"Interpret a Slogan" Creative Contest [Ad]

CoStume National, an Italian fashion house founded in 1986 (wiki), is holding a creative contest.

"Become a C’N’C CoSTUME NATIONAL creative!

Just interpret in your own way the slogan C’N’C Plug Generation with a photo, a composite, mural, stickers, video clip or sculpture and send it in.The best creations will be used as graphics for a series of T-shirts and accessories to be showcased during Milan Fashion Week in February.

You’ve got till 30 January 2009 to focus your ideas, create them and send them in."

Contest rules are here. Prizes:

- 1000€ for the author of the winning concept;
- 2 Apple Iphone mobile (retail price 569,00 €, including VAT, each), one for each of the authors of further two concepts held to be worth of being mentioned.

Sausage Foosball, KFC Recipe Moves, and Other Pitches

Must be a busy day for PR folks, if my inbox is any indication.

"It's "Sausage vs. Sausage" in this custom foosball table for Hatfield Quality Meats by Red Tettemer." -- DiGennaro Communications

"This morning KFC relocated Colonel Sanders’ handwritten Original Recipe for the first time in 68 years from its original vaulted location in Louisville, KY to a secret-secure location as KFC modernizes the safekeeping of one of America’s top corporate trade secrets." -- Weber Shandwick

Axepose.com -- something to do with films, creatives, and voting. Interesting interface.

Create and manage QR codes with insqribe.com.

No, I have no idea what it means but whoever sent this must think AdLab readers should know that "achter de schermen is het al een tijdje bekend, maar nu is het officiëel. Hendsum&Young en Ido de Voos, eigenaar van 290 square meters gaan samen verder als creatief bureau en versterken zo hun positie als agency op het gebied van muziek, fashion en cultuur." -- Hendsum&Young.  

MINI has a new advergame. About parking. With a dude riding a small tall car. -- Interone Worldwide

Chrome is Good for Advertisers: "[Tabbed browsing] is a real issue, as advertisers truly don’t care about time displayed in a hidden tab, just as we don’t care about time displayed below the fold – all measured in the traditional exposure metric. Instead, advertisers now look at a new generation of metrics that show dwell time – time spent when a consumer actually engaged with the ad. Chrome's popularity and existence might drive consumers to toggle more, but will also force marketers to put more emphasis on dwell time. This is the holy grail of brand measurement, far more relevant than ad exposure or click thru rates." -- Mortar for Eyeblaster

First Wives World: social network for divorced women. -- HWH PR

Assorted

Guess your site visitors' gender by looking at their browser history and comparing it with Comcast demo profiles for top sites.

Boston Globe explores the cognitive science of magic tricks. Via Neuromarketing, which builds a bridge between the article and our industry; also see our earlier posts on brand magic, corporate magic, and focus group hypnosis.

A huge list of brands on Twitter.

If you write creative briefs, take a look at how CIA approaches problem solving through asking the right questions (the original source is the Thinkertoys book).

Clicky -- "one of the best web analyzers on the planet". Actually, it's looking pretty good.

Help a Reporter Out:  become a source for reporters looking for experts to quote

Esquire's E-Ink Cover and Ad for Ford

Today must be like that October day in 1994 when the first web banner appeared on a web page and everyone was excited about it without fully realizing what it all meant. The small blinking insert on Esquire's cover is just like that -- kind of simplistic and not at all scary. But you just wait.

During my lunch break today, I ran out to Borders to pick up a copy of the October issue of Esquire that came out with an e-ink insert on its cover.  Boston Globe wrote about the upcoming e-ink issue a couple of weeks ago. Today, the story is all over the web. Wired says its a flop. I say sour grapes, even though, yes, the creative execution is a bit underwhelming.  The cover and the ad are controlled by one circuit and run on six batteries that are supposed to last 6-8 months.

As you'll see in the video, the e-ink screens are pretty thin, fairly high-contrast and bend well. 

Besides "the world's first e-ink cover", Esquire also sports what must be one of the first e-ink ads, for Ford Flex. Production costs for the e-ink insert are reportedly $8-$10 per cover.

Coincidentally, Plastic Logic today revealed its e-reader with the 8.5 x 11-inch form factor targeted at business users.

Earlier:

Electronic Ink Publishing Almost Here?

Tech Review On Obama's Social Media

MIT Technology Review's cover story explores Obama campaign's use of social media:  "The generational differences between the Obama and McCain campaigns may be best symbolized by the distinctly retro "Pork Invaders," a game on the McCain site (it's also a Facebook application) styled after Space Invaders, the arcade game of the late 1970s. Pork Invaders allows you to fire bullets that say "veto" at slow-moving flying pigs and barrels."

Life-like Projection of Best Buy Salesman

Ah, here's a topic I haven't posted about for a couple of years: "a video display at the Mall of America that looks and sounds like a real Best Buy employee." (YouTube, via AdRants).

Here's a look at the tech behind it by Modernistic: "This digital projection signage system uses a screen to capture all available projected light. The screens can be custom cut into any shape. We also make screens in a self-adhesive film that can be applied to windows, transparent partitions, free standing, countertop and hanging panels. The projected image has a multi-dimensional look."

Earlier:
Advertising Holograms
Stereoscopic Advertising: Part II, Part I

Stormpulse: Great Interface for Tracking Hurricanes

Stormpulse.com. Stunning.

Balihoo Launches Marketer Edition [Ad]

AdLab's sponsor Balihoo launched their Marketer Edition product. In a nutshell, the product provides national brands the ability to consistently implement distributed demand-generation efforts by centralizing the management and execution of all local marketing activities. Functionality highlights:

• Local dealers can customize corporate-approved creative on-the-fly to create personalized but on-brand advertising and marketing materials across all mediums.
  
• Local dealers can plan and buy local advertising with a few simple clicks and leverage the corporate buying power of the national brand.
  
• National brands drive demand generation and brand consistency at the local level.
  

Click for more information on this franchise and coop marketing product.

AdLab Riddle: Says Who?

Below are the four nomination acceptance speeches made by the ticket candidates at DNC and RNC over the past two weeks: Biden, Obama, Palin, and McCain. I ran these speeches through Wordle. Can you match the wordled speeches with the right speaker? Leave your guesses in comments and click letters for the answer.


A:


B:


C:


D:

Sony To Release Ghostbusters on USB Drive

Sony's 25-year-old blockbuster Ghostbusters is the first movie to be released on a USB stick (for something like $50).
- via Slyck

Earlier:
Bible Preloaded on USB
Disposable Audio Books

Google Chrome: That's The Way Ad Cookie Crumbles

This must be the cheesiest headline of all 2,200+ headlines in AdLab's almost four-year history.

So, Google Chrome (download yours). First impressions: fast, stable, bare-bones. Miss all the Firefox extensions. Was hoping for a tighter integration between the browser and the stable of Google web apps, especially with Lively, although that's probably yet to come. Google Reader already comes with an offlline option that doesn't require any additional installations.

What does Chrome mean for the advertising industry?


1. The Incognito mode, much like IE8's InPrivate "porn mode", means that cookieless browsing is now much closer to the regular user who doesn't hunt down esoteric options in the Advanced dialog box or install something like AdBlock Plus. If Chrome and IE8 grow about as fast as Firefox and get, say, 20% of market share each within three or four years, we'll have about half of all users lurking around undetected at least part of the time.

Is display advertising headed the way of the pop-up? Probably not yet, but targeting methodologies that rely on cookies (like some flavors of behavioral targeting) will have to develop new alternatives.

2. PPC search campaigns are likely to become more expensive because of how Chrome integrates the address bar with a search box equipped with the Google Suggest feature. It is a new and tricky game: not only you'll have to SEO your page up to the top of search results, you might need to architect search terms and then push them to the top of the suggestion list.

3. When search results load faster, people search more often (CNet). If anything, Chrome is fast. Naturally, more searches =  more money for GOOG.

4. Less "chrome" (toolbars and navigation buttons) in the browser = more space to display content = more space to display ads. On my PC, it's six AdWords ads in Firefox (bookmarks + Google toolbar on + tabs) and eight in Chrome.

5.  Richer and, one would hope, more useful ad apps in JavaScript.  Also, Chrome comes with a pre-installed Flash plug-in.

6. One more browser to test microsites against.

Sarah Palin: The Book

$12 on Amazon; 157 pages, came out in April 2008. From the first chapter:

"One of her strengths is being able to hold her tongue when she’s been unfairly attacked," said Chuck Jr. "By staying true to her beliefs, things always seem to fall into place for her." Not that Sarah’s journey to the governor’s office was easy. From the moment she began making her mark in the politics, she was criticized for being too young, too inexperienced, and too naïve. Yet, time after time over the years, underestimating Sarah always proved to be a big mistake."

Also, opposition research file on Palin from the 2006 campaign.

Earlier: Prediction Markets Go Nuts Over Rep VP Pick

Fred Davis, McCain's Creative Director

Image: Strategic Perception

Wall Street Journal: "Raised in Tulsa, Okla., Mr. [Fred] Davis at 19 took over his father's small public-relations firm when he died. Early on, he told corporate clients that if their ads weren't seen and remembered, they wasted their ad dollars. For a local bank, he beat out the big agencies by showing how customers would have to travel downtown only once to pre-sign all documents, so the rest of the banking could be handled by phone. He created the slogan: 'Fourth National Bank. You'll Never Come Back.'"

Also:  Strategic Perception, Fred Davis's communications firm; a Politico article on Davis from May 2007.

Earlier:
Stage Design Magic As Propaganda Tool

Coca-Cola Tests High-Capacity Fountain

AJC: Coca-Cola is testing a new fountain that can dispense more than 100 beverages due to highly concentrated ingredients.