Olympic ads. Magazine Publishers of America launches the latest phase of its marketing campaign. Let's launch!

Virgin Mobile USA launched "Virgin Mobile Nights & Weekends Listen Line"yesterday, a promotion that enables teenagers to get Unlimited Night & Weekend calls to three phone numbers they choose for 70 cents a day. Virgin Mobile's "Inner Circle" offers customers who sign up by April 30 unlimited night & weekend calls to the three phone numbers that they elect to have within their Inner Circle. The number can be from a mobile phone or landline. The campaign consists of TV spots, a toll-free Listen Line, online ads, a presence on MySpace.com, and a billboard in Times Square. Eight 30-second spots and eight 15-second TV spots were created, and running on MTV, Fuse and VH-1. The Listen Line, 888-876-LISTEN, will be live on nights and weekends during February and March (I received an amusing message when I called today: "Is it a night? Is it a weekend? No? Then that's why you're getting this message.") and features a range of funny content including  "Hard Core Nursery Rhymes." The TV ads highlight the Listen Line. In "Killer Comebacks," a nerd is being picked on by a bully. His killer comeback involves a shovel, not words. "Foreign Language" shows a teenager getting ready to go out and her goldfish willing her to feed it. No such luck for the poor pet. Mother New York created the campaign, its first as Virgin's agency of record. Starlink handled media buying and Mediahead handled media planning.

To support the Friday release of "Date Movie," Twentieth Century Fox is encouraging MySpace users to "Pimp Your Profile." Actor Tony Cox, who portrays Lil' Hitch in the movie, takes users through all the steps to improve their profile. Lil' Hitch said my profile was as bland as a Clay Aiken Christmas CD. Not for long. Ads promoting the campaign are running on sites such as Movietickets.com and Gawker.com. Deep Focus created the campaign. Organic handled the media buying.

The consumer magazine industry will launch a new print and online campaign on Feb. 27, the next phase of the industry's three-year marketing initiative to promote the value of magazines to advertisers. Print is not dead! Print creative features jagged portions of a full-page ad torn from a magazine. Using actual brands, such as Infiniti and Altoids in the debut launch, copy states that readers are so engaged with magazine ads that it leads them to tear the page out and act on it. The tagline for the campaign is "Magazines: Ideas that live beyond the page." I'm still partial to the futuristic mockup magazine ads featured in MPA's previous campaign. Check out the mini-site that also launched. Aside from Infiniti and Altoids, look for American Express, Cover Girl, JCPenney, Lexus, Microsoft and XM Satellite Radio to receive the ripped treatment later this year. The ads will break in trade publications such as Advertising Age, Adweek, Brandweek and Mediaweek; and online at NYTimes.com, WSJ.com, and MediaPost (Out to Launch's parent company). Consumer publications such as Better Homes and Gardens; Blender; BusinessWeek; Cosmopolitan; Country Living; Elle; Elle Girl;  Every Day with Rachael Ray; Family Circle; Food & Wine; Fortune; Golf Digest; Golf for Women; Good Housekeeping; Home; In Style; The New Yorker; Newsweek; Real Simple; Seventeen; Vanity Fair; Wired; Woman's Day; and Women's Health are running the ads. Mullen created the campaign and secured the media.

Fallon launched a national and spot cable campaign for the Bahamas Ministry of Tourism. "Winter Wonderland/Petals," a sixty-second spot that debuted during the Winter Olympics, was generated from still photos and set to the song--you guessed it, "Winter Wonderland." The ad highlights many non-winter activities that the Bahamas offers: snorkeling, boogie boarding, and building sandcastles (instead of snowmen). The spot also points out that the Bahamas consists of 700 islands, rather than just one destination to visit. The same tag line is used, "Escape from everyday life." Starlink handled the broadcast buying of the campaign. Fallon also launched "Dragon," a TV campaign for United Airlines, nationally during the Winter Olympics. The ad aired in five markets during the Super Bowl. Check out the Super Bowl edition of Out to Launch for full campaign information.

GE Healthcare launched "Healthcare Re-Imagined," highlighting technological and biological breakthroughs that transform healthcare delivery from treating "late disease" to a focus on "early health." "Power of Sound," "Welcome to Earth," "Beats," and "Monster" launched during the Winter Olympics on NBC. "Power of Sound" features women all over the world singing to their babies and advises how GE can use sound to look at women's health. "Monster" shows children building a sandcastle and what appears to be a large dinosaur trekking through the sand. In reality, the kids find the monster to be baby-sized, symbolizing the fact that GE's technology can detect problems before they grow in size. TV ads are also running on MSNBC, CNBC and USA. Print ads launched with an eight-page insert in USA Today and The New York Times on February 13 and The Wall Street Journal on February 14. BBDO New York created the campaign; OMD handled the media.

PBM Products has launched a campaign for Ultra Bright Beginnings, its infant formula brand. The campaign highlights the cost of the product: thirty percent cheaper than Enfamil Lipil or Similac Advance. The previous campaign used Brooke Shields as a spokesperson and was created by The Martin Agency; this time around, bubble created the campaign, the agency's first work for the client, and used celebrity spokesmom Elisabeth Hasselbeck, late of "Survivor: The Australian Outback" and currently a co-host on ABC's "The View." Three print ads are launching this month in issues of American Baby, Baby Talk, Child, Parent, and Parenting, to name a few. Media buying is handled in-house by PBM.

15 letters has created Dunkin' Mascots, a game promoting Orbitz. The game has some radio support but is driven predominantly through popunder ads on Weather.com, ESPN.com, and New York times.com, to name a few. The concept is simple: choose your favorite mascot and compete in a dunking contest. Irish Amy here chose Liam the Leprechaun and squared off against Webber the platypus, who easily beat me. If you can complete one dunk (that's all I could muster), you can register to qualify for weekly travel prizes. 

Valentine's Day may be over, but "Luv Libs," a fun take on Mad Libs, last forever. Carat Fusion San Francisco created the viral campaign for RedEnvelope, an online specialty gift retailer. Visitors could create "Luv Libs" using six different categories, including: love poem, I'm a guy, whaddya expect, BFFs (best friends forever), all man, relationships suck and we're naughty (complete with picture of humping turtles!). The promotional tie in was a link to "Cupid's Gift Guide" for gift suggestions.

This week's highlighted Web site is an agency's corporate redesign.

Captura Group, an interactive agency specializing in the Hispanic online market, has re-launched its corporate Web site. The new site features recent news stories regarding the Hispanic market and is adding white papers on various Hispanic online topics in the coming months. The site serves to inform and educate companies and organizations about the Hispanic online market.