The Marines launch a new campaign. Ask Jeeves' Butler goes offline. Subaru picks a new mate. Those are just a few of the campaigns launched this week. Read on for more details.

Starting on a serious note, the Marines launched a new ad campaign last Thursday, the first full day of war. A portion of the ad will contain actual war footage from Afghanistan. The ad is called "For Country" and is a documentary style ad designed by J. Walter Thompson of Atlanta. The 30- and 60-second spots show Marines ready to go into battle. Marines are shown in boot camp, getting ready for a beach assault, and flying helicopters and fighter jets. The scenes contain the titles, "For Honor," "For Courage," and "For Country." The commercials end with their tagline "The Few. The Proud." The ads first aired on CBS during the NCAA college basketball tournament.

Bausch & Lomb is launching a national TV advertising campaign marking a new creative direction and marketing strategy for the eye health company. The campaign spots, which began airing on March 17, contain the Tagline − "Perfecting Vision. Enhancing Life." Bausch & Lomb spent $20 million on the campaign and aside from reaching consumers hopes to foster relationships between eye doctors and their patients. The spots were developed by Gotham and promote two of B & L's products, Ocuvite PreserVision, and ReNu MultiPlus Multi-Purpose Solution. The first spot entitled, "Mother - Daughter," shows a mother and daughter discussing the devastation they felt when learning the news of the mother's increasing loss of vision. Through the use of Ocuvite PreserVision, the mother is offered hope to slow down her vision loss. The second spot, "Sisters," shows an older sister teaching her younger sibling the importance of proper contact lens care and by rinsing and disinfecting her contact lenses with ReNu MultiPlus Multi-Purpose Solution. Two other spots are scheduled to roll out later this year.

The Butler is back... Ask Jeeves kicked off an OOH campaign this week in San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles. The in-house campaign will help raise awareness of the engine and the engine's ease of use and relevant results. All three campaigns will run from March 24-April 24. The Los Angeles campaign will appear on side bus panels and read "The Leading Man of Search", and phone kiosks will read "Search Star." The San Francisco campaign on bus panels reads "Savvy Searcher" and transit shelters signs read "The First Place You Search Will Be The Last Place You Look." Lastly, the New York campaign will run on both bus panels and kiosks with the tagline "Search That Never Sleeps."

Yahoo! and its music destination, LAUNCH, signed an exclusive deal with Cingular Wireless to promote their new pay as you go service, KiC (Keep In Contact). The LAUNCH Concert Series (LCS) event-driven program is being held in South Padre Island, Texas, and is targeting teens and young-adults on Spring Break. The promotion includes a live concert by Sean Paul, a sweepstakes with winners flown down to South Padre for the concert, and wrapped electric cars featuring LAUNCH and Cingular KiC branding - and each car is equipped with Cingular KiC prepaid phones for people/concert goers to make free calls to friends and family back home. House ads will appear across the Yahoo! Network, including a Cingular KiC-wrapped front page of LAUNCH and throughout every music video streamed for a week.

Jose Cuervo has launched a print advertising campaign based on Jose Cuervo Especial's "Vive Cuervo" platform. Created by Arnell Group, the new ads make exaggerated promises that cannot be delivered, and then immediately discounts them with satirical disclaimers. The first ad called, "Electric," offers a twist on the subliminal message that many alcoholic beverages play into: that their product will somehow make you a "turn-on" to the opposite sex. Cuervo delivers the same promise in a very literal way - the woman is "electrified" by the guy's energy. In the second spot, entitled "Irresistible," even the angels can't resist the charms of the devil. Cuervo concedes that the models typically used in advertising are genetically predisposed to being beautiful and are irresistible. The ads will run in a variety of national and regional publications, including Details, GQ, Paper, Playboy, Rolling Stone, Sports Illustrated, Cosmopolitan, Chicago Scene and Improper Bostonian. As part of an OOH campaign in New York, Cuervo will use water towers in a playful way, to capture those who have a thirst for life. The water towers will read: "Water is Boring. Vive Cuervo."

G'day...Lance? Say goodbye to Paul Hogan and hello to Lance Armstrong as the new spokesman for Subaru. Temerlin McClain designed the ads. The campaign entitled "Subaru: Driven By What's Inside," will break in mid-April and will consist of TV commercials, national newspaper and print ads, and billboards. Armstrong will be shown on various bikes and in various Subaru vehicles, including the Subaru Baja, pictured here.

Speaking of cars, Mitsubishi Motors North America, Inc. (MMNA) launched a national advertising campaign for their 2004 Mitsubishi Endeavor SUV. The theme of the ad is: "Remember When Driving an SUV Actually Made You Look Different?" Two 15-second teaser TV commercials called "Remember" and "Stealth" began on Monday, while two additional 30-second commercials entitled "First Floor" and "Second Floor" debut on March 27. The campaign was created by Deutsch LA and features the song "Horn Dog," by Scandinavian music group Overseer. Mitsubishi has also launched a print campaign that begins running in national newspapers and magazines. The ads give a brief look inside the vehicle's interior, while focusing on the outside world's view of Endeavor's style. Starting inside a building, viewers move from room to room, carefully observing Endeavor driving from location to location without physical barriers, between interior walls and upward from beneath the ground. The car grabs the attention of every person it passes on the street, and the spot ends with the rhetorical question, "Are you in?"

Marshall Advertising and Design has created a new campaign for Yamaha Motor Corporations' national snowmobile division. The ads, for Yamaha's 2004 RX Warrior four-stroke, boast the machines as being literally "Light Years Ahead of Everything Else." The national campaign uses hard-riding visuals to capture both the speed and the essence of the sled. The campaign will consist of print, collateral, and online advertising with print ads appearing in Snowmobile, American Snowmobiler, SnoWest, and Snow Goer magazines.

Phoenix Editorial has designed a four-spot branding campaign for discount retailer Mervyn's. The four 30-second spots entitled Bumper Drag, Claw Hands, Spruce Up, and Growth Spurt depict humorous scenarios, which show shoppers taking full advantage of the store's savings. In Bumper Drag, shoppers buy more than they can haul. As one car pulls into the Mervyn's parking lot, another exits, with its bumper weighed down by about fifty bags of purchases. Women are seen filling their station wagons to the brim, with the spot closing with, "You get more for your money." In Claw Hands, the scene opens with classical music in a Mervyn's parking lot, where dozens of women perform a strange dance as they carry their bags to their cars. When the women let go of their bags, their hands are permanent claws - an evolutionary development from shopping at Mervyn's. All four spots end with the tagline, "Big brands, small prices."

Wirestone has designed an ad campaign for Delicato Family Vineyards The theme of the national campaign is "Delicato: The Perfect Wine for Real Life." The campaign illustrates how dining with wine should be a part of everyone's daily life and not just on special occasions. Additionally, Delicato has teamed up with Cooking Light magazine and Tyson Foods to introduce a Spring / Summer promotion which centers around the concept of home entertaining by starting your own "Home Supper Club." The promotion will be kicked off with a national advertising campaign and sweepstakes offer with Cooking Light magazine. Advertising will run in the April, May and June issues and the Sweepstakes includes a trip to San Francisco to take part in one of Cooking Light's Supper Club events. Also included in the marketing mix are regional radio spots focusing on Delicato's award winning Shiraz, recently named "Best Shiraz in California" for the second year in a row at the California State Fair.

DuPont kicked off a $40 million campaign for its Lycra brand this week. TV spots, under the slogan Lycra "Has It" are due this fall. The campaign was designed by McCann Erickson, New York. Lycra's b2b ads feature models dressed as bad imitators like a black male Marilyn Monroe, an Asian Elvis impersonator, and a Rambo-like character holding a water gun. The b2c campaign launched in Marie Claire magazine and the May issues of Glamour and Lucky magazines.