Apparently April 3rd is national cleavage day in New Zealand. I wouldn’t have found out about it if it wasn’t for one of my favorite ad blogs, Adfreak. According to the post it’s a day centered around bras and other partially scandalous clothing. The day was made popular via the popular social network Twitter. Much like the Adfreak blogger I too think the U.S. must hurry up and come up with a similar day. We can have a day where we all wear a special article of clothing. But I don’t think it needs to be anything that will offend anyone. Best,A.B.

Is it possible that Microsoft is trying to get into the spirit of March Madness with the ad above? Maybe I don’t have as good of a grasp on what quality advertising is, as I once thought. Why is the illustration above relevant to the product being advertised by the Redmond company? For those of you who don’t know, Microsoft Visual Studio is used for writing programs. How does the copy in the ad above make the connection related to monsters and basketball? Also, what does the illustration represent? Do the monsters represent viruses? My other issue is who exactly is the target audience for this particular print ad? By…

I’ve been here quite a lot about the game Guitar Hero on TV and other media. Apparently the game is all the rave. Well the game has a new television commercial that feature big time college-basketball coaches. The A-list of coaches includes: Bob Knight, Rick Pitino, Roy Williams and Mike Krzyzewski. I don’t think they were doing to well playing along with Metallica. Here is the big question from my point of view, how do these celebrity endorsers help the game sell more? These big time coaches can’t honestly be considered musical authorities, can they? This commercial must be for brand awareness and entertainment purposes only. The spot was created…

I saw the ad above on one of my favorite advertising blogs (besides this one of course) Adfreak. It’s an ad for Dell’s Adamo laptop. By the way I think the laptop sucks because you cannot downgrade it to a Windows XP operating system. Anyway, back to discussing the print ad itself. The ad looks a little unusual if you ask me it looked more like a fashion ad as opposed to a computer one. I would have chosen a prettier model though. Although, I’m not sure what type of art form they were going for in that ad or in the campaign for that matter. But the ad created…

Video: Laptop Hunters $1000 – Lauren Gets an HP Pavilion So Microsoft has come up with a new advertising tactic in an attempt to combat the beating Apple has given the Microsoft brand with its Mac vs. PC ads. The Redmond company’s new advertising tactic is to point out the significant price increase between Macs and a traditional Windows PC. The price is about the only point that Microsoft can honestly combat the folks down in Cupertino with. In the ad above the actress proclaims after visiting the Apple Store and not finding a laptop within her price range, she was not cool enough to be a Mac person. She…

You probably have all noticed the 2 new book links that are showing up from Amazon. First, I hope you like it and it doesn’t take away from the primary content. Secondly, I am testing out this new feature to give you easy access to high quality advertising books. So if you think you’d like to read one of them by all means click on the link. Best,A.B.

I can’t believe the CIA is using the mainstream media to recruit future spooks. Now don’t get me wrong; I don’t see anything wrong with using all methods available to spread the word about your needs. But I mean come on your not going to work for Wal-Mart, it’s the C.I. freaking A! The CIA apparently needs a few good men &#151 and women. I wonder can we blame this on the current state of the economy too? Their ads, both in radio and in print are for the National Clandestine Service (NCS). According to the Wikipedia article about these guys they are the ones that conduct government sponsored secret…

Fake 911 calls are fun for teenage pranksters, but only if they don’t get fined for tying up emergency lines with non-emergencies. There are people out there with real emergencies.Well, when I saw this ad, I feel like I became a victim, because I thought I was about to read a real 911 call. The above ad, created for K&B Fashion, not only fakes out its audience, it is also a terrible creative execution. The ad is a fake 911 emergency call involving a woman who bought clothes, but apparently, the clothes weren’t fashionable enough. So, apparently K&B’s message is that if you shop with them, you will get stylish…

In the U.K. the game industry is upset because of the new ads appearing in U.K. government’s Change For Life campaign, let’s just say it puts them in a negative light and the industry isn’t too happy about it. The image of the board-looking child with a joystick in his hands and a headline that included the word death really ticked the industry off. The campaign was only intended to promote a healthier lifestyle not cause riots. The video game industry’s main complaint is that the ad pictured above implies that video games can cause a premature death. Now that certainly isn’t true but they cause you to not have…

Last night I was watching the TV show Trust Me, a show that I’ve previously discussed on this blog. One of their two storylines for last night’s episode was about about a guy who was fired because his work was just not very good. Several years later the main characters in the show give him another chance only to discover that he still isn’t very good. So now they need to fire him again and the show takes off from there. So here is my question, when do you realize that you aren’t going to make it in the ad business and look for a new line of work? Maybe…