• by Lindsey Fadner , August 15, 2002

Every week new ad campaigns and websites are launched, and it’s hard to keep up with them all. This week you’ll get a glimpse of how advertisers plan to commemorate the events of 9-11, learn about the campaign plans for major players in the auto industry, and find out what’s next for the beloved forest ranger icon, Smokey The Bear. Time to go Out to Launch!

To help distribute a pro-bono Sept. 11 memorial ad to the nation's newspapers, the Newspaper Association of America will make the ad available for download from its site. The ad, which simply features a vertical American flag with the two black stripes in the middle representing the Twin Towers and the words In Memoriam at the bottom, was created by Lowe, New York. Executive Creative Director Dean Hacohen and Executive Director of Media Services Alan Jurmain reached out to the NAA to help distribute the image to newspapers. The ad is also being run in the September issue of several magazines.

Another campaign to commemorate the anniversary of the September 11th attacks, launched by Pacific Coast Reprographics, is entitled The Freedom Way. PCR, located in Orange County, is inviting businesses throughout Southern California to participate in the campaign, which began with the hanging of the first banner on August 11, 2002. Their vision is to cover buildings across the Southland with the red, white and blue banners. The banners have a picture of the American flag with the Statue of Liberty in the foreground and the words 9/11/01 Never Forget in the upper right corner. Proceeds from each banner purchased will be donated to support local police and fire departments.

Gap launched a media campaign last Thursday emphasizing both the aspiration to appeal to young and old Americans and its commitment to ageless, basic apparel. The global ad campaign entitled For Every Generation will use television, periodicals, billboards, direct mail and the Internet, the goal being to lure back fans of its basic denim and khaki products and put an end to the more than two years of declining same-store sales it’s suffered. San Francisco-based Gap, the largest U.S. specialty apparel retailer, presented its highly anticipated fall line in stores last week.

T.J. Maxx Friday launches Show and Tell, its fifth national TV ad to break this year and the latest evolution in its You Should Go campaign per Mullen, Winston-Salem. The new spot depicts a "show and tell" session in a second-grade classroom. Young children share their treasures, including Suzy, who shows off her shirt and proclaims, "I got this with my mommy. It was only 12 bucks." The spot ends with graphics and a voiceover, "Cool brands. Very cool prices. T.J. Maxx. Back to School. You should go." The 30-second ad will run on network and cable stations through August.

Phillips-Van Heusen will launch print ads and in-store creative in September for its Izod sportswear and Bass footwear brands. Creative for Izod depicts snowy, action-oriented outdoor scenes for Izod Xtreme Function Golfwear, PerformX fleece outerwear and robes. Bass returns to advertising after a hiatus of several years. Images will run as spreads, with a product close-up on one side of the page and a lifestyle shot, photographed on location at Lake Tahoe, on the other. Ads with the tag Easy. American will run through the year’s end in fashion and lifestyle publications, including the men's and women's editions of The New York Times' "Fashions of the Times" supplement.

Foster Farms, the largest poultry producer in the Western United States, announced the launch of its latest advertising spots created specifically for the U.S. Hispanic market. The new spots build upon the success of the Foster Imposter campaign and include three new TV spots: Bounce, Car Wash and Doctor's Office. Bounce and Car Wash will also feature radio spot versions. The radio spots are new to the campaign, and it is the first time in the company's history that radio advertising will be used for the Hispanic market. The TV versions of Bounce and Car Wash, began airing this week in eight California Hispanic markets along with their radio counterparts airing in Los Angeles. The new spots, per Anita Santiago Advertising, continue the comical storyline of two out-of-state, junk-food eating chickens that try to masquerade as fresh Foster Farms chickens.

Saturn this week will break a pair of TV spots that focus on the brand's connection with its consumers, to be followed in September by a campaign featuring the redesigned 2003 L-Series midsize sedan and wagon, and the Saturn VUE compact SUV. The efforts are the first national campaigns developed for Saturn, a subsidiary of General Motors, by Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco. The 30- and 60-second brand spots show people going through the motions of driving but without the use of actual cars: A man walks backward down his driveway; a woman walks down a road with two young boys behind her and stops at a house to pick up a young girl; hundreds of people run down a highway; and a night scene where several people walk with flashlights. A voiceover then says, "When we design our cars, we don't see sheet metal. We see the people who may one day drive them." The spots will run on network and cable primetime and sports programming. Print and local marketing campaigns will support.

General Motors' 2003 H2 Hummer is the focus of a TV campaign that broke on national cable Aug. 12. The campaign, per Modernista!, Boston, features spots that will run on CNN, Travel Channel, ESPN, CNBC, BET, A&E and others through 2002. Glacier features two men off-roading to extreme locations accessible only to the sturdiest of vehicles. The tag: "If you can, maybe you will." A :30 -second spot carries the line, "Sport Utility? Define sport." "City" shows a woman driving through an urban landscape, obviously comfortable and confident. The copy reads: "Threaten men, in a whole new way."

Continuing its association with country music, Ford is partnering with singer/songwriter Toby Keith in a Ford truck advertising campaign. The ads feature an original song written by Keith that captures his love for Ford trucks and the hard-working nature of the vehicles. Keith sings, "I'd rather walk 10 miles, be down on my luck, than drive around the block in another kind of truck," a phrase his father, another Ford truck man, used to chant. The campaign will debut this fall and feature print, radio, television and Internet elements.

Website launches: Ruder Finn, Inc. and the Ad Council announced the launch of the new Smokeybear.com site on the anniversary of Smokey Bear's birth, August 9, 1944. The longest running campaign in U.S. history, Smokey Bear and his famous warning, "Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires," was introduced to Americans in 1944. The new site is the first web initiative taken by the Ad Council since the organization changed the campaign's creative strategy in 2001. Responding to the massive outbreak of wildfires in 2000, the campaign changed its focus from children to adults, and updated Smokey's slogan to "Only You Can Prevent Wildfires."

Avon, Conn.-based Adams & Knight Advertising and its interactive marketing arm, Transcendigital, have designed a new site for The Hartford Financial Services Group. The site aims to educate small business owners and prospects about buying insurance for their entrepreneurial ventures. The online Small Business Insurance Center explains the different types of coverage for small businesses, translates insurance jargon and helps entrepreneurs analyze specific coverage needs, minimize risk and develop a disaster recovery plan.

And finally: Student Sports Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Silverstar Holdings announced the launch of RecruitClearingHouse.com, a new website designed to aid student-athletes in landing athletic scholarships. The site, created in conjunction with Recruit Inc., connects student-athletes with college recruiters so they can land college scholarships and other opportunities to continue playing sports at the collegiate level. The new online service costs $99 a year and enables student-athletes to package comprehensive personal profiles in a format that provides useful and easy to analyze information for recruiters.

-- This newsletter is compiled weekly by MediaPost staff writer Lindsey Fadner. Past issues are archived at the MediaPost website. Your comments, questions and submissions are always welcome and appreciated.