Adweek: The True Agency has created a 30-minute original program for luxury carmaker Infiniti that features five black artists talking about design without once mentioning the brand. Nor are there any commercial breaks. Instead, the conversation ends after 25 minutes and segues into images of Infiniti's various models. The program, moderated by former New York Times film critic Elvis Mitchell, will premiere Feb. 9 …
Shared Tales Of Corporate Oppression
Max Barry, who spent the best years of his life in the bowels of Hewlett-Packard and now writes thinly-veiled fictional accounts of it. His latest novel is Company. He works from home, but enforces a strict dress policy, requires that his desk be kept tidy at all times, and asks that he limit personal calls to less than two minutes. Barry also has a web site where people can post ridiculous but true tales of …
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Reality Shows Have Writers? I Don’t Get It.
MSNBC: More than 1,000 TV writers want their benefits to catch up with scribes of comedies and dramas, and about a dozen of their representatives interrupted a discussion with the entertainment presidents of ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, UPN and the WB at the Waldorf Astoria last month. They dumped leaflets on hotel’s banquet hall tables and Susan Baronoff, an Emmy-winning writer for “Starting Over” and other shows, climbed …
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Change The Music, Change The Meaning
Product Shop NYC: Spike Jonze produced one of the best Nike commercials ever, so it's no surprise that the GAP wanted him to direct a commercial for them. His GAP commercial, titled "Pardon Our Dust", which is promoting a massive remodeling of GAP stores, is scored with Edvard Grieg's revolutionary masterpiece "Peer Gynt Suite". While the executives were okay with the concept of customers and employees demolishing a …
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Film Producer, Soft Drink Marketer, It’s All The Same Street
Newsweek: In "First Descent," a new snowboarding documentary that opens in limited release this week, mountains are everywhere. You'll have to look a little harder to spot the Mountain Dew. But not too hard. Mountain Dew, after all, didn't just pay to have the soft drink in the movie. It financed the entire project, which follows five snowboarding icons. (A rep won't comment on the budget.) Experts call it "branded …
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NCAA Uses Its Amateur Athletes To Sell Pontiacs
USA Today: Critics say a popular website — the Pontiac Game Changing Performance poll — puts the NCAA dangerously close to violating its own rules, as well as the rights of athletes for use of their image and name for commercial purposes. "This is a line they have never crossed before," said Peter Rush, a Chicago lawyer who unsuccessfully battled the NCAA last year over whether former Colorado football player and …
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Brits Complain About Lack Of Content
Digital Spy: Ofcom has upheld 23 complaints over the frequency of ad breaks during Channel 4's Lost. Viewers had complained that the breaks were too close together and lasted too long, and that the programme often began early and finished late. Channel 4 said that "in order to compete commercially with other terrestrial channels it was necessary to maximise the number of breaks in popular programmes, and also to take …
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Cutting Nip/Tuck From The List
Media Week: Toyota has yanked its advertising from FX’s Nip/Tuck after being pressured by a letter-writing campaign directed by the advocacy group Parents Television Council. Since the show debuted two years ago, the PTC has sent letters to Nip/Tuck advertisers calling for them to pull their ads, including Toyota, GM, Ikea and the Vermont ice cream manufacturer Ben & Jerry’s. Other sponsors that have also decided to …