Freak Week: License to Shill

As if driving in California weren't annoying enough, the state is now thinking about putting ads on license plates. As AdFreak reported last week, the California legislature is considering allowing the state to begin researching the use of electronic license plates whose displays could switch to digital ads or other messages when a vehicle is stopped for more than four seconds -- in other words, at stoplights or in the state's notoriously snarled traffic. If the idea sounds desperate, it is. The ad revenue would go toward easing the state's financial woes, which include a mammoth $19 billion deficit. "It's an exciting marriage of technology with need, and an opportunity to keep California in the forefront," state senator Curren Price told the AP. Californians had less kind things to say. Wrote one Mashable reader: "I wouldn't want to be a rolling plug for Viagra."Speaking of mammoths (this time of the woolly variety), German shoppers recently discovered prehistoric animal flesh for sale in their supermarkets -- put there by DDB as part of a clever, eye-catching campaign for BOSCH fridges. The units' VitaFresh technology keeps food fresh longer. To emphasize this, DDB wrapped cuts of (fake, though impressively real-looking) dinosaur and mammoth meat and placed them in store coolers, much to the delight/dismay of amused/horrified customers. DDB advertised the items in supermarket FSIs and had store employees announce the "specials" over the PA system.In other mystery-meat news, the National Pork Board last week got riled up by the sudden emergence of a new rival: Radiant Farms' Unicorn Meat. Actually, it wasn't so much the product as the slogan, "The new white meat," that had the pork people upset -- feeling it was too close to their own famous line, "The other white meat." The Pork Board sent a cease-and-desist letter demanding that the slogan be discontinued. One small problem: Unicorn meat doesn't exist (is this not obvious?), and neither does Radiant Farms -- the whole thing was a gag post at ThinkGeek.com. The site's writers, though, reveled in the attention, and mocked the Pork Board mercilessly in a gleeful blog post. "It was never our intention to cause a national crisis and misguide American citizens regarding the differences between the pig and the unicorn," they wrote.Finally, we also covered Spirit Airlines' latest embarrassingly themed fare sale last week. Following up on its Tiger Woods sale from earlier this year, the carrier last week held a "Best Protection" ("BP") sale, urging people to "check out the oil on our beaches" in places like Atlantic City, N.J., and Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Who cleared this one for takeoff?Best of BrandFreak 'Twilight' celebrates lunar eclipseIt may not have been the only time a cycle of the moon was used as a marketing hook, but it was one of the most memorable. As AdFreak's sister blog reported last week, Summit Entertainment, the upstart studio behind the wildly popular Twilight franchise, held free outdoor screenings of the first two movies in the series on Saturday, to coincide with the lunar eclipse. The screenings, of Twilight and New Moon, took place in a dozen cities, including Seattle, San Diego, Dallas and Philadelphia -- a great way to build up goodwill for the third movie, fortuitously titled Eclipse (after the best-selling book), which opens June 30. At this point, anything Twilight related practically sells itself, but the studio is clearly planning to get as much blood out of this stone as it can.

Brand Marketing

Freak Week: License to Shill

Tim Nudd

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Tim Nudd