, while Flare (which last year was 232 pages according to a Leading National Advertisers Canada summary report for 2008), will actually be bigger this year."

Considering all the dire reports we hear about U.S. fashion magazines--rapidly shrinking ad revenues, increased layoffs, and all the moaning and gnashing of teeth that accompany such calamities--these numbers are quite respectable. So why is our market doing so much better...and can it last?

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Several major publishers and media buyers are currently test-driving MediaEquals, "a new U.K.-based player with ambitions to secure the whole world's media inventory on its system."

According to Ad Age, the "system, which has been in development for three years, claims to offer something more than rival auction-based or pure transaction systems. The founders claim that it replicates the way media is bought and sold in the real world and acts as a vehicle to free up time that can be invested in creativity and developing contacts."

So how will all this work?

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Traipsing along a sandy beach in your bathing suit. Hiking through the woods with nothing but a backpack, some GORP (Good Old Raisins and Peanuts), and a compass. Taking little daytrips or heading out to a single destination for a full week or two.

However you spend your summer vacation, you want to be able to get away and leave the stress behind. But how do you get things ready beforehand so that “work” can fade into the background once you begin your much-anticipated sojourn? And what about the terror of returning to a nightmare of e-mails and tasks?

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Those who create websites--or those who hire people to create websites--finally have some good news about font use on the 'Net.

For years, designers have had two choices when it comes to spec-ing online type. They could use those faces that typically come installed on PCs or Macs, like Verdana, Arial or Georgia--a workable enough solution, if not a very exciting one. To incorporate more exotic faces or display painstakingly kerned phrases, designers were forced to set them in apps like Photoshop and reference them as images in HTML files. Plenty of good-looking sites have been built this way, but those image files eat up bandwidth. What's more, the text they contain can't be read by search engine robots or site readers used by the visually impaired. While non-standard Mac and PC fonts can be embedded in Flash files, Flash isn't always the right solution for every design challenge.

At long last, there's a option. It's @font-face, a new piece of Cascading Style Sheets mark-up that's supported by a number of new browsers, including Firefox 3.5 and Safari 3.1 or higher.

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Susan Krashinsky reports on the increasingly popular use of retaliatory ad campaigns, like the battle up here between Bell and Rogers for our telecom dollars, or the global one between Microsoft and Macintosh operating systems.

In Created, she writes that the Clorox Company of Canada gave out 25,000 Glad garbage bags and coupons to strike-plagued Torontonians last week.

In Noted, Krashinsky sounds an alarm about the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games. The group is currently "on the hook for more than 30 per cent of its ad space, which has yet to be sold."

And in Quoted, she brings us a digital campaign for Tampax based on "the saga of Zack Johnson, a teenage boy who woke up one day to find his 'guy parts' replaced with 'girl parts.'"

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CTV CONNECTS WITH YOUTH

Vancouver-based online ad agency Noise Digital is helping CTV push its content out of TVs and onto the computer desktops and Facebook pages of its viewers.

The CTV Primetime widget allows users to build their application to keep up with show news, create fan pages and watch content online.

Encouraging such online interaction is CTV's attempt to stay connected with its younger viewers, who in turn will promote their content by showing friends what they watch.

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