While Coca Cola Company has been doing an ok job keeping the ad off of YouTube, below is proof that getting something off the internet is about as easy as stirring your cream back out of your coffee.
That’s via the Russian site TopNews and was the fourth link on a Google video search for “Banned German Sprite Ad.”
I hope Coca Cola is glad they’ve wasted all those resources on a fools errand when they could have been laughing it off and soaking up the free publicity.
Walking to work today I came across a rather unusual site. On the corner of 8th Ave and 50th St., just outside the C/E subway stop, there were two scruffy guys playing guitar and singing. In front of them, they had a guitar case open in hopes of donations.
Now the weird, part. As I drew closer I saw a professionally printed poster inset into the inside of the guitar case cover:
Yup. It appears that Dunkin’ Donuts is not only using these guys to advertise their watery coffee and artery-clogging pastries but they are also discouraging anyone from donating to the arts.
Now comes word that McDonalds is, in fact, paying to have their coffee cups displayed in front of news anchors:
“The Las Vegas Sun reported last week that Meredith-owned KVVU, a Fox affiliate, placed cups of McDonald’s iced coffee on the anchor desk during the morning show in recent weeks. The New York Times reported that other Meredith-owned stations across the country have also been accepting product placements during morning programming.” (via)
This has caused much noise in the blog-o-sphere about whether or not this violates the perceived “church and state” separation between news and advertising.
For better or for worse, that barrier fell ages ago and whether or not advertisers get cups in front of anchors is pretty meaningless at this point. Besides, go to CNN.com or any other news website and the news is surrounded by various forms of advertising. How is that product placement any different?
There is a pretty comprehensive look over on TrendWatching at what’s been going on in the past few years in terms of what I know think Anderson has successfully forced us to all call the “Freeconomy.”
One example it should had to do with some beverage companies attempts at working with advertisers to provide free or discount drinks:
“Still in concept phase, Japanese vending machine operator Apex is looking into turning some of its beverage machines into a new medium for advertisers, who will pick up the partial or full cost of drinks. Apex runs 35,000 vending machines across Japan that serve drinks in paper cups, generally priced at 70 to 120 yen (USD 1.16 to USD 2.00) a cup. The MediCafe vending machine (the name combines media and coffee) will play an advertiser’s video for around the 30 seconds it takes to pour the drink and dispense a paper cup with an advertisement printed on it. Eventually, Apex hopes to install up to 35,000 MediCafe machines in large corporate offices, community centers, hospitals & rehab facilities, schools and roadside rest stops. Even if the MediCafe doesn’t materialize, this should be food for thought for other vending machine operators, and their food and beverage partners!”
How would things change if someone figured out how to turn a profit offering free coffee? What would that do to Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts? There is clearly a gigantic market for coffee drinkers and the many competitors are certainly going to drive the price down but offering it for free would really shake things up.
Just a quick follow-up to my previous Sprite Blowjob Spec Spot kerfuffle post…![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=19de3387-452a-449d-8750-7ba4b124fc10)
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July 21, 2009 11:10 am | 
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