POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold.

First official trailer for Super Size Me director Morgan Spurlock’s “Inception of documentaries,” POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold.

The film, which explores the often invasive world of product placement, is set to open in theaters April 22.

How to Sell A Glass Boot

Now, I don't pretend to know ANYTHING about selling, marketing or how advertising actually works. But that's why I'm qualified to run a high ranking agency...

The following is an example of how, precisely one should sell a glass boot designed for drinking. You get the love child of Zoolander and Dieter from Sprockets.


How many can I put you down for? A case?

Facebook Changes

Evil Facebook mastermind Mark Zuckerberg talked up his site's new profile page Sunday in his second "60 Minutes" PR blitz - er - interview. In that chat, Leslie Stahl that covered all the topics relevant to Mark - from his portrayal in the Oscar-favorite The Social Network to his laughable privacy policy, Zuckerberg explained that the new profile format — which was introduced on the site's blog on Sunday — gives prominence to key details, such as hometown, school, and profession.

Profession? Watch your back, LinkedIn.

(Watch Zuckerberg's "60 Minutes" interview. If you dare!)

It also places greater emphasis on photos and family members. Facebook members who want to use the new profile can get it now; others will get it automatically over the next few weeks. You will Obey.

What's in a Name?

Some BP gas station owners are thinking of going back to the Amoco name.

If they don't like the name British Petroleum, why not go back to BP's original name...

Gulf Oil?

Oooo (More)

The iMaxiPad

The iPad--is probably the worst named product since HeadOn. On my best day, I cannot get past the obvious feminine hygiene product image.

"Did Apple really check whether women would like the idea of a maxi-pad?" writes blogger Ann Althouse, who suggests that Steve Jobs' marketing gurus should've consulted women a bit more. "Anyway, for our light days, we have iPhones. For our heavy days, we have the iPad? The iMaxiPad? Come on, guys!

Seattle Post-Intelligencer writer Mónica Guzmán also wonders what Apple was thinking: "Whether we make this part of the conversation surrounding Apple's highly anticipated tablet device or ignore it for the sake of decency, the word 'pad' has a meaning that is about as far removed from computing as a Band-Aid is from a television set.

"But how many times do you say 'Hand me that pad' and not, you know, blush a little?" Guzmán asks rhetorically.

Interestingly, the "iPad" jokes began before today's product launch. "Am I the only one who thinks the iPad sounds like a new feminine hygiene tech product?" asked one reader last week on Neowin.net, a tech news site.

iTampon on Twitter

A mere two hours after Jobs wrapped up his iPad demo, the term "iTampon" was trending higher than "Apple's iPad," on Twitter. The jokes were flowing. Pun intended.

User "britpixie" tweeted: "gotta love that iTampon is trending higher than iPad on twitter right now. Something tells me, they picked the wrong name?"

"MaestroMasadeJr" added: "iPad will forever be known as the iTampon ...oh dear I wonder which unfortunate ad agency advised Apple on the 'iPad' name..."

Will the name "iPad" ruin the tablet's success? It's too soon to tell. Once the jokes die down, consumers will focus on the tablet's capabilities [and limitations] and that price tag.

What's interesting to me is that Apple, usually a master of marketing, seems to have stumbled so incredibly terribly down the stairs with the product name.

Coke Sugar High

In what's surely an attempt to spite high fructose corn syrup haters everywhere, Coke has redesigned their plastic bottle to contain what was once sugar cane. They call it a "PlantBottle." (It's not this thing.)

70% petroleum, 30% sugar cane leftovers (converted to a plastic after several chemical processes), the plantbottle is debuting in regions of high profile first, like Denmark for the convenient United Nations Climate Change Summit.

Through a commissioned study, Coke found their PlantBottles to have a 12%-to-19% smaller carbon footprint than their plastic classic. To put that metric into perspective: Coke used to be polluting the Earth with millions of bottles yearly that would expend our limited resources while filling our our oceans with endless filth. But wait! With their new bottle, Coke is doing pretty much the same thing while being super pretentious pricks about it at the same time!

[WSJ via Grub Street Chicago]

Marketing Fail, or Win?

This is either so bad, it's full of win - or I just don't know what works anymore

Old Farts Don't Get It: Why Sears and GM Continue to Fail

The other day I saw a screen capture of a Sears product page with a suspicious category description (Consumerist).
Sears quickly fixed the error, but the problem was that the entire Sears website was built in a slipshod way that allowed goofballs to mess with the category descriptions. If you've ever messed around with history in wikipedia, imagine the fun you'd have with a whole Sears store!
Everything was fun and games until Sears ordered Conde Nast, owners of Reddit, to delete the post that pointed out their incompetence. With this being the Internet, that just blew up into a whole new level of Sears hatred. Go to Reddit and search for "Sears"

Which leads me to my thought. Old Farts Don't Get It.

Sears could should have left that up there. Except, then they should have personalized it for YOU. Like an Amazon page. If you want the circular blades to be called Big Fuggin' Circles That'll Cut Ya' - cool. That's your personalized site! You've interacted with Sears. Looked at their product. You might have even shared that with your dopey friends. Then they could have logged into their own Baby Grills in the Human Cooking Sections. Now they're having fun, but also looking at the great price of those Craftsman tools and BBQ's. Maybe they'll (shock) buy something?

But instead, the legal team jumped in front of an opportunity and pissed off the Reddit crowd..."Remember when some Reddit posters organized a boycott of Glenn Beck advertisers and had him thrown off the air? yeah, those were good times."
...and then someone puts that on fark.com too, and suddenly it's on someone's twitter and facebook page, and pretty soon it's here on Blasphemes - followed by a news cast and finally in newsprint the following day. That's the Social Media Revolution in the smallest of nutshells. And Sears just stepped in it.

But Sears has NO idea what that is. Or what could be. Or how to sell or build on it. Hell, they can't seem to attract people into their stores anymore. Or K-mart either. Both companies are joined together now intertwined in a retail death spiral. The combined company, Sears Holding Corp. has just less than the buying power of Wal Mart - but still hasn't figured out how to make that work for them. Instead of adopting the Wal Mart strategy of hub logistics and value pricing they continue to be big, bloated, discombobulated, and dumb. I think it's funny that Wal Mart drank Sears and K-mart's milkshakes... especially since Sears and K-mart invented their brand of retailing!

One would expect that Sears, which was built on the catalog would have been an early adaptor of the internet and internet sales business models. They should have been buying Amazon in 1994. They could have had bricks and mortar for grandma, and could have linked their inventories to some massive database center in the Sears Tower. Instead, they hired a second rate web guy? I mean, the security hole was that you could change the category values in the URL, and they'd show up on the page. Hey, at least they have a web site. Montgomery Wards refused to get into that whole 'web thing.' Wonder how that worked out for them?

Meanwhile, there's GM. GM is an old fart, wearing a hat, driving slow in the fast lane. And doesn't get it. GM is 101 years old. It's too old and still doesn't understand what is going on either.
GM has actually been bankrupt since 2006 and avoided filing until 2009 thanks to the backs of banks and bondholders who propped it up by profitable car loans. Their management team that got booted by Obama came from finance, not vehicle design.

They also made pretty crappy cars. They couldn't compete with Toyota. Toyota ate their whole lunch. They also ignored Toyota and Honda. Except for the Saturn, but they let that get fat and bloated too. They failed to innovate. Why bother? All the money was in financing.

But I think their biggest failure was that they failed to win over the Gen Xers. There was never a discussion or marketing, or that 'one cool ass car' that got the Gen X American kids interested in GM. They LET those customers walk out of the dealerships. Those customers discovered and became loyal to GM's competitors. Once a customer took the test drive, why would you go back to a GM?

Look, even the staunchest Made In The USA folks I know have finally conceded, and now will never buy another GM car. It's over. And even these guys can justify their new Hondas and Toyotas by rattling off all the manufacturing plants -- in America. Their only regret is that the management in Japan is making all the money. I stop them right there and explain that good management deserves ever dollar that they earn.

And why they'll fail again? GM has had no dialogue with Gen X. So far, they don't seem too interested in Gen Y either... Wonder if they'll get enough bail outs to last that long that this misstep will even matter?

But GM getting a Twitter account isn't going to suddenly turn their fortunes around - but they did try selling cars on eBay not too long ago. How's that working out?

The thing is, Sears/K-mart and GM are examples of Old School Big Business. Big, bloated, over confident, more managers than innovators, management that is risk averse and is incapable of understanding or working in the current market conditions.

See you in the history books! Well.... bye!

Bing?

I've been trying, for the life of me, to figure out why on God's Green Earth the braintrust that is Microsoft picked "Bing" for their search engine name. I'll I can come up with is maybe they're big Friends fans?

The company worked with, and spent major coin, with Interbrand to come up with Bing, which is meant to evoke the "aha" moment of finding what you're looking for. Hey, why not "Aha" guys? Other candidates were said to include Sift and Kumo. Both sound like Native American words for Dookie.

"We looked a name that was short, easily recognizable, we could own it. Something that was easy to type into the search box," says Danielle Tiedt, general manager for online audience business group marketing at Microsoft. Wait, hang on. You have to type Bing into the Google search box? Danielle - really, I don't think you understand how this is supposed to work, do you?

Is 'Bing' catchier than Microsoft's previous search-engine name Windows Live? Maybe. I always imagined an oversized plush windows characters like a sand dial or a cursor lip-synch performing to toddlers... but that's me. (see photo illustration)

At Google's I/O event, meanwhile, co-founder Sergey Brin declined to comment directly on Bing, but noted that "we're pretty happy" with the name Google.

At least Wolfram Alpha has 'wolf' in its name. Oh, and you can ask Wolfram|Alpha if it is SkyNet...

Marvel Comics viral marketing win

Click on to embiggen - boil down is the first post is a "how to viral" for the folks at DC comics, the second post is a WTF?