Barbara Lippert's Critique: AOL's Upgrade

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When last we covered AOL advertising, the online giant had dropped its usual homespun, low-budget, Wal-Mart-without-the-warmth approach and abruptly gone Hollywood/Vegas: A jaw-dropping spot that broke on the Oscars showed a post-orgasmic Sharon Stone alone in bed, complaining about the company’s slam-bam running-man icon, who, ha ha, had serviced her and left at lightning speed. Ba-bum.

As AOL’s huge new body of work shows, Ms. Stone was merely being used (again!) as a place holder for the brand (the way, say, Einstein and Picasso served Apple a few years back) until there was an actual product to sell—in this case, AOL’s 9.0

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