The latest online marketing campaign by General Mills takes the idea of medical marijuana to a whole new level. The company — yes, that General Mills, maker of mostly mundane but helpful family-friendly products ranging from Cheerios to Hamburger Helper — has gone out on a marketing limb that seems drug-induced.

The company has launched a series of web videos in a promotion featuring Cheech and Chong touting General Mills' new FiberOne 90 Calorie Brownies. And General Mills leaves nothing to allusion or wink-wink suggestions in selecting the counter-cultural champions of cannabis haze as the focus of the effort.

The videos are positioned as a trailer and clips from what is billed as the comedy duo's first road epic in 28 years, "Cheech & Chong's Magic Brownie Adventure." On their way to deliver a truckful of the "magic brownies" to a desert festival, they indulge in a treat that is chock full of a different kind of organic substance than they're used to: fiber.Continue reading...

With automakers, CPG manufacturers and many other brands becoming big producers of branded video content these days, it might be easy for them to drift from their essential message. Once you go Hollywood, it's possible for a brand to get so enamored of its creative capabilities online that it forgets to sell stuff.

Audi doesn't want to be that brand. So in its new collaboration with the FX network for a series of on-air and online videos called "Untitled Jersey City Project," Audi marketers are taking pains to make sure that the promotion gets the real job done: positioning its new, 2012 A6 as a smart, innovative vehicle choice for its target market.Continue reading...

“Verge culture,” as in young, digital, influencers and brand-savvy hip youths, is poised for a social media guerilla takeover — if Karmaloop TV has anything to do with it.

An offshoot of the Karmaloop.com retail site, KarmaloopTV.com is an online video-based network that's vying for broadband and video-on-demand distribution in the US. It aims to be a full-blown 24-hour cable TV network, and is now pitching cable and telco TV operators that it can help them “reclaim” the 18-to-34 year old audience that lives online, on digital, on mobile and on social.

In a similar vein to Vice TV, it aims to offer an in-depth look (and insights) into global street culture. The website also features exclusive interviews with designers, brands, artists and musicians — musician/producer Pharrell Williams signed on as KarmaloopTV's creative director in May.Continue reading...

In the short life of Doug the sock puppet, the orange mascot for the Focus that Ford introduced in March, that automaker has had him engage in all sorts of fantasy scenes — because, after all, Doug is an orange puppet. In watching the online-only video campaign so far, viewers who already have suspended their disbelief, because they're watching a smart-alecky orange puppet, are even further willing to suspend their disbelief as Doug variously saves a life, schmoozes with human females, and takes over a Ford "press conference."

Now, however — and rather ironically — it's a turn to a sort of realism that may be indicating the Doug campaign is running out of steam.Continue reading...

Top Chef has been on Bravo for eight seasons and it is hard to imagine any one of the show’s many knife-wielding contestants just popping in some frozen food.

That will soon change, thanks to a new partnership between ConAgra’s Healthy Choice and the franchise. Healthy Choice is using Top Chef  to launch its latest line of frozen entrées, called Healthy Choice Top Chef Inspired Café Steamers, by sponsoring an original web series on BravoTV.com. 

The hit cook-off competition just started shooting its ninth season in Texas, so creating web-exclusive programming featuring its fan-favorited alumni makes sense to whet viewers' appetites for the next season, keep the Top Chef brand top of mind — and give advertisers new (branded entertainment) opportunities to reach Top Chef foodies, who are salivating for the new season.Continue reading...

It's channeled Elvis, taken over Times Square, and slipped into a Gucci racing stripe for New York Fashion Week. Now Fiat USA is promoting the Fiat 500 in a new 30-second trailer that's breaking during ESPN's Monday Night Football telecast tonight.

The Chrysler-owned brand struck a product placement deal to feature the 2012 Fiat 500 Cabrio in Lopez's new music video, Papi, the latest single from her new album. As part of the agreement, Lopez will appear in commercials for the 2012 Fiat 500 which are scheduled to debut later in the year.Continue reading...

Gymkhana is a type of motorport, and an extreme one at that. Like all races, there is a start, a finish, and it's timed. The driving extremes can involve wild stunts such as 180 degree spins, 360 degree spins, all through parking boxes, figure 8scones, tires, and barrels. More notably, in each video, Monster World Rally driver Ken Block donuts around people on Segways, forklifts and robotic sharks.

The latest —  DC Shoes: Ken Block's Gymkhana Four: The Hollywood Megamercial — was released Aug. 16 on YouTube. It already has attracted more than 8 million views, 1,558,593 Facebook shares, and 13,181 tweets, and may be the most insane Gymkhana event to date.

The DC x Ken Block Gymkhana project is a seven-part viral internet sensation, notching more than 70 million web views overall and receiving numerous awards. The Gymkhana TWO video was named one of Ad Age’s “Top 10 Viral Ads of All Time”, and #4 on its list of top viral videos of 2009.Continue reading...

The initial jarring element of Palladium Boots' (maybe) exploitative new campaign is the use of "3/11" in the same way "9/11" is used in the US to describe the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. While the earthquake and tsunami that turned much of Japan upside down in March 2011, the moniker "3/11" is hardly a mainstay, making Palladium's use all the more intentionally evocative… and exploitative.

Tokyo Rising, its new video "exploration" of the city hosted by Pharrell, faces "a new reality after the tragedy of 3/11." This makes Palladium, maybe, the first brand to heavily leverage the disaster for a brand campaign. (It is something American brands have already mastered with 9/11.)Continue reading...