I made up that second word, sorry.

Its not a big surprise to see YouTube and other video sites carrying political messages for the US election.

Here is the best so far, combining very well known advertising figures to support a candidate.  Very clever…

Google will begin to use it’s ad placement program Adsense in a new territory; In game Ads. The technology has been in development since 2007 and could launch at anytime.  It will work with console games (Xbox 360, PS3), web based and CD-ROM PC games and even mobile phone games.

The real question is, how will gamers take this new advertising from Google?  Personally, I think this is a great way to keep flash based games free for users and should also allow for video ads instead of the static text ads that are a staple of Google’s advertising repertoire. 

http://venturebeat.com/2008/07/30/google-testing-adsense-for-games-in-bid-to-shake-up-in-game-advertising/

Unfortunately, it’s out with the old and in with the new… Almost. CBC has revealed the top five songs contending to be the next “Hockey Night In Canada ” Theme. Viewers will vote for their favorite this Saturday.

I’m sure there is SOME people out there who might consider this vote to be more important than the general election ! (which is on October 14th btw)

It’s a tough act to follow!! What new HNIC song would you vote for??

Have a listen!:

http://anthemchallenge.cbc.ca/

While your there, you can read up on the creator of the song and more importantly - VOTE!

  At 9 PM tonight, Canadians will have a choice to make. The Canadian debate will be airing on CTV and the American Vice Presidential debate will be airing on CNN live at the exact same time! Get ready to debate the debate folks!

In this corner, on CTV, we have Canadian Politics! With a tag team   consisting of The Francophone, the Current Prime Minister, The NDP Guy, The OTHER Francophone, and the Woman Who Cares about the Environment! They will face off about everything from the economy to carbon tax to why the heck nobody wants to help Toronto out ever.

They will be going up against American Politics on CNN featuring Sarah “I Can See Russia From My House” Palin and Joe “Talks Before He Thinks” Biden! They will be discussing the economy, moose hunting, and the relationship between lipstick, pigs, and pit bulls.

What will Canadians do? On one hand, we should watch our own debates. On the other hand, it is likely that one or both of the Americans will say something really stupid, and who wants to miss that? We will have to wait for the ratings to find out what Canada decides. What will you be doing on Debate Night in Canada?

    Every child should live free from violence and abuse.

Last year, more than 27,000 children received services from Ontario’s Children Aid Societies for protection from suspected child abuse and neglect. Child abuse remains a concern in Ontario because too many children suffer from physical, emotional and sexual abuse and lack of proper care. Too many families are coping with stressful life situations and challenges affecting their ability to provide a safe, secure home for their children.

That is why The Ontario Association of Children’s Aid Societies, are launching a public education campaign on
October 1st: Child Abuse Prevention Month in Ontario. 

During the October campaign, the public is reminded that kids shouldn’t have to live with abuse because everyone has a responsibility to act when they see or hear that a child is suffering from abuse or neglect.

To learn more about child abuse and neglect, how to spot the subtle signs, and about what happens when you call your local CAS, visit: www.useyourvoice.ca

Read more on how you can help…

Watch out for the Child Abuse Prevention Campaign across a variety of touch-points throughout the Province, including Transit, Digital Outdoor, Cinema, Online, Television CC and Radio.

‘Do Not Disturb’ checks out?

By Atreyee from tvguide.sympatico.msn.ca

2008-09-26 http"//

Looks like fall’s first casualty is ‘Do Not Disturb’ …

Although nothing official has been announced, critics are pretty sure that Do Not Disturb has been given the axe after a three-episode trial, thanks to an article in Entertainment Weekly.

The article claims Fox has canceled the not-so-funny Niecy Nash and Jerry O’Connell comedy after it failed to perform.

Just days ago producers were pleading with critics to give their show another chance, apologizing for the bad content.

Although the third episode was probably the strongest, there have been problems with the show from the beginning. The original pilot was saved for a later date and ratings have gone from bad to worse; not once did it hit the five million mark in the States, and it failed to even crack the Top 30 here in Canada.

Fox has replaced the show next week with an additional episode of the Brad Garrett sitcom ‘Til Death, which doesn’t fare much better, but is more established. The network is claiming Do Not Disturb is pre-empted next week, but won’t give a future beyond that.

The cast and crew shouldn’t feel bad. Fox only gave last season’s mid-season replacement Unhitched six episodes, and that was way funnier.

I don’t know if that’s saying much.

Until now, you thought there was nothing worse than arriving on a Monday to a myriad of emails and phone calls that start with “Our ad didn’t run…”, or “they ran the wrong ad…”, or “they ran our ad right beside the competitor…”.  So here is something worse, the email from the client telling you what they just saw on someone’s blog, an ad in the wrong environment:

Dear Bell,

What were you thinking?!

Article I found on thestar.com

Billboards with reference to Nazi gas chamber went up during celebration of Jewish New Year

Debra Black
Staff Reporter

As Toronto’s Jewish community celebrated the Jewish New Year, a subway ad campaign for Solo Mobile, which contained a reference to a Nazi death camp, was pulled down Thursday by horrified officials at Bell Canada.

The billboard ads, which appeared in six subways stops in Toronto and in Vancouver and on a number of buses in Vancouver, featured a young Japanese girl dressed in an urban punk style, sporting a number of buttons and accessories.

One of the buttons she was wearing read: "Belsen was a Gas" – referring to the title of a controversial song by the Sex Pistols about Bergen-Belsen, a Second World War concentration camp.

The ads were pulled down almost immediately, said Mark Langton, a spokesperson for Bell Canada, which owns Solo Mobile, a discount brand wireless service, through Bell Mobility.

"It’s a bad ad on any day, perhaps particularly so this week," he said yesterday, referring to the fact that Jews across the city and the world celebrated Rosh Hashanah, or the Jewish New Year, from Wednesday evening till sundown yesterday.

"It was unintended. The reality is we would never knowingly run an ad with an offensive slogan like that."

Bell and its team takes full responsibility for the ad, said Langton, apologizing to "anybody who was offended, distressed or troubled by it, because we were too."

Complaints about the ads flowed into various media outlets, which contacted Bell Canada Thursday morning.

According to Langton, no one directly called Bell’s customer service team to complain.

The ads were a serious mistake, he said.

The wording on the button was not clearly visible in the small ad proofs the team at Solo Mobile and Bell saw when approving the ad, Langton explained.

The button and the wording was virtually impossible to read.

But when the ad was blown up to full size – a minimum of four metres by two metres – and plastered on the billboard, the words on the button were very clear.

Some of the ads on buses in Vancouver were smaller and the offending button was cropped out of the picture.

Bell Canada has put measures into place to prevent such a thing from happening again, Langton said.

"Everyone involved has had intense discussions about it and how it will never be repeated, what errors happened, what functional glitches allowed it to happen.

"New processes are in place to avoid a situation like this from happening again."

The offensive ad will be replaced with another, either featuring a London police officer in front of the British Parliament or a woman in Dutch clothing in front of a windmill.

The ads are supposed to depict people from around the world envious of Canadians who can get cheap Solo Mobile phones.

Horrified TTC officials also moved heaven and Earth to get the ads down as quickly as possible, spokesperson Marilyn Bolton said yesterday.

They, too, had only seen a small version of the ad and had not seen the wording on the button.

Bolton said she believes the TTC has good practices in place to screen offensive ads, but the transit firm as well as CBS – the media company that handles transit advertising space – will review them to make sure this kind of thing doesn’t happen again.

Maybe it’s as simple as making sure someone reviews the full-size billboard rather than a proof, Bolton said.

"If we’d seen the offensive words we’d have deep-sixed it really fast."

I recently saw a presentation that suggested the average person consumes 46 hours worth of media in one day.  Considering we sleep for about 8 (me only about 3), that is about 2 3/4 hours of media consumption for every hour awake.

As I pondered this, I saw some ads on yahoo, while listening to the radio, then looked over to Dundas square and saw a bunch of outdoor ads…and as i look around more closely, I see the back cover of a magazine, a banner on a newspaper, a broadcast calendar from CTV, and a mug from the Hockey News.  In that 2 minutes, I may have met my quota and its time for a nap.

But, coming out of the US is a study that says we don’t multitask as much as you might think.  According to AdAge:

Attention level varies
Specifically, 55% of newspaper reading in an average day is exclusive, as is 53.8% of internet usage, 53.6% of magazine reading and 49.4% of TV viewing. Radio, as could be expected, yielded only a 28.3% exclusivity rating.

TV viewers distracted
The MediaDay results also suggested that when more than one medium is used simultaneously in the home, it is typically TV and another medium: 19% of at-home magazine reading is done while watching TV; 17.4% of internet usage is done while watching TV; and 15.3% of at-home newspaper reading is done while watching TV.

In reality, we do all that stuff, but what really sinks in?  I would like to ask that the next Neuroplanning model consider multi-media.  FYI - I don’t remember a single ad from all of the 8 hours of media I was exposed to in the last 15 minutes…

I’m sure we have all heard that KITT is MIA after a man jumped in the infamous car and drove it away, while it was on the last day of it’s celebrity tour. The good news in all this?

Keep your eyes peeled for KITT and you could an amazing prize thanks to E!’s clever and engaging promotion…

E!, Canada’s destination for Everything Entertainment, launches its fall marketing campaign this week and focuses on the highly anticipated premiere of 80’s icon Knight Rider.

To accelerate the steadily building buzz around the premiere of the Knight Rider series, last week E! Everything Entertainment brought the star of the show, the new and improved KITT, to a number of high profile events and heavy traffic locations in Toronto including the Virgin Music Festival, where fans were able to have their picture taken with the legendary car.

Last Friday, the final day of KITT’s celebrity tour, crowds of Knight Rider enthusiasts were left stunned when a man ran out of the crowd, dove into KITT and screeched off. Intense speculation spread across news outlets and viral communities promoted by links to YouTube with audience cell phone footage of the ‘KITTnapping” action.   And now E! is looking for help to find KITT.

“KITTNAPPING” LAUNCHES CONTEST TO WIN MUSTANG GT COUPE OR MIO KNIGHT RIDER GPS!!!!

 
Toronto’s “KITTnapping” officially launched a unique viewer engagement promotion whereby fans have a chance to win a brand new Mustang GT Coupe or a number of limited edition Mio Knight Rider GPS units simply by identifying where KITT’s been spotted. 
E! is also looking to the public to post their sightings of KITT at eonline.com and watch E! for updated dialy KITT sightings.  Viewers will be encouraged to enter their sightings once daily at eonline.com and during the Wednesday, September 24th premiere episode of Knight Rider, when one lucky fan will walk away with a brand new car!