It’s Cuil (I think pronounced Cool), a new search engine built by some of Google’s former brain-trust and lots of funding.

Its simple, easy to use and follow, seems to have a better grasp for what you are looking for, and is currently completely underutilized.

It will:

Search 121,617,892,992 web pages!

which is 3x as many as Google.  Or, perhaps 3x more irrelevant?

To find out more about them, click here.

For fun, I Cuiled myself, “Brian Wylie PHD” and it froze solid.  Better get those kinks worked out…

The station rankings are pretty consistent to the previous survey, however a few stations increased their audience tuning with others losing audience.

CHUMFM remains number 1 however with the loss of Rick on the morning show ( and soon to be, Roger), and the adjusted play list, it will be interesting to see where the station nets out in the next book.  The morning show audience has declined over the past 2 books, with CKFMFM and CHFIFM increasing their tuning in the breakfast drive period.  CHUMFM seems to be going after the younger demo of Women 18-34, at the expense of CFNYFM, CIDCFM and CFXJFM.

CJAQFM was the winner this book moving up from # 11 rank to #7 rank.  The revised JACK format is now starting to draw listeners.

CFNYFM took a big hit to the core demo of 18-34, however, still retains the top morning show for the demo. 

It’s not surprising these days to see big brand name sponsors supporting many Hollywood parties but Lindsay Lohan has just raised the bar.

The young star recently celebrated her 22nd birthday and with the help of a promotions agency, opened up various components of the party for branding and sponsorship. This obviously isn’t the first time that a star has endorsed products, but this event offered logos on the invite, product availability on site, and images of Lindsay posing with the product… not exactly subtle.

If purchasing all media space surrounding a hollywood star’s birthday is in line with your brand image, then it might be a worthwhile investment.

I am however undecided on who would want their brand at Lindsay’s party…

Check out the website for Lindsay’s sponsorship opportunities at:   http://www.dizmajiz.com/clients/tr/18.html

In the spirit of sharing some stunning creative for one of our clients (and to give myself a kick-start into our blogging world here!), please have a look at this British television ad for Honda/Acura. For those of you who haven’t yet seen it, prepare to be dazzled! The description accompanying this video reads as follows:

If you thought that the people who set up a room full of dominoes to have them knocked over later was amazing, you haven’t seen anything yet. There are no computer graphics or digital tricks in these images. Everything that you see happened in real time exactly as you see it. The recording required 606 takes and in the first 605 takes there always was something, usually of minor importance, that didn’t work.

It was necessary for the recording team to install the set-up time after time and it took several weeks working day and night to achieve this effect. The recording cost 6 million dollars and it took 3 months to finish, including the engineering design of the sequence. The duration of the video is only 2 minutes, but every time that Honda shows the commercial on British television, they make enough money to support any of us for the rest of our lives.

However, this commercial has turned out to be the most displayed in the history of the Internet. Honda execs think that it will pay for itself simply because of the free showings (as Honda is not paying one cent for you to see it). When Honda senior execs viewed it, they immediately approved it without hesitation-including costs.

There are only six Honda Accords built by hand in the whole world, and to the horror of Honda engineers, the recording team disassembled two of them for the recording. Everything you see in the sequence (besides the walls, floor, ramp and untouched Honda Accord) is part of those two automobiles.

The voice is that of Garrison Keiller.

The commercial was so well received by Honda execs when they saw it, that their first comment was how amazing the computer graphics were. They almost fell out of their chairs when told that the recording was real without any graphics manipulation.

By the way, about the wind shield wipers in the new Honda Accords, they are sensitive to water and designed to start working as soon as they get wet.

Enjoy!!

I know what you’re thinking. ‘Gossip Girl’? Really? Well, whether or not you’re a fan of the show, ‘Gossip Girl’ might just be at the forefront of the changing TV model – a model involving everything but a television.

‘Gossip Girl’ launched in September 2007 with mediocre ratings compared to those of teen dramas past. New episodes averaged just 526,000 viewers in Canada during the fall of 2007, and 2.5 million viewers in the U.S.

What was different then about ‘Gossip Girl’ - were people not as interested? It turns out they were indeed watching, just not as much on TV. ‘Gossip Girl’ was the number one streamed show on CTV.ca during the fall of 2007 and quickly rose to the top of iTunes’ most downloaded list. The show was tapping into a younger, tech savvy audience who didn’t need to make sure they were planted in front of the television at a certain hour – they were in control of when and where they watched the show.

In this month’s issue of New York Magazine, they speak about ‘Gossip Girl’ as changing the way in which we watch television. They describe the show as one, “…that may foretell a future of multiplatform entertainment whose success is determined not by traditional ratings but by what Schwartz and co–executive producer Stephanie Savage call “cultural permeation”.

Fans of the show can posts blogs online and speculate about characters and storylines. They can find out where to purchase the clothing or accessories seen in the show. There is even a ‘Gossip Girl’ component in Second Life. The show lives online and so do its viewers.

‘Gossip Girl’ is by no means the first TV program to experience online success. What separates this show from others, however, is its younger audience who already have the tools necessary to easily interact in an online environment. ‘Gossip Girl’ can capitalize on their viewers’ “tech knowledge”, enabling the program and the brand to expand quicker online than a show aimed at an older generation. 

‘Gossip Girl’ has started a conversation with its audience and the viewer doesn’t even need to turn on the television. The challenge to advertisers now is that the viewer is getting more out of this conversation than they did before and may refuse to settle for anything less. If viewers continue to interact with TV programming in this way, does the future of the TV model even include the TV?

We recently pitched the business of a client who has very strong values when it comes to health and the environment.  We felt we needed to cater as much of the media plan with sustainable media as possible and thus was born “The Living Board”.

Don’t get the wrong idea - the board is really not alive, it is not organic in anyway.  The concept is simply that the material is a recyclable vinyl and then transformed into shopping bags and given out to consumers when the campaign is over.  It is also bio-degradable for the time down the road when the shopping bag is no longer needed.

Great idea Michelle and Jonathan.  No word yet on if we won the assignment, stay tuned.

I just stumbled across this on Trendhunter, which follows the above to a degree - recycled movie posters.  And no, I don’t nor do I ever plan to own one…

These pretty bags will delight many environmentally conscious women and if they happen to be film buffs, they will be doubly delighted. The bags are made of recycled movie billboards. Films such as Mission Impossible, The Bourne Ultimatum, Pride and Prejudice and a whole lot more, are featured on these unlikely canvases.

Outfitted with an inside zippered pouch and an elastic-over-metal closure, the Billboard Bags are one of a kind according to Ecoist. They sell for $48.00 and if you’re curious about which movies are represented in the gallery, here’s the breakdown:

1. Thunderbird
2. Pride and Prejudice
3. Bourne Ultimatum
4. Superbad
5. Mission Impossible

How will you be reducing the carbon footprint of your next marketing campaign?

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