50 Cent touted his feud with Kanye West to sell more albums in a dramatically declining environment for sales. No need to get appalled though, exploiting sensationalism is nothing new. Just ask the Beatles who enjoyed the hype of the ongoing conspiracy theory “Paul is Dead”.

In November 1966 it’s rumored (website detailing 358 clues) that Paul McCartney drove off in a rage after fighting through a song that wasn’t going the way he wanted. Not long after it’s said that he crashed his car so badly that it burst into a fire and eventually exploded, leaving few witnesses. The wreck was said to have knocked all Paul’s teeth out, burned his hair off and broke his fingers (preventing him from exiting the car). Once the Austin Healey exploded Paul was decapitated. Rumor or truth?

This eventually led to the growth of a massive urban legend that the remaining three Beatles replaced Paul with a look-a-like and left clues to tell the story without ever admitting it. A great example of that is the Beatles album “Yesterday and Today” which shows “Paul” sitting in the middle with two decapitated dolls pointing to his head. Harrison is in the background holding a doll head that has no hair and no teeth. However, there is a false set of teeth on McCartney’s arm. Coincidence or playing into the hype to help sell albums? It certainly didn’t hurt!

Before you roll your eyes at 50 Cent for using boxing-like hype to promote the sales of albums don’t forget that musicians have been doing this for a long time, whether you believe the “Paul is Dead” conspiracy or not.

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It should come as no surprise that Toyota isn’t sitting around doing the “typical” advertising campaign after their cutting-edge Little Deviants site for their Scion lineup (previously covered on HookorSink.com). Nevertheless, it’s still a shock when you see Toyota jumping into the video game giant World of Warcraft to promote their brand.

So how do you leverage WoW enthusiasts, and there are a ton of them? First, you create a new weapon to use… a Toyota pickup truck. Then, have one of the characters drive it right into the belly of the beast eventually driving out with the heart still pumping in the flat bed. At least that’s how Saatchi & Saatchi did it.

Not sure if it will sell but Toyota sure gets a “Hook” rating for giving it a whirl. You can view the commercial on YouTube here.

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The Interactive Advertising Bureau announced on Thursday (Oct. 4th) that online ad spending surpassed the $5 billion mark for the first time. HookorSink.com previously noted that this wasn’t a matter of “if” it would happen, rather “when”. Easily surpassing $5.1 billion is impressive but the fact that it hasn’t slowed down is outright incredible.

The IAB points out that the first half of 2007 totalled more than $10 billion, a 27% increase of 2006.

Two other things worth noting was the slight shift away from the large websites across the board. The advertising is getting stretched more evenly with a dip from 94% to 91% of spending done with the top 50 websites. Google Adsense anyone?

Also, the deals between advertisers and ad purchasers is shifting towards more performance based contracts, instead of CPM. Performance based deals represent 50% compared to 47% a year ago.

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Advertising Age released its monthly “10 most recalled TV spots” for the month of September. Without stealing their thunder it’s worth noting the patterns of these top ten. 7 of the top 10 were food-related, two were auto and the last was for Kmart.

Seventy percent were food related? That’s a pretty good indication that America is obsessive about food. Campbells, Pizza Hut, Burger King and Subway were all represented and apparently remembered.

That’s pretty important, especially for children. A study found in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine found that children preferred food if they believed it came from McDonald’s. The study concluded that branding of foods and beverages influences young children’s taste preferences.

It’s discussion time again, please share your thoughts on food related marketing. Good/Bad/Ugly?

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In a high profile collaberation the Martin Agency has put out their first commercial for Wal-mart. The Martin Agency is probably best known for their GEICO Caveman commercials (highlighted on hookorsink.com back in June ’07). The new spot isn’t anything like that.

Martin Agency gets straight to the point, highlighting $2,500 a year that Wal-mart saves its shoppers. This ad takes you through a vacation that a family of six takes heading to Florida (Disneyworld anyone?). “What will you do with your savings?”

Brilliant. Wal-mart is answering “Why is it important to me?” and adding a little flare to it. Check it out for yourself here.

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Sheeple getting thrashed by Deviants sounds like the cutting room left overs from a terrible horror movie. Unexpectedly, it’s the theme of Toyota’s new website promoting their Scion xD. Oh, and it’s good… probably great. Attik, the agency responsible for this site, launched one of the coolest pop-up interactive websites ever back on May 14th. Don’t be cynical until you see it for yourself, check out littledeviant.com.

No doubt Toyota created the Scion lineup to appeal to younger users but they aren’t just relying on the cookie-cutter attempts. They are paving the way for future copy-cats with the help of cutting edge agencies like Attik. Give them some credit too, not many agencies could pull this off. In-house agencies all over the world are day-dreaming about the possibility of doing something crazy like intentionally throwing a Sheeple against a wall to collect his green, slimy guts.

Toyota gets a hookorsink.com “Hook” rating for having the brass ***** to even give this a shot. This is marketing worth discussing!

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It was anticipated that if Microsoft could somehow rake in $170 million in the first five days after the launch of Halo 3 that it would post a profit for the quarter. The Xbox unit of Microsoft has notoriously floundered its way through the video game market, staying in the red. Until now. Microsoft didn’t make $170 million in the first five days, it needed only one.

For those of you who don’t have nine figure incomes that’s a lot of money. To put it into perspective Spiderman-3 set new records for bringing in $151 million in its first weekend. When all is said and done the total cost for creating the third movie in the Spidey series will cost nearly a half billion bucks. Halo 3 probably had a budget of $30 million (and that’s with a lot of perks for the 300 game creators locked into a Microsoft closet for 3 years). Get this, it’s profit margin is anticipated to be about 90%. That’s amazing for anyone, especially on that scale.

What remains to be seen is the impact sales of the final installment of Master Chief’s adventures will have on Xbox consoles. The first two Halo’s were played on the initial Xbox while this game requires an Xbox 360.

As an added bonus Microsoft will only have to spend about $15-20 million in marketing because companies like Pepsi and Burger King are integrating Halo into their promotions. FREE ADVERTISING!

For setting a new standard in which other games will be judged Halo 3‘s opening success gets this marketing discussion blog’s “Hook” rating.

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“Hey, we got nailed for doing something like that.”

“Yeah, Google can’t get away with that quietly.”

“Who wants to say something?”

*Drawing straws*

“Sorry Brad, you got the short straw. Go get ‘em!”

In an imaginary executive meeting I imagine the big-wigs at Microsoft had a conversation similar to that when Google announced plans to buy DoubleClick. Microsoft points out that Google already dominates Search Engine marketing and the merger with DoubleClick would give it 80% market-share of banner advertising too, a clear monopoly. Isn’t it ironic that Microsoft is upset about a company having a monopoly? Brad Smith, Microsoft’s senior VP-general counsel and corporate secretary, even coined a new definition for “being Googled”.

Google saw this conviction as “ironic” as well and quickly pointed out that the figures Microsoft were using had no factual basis. Details, details. They also don’t believe it would be a monopoly because there are, indeed, other competitors and that users can change websites within a matter of seconds.

In reality it’s only monopolistic because of scale, not practice. In fact, you could probably say the same about Microsoft. If Apple had a bigger market-share Brad Smith might not have his pants wound up so tightly. Then again, if Microsoft was a monopy it would seem that Google is becoming one too. Just like a referee, even if you call the game poorly just call it consistently for both teams.

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