Playboy in Braille

This Braille Playboy post from Banterist made rounds back in December, but I thought now would be a good time to put it here because:

1. There's a big Playboy-related post on Billboardom.
2. It fits nicely with the whole "rethinking print ads" idea.
3. I just did a post on porn advertising.
4. It's Friday.

The Flip Side of Consumer-Generated Advertising

If you are following The Apprentice, you'll remember how a couple of episodes back the contestants where given a task to create an event for the dealers. You'll also remember how Chevy followed up with a web site where people can create their own version of a commercial by rearranging pre-canned clips, overlaying pre-recorded music, and typing their own titles over the whole thing. As Radar Waves found out, some conscious citizens used the opportunity to express their views that probably stray away from the official brand strategy. Here's one of those clips, and in case it gets deleted, below are some screengrabs.

[Update: April 1, 2006] It turned out to be a bigger deal, actually. Ad Age mentions it, and Daily Kos has discovered and captured more of the off-strategy videos. Very handy, because the original file on the Chevy site linked above doen't work any longer. Who is surprised?













Here's one of the many articles, by USA Today, that discuss the whole amateur advertising trend.

Advertising With Porn

Warning: the featured site is not work-safe at all.


If you are tired of semi-naked women lamely placed in ads to peddle everything from beer to deodorants but still think that sex has some selling power, this site is for you. A European fashion maker of the Shai line of clothing has published Sexpacking.com, a site where BMW films meet Victoria's Secret catalog along with One Night In Paris. It's a series of three Flash movies that are very elegant but also rather bluntly pornographic. On the top of the movies, they place green dots that open small pop-overs with info on that particular piece of clothing, kind of what Microsoft is trying to do with its video hyperlink ads.

The movies are downloadable in several formats, including PSP, iPod and mobile. The .mov file is multi-layered and also features the "hotlinks".

They are doing many other things right, making it the best interactive execution I've seen in a long time. They offer a "making of" video, an RSS screensaver and a bunch of downloadable goodies, including different versions of the kick-ass soundtrack (if you want more of their music, tough luck; it's been produced specially for this project by nventa). The song, called "No reason to be Shai", is also carrying the brand message.

(thanks for the tip, Ben)

Most Popular Commercials on YouTube

Here are the most popular video spots tagged as "commercial" on YouTube, judging by the view count. The actual view numbers are probably higher because of the duplicate files that are not counted here.

• The three new "Unpimp Your Ride" spots for Volkswagen have been collectively viewed 3,370692 times in one month, the most popular of the three being Unpimp Your Ride I with 1,357,705 views to date.


• The Sony Bravia ad pulled 1,950,387 views in four months since being uploaded.


• The trailer for Scary Movie 4 has been watched at least 1,023,151 times in two weeks since being uploaded by the movie's promo agency.


• GoDaddy's Window Washer ad follows with roughly half million views in two months.

Earlier:
Honda's "Choir" Hits Three Million Downloads

Million Products Page

It's like the Million Dollar Home Page and the countless pixel-peddling clones, only cooler. 500 Gifts for Geeks is a collage of hand-picked product shots done in Flash, with explanatory notes popping up on mouse-over. Other categories include guitars, wacky packages, and cult movies.

Flashback: Megaphone Helmet

If you can't buy one of these two 1950's megaphone helmets on eBay, you can always make one yourself. Very handy if you work as a town crier.
-- via Music Thing

How to Advertise on Social Networking Sites

Jason Calacanis continues the conversation about why display ads don't really work (well) for social networking sites and suggests a few ideas of what could work. My take: throw in a recommendation engine. If people are to endure ads on their MySpace pages, at least let them and their friends pick the ads to see. If I know that my buddy is on the market for a new car, I'll think there's a better chance he'd appreciate a Toyota ad more than a random punch-the-monkey banner. And if a banner is funny or otherwise amusing (yes, there are amusing banners), people would recommend those too (just watch all these commecials uploaded on YouTube), eventually driving the overall quality of advertising up.

And here's Danah Boyd's academic take on why Friendster died.

Earlier:
Why MySpace Beat Friendster?

Choxpics Print on Chocolate

If you liked Choco Logo, you will love Chocpix. They say, "In every bar of tasty white chocolate is a hidden, detailed picture - revealed by simply holding it up to any bright light. All kinds of images can be captured in a Chocpix bar... detailed photographs, artwork, cartoons, logos. The intricate photographs are made up solely from the finely detailed thicknesses of chocolate."

Earlier:
Advertising On Chocolate
Chocolate Business Card

Picture Marketing

Here's an idea: building buzz with instant Polaroid pictures gone hi-tech. You take picture of someone on the street, hand them a ticket with a unique URL, they go to your site and see their snapshot in a branded environment and, you hope, send it around for their friends to marvel at. All from Picture Marketing In-A-Box. Gatorade, Ford, Toyota, Volvo and some other big names are on their client list.

Programmable Liquid Containers

Ipfini's technology allows consumers to select and customize the drink they want in their bottle on the spot by pressing a few buttons that release additives and paints. That's 32 flavors and one million possible colors. More info in this article.
-- via Gizmodo

Oh, and this is officially the 1000th post on this blog.