• by Amy Corr , Staff Writer @MediaPostOTL, June 9, 2004

Hotwire.com is still cheap. Best Buy makes digital look easy. Gillette teams up with NASCAR. Welcome to highlights of ad campaigns launched recently.

To help launch its Gillette M3Power shaving system, The Gillette Company is turning to the Coca-Cola 600 and bowing two TV spots starring the Gillette Young Guns. The Gillette Young Guns are six of NASCAR's top young drivers - Kurt Busch, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Kevin Harvick, Jimmie Johnson, Matt Kenseth, and Ryan Newman. The 30-second spots, part of a multifaceted advertising campaign to support the M3Power shaving system for men, first aired during the FOX telecast of the Coca-Cola 600 on Sunday, May 30, and will run exclusively during NASCAR programming on TNT, NBC, and FOX for the remainder of the 2004 race season. Created by BBDO New York, the two commercials use the playful and competitive nature of these six drivers to illustrate the M3Power's unique micro-power technology. The technology utilizes a battery-powered pulsating handle to deliver gentle micro-pulses that stimulate hair up and away from the skin, providing a close shave with less irritation.

This week, Hotwire.com launched three TV spots (one 30-second and two 15-second spots) as part of the company's national cable buy. The 30-second spot called "Hotel Anthem" features vacation snippets focusing on the happiness consumers experience when they find a great hotel rate on Hotwire as well as similar themes previously seen in other "Cheap" commercials. The two 15-second spots called "Vegas" and "Two Rooms" each tell a story that follows travelers on their trips. "Vegas" follows three guys on a weekend trip, capturing the exuberance of a Hotwire-enabled visit to Las Vegas. "Two Rooms" shows a family who saved so much on Hotwire that they could afford to get a second room for their kids. McCann Erickson San Francisco created the ads.

Best Buy's latest campaign aims to help consumers who are overwhelmed by the options in digital cameras and don't want to make the wrong move. The TV spot is entitled "Big Dreams," and online and newspaper ads are also included in the mix. The national campaign is running in May and June (in time for Mother's Day, Father's Day, graduations, weddings, family vacations, etc.), during a time where people want to preserve these moments and memories. Best Buy Advertising created the TV spots and Digitas created the online ads.

Adelphia Media Services (AMS) has launched a business-to-business marketing campaign designed to challenge the traditional approach to planning and buying cable TV advertising. The campaign, "It's All TV to the Viewer," encourages targeted agency planners and buyers to consider cable TV as part of the TV mix. The yearlong campaign began with a targeted direct mail effort featuring cable TV viewership facts and figures as well as press clippings touting cable TV's "coming of age." The piece also included twenty-five dollars in "lunch money" as well as a sweepstakes entry for those who requested a meeting with an AMS representative.

DYMO, a producer of labelmakers for home, business and industry, has launched a national TV, print and Internet campaign. The campaign focuses on the DYMO LabelWriter label printer - and how it is designed to specifically appeal to Small Office/Home Office (SOHO) and small business consumers. The campaign was developed by North Castle Partners, Stamford, CT, and focuses on communicating the everyday problems of sheet label printing. The 30-second light-hearted spot depicts two office workers, one using a LabelWriter and the other using a laser printer and sheet labels. TV ads are running on ESPN, Fox News, CNBC, and Headline News, while print ads can be seen in Business Week, Fortune, Inc., and Fast Company. Online ads will be featured on sites that attract small business customers such as Business Week, AOL Small Business, and MSN.

Morsekode, a Minneapolis-based firm, has created print campaigns for Moog Music Inc. Moog is known in the music industry for its analog synthesizers. The first campaign was for the 50th anniversary edition Mini-Moog Voyager, an all-analog performance synthesizer. The ads will run in Electronic Musician and Remix Magazine. Another print ad touted Moog's PianoBar, a technology that uses infrared sensor technology to transform your piano into a versatile instrument. Targeting the church market, the ads will run in Worship Leader, Christian Sound and Song, The Church Music Report and Worship Magazine.

The Advertising Council and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services launched a PSA campaign to inspire Americans to pursue healthier lifestyles to prevent obesity and its resulting health risks. Created pro bono by McCann-Erickson New York, the campaign coincides with publication of a study by HHS' Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association. Studies show people who are overweight or obese have a greater chance of developing high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, high cholesterol, and certain cancers. The PSAs provide tongue-in-cheek examples of the power of small steps for long-term, sustained weight control, and good health. The ads show typical Americans finding love handles, double chins, and other unwanted body parts in public places, apparently "lost" as their neighbors played with their kids, got active at the beach or walked to the office.

In website launches this week:

Rent-Direct.com, a New York marketplace for no-broker-fee apartments, launched an updated version of its website. Rent-Direct.com launched its site to accommodate an expected increase in the number of renters looking to avoid costly broker fees. The new streamlined website is packed with resources that make finding an apartment in New York City faster, easier, and more economical. The newest addition to the website is "virtual exclusive" apartment listings. The "virtual exclusive" logo on a listing helps renters to easily identify apartments that can only be found on Rent-Direct.com and not on any other no-broker-fee website. This gives renters who use Rent-Direct.com an added advantage and exclusive access to more apartments than ever before.

A satirical online newspaper has launched. The Humor Gazette was launched by John Breneman, who uses humor to spotlight the absurd realities of politics, culture, the media and society at large. The site's motto is, "All the news that's fit to abuse, desecrate, adulterate, skew, twist, embellish, warp, humorize, fictionalize, satirize ... and print." The site is divided into seven categories: money, politics, health/science, terror, sports, entertainment, and movies.