Other brands are joining Pepto-Bismol in attempting to get ahead of cheer-driven consumer behavior during the holiday-celebration season. While the Procter & Gamble brand has called in Modern Family star Eric Stonestreet to promote its abilities to offer relief after major gastronomic expeditions, a couple of non-American brands are laying cover for celebrants who indulge in other distractions.

Argentina’s Norte beer has begun advertising a fanciful, fictional device it calls the Photoblocker (demonstrated above), a tongue-in-cheek, office holiday party-ready app to prevent those candid photos from the night before from incriminating guys with their girlfriends. The high-tech “beer cooler” purports to detect when someone in a bar is taking a photo and leapfrogs the process by issuing a flash that obliterates the offending image – which, of course, was destined for social-media discovery by said girlfriend.Continue reading...

Air New Zealand isn’t above doing something a little scandalous to bring in customers and publicity. Two years ago, it painted uniforms onto the skin of supposed members of a ANZ flight crew for an ad campaign, raising more than a few eyebrows.

Then a year ago, the airline introduced a brand mascot: a raunchy puppet named Rico, who starred in an online-only ad campaign in which he used “sexual innuendo and chats with B-grade celebrities,” such as David Hasselhoff, Richard Simmons, Snoop Dogg and Lindsay Lohan, to help sell the airline, according to New Zealand’s Stuff.

Rico found some success, collecting 4.5 million YouTube viewers and more than 48,000 Facebook fans along the way. ANZ is likely the only major airline that had a series of online ads starring a puppet that all opened with the text, “The following video contains language and themes of a sensitive nature. Viewer discretion is advised.”Continue reading...

After the head of the Federal Communications Commissioned moved to block AT&T buying T-Mobile's USA operations, AT&T announced on Thanksgiving Day that it was withdrawing (for now) its application with the FCC for its planned $39 billion purchase of T-Mobile USA — and would take a $4 billion charge against earnings, the amount owed to T-Mobile parent Deutsche Telekom in the event of a failed deal. Its next move? According to the New York Times, an asset sell-off is likely looming.

"Focusing on the antitrust trial, scheduled for February, the companies ... vowed to continue to pursue their bold plan to combine the second- and fourth-largest cellphone carriers in the United States," the Times reports of the buzz on Wall Street. "But the companies’ ambitions must be scaled back if they want any chance at a deal, analysts say. To address the objections of the Justice Department and F.C.C. that a merger would be anticompetitive, AT&T could agree to sell off 40 percent or so T-Mobile’s assets to wireless rivals, they say."

Possible scenarios include selling assets to rivals who opposed the merger: Sprint and MetroPCS, the third- and fifth-largest U.S. carriers. Good thing AT&T has hired a "high-powered Internet attorney" to plead its case: "High-powered internet attorney Kent Wesley," played by Will Arnett, who will say or do "whatever it takes to get you the AT&T 4G smartphone you deserve." See more of AT&T's "You've Got a Case" holiday campaign with Arnett below.Continue reading...

With Black Friday just a week away, a new survey shows that retailer optimism about sales growth is lower this year than in 2010. Heavy discounts are expected to rule the day as many retailers move their Black Friday operations to Thursday in a dismal zero sum game sales spiral.

One way for retailers to save a little money in a potentially grim holiday shopping season? Regift!Continue reading...

The week before Halloween is always zombie week. This time last year, retailer Sears hit it big with a successful zombification campaign that turned the Sears website into a zombie-infiltrated .com of the walking undead, including the "Blue Zombie Crew, your trusty undead experts."

Emboldened, the retailer is back this year with an even bigger zombie Halloween campaign, this time enlisting its Craftsman tools brand. And, of course, braaaiiiiinnnnnssssss!Continue reading...

Back in January, Fast Company posed the question: "Does Legal Seafood's Blacklisted Fish Dinner Offer Reel Truth or Mere Press Bait?" 

Fast-forward to the US restaurant chain's latest ad campaign, which wins praise from Adrants because, "We love this new campaign for Legal Sea Food. Why? Because it slaps upside the head all the tree-hugging, animal-loving cause groups who spend their days complaining about stuff when, instead, they could be at Legal Seafoods devouring succulent crab, salmon or trout."

It’s one for Marketing 101 case studies, raising a debate about ads that mimic PSA’s; ads skewering environmental messages; ads of just plain questionable taste; and a restaurant brand that thumbs its nose at all three camps.Continue reading...

"No pants day; batting, owling and planking; people thinking they are vampires and zombies; the world's gone crazy ... No! The world's gone Four Loko!"

So begins the press release for Phusion Products' new Four Loko beverage campaign, the brand's latest in an ongoing effort to clean up its image by mocking its image in the media.

In a true bit of irony, the brand is now doing almost exactly what it told us a year ago it "made a conscious effort to reject."Continue reading...

It was only last week that we asked, "Has Ford's Focus Spokespuppet Doug Jumped the Shark?" Turns out, he has jumped ship entirely.

Ford has decided to shelve Doug, the orange spokespuppet for the Focus, after a six-month run that did wonders for consumer interest in the car, exceeding the company's initial expectations.

Brandchannel has learned that the denouement of Doug's story will be told on Thursday with the release of the last new video in a series of many.

Ford released the penultimate chapter today, a Doug-less video that featured only "John," the human handler for the smart-alecky mascot, bemoaning the departure of his friend after Doug drove off himself in a 2012 Focus.

"The video today tipped it off," Scott Monty, Ford's head of social media, told brandchannel. "Tomorrow we'll have the concluding video."Continue reading...