Ending on a High Note: Red Bull Gives You Wings

Here comes another urinal ad, but this time, the ad IS the urinal. Har har! This latrine in Valencia, Spain is about 6 feet up in the air with a little bumper sticker reading, "Red Bull Gives You Wings" en Español. Get it? You'd have to be hopped up on 8 cases Red Bull to fly this high, or at least have enough urine pressure to aim your stream 6 feet off the ground. But honestly, who's thirsty after thinking about all that peeing?

Advertisers loooove to hit consumers in the loo. I'd like to see the piece of market research that revealed the public restroom as the most optimal place for advertising (or the state of urinary urgency as the most receptive to ad messaging). Oh wait here it is...

According to Glenn Gowen, head of marketing and public relations at UK agency Admedia:

"You have got a captive audience with little to do other than read your advert. The long dwell times—an average of 105 seconds for women and 55 seconds for men—give people plenty of time to take the information in. We have found that because of the one-to-one nature of the communication, there is high recall: up to 100% recall, and 78% prompted awareness."

Considering most people carry a paper or magazine with them to the toilet, each of which contain dozens of ads, I guess this isn't too different.

Coolspotter: Yes, I'm a Tech Groupie

I've had the same crappy LG Musiq for over 2 years. 2 years! For most of my friends, 6 months is the expiration date for any and all mobile technology. I usually don't get rid of my cell phone until a) it breaks or b) I leave it in a cab on a drunken rainy night. In my case, when situation A finally rolled around, I buckled and bought (gasp!) a BlackBerry.

Why did I willingly decide to join the legions of CrackBerry users? Well, I'm on Sprint plan, and the Apple iPhone hasn't yet crossed into inter-service-provider waters. To me, this was the next best thing. I'll tell you one thing, after 5 years of using crappy non-smartphones, I love my BlackBerry 8830. And today, that love doubled as soon as I logged onto Coolspotter.com.

Coolspotter.com is a user-gen site that logs every time a celebrity is "spotted" holding, wearing or using any number of consumer products. It even creates dedicated pages for each product. I'm happy to say that my BlackBerry 8830 has been "coolspotted" in the hands of Lass Bass, Jay-Z, and even Paris Hilton! If this phone is good enough for the queen of all excess, it's good enough for me. What's great about the site is that it actually tags photos of celebs with their products, so you don't just have take someone's word for it.

Sure there was a time when I was nearly brought to tears when I saw a pregnant Britney Spears wearing a Catharine Malandrino gown I had just bought on the cover of US Weekly, but that's so different. For one thing, she was 7 months pregnant and still with K-Fed. I doubt there's a woman alive that would be happy to find out she should be wearing maternity wear. And Jay-Z is D a powerful businessman. Who knows where my new phone will bring my career. Although there is a downside to this Coolspotter phenom. The front page shows you different rankings for products and my 8830's 11 celebrity spots pales in comparison to the BlackBerry Curve's 21. Looks like I'll be taking a trip to Sprint this week for an upgrade. I gotta keep my street cred, yo,

A Little Tease

Talk about an interesting integrated campaign. To promote an upcoming burlesque show, tassled pasties were slapped on local parking meters in St Johns, Newfoundland to generate buzz for the event. Lucky for marketers, the street meters already resembled the proper anatomy. Hidden cameras caught reactions from passersby and provided enough footage for an accompanying viral video (above). Not only did the show sell out and get tons of press coverage for the stunt, every single pasty was stolen as a souvenir. And who says Canadians don't know how to have fun?

Genius: Zyrtec Ad on Telephone Pole

Oh this brightened my day. Adrants posted this funny Zyrtec ad found on a telephone pole in Boston. They ask, "Can A Sharpie Poster Push More Sales Than A Glossy Ad?" Apparently their source took the time to take down the ad and pass it around the office. Even though I suffer from horrible skin allergies, I don't think I'd really act on this if I saw it.

It kinda reminds me of the Craig's List ad the guy from Ogilvy put up for Six Flags.

Advertasting: Tongue Ring Ads in Brazil

It's one thing to say you like the taste of the new Coke Zero, it's another to brand that opinion on your tastebuds. According to Adrants, Coca-cola is pioneering the world of "advertasting," in other words, they're working with tattoo and piercing parlors in Brazil to give away free piercings to those who pose for the camera with Coke-Zero-branded tongue rings.

All the pics are then uploaded to a Google PicasaWeb gallery, directed from www.cocacolazero.com.br/linguapatrocinada. Interesting that Coke chose to upload their images to a Google gallery rather than host it off their own site, but it remains to be seen what the end purpose of these images will be. Still, I fail to see the effectiveness of this campaign apart from generating buzz. But wouldn't said buzz be built from the particpants agreeing to wear their Coke Zero piercings beyond their photo shoot?