N00 TACTICS
Self-Confidence: It's All About Beef!
Hey, girl! You're independent! You love your friends! Don't worry about being perfect! Spend some time with your family!
If the messages from Zip4Tweens seem kind of lame and pointless, it should come as no surprise. This whole site, which appears to be about girl empowerment, was sponsored by the beef industry to get young girls to eat more fatty, antibiotic-laden, cancer-causing beef. (Hey, girl! I guess your thoughts about going vegetarian have the meat industry shaking in their boots! Um, right... on!)Nice try, beefguys. But superficial babble about girl power and getting more iron does not a website make. There are a lot of product-shilling sites out there which pretend to be about spreading information and supporting you as an individual, but this one wins a special prize for its complete inability to make a good case for its connection between girl power and beef.

N00 TACTICS
Who Is More Tool, The Tool Or The Tool Who Markets The Tool?
Toyota gets more attention this week for a campaign which they say is trying to "reach 25-year-old people who are hip, on the edge and trendy." How do they intend to reach this audience? Running ads in music magazines? Product placement? No-- "forehead advertising." I'd never heard of this before, but Advertising Age (April 26) mentioned it as if it's been going on for years... "oh you betcha, my great-grandpappy was in forehead advertising during The War! Used to stand with a bunch of buddies and run ads for Burma Shave." They had "several dozen young adults... wear temporary forehead tattoos with one of three messages: Scion, tC, and $16,465 -- its suggested base price." These tools were then told to wander around Times Square for a while with tattoos on display. I don't know who to be more embarassed for -- the people they paid to do that, or the people who planned the campaign. Who knows if it worked. If it did, look for Pepsi-branded foreheads in your town soon.