Being health and fitness conscious as part of a new year resolution is a great thing! If you happen to be in a grocery store this week, I suggest you purchase this type of "special" cheese. Watch this video and decide how you might benefit from Nolan's "seriously strong" Cheddar. Enjoy! :)

—Tristan

I was recently having a conversation with my award-winning-teacher sister about marketing to educators. In all honesty, it wasn’t a conversation at all, but a shameless attempt on my part to get some free demographic research. (For example, did you know that teachers are far more likely to respond to direct mail than email campaigns? And did you know that they prefer technology swag to tote bags and stress balls? And did you know that teachers are really sick of red apple and yellow number two pencil imagery?)

My true goal was to discover whether the field of education was as self-mocking as the advertising industry. I wanted to learn about the inside jokes of teachers. There are one million (give or take) YouTube videos that parody the travails of ad agencies and marketers. It’s practically a cottage industry. We advertisers just can’t stop observing and wittily commenting on ourselves.

Are educators the same? Do they gleefully record themselves mocking…well…themselves? Do they produce highly-scripted video complaints about being in their chosen field? No. They do not. Their funny videos have to have a message.

I give you Not On The Test

I feel so ashamed.

—Lisa

Grolsch Dutch brewing company has launched a new iPhone application called Walk the Line, which challenges users to walk a straight line and monitor their alcohol consumption. The game also encourages users to play together. While this is not an actual alcohol test, it’s a fun and innovative way to promote alcohol awareness. The app was created by Marvellous Amsterdam, and uses the iPhone's motion-sensing accelerometer.

These eye-catching billboards by First Bank advertise businesses offering services like babysitting, piano lessons and math tutoring. The best part? The ads, services, and phone numbers are real. I think this is a great idea! First Bank gets props for promoting their small business customers, while providing free exposure to those businesses that generally couldn't afford to launch such a campaign on their own.

A great t.v. spot for Robinsons Be Natural juice drink in London. No joke, the bird has a lot nicer home than I do. It acts a lot more normal also! Enjoy.

—Tristan

A innovative UK company called Curb, uses all-natural materials as its canvas for marketing messages. They offer crop ads, mow ads, rake ads, compost art, solar art, snow tagging, sand carving, and field ads. Well known brands such as, Nike, Budweiser and Kia are all using this type of advertising. This is a clever and sustainable way to advertise. Not to mention, it creates maximum impact at minimal cost to the environment!

—Sara

Over the past few years, social networking web sites, such as MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter have begun to generate more web traffic than traditional web protocols. According to Ad Age, a new social shopping technology called “Fluid Social” allows friends to make purchase suggestions via Facebook, and AIM. This technology is now available at Vans.com. It allows consumers who are building custom shoes on the site to invite friends to chat about product design. This type of interaction will be a very valuable tool for online stores to incorporate. Product recommendations and feedback that come from peers are the most trusted!

—Sara

I'm sure the people at PETA are a generally well-intentioned, passionate bunch, but their energies often seem completely wasted on misguided marketing efforts. Exhibit A: Save the Sea Kittens, a movement intended to inspire people to stop the "hunting" and eating of fish by re-naming them "Sea-Kittens."

Seriously?

The whole idea behind the campaign seems to be that people who regularly chow down on delicacies from the deep might think twice before eating a Sea Kitten. An admirable cause, but I can't help thinking they're going about it the wrong way. Case in point: the movement's own microsite contains the following copy:

"People don't seem to like fish. They're slithery and slimy, and they have eyes on either side of their pointy little heads—which is weird, to say the least. Plus, the small ones nibble at your feet when you're swimming, and the big ones—well, the big ones will bite your face off if Jaws is anything to go by."

O-kay. What I'm getting from the above copy is that PETA wants me to feel sympathetic toward a bunch of ugly, intrusive, generally lethal mouth-breathers who would devour me at the first opportunity? Now, I'm not a particularly big fan of fish, but if I were, I doubt this argument would make me drop the drawn butter and lemon and hunt up a soy burger.

—Tom

Frito-Lay has rolled out a new ad campaign and packaging in efforts to get women to eat more Frito-Lay Snacks. Research shows that women are snacking more than men, but are not eating as many Frito-Lay goodies. To figure out how to sell more snacks to women, their agency turned to neuromarketing. Neuromarketing is a new field of marketing that studies consumers’ sensorimotor, cognitive, and affective response to marketing stimuli. After researching women’s brains compared to men, results showed the memory and emotional center, the hippocampus, was larger in women then men. The agency concluded that women look for characters they could empathize with.

The new advertising campaign, “Only in a Woman’s World,” will be introduced in March and webisodes will begin running at awomansworld.com. The campaign features four funny cartoon women, that were almost certainly inspired by characters on the popular cable series, Sex and the City. Sounds fun, but I have to wonder if it will make me crave potato chips.

—Sara

Rather than using the world wide web, television, or traditional print for their advertising campaigns, some companies are taking a much more personal approach: hiring people to display temporary tattoos on different parts of their bodies. In this economy, it might not be such a bad idea to turn your body into a billboard in order to make a little extra money. I wouldn't mind doing it (if the price was right), but I know my girlfriend wouldn't be too keen on it, and mom definitely wouldn't approve. So, for now, my form remains ad-free.

Click here to read more about New York Times Media & Adverting By Andrew Adam Newman's article "The Body as Billboard: Your Ad Here"

—Tristan