Copy Ploppy

+ Adding smell to advertising. Could this be the beginning of smell-o-vision? Just think of the implications this technology *could* have on advertising. If you were selling something like burgers, you could get that grill smell in someone's livingroom, or the smell of baking Cinabuns. For food marketers this seems like it could be a gold mine for them to work on this type of technology.

+ Ad shows coming to a screen near you. Seems like not just us ad grunts like watching ads.

+Fuse parodies two campaigns in one- Apple gets miffed. Shame that this parody does nothing for the Fuse brand. Sure they are trying to create a buzz with the types of images they have in the ads. But as people are confusing the ads with real Apple ads, it's not doing much for their own branding effort. Plus, Fuse is supposed to be a non-mainstream music channel. What's non-mainstream about lighting farts, wanking, and beer bongs? Maybe 10 or 20 years ago it was "shocking" and all. But now it's trite and going to hit a mainstream of young men. Not the non-mainstream they claim they are after. To be fair, they did a nice job on the art direction and design. But their Sally campaign was a lot stronger.

+ TBWA steals from itself? Check out these Badlanders for Sony "Mountain" and Adidas "Carry".

+ Edinburgh's Royal Mile sandwich board advertising problems heat up even more.

+ Undoing of classic brands- namely AT&T. "This increased competition in many industries underscores the new reality that few brands can be all things to all people these days. "The metaphor for American society is no longer the melting pot - it's the quilt," Donatiello said. "People no longer want to watch the same television show or use the same toothpaste." Judy Hopelain, managing partner at Prophet, a San Francisco-based consulting company that focuses on brands, added that big companies with iconic brands "are often too conscious of preserving their fat margins to realize they should be leading change." In fact, for some companies, a strong brand identity has been as much hindrance as help. Smith Corona was a leader in manual typewriters, and Polaroid had a lock on the instant camera market, but both companies wound up in bankruptcy when they could not extricate their identity from antiquated technologies."

+ Cult Brands- BusinessWeek/Interbrand's annual ranking of the world's most valuable brands shows the power of passionate consumers.