Since introducing Fabio as the "New" Old Spice Guy last week, and then acknowledging on Friday that it would be a guest stint to take over for Isaiah Mustafa, the duelling brand mascots have been engaged in a war of tweets.

Now, Fabio has issued a challenge to Mustafa: to settle the matter with a web duel, to take place at Noon EST tomorrow.Continue reading...

Viewed nearly 1.5 million times, the above "Ape with AK-47" video is in fact a viral ad for the upcoming 20th Century Fox film Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

The vid, which claims to be from the 20th Century Fox Research Library, was uploaded on the movie's official YouTube channel, and links to an "Apes Will Rise" iTunes app: "Are you smarter than an ape? Challenge yourself with this memory test/iPhone app designed by scientists and tested on apes."

But is featuring Africans handing an ape an AK-47 really the best idea for a viral — let along a major media conglomerate?Continue reading...

Heineken's first worldwide campaign, dubbed "Legends," centered on YouTube, where the brand's first spot, "The Entrance," scored more than 3 million views globally in the first three weeks of its release in December.

The eagerly-awaited second instalment in the creative brand campaign, "The Date," premiered on Heineken's YouTube channel late last month, and zoomed to more than 4 million hits.

Fast forward to today, when Heineken and YouTube parent Google announced a multi-year global agreement that continues leveraging YouTube and expands to mobile.Continue reading...

Launched more than a decade ago as Toyota’s answer to the question, “How do you appeal to new customers as your baby boomer fans age?,” Scion  has been a big disappointment. Sales of the youth-oriented marque with the limited vehicle lineup peaked in 2006 at 173,000 cars and then dropped off to just 45,000 last year.

Part of the problem has been the company’s lack of marketing conviction behind Scion. Toyota spent only $20 million in measured media last year on Scion compared with $888 million on Toyota and $211 on Lexus, AdAge said. Another problem is that the youth market hasn’t had a lot of pocket change over the last few years to spend on new vehicles; good thing their parents’ health policies can cover them until they’re 26 years old now.

Scion’s new Zeus-themed viral video campaign might not be much help in that department.Continue reading...

Banks aren’t generally known for frisky, hilarious advertising — after all, they're taking care of commercial and consumer finances — but the National Australian Bank broke down all the walls earlier this year in an effort to draw extra attention to it. And it has apparently worked. 

NAB's 2010 research showed that 50% of Australians who responded had, at some point or another, broken up up on or near Valentine’s Day. Inspired, the bank duly hired 60 couples across the country to publicly break up on Valentine’s Day and post about it online as part of a social-media effort showcasing NAB’s “breakup” with other banks.Continue reading...

Since Heineken’s latest commercial, “The Date,” debuted in late May, it has racked up more than 2 million views on YouTube, with no plans for television broadcast until September.

It’s all, of course, part of the brand’s strategy to use digital to attract younger (or at least, young at heart) consumers.

Alexis Nasard, chief commercial officer at Heineken International in Amsterdam, told the New York Times that brands must “think digital at the inception, not as an afterthought…the digital element must be part of the brief and the creative presentation.”Continue reading...

Executives usually don’t badmouth their former companies, but the ones that are no longer with Pabst Blue Ribbon after it was sold last year to billionaire C. Dean Metropoulos and his two sons don’t mince words.

“If our core PBR drinker knew that what they were drinking is owned by guys like these, it's the last beer they'd want to drink,” stated the former director of marketing to the Chicago Tribune.

And he’s not alone. “It was what the brand stood for, which was that we embrace people for what they are, their creativity and specialness,” said Kevin Kotecki, who was CEO from 2005 until he quit in November, to the Trib. “I want it to fail,” adds Bryan Clarke, former VP of marketing.

Why the trashtalking? These are the execs "who helped breathe life into the company’s stale brands," such as PBR, Schlitz and Old Style. Now, they're on a new campaign, speaking out to save the brands they loved and labored to resurrect.Continue reading...

The joke in the Farmers Insurance commercial above: the X-Man Beast is an "X-Change" student at the Farmers Insurance university. Get it?

The spot, which has attracted a lot of attention, much of it confused, is surprising for an X-Men: First Class tie-in — not only for its subject (insurance?), but also because it is an ad mutant, a rare anomaly. It didn't have to be this way.Continue reading...