The Best Pharmaceutical Ads Ever: AmbienCR silenceyourrooster.com. But A Huge Viral Opportunity is Missed

Oh my...I just saw a HUGE home run...someone has finally done something just great in the wonderful world of terrible pharma advertising. I'm jealous...I wish we at Jugular had done it. The premise is simple...annoying sounds wake people up...they go in search of the sound and find a rooster that, ironically, creates the wake up sound by calling, using a hair dryer, playing basketball, etc. etc. Essentially diverted roosters misled by modern devices before dawn (great theme...almost Hitchcockian) As you see the ads are signed off silenceyourrooster.com with the sanofi aventis logo appearing on them. Brilliant. The spots are on the website and YouTube. BUT YouTube is DISABLED so you can't insert them in blogs like this one. HUGE MISTAKE. This is going to be big and could be so much bigger if you just let it be viral to the extreme. (Or is there an FDA problem with doing this?). Please clients set this free. You'll be glad you did. Otherwise, as you see, I'm relegated to screen captures...which don't cut it.

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Heineken Street Marketing and Product Sampling in New York City: Free Beer.

OK Heineken Light I'm impressed... at about 2 PM got an call from an excited advertising friend out for a lunch hour walk in front of Grand Central. "Heineken Light is handing out beer on the street." We both agreed that it was pretty incredible to set up a bar on a heavily trafficked sidewalk in New York at midday. Impressive ability to obtain permits. And a big idea...combining street marketing and product sampling of beer. Surprised there isn't more activity...let's hope it's still up there after work. I'd like to see a better themeline than "Share the good" and a more provocative street bar...but kudos for a good idea. Now...will we be able to drink free beers throughout NYC? Just got a final communications from my street correspondent in response to my question about the size of the sample cups. "They only had small cups...I had two." (Thanks to him for the instant Blackberry pictures, by the way).

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Billboard Roadblocks: Like Internet Roadblocks, Stand Out from the Static.

Here are a few more examples of billboard roadblocks. I know, I know...I'm obsessed...I've gotten carried away. But...I can't believe how many examples you can find all over New York City in mid August. Billboard roadblocks are based on the exact same principle as internet roadblocks (see previous two posts)...the need to dominate a crowded, noisy space filled with too much static and too many messages. These work for me. If you want to ride the boards (ad lingo from the Mad Men age): Chile @ 43rd and 7th across from the Hard Rock Cafe in Times Square, The Cleaner on the Adidas Store @ Crosby & E. Houston, Jaguar @ Watts and Thompson St.

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Billboard Roadblocks: More Internet Roadblock Inspired Outdoor Boards

I'm coining a new name called Billboard Roadblocks for traditional multiple panel outdoor ads. Billboard Roadblocks. Please start using it as often as possible, and we'll start a trend. Jugular has just finished one of our extensive reviews of billboard ad space in New York and have discovered, as mentioned in the previous post, this new phenomenon of using multiple billboards in the same style as internet billboards. The first image, taken from a video game Red Alert 3, is another example of how to take over an internet page with adjoining units. The following two images show just how this same method is being applied to traditional outdoor billboards: the fabulous Wamu Theater guitar (the best example of a Billboard Roadblock, we think) and the impossible to miss MVP billboards from the Soap Opera Network. And yes...you guessed right...direct from Times Square. Stop by now to see them. (Thanks for the photos to Katie the intern).

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Billboards and Roadblocks: Traditional Outdoor Inspired By Internet Advertising

Jugular, our ad agency, is on 39th Street, three blocks from Times Square. But I haven't been out much of late because we've been preoccupied with a new internet advertising account where we've been creating banners of all shapes and sizes. Recently, we sent one our interns out to document the current state of outdoor advertising at the heart of the universe where the ball drops and guess what we found? Billboard and wallscape advertising patterned after internet banners....specifically roadblocks where two or more internet ads of various sizes combine to form a unit which dominates the screen...hence, of course the very witty name. So, here's an example of a Discovery Channel wallscape for Mythbusters done internet style. A screen capture of an actual Mythbusters internet roadblock follows...which combines a horizontal and a skyscraper unit to capture more space (and therefore more attention) on the very small scale of the computer screen. Of course, the internet roadblock has a whole host of interactive games, videos and more. But, fundamentally these units are startlingly similar in concept, don't you think?

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