Rocker’s Music Video

… Helps Unemployed Find Jobs

Ryan Star knows a thing or two about being unemployed — but what he didn’t know was that he’d create a new model for music marketing.

The rangy rocker is working on an album release, has a reality TV show under his belt and just wrapped up about a half-year gig as the opening act for “American Idol’s” David Cook, but the memory of being without a job is still fresh. “I’ve been there, living on girlfriend’s couches,” said Mr. Star, munching on a green apple while sprawled across a chair in a living room of another sort — a lounge area in the office of his label, Atlantic Records. “I know what it is like to be down and have nothing and now I can reach out a hand to help.”

Video from IDEA ‘08:

DJ Earworm The mashup maker leads our post-IDEA video offerings. We’re rolling out the first of the video from this year’s IDEA Conference, and leading the way is our afternoon musical interlude courtesy of DJ Earworm, Jordan Roseman. Watch as Roseman deconstructs his chosen genre and explains the art of the mashup. Stay tuned, as we’ve got plenty more Idea Conference footage to come. Check back at our photos from the event as well. » Read more

Smartphones Could Fuel Surge

… in Video Gaming Studies Reveal Growth Potential for In-game Ads

The video-gaming and mobile industries have been on a collision course for years, but Apple’s iPhone 3G and its video-game-laden AppStore has pushed mobile video gaming to the edge of a possible mainstream breakout. And that means not only a surge in video games played and developed for the iPhone — and similar phones such as those being built on Google’s Android platform — but also more potential for in-game advertising.

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Latest in Green Marketing: Clothes-Closet Advertising

A 3 Minute Ad Age Video Report

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — One of the tentacles of the rapidly expanding green-marketing movement is turning consumers’ clothes closets into a new sort of advertising venue. The New York-based Hanger Network has crossed the concept of an environmentally friendly clothes hanger with in-home advertising strategies. The end result is a new medium that helps to protect the Earth at the same time it carries big marketers’ commercial messages into consumers’ bedrooms and other dressing areas.

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Creativity Weekly Top 5: Nov. 3

The Latest Spots for ‘Resistance 2′ and ‘Gears of War 2,’ the Wassup Gang 8 Years Later and Other Work

In this week’s episode of Creativity’s Top 5, wild rantings come true for “Resistance 2″ and Sony PlayStation 3; the “Wassup” crew returns; Samsung puts photographer Nick Turpin at the mercy of web users; Marcus Fenix once again gets in touch with his emotional side for “Gears of War 2″; and The Economist and BBDO make pizza time educational.

Sony PS3: “Resistance 2″

Agency: Deutsch, Los Angeles
Chief Creative Officer/President: Eric Hirshberg
Group Creative Director: Mike Bryce, Jason Elm, Josh Rose

Wassup ‘08: “Wassup”

Production Company: chopshop@Believe Media
Director: Charles Stone
Director of Photography: Shane Hurlbut

Samsung: “The Photographic Adventures of Nick Turpin”

Agency: Lean Mean Fighting Machine

Gears of War 2: “Last Day”

Client: Xbox 360
Agency: TAG
Creative Director: Scott Duchon, Geoff Edwards, John Patroulis
Art Director: Ben Wolan

The Economist: “Pizza Boxes”

Client: The Economist Agency: BBDO, New York Chief Creative Officer: David Lubars, Bill Bruce

Newsflash: Subway Effort Was Not Racist

We’re Dangerously Close to Stripping the Word of All Meaning

The Big Tent

Bloggers are claiming Subway pulled an online effort because it was “racist.” Such efforts only make it that much harder for real instances of racism and racial insensitivity in this industry to be taken seriously.

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Honda Ads Pioneer New Form of Road Music A 3 Minute Ad Age Video Report

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Inspiration for advertising can come from anywhere but this is probably the first time the lowly highway rumble strip provided any. Honda’s new flock of Civic spots document an effort to turn a portion of California road into a data-storage surface and a new car into a musical instrument. It was a rare sort of undertaking that didn’t just create new ads but made musical and road engineering history in the process.

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Turning City Buses Into Rolling Video Billboards

A 3 Minute Ad Age Video Report

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — In the latest incursion of ads into big-city life, New York and Chicago are planning to turn hundreds of buses into rolling video billboards. The project is the latest work of Titan Worldwide, the outdoor advertising company that has focused aggressively on new digital formats. The 12-foot-wide bus-mounted video screens are networked to a central computer and can be programmed with a constantly changing schedule of commercials.

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Will Wal-Mart Bring Mobile Internet to the Masses? Links Up With T-Mobile to Hawk Android Phones

DigitalNext

Wal-Mart is teaming up with T-Mobile to sell the G1, the first phone equipped with Google’s Android mobile operating system, for $148.88 — $31.11 off the price I paid to get mine shipped to me the day it launched.

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Ad Age at the ANA

News and Video, Including Marketer of the Year, From the Marketing Industry’s Largest Annual Gathering

Growth was the theme of the Association of National Advertisers’ annual meeting last week. Given that the industry is staring into the gaping maw of a 2009 that many believe could be its worst in decades, that may sound ironic. But somehow it seemed to work, as speaker after speaker outlined strategies soft and hard for growing in good times and bad. Ad Age editors and reporters were there. Read the news reports and watch videos from the event. Also: See who marketers, agency heads and marketing-services vendors selected as Ad Age’s Marketer of the Year.

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With No Ring, James Is Still No Jordan Behind the Continuing Quest to Turn the NBA’s Biggest Endorser Into a Global Icon

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AdAge.com) — Everybody loves a winner, and in some respects that’s what it’s going to take for Lebron James to achieve his stated goal two years ago of becoming a global icon, along the lines of Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods and Muhammad Ali, by the 2008 Summer Olympics.

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Will Video Search Ads Be YouTube’s Money Mint?

Google’s Video-Sharing Site Is Racking Up as Many Queries as Yahoo

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Google is borrowing from its most successful money-minting product, search ads, to goose revenue on its video-sharing site YouTube. The move comes just as YouTube’s search traffic has passed that of the No. 2 search engine behind Google, Yahoo.com.

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Martin Cass Replaces Scott Sorokin as Carat U.S. President Will Remain on Media Agency’s P&G Business, Which He Led Globally

LAS VEGAS (AdAge.com) — Carat announced it has named Martin Cass president of the media agency’s U.S. operation. The former exec VP had been running Carat’s Procter & Gamble business globally, as well as serving as head of communications planning domestically.

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The Five Biggest Digital Marketing Cliches

Why Marketers Use Them, Why They Often Don’t Work and What to Do Instead

DigitalNext

Once upon a time — say, 2002 — digital spending was a negligible proportion of total marketing budgets and we lived in a world where few marketers would dare go “beyond the banner.” Fast forward to 2008 and in some cases we have the opposite problem. Digital spending is still too low, but in the spirit of wanting to appear current some marketers have rushed to embrace any and every new digital tactic on the horizon.

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Letterman YouTube Video Outdraws CBS Clip Tirade Against McCain Gets 10 Times as Many Views

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Sen. John McCain’s snub of David Letterman last week may have deprived the “Late Show” host of some needed star power last week, but it’s given him a hit on the web. So far, video of Mr. Letterman’s tirade against Mr. McCain, who bowed out the day of the telecast, has generated more than 3.5 million views on YouTube. One problem: CBS is barely making a dime from the clip.

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