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PATH: BS | Business | Marketing
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Actually Significant Charity Challenge Ideas
Posted by Pile
(13277 views)      [E-Mail link]
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[Beating Dead Horses]
[Viral Marketing] |
 Right now it's all the craze to, amidst one of the hottest-record Summer seasons, dump a bucket of ice water on your head as an alternative to donating towards ALS research. The list of public and private people who have jumped on this goofy bandwagon is too numerous to mention.
Has anybody figured out what a bucket of icewater actually has to do with a degenerative nerve disease? Does Lou Gherig's disease make you suddenly feel wet & cold for about five minutes on a hot Summer day?
Sorry, but count me in the tiny little camp of people scratching our heads wondering what difference this really makes? Has anyone managed to prove that more money = more curing? Jerry Lewis over 50 years, raised tons of money for Muscular Dystrophy research and there's still absolutely no cure. Perhaps using money to as a gauge of "success" in medical research is not the right approach?
But we here at BSA digress... it's not really about making the world a better place. It's about making YOU feel like you're doing something, even if you're not, so you can go to bed thinking you're "making a difference" because you dumped a bucket of icewater on your head. Congratulations!
However, if you are wondering, are there better, more appropriate "Charity Challenge" events you could promote, we at BSAlert have come up with a few. Check them out.... |
READ MORE | 1 comment since 2014-09-23 10:16:02 | Comment on this Article |
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Blogging For Dollars
Posted by Pile
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[Liars]
[Viral Marketing] |
Think your favorite web site has integrity?
Blogger Colleen Caldwell rants and riffs about whatever strikes her fancy — a run-in with her child's school principal, the rising price of Girl Scout thin mints, or an upcoming movie that caught her eye.
"Has anyone out there read a book called 'The Ultimate Gift'? I just heard that a movie is being made of the book (which sold 4 million copies)," she wrote in a recent post on her site, Simple Kind of Life.
The 30-year-old software analyst from Brooksville, Fla., went on to praise the inspirational message of the Fox Faith film, which opens today, about a trust fund baby who discovers the joy of giving.
One thing Caldwell didn't mention: She was paid $12 to build buzz about the movie's opening and the charitable campaign — bringing her blogging-for-dollars take to more than $7,700.
I can assure you here at BSAlert, we're not taking any money to run stories... after all, when have we said something nice about anybody lately? |
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Administration Unveils Latest Iraq Buzz-Phrase: New Way Forward
Posted by Pile
(11729 views) [E-Mail link]
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[Viral Marketing]
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 Who needs a plan when you have a new slogan! Because YOU, the A.D.D. American public can't be bothered to understand the details of anything, you get a new slogan! Aren't you excited?
The Bush administration and the same folks who gave you: Operation Enduring Freedom, Cut and run, Stay The Course, You're-Either-With-Us-Or-With-The-Terrorists, You Forgot Poland, USA Patriot Act, Support Our Troops, Activist Judges, People Who "Hate Our Freedom," Islamo-Facists, Surrender Monkey, Iraq Is The Central Front On The War On Terror, Politics of Hate, Compassionate Conservatism, Weak On National Security and more have a new slogan... it's not a real plan. Instead it's a buzzword about the idea of a plan. It's called A New Way Forward. Feeling warm and fuzzy yet? |
READ MORE | 2 comments since 2006-12-14 10:16:51 | Comment on this Article |
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Your Porn-Buying History May Now Be Public
Posted by Pile
(10745 views) [E-Mail link]
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[Viral Marketing]
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Seventeen million customers of the online payment service iBill have had their personal information released onto the internet, where it's been bought and sold in a black market made up of fraud artists and spammers, security experts say.
The stolen data, examined by Wired News, includes names, phone numbers, addresses, e-mail addresses and internet IP addresses. Other fields in the compromised databases appear to be logins and passwords, credit-card types and purchase amounts, but credit-card numbers are not included.
It appears spammers have been buying and selling these lists and using them as sources for solicitations. So if you're getting more spam than usual, it could be because your personal information has been leaked to the black market. |
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USDA Parades Dog-And-Pony Show Over Mad Cow Disease
Posted by Pile
(7651 views) [E-Mail link]
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The online free encyclopedia Wikipedia defines "dog-and-pony show" as a public "display that is somewhat pathetically contrived." That's what the new U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, Mike Johanns, is convening this Thursday, June 9, in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Secretary Johanns will lead a roundtable discussion dominated by the most powerful agricultural lobby organizations in the United States to spread the good news that mad cow disease is no longer a problem in North America. The invited participants include the American Farm Bureau, the American Meat Institute, the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, the National Meat Association, the National Milk Producers and the National Renderers Association. Not a single consumer, human health or public interest group was invited to speak, nor were any scientists who research mad cow and related diseases, such as Nobel laureate Dr. Stanley Prusiner. The USDA hopes to convince the assembled news media that it's time to open the U.S. border to Canadian cattle and time for Japan and Korea to accept U.S. beef and cattle.
There's just one problem with this rosy picture of mad cow disease in North America: it has little or no basis in fact. |
READ MORE | 2 comments since 2005-06-15 14:39:45 | Comment on this Article |
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Bumper Sticker Store
It's no secret among savvy shoppers that Amazon is a great place to research products and find the best price-quality ratio.
The National Tea Party Convention, an event I'm sure many readers have already gotten tickets for, has run into a couple of snags. Fortunately there's one big-haired semi-pro ex-governor who's going to pull it out of its doldrums.
Israel has taken the next step in pushing its own friendly image in cyberspace: An army brigade dedicated to astroturing pro-Israel messages on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and other social networking sites.
This summer in Japan, those lucky Japanese get to cool off with the latest Pepsi creation: CUCUMBER-flavored Pepsi. What, what?
A television network's marketing campaign went badly awry on Wednesday, causing a day-long security scare in Boston that closed bridges, shut major roads and put hundreds of police on alert.
A U.S. Marine Sargeant was ordered to put a stop to an online auction which would have allowed the winner to pick the name the young Marine would legally assume. Sgt. Cody Baker might have become Sgt. Finest Freshest Fastest or Sgt. Mr. Clean although the winning bidder at the time the auction ended was FreebieStore.com with a bid of 30,000.01. Apparently the Dept. of Defense was not amused (is anyone surprised?).
Jesus went to the mall and a movie Saturday.
When Terry Wilson filed for trademark protection for her "Tightpod" laptop protectors, she received a cease-and-desist order. The order from Apple reads in part: "The Tightpod mark will inevitably cause consumer confusion as to the source of the products, and dilute Apple's famous iPod mark."
At a news conference after his spirited address to the United Nations on Wednesday, President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela expressed one regret: not having met that icon of the American left, the linguist and MIT Institute Professor Noam Chomsky, before his death.
How sad do you have to be when you tattoo the logo for "Snakes on a Plane" on your arm? So sad that you can't even get comp tickets to the movie.
A tiny little movie making fun of Al Gore, supposedly made by an amateur filmmaker, recently appeared on the popular Web site YouTube.com.
Today is Chick-Fil-A's second annual "Cow Appreciation Day" (otherwise known as Lets-get-some-idiots-to-promote-our-company-for-virtually-nothing day). What does this mean for you? Well, if you're willing to dress up like a cow from head to toe, you get a free combo to help fill the void in your otherwise empty life. And some goofballs at an advertising company show Chick-Fil-A they can convince people to do just about anything for a 400+ calorie, 16g fat, MSG-doused, 1300mg sodium-laced, breaded and fried in peanut oil chicken sandwich.
Many may have heard the news report last week of the latest recording of Osama Bin Laden offering the United States a truce, but what the news media didn't report much, was he recommended a book by an American author that people should read. As a result 
Sony scouted out an unusual place to advertise its PlayStation Portable before the holidays: the side of an abandoned building in a gritty North Philadelphia neighborhood.
At last, you can finally express your true feelings about that special someone you're committing adultery with, in that most intimate and heartfelt way possible...a greeting card.
In a national address, the President took advantage of the holiday and directed people towards a new web site, AmericaSupportsYou.mil - touted as a way to show support for the troops. Apparently one of those ways is to purchase yet another crappy ribbon lapel pin from a Pennsylvania marketing association (whose claim to fame is making a toaster that burns the Target logo on bread, and a stilletto heel that doubles as a beverage holder). Are any of these products actually made in America? Does any of the revenue generated go towards supporting our troops? Are you kidding me?
"For the bargain-basement price of $29,000, your company could be touted by the Hall of Fame quarterback in slots on CNBC and MSNBC," writes PR Week's Julia Hood, about Terry Bradshaw's "Winners Circle" and "Pick of the Week" TV segments. The segments praise companies for their "forward thinking and consistent principles," in what may seem like "a neutral third-party endorsement," but is actually "a paid placement that inconsistently identifies itself as such." The segments are produced by Broadcast News Corporation (BNC), which also pays to air them on MSNBC, CNBC and CNN Headline News. "We're doing this so we can tell a good story about companies," said one BNC producer. PR Week found that MSNBC either ran "a subtle disclaimer" or none at all marking the segments as paid commercial programming.
A McDonald's television ad that showed a Chinese man begging for fast food has been taken off the air in China following complaints. In a statement faxed to local media on Wednesday, McDonald's defended the ad as an attempt at humor. Reports said viewers complained that the ad's depiction of a middle-aged man on his knees begging for a discount was disturbing because Chinese consider such an act a humiliating indignity. 
McDonald's latest ad campaign, launching this week shows a new svelt, fitness-guru version of their Ronald McDonald mascot promoting exercise and fruit juggling. Conspicuously absent from the new commercials are images of their food products.
Not more than a few weeks after Newsweek's disasterous story and related retraction over Americans flushing the Koran down the toilet and sparking religious riots in which many died, the "news magazine" runs an interesting picture in their Japanese edition. 
If you've been surfing around the net, you've probably seen those annoying "click here to win a free iPod" banner ads. It's basically a Ponzi-esque marketing scheme that people fall for. An enterprising site called iMockery.com has put together a very funny collection of new ads for these schemes.