Out to Launch
Wednesday, March 31, 2004
Corbis takes the saying "An apple a day..." very seriously. Animal Planet launches a spring/summer campaign. Hotwire.com is still cheap. Welcome to highlights of ad campaigns launched recently.
  • Corbis takes the saying "An apple a day..." very seriously. Animal Planet launches a spring/summer campaign. Hotwire.com is still cheap. Welcome to highlights of ad campaigns launched recently.

    Animal Planet is launching its spring and summer campaign on April 1. The campaign uses a new tagline - "Living Breathing Entertainment" - and showcases the network's ability to tap into viewers' fascination with animals. Three new advertisements, entitled "Drama," "Romance" and "Passion," were created by New York creative director Mark D'Arcy and Frank Todaro of Moxie Pictures. "Drama" conveys the inherent risks and tribulations associated with being a dog trying to navigate through the world; "Romance" uses the backdrop of a "date" to reflect on the lives of two raccoons; and "Passion," starring Steve Irwin, The Crocodile Hunter, examines the curiosity humans have for animals and vice versa. Print ads will run in People, Sports Illustrated, Entertainment Weekly, ESPN The Magazine, Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair, as well on bus shelters, and billboards in New York and Los Angeles. In its outdoor campaign, Animal Planet will use 3-D elements showing three vultures watching a lioness hunting a zebra; a snake that is targeting the billboard itself for lunch by swallowing it whole; and the rear end of a zebra with its tail wagging back and forth.

    Discount travel site Hotwire.com's latest TV campaign shows the company is still cheap. And it's not ashamed to tell the world about the discounts the site offers. "Real People. Real Travel. Real Cheap," shows everyday people and travel experiences representing the company's core audience: anyone whose first priority is saving money on travel. "Cheap Commercial," is the first of a series of spots following real people on trips. The spot launched this week on CNNfn, Comedy Central, ESPN, FOX Sports, TBS, TNT, USA, VH-1, and the Weather Channel, as well as spot buys in major markets. With simple snapshots and snippets of video captured with a cheap camera and set to garage band music, the campaign reveals true-life travel on the cheap. McCann Erickson San Francisco created the campaign.

    Corbis, the image licensing agency, is launching an "Apple-a-Day" promotion from April 1 through April 30 in the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Japan, and Hong Kong. Each weekday in April, Corbis will give away an Apple G5 & a 23" monitor. To be eligible to win, participants must first register on the Corbis website. Once registered, users need only visit the site before noon to enter themselves in that day's contest. To support the contest, Corbis will place double-page ads in major creative trade publications, launch an email campaign to Corbis clients; have sidewalk art in front of more than 1,800 client offices worldwide, and hand-deliver baskets of Corbis-branded apples and other goodies to key clients. Bondo & Remer created the campaign.

    Gardner Nelson & Partners has created Cablevision Systems' latest print and TV campaign for its iO: Interactive Optimum digital cable television service. The first execution, launched earlier in the month, features a fictional politician named Beekins, who conducts a filibuster by listing all of the channels available with iO Digital Cable Service. Upcoming ads will focus on specific benefits of iO, such as on-demand viewing and an array of high-definition programming available at no additional charge.

    Eyeblaster, a rich media advertising delivery and management company, has developed a program with Yahoo! to offer more powerful, rich media banner advertising without additional serving fees. All of Yahoo!'s banner inventory will now support 100K of advertising content. In conjunction with this partnership, Eyeblaster kicked off a campaign of its own, touting this relationship and promoting the Polite Banner. The ads were created in-house, and are running in ClickZ, iMedia, IAB and AdAge.com. The ad shows a toy horn and a saxophone, and by rolling over each horn, along with hearing music, a different message is shown, including, "Your campaign shouldn't fall flat because of small file sizes."

    Pentax USA debuted a new tagline in its latest campaign for the company's digital cameras. The new tagline, "The Official Digital Camera of the Internet," debuted last month in USA TODAY, to coincide with the opening day of the 2004 Photo Marketing Association International Convention & Trade Show in Las Vegas. Della Femina Rothschild Jeary and Partners, New York, created the tagline and campaign. The campaign will also run in The New York Times and in photography enthusiast and retail magazines.

    The March 2004 issue of Guideposts magazine, featuring a cover story by financial adviser Suze Orman, is the first issue of the magazine to be available on newsstands. To celebrate, the magazine launched a TV campaign entitled, "$5000 Guideposts Grocery Give-A-Way" contest. The sweepstakes offers readers the chance to win supermarket gift card prizes nationwide. The TV campaign runs nationally on ABC Family, TV Land, Country Music Television, Hallmark, and the Weather Channel. h2o Associates, New York, created the campaign.

    In website launches this week:

    Tommy Hilfiger has launched an interactive fashion tool for its tommy.com website. Organic produced "mix & match," an interactive wardrobe builder featuring exclusive Tommy Jeans products. Resembling a flipbook, the interactive tool offers visitors the chance to match a variety of tops and bottoms from the Tommy Jeans collection. Tommy.com visitors can build a variety of Tommy Jeans outfits using the wardrobe helper.

    i-FRONTIER has created a website for the Hepatitis C Support Project. The site was developed to provide an easy to access resource for people who are searching for information on the hepatitis C virus (HCV). The site offers news, clinical research, education, conference reports, information about clinical trials (available by geographic location) and a comprehensive list of resources for information and support. The site also offers content and resources in Spanish.