Forget sticky marketing; Clorox is going with icky marketing in its latest effort to get moms to laugh.

As announced in a press release Wednesday, the brand is partnering with Carol Leifer, an award-winning comedian and comedy TV writer (Seinfeld, Modern Family), to launch the Clorox Ick-tionary, a wiki-style dictionary of everyday ick that parents and caregivers contend with on a daily basis.

As Leifer observes in a blog post, "Don't ask, don't smell... Because as I’ve learned from my comedy writing on sitcoms, real life always does seem to present the funniest ideas."Continue reading...

NBC today confirmed that Jimmy Fallon is taking over The Tonight Show from Jay Leno in 2014, ending months of rumors in a deal that was (according to Variety) brokered by Comcast exec and NBCUniversal president Steve Burke.

Leno will retire following a 22-year run, while Fallon's reign will begin, Variety hears, following the Sochi, Russia, Winter Olympics coverage on NBC and its sister TV networks.

A hint that a deal had been struck came earlier this week with the release of a video between the two late-night comics, which Leno and Fallon tweeted and NBC promoted online.Continue reading...

Six months after posting a low-budget, self-made, 12-minute video of himself, the US-born Mike Sui has been tapped by the NFL and Nike, Netease, Puma, Lenovo and, now, Nescafe, to give their respective brands a sense of humor and some attitude in China.

But the rise and popularity of the teacher turned actor and comedian — who's half-Chinese, half-American, and lovingly known as "diaosi Mike 隋" — also says something about a major change in how the nation's youth see themselves. That's right, China's Gen Y has become self aware.Continue reading...

Despite being effectively fired by Mitt Romney during the first presidential candidates' debate, Big Bird doesn't need the president going to bat for him. Obama's campaign released a TV commercial (description: "According to Mitt Romney, it's not Wall Street you have to worry about, it's Sesame Street") criticizing Romney for making the Sesame Street star, as the brand ambassador of PBS and the federally-funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Public Enemy #1. The Sesame Workshop wasn't amused, responding:

Sesame Workshop is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization and we do not endorse candidates or participate in political campaigns. We have approved no campaign ads, and, as is our general practice, have requested that both campaigns remove Sesame Street characters and trademarks from their campaign materials.

That's right — the president of the United States was schooled by puppets, but his campaign still has not taken down the offending video, despite the request, by this writing. Whether Sesame Workshop's lawyers sends a cease and desist letter (unlikely) remains to be seen.Continue reading...

Everyone knows the funniest Americans were born in Canada, so why not leverage that to bring a few tourism dollars north of the border?

Now playing in New York City: a series of spots featuring Canadian expat actor Eric McCormack, pitching the great white north to Manhattanites and visitors. The "Canada for Fun" tourism and branding campaign, from a consortium of Canadian tourism boards, aims to boost awareness of "why Canada is such a fun place to visit." It just launched in the New York metro market on NBC-owned TV stations; online at CanadaForFun.com and YouTube, where you can watch more of the spots; in taxis (where this expat Canadian caught the campaign); and on digital signage in commuter rail stations such as Penn Station. 

"Humour is an intrinsic part of our culture and is a great way to give Americans who haven't had a chance to visit Canada an inside look at their northern neighbours. We hope they enjoy Eric's take on our myths and realities," noted Greg Klassen, SVP of the Canadian Tourism Commission. Follow along on Twitter: @canadaforfun and #canadaforfun 

Trending on YouTube lately, and added a week ago with over 1 million hits, is the King of Cone-ing himself, Alki Stevens.

The Australian comedian proves there actually is fun to be had with fast food. Cone-ing, a trend he singlehandedly (sometimes doublehandedly) created as a viral sensation, is when a person orders an ice cream cone (say at a McDonald's drive-thru window) by grabbing it by the ice cream end, instead of the cone... And then filming it for all of the web to laugh at.Continue reading...

One of Kraft's biggest-ever product rollouts may seem like a whole lot of nothing — flavor drops for water. Yet MiO is Kraft's newest attempt to grab its share of flavored water, a category that accounts for about $1 billion in sales.

It's a flavoring drop for water that has no calories and is packaged in slick squeeze bottles that look like over-sized water droplets. Each bottle sells for $3.99 and can flavor about 24 servings of water.

MiO will be available in six flavors: Berry Pomegranate, Fruit Punch, Mango Peach, Peach Tea, Sweet Tea, and Strawberry Watermelon. It's certainly eye-catching in a lava lamp-like way — but does it taste good? And why is Kraft using Sassy Gay Friend to market it?Continue reading...

Social media has pretty much reinvented everything, including the way brand advertisers approach digital marketing. So it's no surprise that marketers are employing a promotional technique commonly used in the past, but updated for the digital world.

Live product demos (and live television shows, for that matter) dominated the three television networks in TV's heyday, the 1950s and 1960s, as Stuart Elliott points out in today's New York Times. It wasn't unusual to see personalities like John Cameron Swayze demonstrate a Timex watch being mercilessly tortured in a live television commercial that ended with the famous line, "It takes a licking and keeps on ticking."

Fast forward to 2011 and watch Hewlett-Packard reinvent the idea. Marking its first foray into branded entertainment, the tech brand will stage a live product demo on YouTube, Facebook and mobile this Friday — instead of TV. And while it won't be torturing one of its Web-connected printers, HP hopes the blend of live + crowdsourced + comedy will engage viewers with its new technology.Continue reading...