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Don’t Go Back To Whyville
According to the New York Times, Toyota is working to bring children into the franchise, despite the fact that children can't drive. In April, Toyota quietly began an unusual virtual promotion of its small, boxy Scion: it paid for the car's product placement in Whyville.net, an online interactive community populated almost entirely by 8- to 15-year-olds. Never mind that they cannot actually buy the car. Toyota is …
I Hope They Didn’t Pay Retail
National Semiconductor capped off its most successful fiscal year in history by equipping every one of its 8,500 employees with a 30-gigabyte video iPod. While designed for personal entertainment, the popular Apple MP3 player will be used as a new training and communications tool at National, providing a convenient method for employees to download National podcasts and other employee communications. The analog …
Holiday Inn–Where Road Warriors Rest Their Sleepy Heads
What do you think about when you think about Holiday Inn? According to Landis Global Market Research, consumers most often think about amenities like the hotel pool. Fallon is launching a new campaign to counteract this pattern. The agency's "Look Again" campaign aims to round-out consumer perceptions of the brand so they view it as a first option for business travel as well as leisure. The campaign--with broadcast, …
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Dos Bistec Con Queso (On The Double)
According to Associated Press, the customer is not always right. Not in South Philly, at any rate. An English-only ordering policy has thrust one of Philadelphia's best-known cheesesteak joints into the national immigration debate. Geno's — which together with its chief rival, Pat's King of Steaks, forms the epicenter of an area described as "ground zero for cheesesteaks" — has posted signs telling customers, "This …
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Wendy’s Fixes It Fries
USA TODAY reports that Wendy's is dumping its cooking oil for a blend of non-hydrogenated corn and soy oil containing next-to-no artery-clogging trans fats. With the new oil — to be rolled out in the USA and Canada in August — a large order of Wendy's fries will drop from 7 grams of trans fats to 0.5 grams. "This is the right thing to do," says Kerrii Anderson, interim CEO. Wendy's move is expected to have vast …
Cultural Hegemony Will Not Be Tolerated
To compete with Apple's mobile music player, you need more than a product or great advertising. You need a manifesto. SanDisc, maker of the Sansa e200, has one. Calling all free thinkers, contrarians, and malcontents. The time has come to rise up against the iTatorship. To resist the monotony of white earbuds and reject the oppressive forces of cultural conformity. Now is the time to break free from restrictive …
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Right Out Of The Chick-fil-A Playbook
What is it about cows that lead advertising execs to treat them anthropomorphically? Yes, there is a character blog attached to this effort. …
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