Brand Central Station

Oh well, from a rant on the need for multicultural to this little gem exploiting the US’s first African-American President a full sixty days before he’s even sworn into office.  We all know a person’s right to privacy flies out the window when he’s voted to be the next “most powerful dude on the planet” – but seriously, shouldn’t there be a law about this kind of hucksterism?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWN1Au4HNFY]

Well, at least it’s not real money.  I guess it could have been worse.  In Bermuda, monetary officials are having to explain why they allowed their engraver to change the bill of the White-tailed Tropicbird to more closely resemble that of a Red-billed Tropicbird instead.  Huh?

So they now have a “mashup” of two birds to create some kind of hybrid, megabird for their $50 bill. Next thing you know, they’ll put a Pushmi-pullyu on the $100.  Hugh Lofting would be proud.

(Bet you never thought you’d get a D.D. allusion in a marketing blog, did you?)

Hat tip to the “Make the Logo Bigger” blog for the tv spot.

Ever have a burning desire to win a Quackie?  Me neither. 

But Steve Hall at AdRants ran this post summarizing the advertising awards show known as the Golden Ducks – a show dedicated to “the weird, the strange and the head-scratchers in advertising.”

You can see some of the award nominees here.

Heaven knows we’ve all seen enough of that (ref. the Tiddy Bear, a Quackie nominee if there ever was one).
 

The guys over at Mental Floss wrote a hilarious post about poorly named businesses. 

It may seem like common sense, but as I noted in this post about a rather ill-advised branding strategy for a restaurant in India, not everybody gets the idea that the first name that pops into their head isn’t always the best.

Here’s a link to the slide show of some 30+ poorly named businesses.

It’s pretty funny and not neccessarily “safe for work.”

Found this on YouTube and thought I’d share. This IS NOT an SNL spoof, this is a real product.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gw1g2yKxb0I&rel=1&border=1]

As for the pronunciation of the product name, it may be a “tomato” versus “tomahto” thing, but I think it’s hysterical.

Seriously, a TIDDY bear?

For all the celebratory hubbub surrounding Agency.com’s withdrawl from the Subway pitch, it doesn’t look like their lame documentary had anything to do with it.

I’m not sure which is worse spectator sport: watching Agency.com’s self-indulgent video or deleting all the RSS commentary from bloggers who are convinced (one way or another) that Agency.com’s pull-out was the result of that lame video.

The geniuses over at Maple Creative (the bloggers behind the Marketing Genius blog) have posted this critique of the Dr. Z campaign from Chrysler.

Sales are down. Down big. Like double-digit big. Is it all Dr. Z’s fault? Of course not.

But Emily Bennington’s point is that Dr. Z isn’t helping.

Then again, could even Lee Iacocca turn things around in this economic environment? I don’t think so.