communique

P2050 + NEW ERA ARTICLE IN ADVERTISING AGE

iPOD + iTUNES AD + MI SWING ES TROPICAL

Apple does it again. Steve Jobs never ceases to amaze us, this time with the Latin tinge flavor of Nickodemus & Quantic feat. Tempo. Pa'lante mi hermano!

ASICS LAUNCHES MADE IN JAPAN CAMPAIGN WITH A 4.92 FOOT SNEAKER...GENIUS!

To celebrate its quirky Japanese roots Asics presents its Fabre74 Onitsuka model in the style of ad-idolatry: with a 1.5-meter (4.92/ft) sculpture of an Onitsuka Tiger sneaker made of warring elements of Japanese culture. This is part of Onitsuka's Made of Japan effort, which seeks to challenge ideas about the Japanese pop-world with, uh ... a hodgepodge of its icons.
The sculpture is a collabo between StrawberryFrog, LA-based artist Gary Baseman, and Dutch photographer Marcel Christ, and it will appear in print, online and at venues in London, Paris, Berlin, Barcelona and Zurich.

Peep the  video, it's quite artistically and culturally interesante!

For the rest of this story visit: www.adrants.com

Better By Design: The Rise of the Lifestyle Brand

"In this ever-changing uptime-downtime environment, brands needs to consider the implications of this merging of work and play not just in terms of the design of their product offerings, but also the entirety of their overall brand message."

From an article written by Jonathan Ford on www.stepinsidedesign.com

LOW BUDGET, HIGH IMPACT

By Ted O'Callahan, Inc.com

When you're a solo entrepreneur, marketing your products and services can seem like more than you can afford. However, take it from our experts, it doesn't have to be.

Lynn Gordon has been riding a 20-year wave of word-of-mouth marketing. When her "Woman's Bread" was mentioned last year in a health segment on the Good Morning America television show, it was one more instance of national exposure she received from a low-cost, grassroots marketing effort she began years ago.

Back in 1985, Lynn Gordon began the Minneapolis-based French Meadow Bakery with little more than a bread recipe. At that time, her marketing efforts consisted of hand delivering sample loaves to local health food co-ops.

The company's first moment of national exposure also led to some celebrity word of mouth. Good Morning America's host, Diane Sawyer, discovered Gordon's bread in 1988 while doing a story for 60 Minutes on a Minneapolis organization that loaned money to women entrepreneurs, including Gordon.

Sawyer's discovery also led to Gordon distributing her breads nationally. According to Gordon, Sawyer wanted to be able to keep eating French Meadow's bread and pistachio dip in New York, so Sawyer asked the specialty markets Balducci's, Dean & DeLuca, and Zabar's to start carrying Gordon's products. Gordon said that Sawyer even put her in touch with a buyer at Balducci's.

The steady grassroots efforts French Meadow Bakery has employed over the last two decades have helped it grow into a company with 125 employees and over $10 million in revenue. Her company could have grown faster with more risks and more aggressive marketing, Gordon says, but she made the tough choice to go with more conservative tactics that matched the personality of the company.

FOR THE REST OF THIS STORY VISIT:
www.inc.com

ADIDAS' WORLD CUP SHUTOUT

U.S. fans of soccer's big event will see only Adidas ads on television. Nike's response: A MySpace-style site for soccer nuts

In new Adidas TV, U.S. soccer star Pablo Mastroeni and Mexican soccer standout Jaime Lozano have three hours to recruit amateur players from the streets and beaches of Los Angeles. Their goal is to form one team of U.S. players and one team of Mexican born players to square off in a sandlot soccer game. The ad, one in a series, is meant to capture the high-octane international rivalries that will erupt starting on June 9, the kick-off of FIFA World Cup Soccer. But all that competitive tension is nothing compared with how the company behind the ads, Adidas Group, feels about soccer when it comes to its nemesis, Nike Inc.

FOR THE REST OF THIS STORY VISIT:
Business Week

Reebok Loves Hip-Hop

By Verbal Walker

Reebok and Adidas have joined forces to fight the evil forces of Nike but in the meanwhile Reebok will continue with their “I Am What I Am” campaign. While it is no secret that Reebok wants to tap into the hip-hop market, the shoe company now wants to attack the hip hop market on a global level.

Miri Ben-Ari, the hip-hop violinist, and the unconventional English hip-hop artist, The Streets, have joined forces with Reebok to continue its global onslaught. The “I Am What I Am” campaign has targeted the younger demographic by using music icons and athletes and has included the likes of Nelly, Allen Iverson, Jay Z, Stevie Williams, Curt Schilling, Yao Ming and others.

FOR THE REST OF THIS STORY VISIT:
http://www.hiphopdx.com/index/news/id.3501

Pop Stars and Pixels

In an expansive music marketing campaign Yahoo takes on Apple's dancing silhouettes.
By Thomas Mucha

When gunning for Apple -- a company that controls more than 70 percent of the booming market for digital music -- it's probably a good idea to think big. That's the current marketing plan at Yahoo, which during this past week's MTV Video Music Awards program unveiled a massive multichannel ad campaign to promote the launch of its subscription-based digital-music service. The sprawling advertising effort, produced by San Francisco's OgilvyOne and Manhattan-based Soho Square, is designed to introduce Yahoo's new $5-per-month music offering to the masses. But there's another very lofty goal here too. "We want Yahoo Music Unlimited to be the standard online music service," says Yahoo senior director of marketing Cricket Wardein.

But to turn that ambition into anything resembling reality, Yahoo will first need to dent Steve Jobs & Co.'s market and cultural dominance in digital music. Apple's iTunes Music Store, after all, sells more than 1.25 million 99-cent songs each day. (More than 500 million songs have been sold since its launch.) Yahoo also plans to take on the groovy and iconic iTunes marketing silhouettes with some dancing-cum-marketing characters of its own.

Working with Berlin-based digital artist Craig Robinson, Yahoo and its ad agencies have conjured a crew of "mini pop stars" -- tiny, crudely stylized animations of hot recording artists like Big & Rich, Ciara, Missy Elliott, and Green Day. Each character will sing and dance in both TV spots and online ads. It's a fresh idea -- representing artists with digital pixels. It's also a neat visual trick that the company hopes will bolster its digital-music message and help it take on the current leaders. "The main idea when competing against very highly regarded brands [like] iTunes and Napster is finding something very iconic and ownable," says Arthur Ceria, an OgilvyOne executive creative director who helped think up the campaign. "These characters typify a funny, delightful space that Yahoo can own."

FOR THE REST OF THIS STORY VISIT:
http://www.business2.com/b2/web/articles/0,17863,1098842,00.html