With everybody whipping through commercials on their DVRs, product placement on prime-time television is fairly prevalent these days. As Seth MacFarlane commented to the New York Times this week, we even speak in brands — "On any give day, how many times do you reference a piece of pop culture or a brand name? I bet it’s a lot more often than we think. 'I’m going across the street to Starbucks.' 'I’ll make a Xerox of it.' Our daily lives are packed with proper nouns of the corporate kind."

So it should come as no surprise that MacFarlane is a champion of brand synergy, as he's showing by leveraging his hit Fox animated series Family Guy to promote his big-screen debut as a director. Even though his R-rated movie Ted doesn't hit theaters until June 29, its foul-mouthed star has already found his way into Family Guy Online, a 3D game extension of the hit animated comedy that launched last fall.

After all, the film is directed, cowritten, and partially voiced by MacFarlane so it was a natural fit to cross-promote the film and television show. And given that Ted is cut from the same cloth as Family Guy (although it's a live-action comedy starring a CGI raunchy, talking teddy bear plus Mark Wahlberg and Mila Kunis) the movie/game crossover promotion was a no-brainer move for MacFarlane and Fox — and a handful of invited brand partners.Continue reading...

Readers participating in the Consumerist blog’s second annual Worst Ad in America Awards have crowned Luvs “Poop! There It Is” as the 2011 winner, (above) taking 32% of the 115,000 votes and beating an AT&T spot at 23.98%, in which a wife berates her husband for signing the family up for unlimited texting. Check that out, plus this year's other Consumerist 'winners,' below.Continue reading...

It's the first day of summer and thoughts turn to vacations, beaches... and of course, ice cream. And it doesn't get much better than earning a free ice cream just for smiling. Swing by a "Share Happy" ice cream vending machine this summer and it will attempt to engage you with visual tricks, and then encourage you to give it your most winning smile. When your smile is big enough according to the "smile-o-meter," the machine takes a photo, asks for your permission to upload it onto Facebook, and then rewards you with your choice of a free ice cream.

The vending machine is the brainchild of SapientNitro, a consumer experience company who developed "Share Happy" for Unilever, the world's biggest ice cream manufacturer. As the promotion notes on its Facebook page, "You know the brand as FRIGO, LANGNESE, ESKIMO, ALGIDA, WALL'S, OLA etc., depending on where you come from. In short: The heart brand is the world's favourite ice cream."Continue reading...

Burger King raises the cost of its double cheeseburger from $1 to $1.19. [WSJ]

New Klondike commercials channel 'The 40 Year Old Virgin.' [BrandFreak]

Burger King will now sell Seattle's Best coffee in its restaurants. [Daily Finance]

Chevy hopes consumers feel connected with its new family-oriented ads. [Brandweek]

Microsoft adds Facebook and Myspace sites to its Outlook program. [AP]

The Federal Trade Commission puts its foot down on unemployment scams. [LA Times]Continue reading...

With sponsored iPhone apps flooding the marketplace, a brand needs make a big splash to stand out. Enter PepsiCo's "Amp Up Before You Score" iPhone app, released on Friday.

Proving that there's no such thing as bad publicity, the app has created a firestorm of controversy -- even if it's really just a tempest in an iPhone. The male-targeted application offers dating and "pick up" advice guaranteed to assist in "scoring" with members of the opposite sex.

The hetero-normative app allows men to choose from 24 "types" of women, ranging from "athlete" to "cougar" to "trouble," with pick-up lines, background information and restaurant listings for "suitors" to take their potential "conquests." You get the picture.Continue reading...

What would you do for a Klondike Bar? If the answer is: flee your nagging wife and children and reclaim your manhood, you seem to be Klondike’s newest target market.

On the Klondike website currently, you will find a man cave, where you can play a video game that revolves around helping staid, suburban Khaki Pants Pete go out on the town with a 21-year-old babysitter and watch pudding wrestling at a strip club. (Because real men drink Buds, watch the NFL and eat dainty delicious ice cream sandwiches.)

If this technique had been used to promote either Budweiser or the NFL it would have made sense – rather than forcing viewers to imagine a world where ice cream bars are the ultimate in rebellion.Continue reading...