Greatest product placement ever?

A boy dropped his DS in a gorilla cage and inadvertently created the best photo op ever.

Via GamesRadar which has more great pictures.

Shoe-thrower shows the power of product placement

When Muntazar al-Zaidi threw his shoes at President Bush he unintentionally gave the Baydan Sho Co.’s Model 271 one of the greatest endorsements ever.

Ramazan Baydan, owner of the Istanbul-based company, has been swamped with orders from across the world, after insisting that his company produced the black leather shoes. He has recruited an extra 100 staff to meet orders for 300,000 pairs of Model 271 – more than four times the shoe’s normal annual sale. (Nice to see George is creating jobs somewhere!)

Baydan is planning to rename the model “the Bush Shoe” or “Bye-Bye Bush”.

“We’ve been selling these shoes for years but, thanks to Bush, orders are flying in like crazy. We’ve even hired an agency to look at television advertising,” he said.

About 120,000 pairs have been ordered from Iraq and a US company has ordered 18,000 of the shoes, which have been on the market since 1999 and sell at around $41  in Turkey.

Cheney “going hunting” on Election Day

So there’s another euphemism for getting drunk. When that guy does a few shots … he really does a few shots! (Rim shot, please…) OK, so the man is going to be armed, imbibed, already in a bad mood over whatever goes wrong in Iraq tomorrow and facing a likely major loss at the polls — are you brave enough to get in the duck blind with him? Oh, and yes, this is the first time since his last shooting incident that the Veep has directly taken up arms against a living thing. Put the Spinmeisters on high alert. Congrats to some Colorado Pro-Pot group for putting down the oreos long enough to come up with the above ad.

Technorati Tags: Cheney, VP, Vice, President, Hunting, Drunk, Election, Marijuana, Pot, Duck-and-Cover

Overly optimistic marketers think kids read

Marketers have discovered a novel way to get their word out: embedding products in books.The latest example is “Cathy’s Book,” a novel due out Oct. 2 about a teen determined to find out why her boyfriend dumps her, then mysteriously disappears. Procter & Gamble wrote a deal with the authors to include products such as Cover Girl’s “Shimmering Onyx” eye shadow and “Metallic Rose” lipstick in exchange for promoting the book on P&G’s teen Web site BeingGirl.com.

While I support anything that gets more money to hack writers this is a dubious and thorougly un-needed expenditure. As Brett Easton Ellis’ fan(s?) can tell you: He lists brand names for free.