• by September 1, 2004

BRAMAGED GOODS - When we can think, the thought often occurs to us that we might have brain damage. But until Tuesday evening when we received an e-mail alert from the marketing communications linguists at Starcom MediaVest Group, we never would have imagined that we also might be suffering from a bad case of "bramage."

Bramage, according to SMG's vernacular is a noun defined as: "The brand damage that is done by inappropriate (i.e., Ford Focus in 'American Idol'), poorly executed (i.e., AmEx in 'The Restaurant') or painfully obvious (i.e., Doritos in 'Survivor') brand integration deals." So, we're not alone. There are others out there who feel our product integration pain.

Still unsure what the proper usage of this term should be? SMG offers the following example: "How much bramage do you think Mercedes Benz suffered being Jeff Foxworthy's favorite car?"

Or, here's our take: "Bramage control, is what we hear Advertising Age has been attempting to do ever since two of its top reporters covering the topic left the magazine to inflict their own brand of bramage on the marketing world.

Now, thanks to SMG, we are no longer at a loss for words - well a word, anyway - to describe such situations. And from what we hear, we'll be hearing more from the agency's new marketing vocabulary over the next several days as it rolls out a "Trendy Terms" campaign designed to pique interest in the release of the agency's "Insider's Guide" to the new TV season, which includes a veritable lexicon of trendy terms coined by SMG entertainment expert Laura Caraccioli-Davis, author of the report.

And since those installments are being distributed via e-mail, we'd like to suggest yet another trendy term to the SMG team. We call it spamage.

JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT IT WAS SAFE TO GO BACK INTO PRIMETIME -- Not even a week has gone by since the Olympics concluded in Athens, and more importantly, on NBC and already we've gotten our first press release touting advertising in Super Bowl XXXIX. The preemptively public relations-minded team at AdSouth Partners says it has "reserved a fourth quarter slot" for Gamez-n-Flix on Fox's coverage of the Big Game. We're not sure what Gamez-n- Flix actually is, but we have a feeling we'll be hearing lots about them during the build-up to the Super Ad Bowl. Meanwhile, AdSouth Partners is spending more of its Super Bowl creds promoting its in-house brand via the media buy.

"Every agency aspires to someday produce a Super Bowl spot and display its company's creativity to the entire world," effuses John Acunto, CEO of the Boca Raton-based ad shop. "AdSouth Partners, as a fairly young agency, is honored to be able to achieve this goal and looks forward to the challenge."

If we were doling out Super Bowl rings, we'd toss one to Acunto and his team for sure.