Advertising

Deejay Chris Oaks hunched over a studio soundboard at WFIN-AM radio, ignoring the cramp in his lower back and the flashing lights from the phone lines. He listened to the voice in his headphones: a man calling in to sell a pair of air conditioners for $60 each. "I need the money more than I need to stay cool," the man said. Oaks nodded. "I hope you're not selling all that you have," he said as the temperature outside hovered in the mid-90s. "You may need one." For more than seven years, Oaks, a skinny, mustachioed man of 42 whose uniform is a rumpled plaid polo shirt and faded jeans, has broadcast radio want ads over the expanse of Ohio farmland.

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Sacramento is home to nearly 1 million Catholics. On a typical Sunday, less than 137,000 can be found in church. Now, using a strategy straight from the secular playbook, its leaders hope to lure back those who have drifted. The diocese and nearly a dozen others across the country are preparing to air several thousand prime-time TV commercials in English and Spanish, inviting inactive Catholics to return to their religious roots. In addition to Sacramento, dioceses in Chicago, Omaha, Providence, R.I., and four other cities will launch the "Catholics Come Home" advertising blitz during Advent, the period before Christmas.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa drew cheers from environmentalists just over two months ago when he issued a new political promise: eliminating coal from the Department of Water and Power's fuel mix by 2020. Instead of waiting a decade to see if that promise comes true, a Sacramento-based advocacy group decided to stage a publicity campaign thanking the mayor. It bought advertising space on city bus kiosks showing a smiling picture of Villaraigosa and the word "Successful."

State parks bring to mind walking, biking or just relaxing amid beautiful scenery. But outdoor enthusiasts Shari and Christopher Boyer see something else: an efficient marketing tool for businesses. "Parks are about going out, having fun with your family, hiking," said Shari Boyer, chief executive of a small Pasadena company called Government Solutions Group Inc. "To associate your brand name with something positive is a unique experience, which is exactly what brand owners are looking for and what parks are in need of."

News flash: High-fructose corn syrup isn't to blame for the obesity epidemic. "High-fructose corn syrup was acquitted today amidst a flood of public apologies by consumers who had singled the corn sweetener out as a unique cause of obesity," newspaper ads declared in what was intended to look like a news story showing a man dressed like an ear of corn being proved innocent. The full-page ads, part of a $1-million marketing campaign launched Tuesday by a food-industry-backed advocacy group, ran in prominent newspapers nationwide, including this one. TV versions are running on all the cable news channels.

Ron Cervenka is a 55-year-old Burbank police detective who went to Game 3 of the 1963 World Series, when the Los Angeles Dodgers swept the New York Yankees. And if the Dodgers were to play the Los Angeles Angels in a 2009 World Series, he is pretty sure he could get tickets to Angel Stadium -- except he'd rather not. Cervenka wants the Dodgers to play the Yankees again. He's not alone. Thoughts of a Freeway Series between the Angels and Dodgers may make hearts sing in Anaheim and Brea and Huntington Beach and Tustin, but with hundreds of millions of dollars at stake, advertisers, marketing experts and television executives love New York.

Do you miss the monkey? Once the Internet vines were full of monkeys in banner ads that, if you "punched" them with your cursor, would bring you a free Xbox or iPod or maybe $25,000 in cash -- which would be excellent simian-pummeling wages, to be sure. But the monkey -- indeed, a whole class of flashy, shaky, maddening advertising collectively known as "punch the monkey" ads -- is going away, or at least slinking off to some forgotten cavern of the Internet where few will ever see it. Like MySpace.

A new book on advertising reminds me of a joke William Shatner once told on "Saturday Night Live": "Star Trek" is really popular in Japan, where it's known as "Sulu, Master of Navigation." That same self-glorying attitude is on display in "Baked In: Creating Products and Businesses that Market Themselves" by Alex Bogusky and John Winsor. Running at a mere 150 pages of big type, the book is the ad guys' parochial perspective on why advertising and marketing so often fall flat.

Microsoft Corp. and OpenX Technologies Inc., a Pasadena-based Web advertising start-up, have struck a deal that would enable both companies to expand the reach of their online ad businesses. OpenX, which operates one of the nation's largest independent online advertising networks, develops software that enables marketers to funnel ads to websites that are visited by the type of buyers they are targeting. Similarly, advertisers use Microsoft to create and distribute ads, be they for flowers, movies or Maseratis.

Google Inc. took another major step in its quest to ensure that wherever consumers go -- whether to their laptops to search sports scores or videos or to their phones to find a restaurant -- advertisers will be there too. On Monday the search giant said it was buying AdMob Inc., a developer of technology that plops ads into thousands of mobile phone applications, for $750 million in Google stock. It's one of the largest acquisitions yet for the 11-year-old company and illustrates Google's double-barreled strategy of attracting consumers with free tools to access billions of Web pages, books, maps and movies -- and then charging advertisers to pitch their wares to its huge audience.