Welcome to our advertising news portal. Here you will find the latest news on cutting-edge ads from the worlds of fashion, high technology, and entertainment. Take a glance at some the best jaw-dropping ads of the year, or stay a while and read our profiles of the industry's outstanding trendsetters. Either way, it's to your advantage.
No Secret: Sex Sells Victoria’s Secret has perfected its recipe for success over the years: ad large portions of supermodels, mix in some feathery thongs and throw in a dash of angel wings. That combination, with some big-name advertising events to boot, has made the lingerie giant a winning business model – the chains’ 1,000 stores grossed over $5 billion in sales worldwide during the last fiscal year. It’s no secret at all. Sex sells and will always sell. Part of Victoria’s Secret’s success, though, lies in its ability to successfully walk the fine line between sexy and sleazy, something that Calvin Klein and
American Apparel have also achieved, albeit in a very different way.
Established in 1954, the 2008 edition of the Cannes lions International Advertising Festival will take place on the Croisette soon after the Film festival in the third week of June. The primary purpose of the festival is to present the Lion awards for the advertisements and advertising campaigns adjudged the best of the year. Last year's edition, of this generally regarded most prestigious international advertising festival, outlined a new trend in the business. Even as the web and handled devices shake up where marketers spend ad dollars, one of the fastest-growing media is tried-and-true outdoor. Driving outdoor growth has been technology and a burst of creative ideas hat are making a relatively old medium new.
Among other fresh outdoor ideas, buses and bus shelters have recently inspired many advertising companies.Prime Point Media and Pepsi recently supervised a U.S. campaign that included Bluetooth-enhanced posters at 120 bus shelters and pay phone kiosks in Los Angeles and Orange County, California; Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Denver, Colorado; and Washington D.C. Passers by with Bluetooth-enabled cell-phones could opt for a music download while waiting for a bus. The effort also had 8,800 regular billboards in 200 markets to promote new packaging and invite consumers to design a Pepsi can. Ad agency PHD bought 40 bus shelters in New York City equipped with Bluetooth technology.
The photos jump off the page. A teenage girl wearing only socks and panties squirms in varying degrees of ecstasy. In another, the camera close-up zeroes in a woman’s tight-fitting underwear – “Stuff this,” the ad says. ”Stocking stuffers and Hanukkah hits.” These are not pictures from a racy magazine but billboard advertisements from retail phenomenon
American Apparel.
American Apparel also places the advertisements in alternative magazines and Web sites, or on the back pages of weekly newspapers like SF Weekly, The Onion, and the alternative lifestyle magazine Vice.
Virtual Garage Sale Want to organize a garage sale but don’t own a garage? Scottsdale, Arizona-based IQzone will soon offer a virtual alternative with the launch of its cell-phone-submitted classified service. The online service will allow users to sell, promote or giveaway by instantly broadcasting videos and photos of items via mobile phones – and the service is free. "IQzone is Craigslist with a dash of YouTube for the mobile generation, and that's just the beginning. People can share videos, photos - a whole world of mobile user-generated content (UGC) beyond classifieds - and monetize it or simply share it," CEO Michael Bates told Business Wire.
The U.S. Air Force’s new “Above All” advertising campaign, a $25 million endeavor, has not been able to rise above the clamor in Washington. Pentagon officials, some of them expressing indignation, say the ads are geared towards generating funds. It is against the law for the U.S. armed forces to solicit money.The chairman of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., called the campaign “outrageous,” according to a report by the Los Angeles Times.
Normally, you wouldn’t expect a company that has pledged $10 million to a children’s hospital to come under the wrath of child advocates, but
Abercrombie & Fitch has managed to do just that. The clothing retailer, known for its and provocative and sexually-charged advertising campaigns, recently offered the large sum of money to a Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Ohio, in exchange for permission to affix its name to the hospital’s trauma center. But a coalition of children’s right groups, the Boston-based Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, has urged the Columbus hospital to drop plans to name its future center after the retailer.
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