{ For those making big ass international calls. }

{ New York City escort service uses Metrocard template to make business cards. }

{ Alka Seltzer ad by Paul Kreitmann/CLM BBDO Paris | via Animal NY | more }

{ Viral campaign for Axe | Agency: Buzzman, Paris, France }

From gigahertz to bogomips, dot pitch to DPI, it’s hard to exist in the electronics age without getting bombarded by figures that are supposed to help you understand what, precisely, you’re getting for your money. But really, how many of us understand the implications of a few extra megahertz in the memory interface on a graphics card? A study released by the Journal of Consumer Research suggests it doesn’t really matter: everyone just wants bigger numbers. As the researchers found, it doesn’t even matter if those numbers don’t line up with personal experience, or even if they’re completely made up.

The research was focused on the gap between how we perceive an item based on experience, and how we view the item based on what we know about it. For example, we can have experience using a digital camera, and think it takes great pictures; in marketing jargon, this is termed a “hedonic preference,” which the authors parenthetically defined as “liking.” (Why they just didn’t use liking…). At the same time, we’re typically aware of specifications, such as megapixels.

Both of these should contribute to purchase decisions, and the authors set up a series of tests using students at a major Chinese university. The tests were designed to determine the relative weight of liking versus specs, based on the hypothesis that consumers will base their decisions on specifications when buying something.

{ Ars Technica | Continue reading }

Looking at the bigger picture, today’s celebration cannot mask the threat of economic recession for the United States. Earlier today, Bloomberg’s Rich Miller talked about this risk for recession, and those in the financial community who think we’re headed for a particularly nasty one. From Miller’s piece:

It’s hard to imagine it not being the worst recession in at least 25 years.
-Kenneth Rogoff, Harvard University economic professor and former IMF chief economist

It’s certainly going to be the worst since the 1980s. The hope is that it won’t become the worst unemployment business cycle since the Great Depression.
-Bradford DeLong, University of California at Berkeley economics professor who worked at the U.S. Treasury from 1993 to 1995

This is the worst crisis I’ve seen in my 50-year career. We still have to deal with the effects on the real economy here and elsewhere.
-William Rhodes, Citigroup senior vice chairman

And as I was writing this post this afternoon, MarketWatch’s John Letzing reported:
A Citigroup analyst late Monday issued a dour outlook for the U.S. economy, writing in a note to clients that the recent crisis has “broken the bounds of any previous, merely cyclical event.” Citigroup analyst Steven Wieting wrote that tightening financial conditions and weakening economic activity are expected to continue, and suggest “a more severe recession.” Wieting wrote that even if “traction is eventually regained,” he is nonetheless expecting contraction in the U.S. GDP over the four quarters ending in the second quarter of 2009. “We believe large company profits will now fall 27% peak-to-trough, and the unemployment rate to peak above 8 1/2%,” Wieting wrote.

{ Boom2bust | Continue reading }

{ SHS ad | more }

An Australian pub has come under fire for offering free drinks to women who take off their panties and hang them on a rail above the bar.

The Saint Hotel in Melbourne promoted its offer as “No undie Sunday,” with a notorious paparazzi picture of US singer Britney Spears getting out of a car wearing no knickers.

The advertisement in an entertainment magazine offers a free glass of champagne to women who “flash bra or undies to bar staff.”

Those who go further and “hang your undies on the line above the bar” win 50 dollars (40 US dollars) worth of free drinks. (…)

The same hotel drew criticism in June when it employed a shirtless dwarf to pour shots of liquor down the throats of patrons.

{ AFP/Yahoo | Continue reading }

photo { Kate Moss by Terry Richardson }

Last night, Stereo Hell exclusively shared with ANIMAL this nifty video presentation (click the red arrow) revealing that all of the guerrilla AA posters were in fact not physical posters, but expertly Photoshopped fakes. (…) “I already feel sad thinking about walking in Soho and not having to take pics of billboards,” says SH’s Imp.

{ Animal NY | Continue reading | Gawker }

» ALL POSTERS: MORE »

In March 1999, just three months before the FDA gave its blessing to the ill-fated arthritis drug Vioxx, Merck & Co. had everything in place for an award-winning marketing campaign.

It was a clinical trial. At least it looked like one.

In fact, according to four physicians in the Aug. 19 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine, Merck’s clinical trial had a purpose very different from the goal of rigorously assessing the effectiveness and safety of Vioxx — the blockbuster painkiller drug that Merck withdrew from the market in September 2004 after it was linked to a possible doubling of a patient’s risk of heart attack and stroke.

The clinical trial known as ADVANTAGE was a “seeding trial,” write the four authors — all of whom have served as expert witnesses in court cases brought against Merck in connection with Vioxx. It was designed, they write, to speed and increase the rate at which doctors accepted and prescribed the new drug, to gather inspiring “patient stories” for future use by reporters and marketers, and to court the goodwill of front-line physicians with the promise of professional prestige, research funds and the chance to be among the first to try a vaunted new remedy for an age-old scourge.

{ LA Times | Continue reading }

Nearly all of the most valuable drug trials have been undertaken for marketing purposes. When Bristol-Myers-Squibb introduced its statin cholesterol-reducing drug Pravachol to compete with Merck’s then-dominant Zocor, it mounted a huge and extremely expensive trial to show that Pravachol did something Zocor had never been shown to do: prevent heart attacks in patients who had high cholesterol but were otherwise healthy. The trial ended successfully, marketing measures were adjusted accordingly, and sales soared. The result was a triumph not only for marketing but also for patients.

{ The American | Continue reading }

I’m done posting on copyranter for the foreseeable future.

{ Copyranter | Continue reading }

Copyranter is this phenomenally hateful individual, a New York advertising copywriter who’s been working at the same ad agency for the past 16 years. (…) Almost every day, he provides ingenious commentary on a given ad campaign (usually ripping it to shreds) with inimitable elegance and wit.

{ Coilhouse | Continue reading }

I contradict as has never been contradicted before and am nevertheless the opposite of a No-saying spirit. I am a bringer of glad tidings like no one before me.

{ Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, 1888 }

If you can’t crack America with Kate Moss, then whom can you crack it with? Multibillionaire ($9 billion and counting) British business entrepreneur Sir Philip Green has spent the past two decades shaking up British retail with his strategy of fast-moving, mid- to low-priced fashion—especially with his thriving Topshop chain (similar in price-point and cool factor to Club Monaco).

The former shoe salesman is betting on the Moss factor to help him take the States by storm. (…) She has become an essential part of the growth strategy of Topshop, which Green acquired in 2002 when he bought Arcadia Group Ltd. for $1.6 billion. The chain boasts about 300 locations in the U.K., and by the time the first Top Shop store opens in the U.S. this fall, Green will own more than 100 stores overseas.

How Green managed to pull off such a coup by persuading Moss to become his business partner is a hotly debated topic in the fashion industry (currently valued at $1.2 trillion globally). The answer is not money. Moss was No.99 on Britain’s 100 richest women on the Sunday Times Rich List in Britain last year, with assets and earnings reportedly totalling about $88 million. Media reports peg her contract at $6 million. Topshop declined to comment on the matter. (…)

The key to their chemistry may lie in their common history. Although a generation apart, both are mavericks in their fields, and were brought up in an ignominious London suburb called Croydon. Though she is not a fashion visionary (she publically said that she takes pieces from her vintage collection and has the Topshop designers modify them to her satisfaction before production), one could call her Green’s business muse.

{ Wall Street Journal Magazine | Continue reading }

photos { Kate Moss photographed by Michael Thompson }