Here’s a brilliant Wes Anderson My Life, My Card ad starring Jason Schwartzman.

[from theautochannel]
‘Flashmob’ Video Clips Available Through VH1 Mobile and MTV Mobile

MTV and VH1 will paint their respective broadband and mobile platforms “pink” with content from an exclusive flashmob concert in New York City with platinum-selling LaFace/Zomba artist Pink. The concert footage features music from Pink’s latest album, “I’m Not Dead.”

The “flashmob” concert was the result of a contest launched last fall in conjunction with Honda and its advertising agency RPA to promote the launch of the 2006 Honda Civic. MTV and VH1 worked with Honda to develop the extensive 12-week “Honda Civic Under The Hood” campaign featuring a unique series of music-based interstitials that drove viewers to various media platforms to enter their zip codes, giving the region with the most entries a “flashmob” concert by a national music artist. VH1 and MTV joined forces for the first time ever in creating a cross-channel multiplatform campaign that amplified the reach of the networks’ live music franchises to support the launch of the 2006 Honda Civic.

On April 5, text messages and emails went out to contest entrants informing them of the Pink “flashmob” concert in New York that evening. The first 200 to respond to the message won access to the event at Crobar.

Read more.

[from mediapost]
PROVING THE RULES FOR ONLINE viral campaigns may in fact be different than for over-the-air and cable TV ads, adult film star Jenna Jameson stars in the first of a series of new advertising podcasts created for sneaker maker Adidas. The campaign, created by New York-based Tronic, utilizes a whack-the-mole theme in which Jameson attempts to “pound the living daylights out of six cute little gophers that keep popping out of a coin-fed machine.” The podcast is part of the revival of adiColor, a 1983 Adidas campaign in which Adidas shoes could be personalized with colorful markers.

Get the podcast feed here.

[from MediaPost]
Perhaps Chevy is getting what it deserves by asking consumers to create ads for them, writes Stuart Elliott of The New York Times. As a new means of “engaging” consumers with brands, some advertisers have asked consumers to make their marketing messages for them, offering some kind of incentive to the user who creates the best ad. Chevrolet, using video shot for a 30-second TV commercial for its 2007 Tahoe, in which the vehicle careens down a sunflower-lined country road, did just that, and some of the responses they’ve gotten haven’t exactly been what a media agency would like to see consumers doing with their client’s brand. At the end of the video clip, one consumer posts, in white lettering: “$70 to fill up the tank, which will last less than 400 miles. Chevy Tahoe.” Part of the idea here is that consumers will share their video creations with friends–but not these kinds of creations, which, the Times says became the most widely-circulated videos of the Chevy Tahoe on the Web. Says another, using an image of the Tahoe driving through the desert: “Our planet’s oil is almost gone. You don’t need G.P.S. to see where this road leads.” Advertisers, who’ve become enamored of late with user-generated content, “buzz,” and engagement, are learning the hard way that these opportunities can be a double-edged sword. The lesson here: there is a context for consumer engagement and viral marketing; just because consumers don’t necessarily hate advertising doesn’t mean they love plugging your brand for you, either.

Watch the Chevy Tahoe videos on YouTube.

Read more about it.