After taking an abnormally long hiatus spanning five years, Eminem officially returns to the rap game today with the release of Relapse. As you can imagine, the landscape has changed significantly and it takes more than slickly produced videos, mixtapes, headline-grabbing interviews and song “leaks” to transform an album into actual sales. Slim Shady and company are fully aware of the brutal new environment rapper’s face and aren’t messing around for this release. From video games for iPhone fanboys to special edition comic books and streetwear t-shirts, a lot of money was doled out to make sure this album targets as wide a demographic as possible. Click below to see the huge arsenal of PR and marketing resources* it took to make one of the best rappers of all time, relevant again. Read more »
Dirty Politics As Usual In Chicago: Mural Destroyed
A freshly painted mural by Chicago artist Gabriel Villa was destroyed last Friday by order of a local politician who found it “distasteful.” Alderman Jim Balcer used the local “Graffiti Blasters” to wipe the legal mural off private property, falsely claiming the painting required a permit. Read more »
Ha! Woody Allen made more more off his $5 million settlement with American Apparel than he did at the box office in the opening weekend of his last film: Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Still, the pint-sized filmmaker insists that he preferred to settle instead of going to trial, proclaiming, “[T]his is not how I make my living.” |NYP|
Fleet Week begins today and a Manhattan strip club has a charitable cocktail to entice fresh off the boat sailors. HeadQuarters Gentleman’s Club plans to donate proceeds from the fruity “Drunken Captain” to benefit troops visiting New York. |NYDN|
Beyond Your Wildest ‘American Dream’
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- “Flowers and Dildos” by Panni Malek
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- “The Money Lenders” by Kirk Fanelly
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- “Ovul Office” by John Jacobsmeyer
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- “Mammoth Painting” by Sarah Bereza
An upcoming group exhibition brings together an array of illusions by ten American artists working amidst the country’s changing mood. “American Dream” opens on May 22 at Jack the Pelican Presents gallery in Williamsburg and runs through June 21, but for now, click the images above for a preview of the work that touches on a range of topics from the battered economy to political sexscapades in the “Ovul Office.”
Artist Steve Lambert writes Virgin America an open letter rant after they spray painted his Brooklyn neighborhood with “Flydealists Unite” advertisements: “Please just stop with the fake revolution, stencil in the street bullshit. We’re all smarter than that.” |AAA|
Another Swiss Paper Mocks Obama
Peace-loving, staunchly-neutral Switzerland sure has some aggressively-opinionated newspapers. Previously WOZ, a weekly Swiss rag, made Barack Obama look like the anti-Christ in a print ad. Now, the country’s leading Sunday paper, Sonntagszeitung (literally, Sunday’s newspaper), provides “the insight story” on our new president—SuperBam’s broke. True enough, though not what this former journalist would call especially insightful. At right, is a rotating outdoor billboard from the campaign featuring their inside view of the Secretary of State—Hil’s Bill, but Bill’s also Hil. Or something. Well, like here, I’m sure newspapers are also dying in Switzerland. So Sonntagszeitung? Do whatever you gotta do to sell ink, I guess. Because soon, you’ll probably be broke, too. FYI, previously in what the agency Advico Y&R calls this “Babushka principle” campaign, the paper also looked inside Bush and Putin. |Images: BestAdsOnTV|
After an eight month investigation, the NYPD dismantled one of the most insignificant, low level, drug rings ever. The sting lead to the arrests of at least two party promoters who peddled relatively small amounts of Ecstasy and other played out club drugs. |NYDN|
The photos of last month’s New York Street Advertising Takeover do offer some interesting perspectives, but this interactive map really helps convey the project’s scale. Included on the newly public map are photos of the more than 120 illegal billboards that were whitewashed, photos of the artists’ work, some of their stories, and links to video footage. Besides adding to the creative dimension of the project, the map also helps show how rampant illegal and un-permitted NPA billboards are. Even after painting out 19,000 square feet of illegal ads, there were still dozens of illegal ad spots that were untouched. |Public Ad Campaign|
Parting Shot: Blast Off For a Quick Fix
The space shuttle Atlantis blasts off from the Kennedy Space Center for the final repair mission to the expensively broken Hubble Space Telescope. |Big Picture|
Photo by Matt Stroshane/Getty Images
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