I just caught this commercial on TV and laughed by ass off when a ram, our of nowhere, butted some gum-chewing guy on a cell phone in the belly.

Live Blogging Firebrand Thursday, originally uploaded by Chris Abraham.

I caught Firebrand on ION last night. Again, laughed my ass off. What I like most about Firebrand is that they treat commercials like little movies. The CJs discuss the directors, the actors, the agencies, and the outcomes of the ads. For any of you who are in the industry, it is a great education.

Actually, Firebrand is interesting for anyone interested in products, services, or television and the way things work. It also allows me to do come comparative studies since Firebrand isn’t jingoistic and offers access to commercials from around the world, especially online.

And, of course, cute CJs. Oh, and while Firebrand is and has been my client, the truth is is that they continue retaining me because I am a super fan.

Liveblogging Firebrand on ION, originally uploaded by Chris Abraham.

Well, today’s the last day on the Road to Firebrand — Friday night! Cute foreign CJ and lots of bizarre ads, including the famous preppy Smirnoff Tea Partay commercial. I am pretty sure that the Tea Partay idea started on YouTube, right? and then was co-opted by Smirnoff. Anyway, Firebrand Monday is on Monday so set your alarms, your Tivos, and your biological clock. Watch Firebrand on Monday night instead of the local news, which will suck anyway.

In response to my recent post, Here’s a Dead Sexy Look at Firebrand TV For You!, I defined Firebrand as Dead Sexy. Well, it is, but it was Dude Sexy. Then came Stevie Wilson, who commented, “love that DIRT section. Bring it on. Give me that game or whatever to play. I am all for that one. The other stuff— cmon.. don’t they do stuff that the *ladies* would really love or do they need to add a woman’s touch to the content…” So, I looked for something more for the ladies. I don’t know how well I did, but you tell me: Firebrand Water World.

NBA star Kevin Garnett gets an autograph session going for Foot Locker, and Codemasters gets behind the wheel with legendary rally driver Colin McRae. Plus, some serious cell defense from Sprint-Nextel, and even more serious Nascar fans from Oreo!

This is basically a good “first experience” of what every minute of every day is like at Firebrand, 24-hours/day online and for an hour-a-day on ION Network, from 11PM, week nights.

Anyway, this is a big couple weeks for Firebrand — the Road to Firebrand Monday. Here’s an excerpt of the email I sent out last Monday:

…We’re only a couple weeks away from the Big Game — and all the associated commercials. Why not check out all of the best ads from the “holiest days of advertising” over at Firebrand, http://www.firebrand.com.

Next week Monday, I’m going to offer you up a blogger exclusive — a spot called “the road to Firebrand Monday” (teaser below) — but for now, I just wanted to get back in touch and catch you up and offer up a couple spots we launched today: the Pre-Game Spot: http://youtube.com/watch?v=C8rYZWReyzw, the Kick-Off Spot: http://youtube.com/watch?v=iEXhigptdM8, and the Half-Time Spot: http://youtube.com/watch?v=c8fwNM. You can check out the full details over at our press release, http://firebrandmonday.smnr.us.

I’ll get back to you next Monday with the blogger exclusive but for now here’s a teaser, “We’re kicking off the road to Firebrand Monday, playing with some of the best names in the game — Mr. Peanut, Bob’s Big Boy, the Cavemen and a California raisin, just to name a few. Some of the greatest icons in advertising are going head-to-head during the Big Game, but who will come out on top?”

And, if you have any questions, please pop me an email and I will get back to you personally — and if you’re interested in more general Firebrand info, feel free to join the official Firebrand group on Facebook, http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5967126396.

My Blog Post About the Road to Firebrand Monday
http://chrisabraham.com/2008/01/24/the-road-to-firebrand-monday-is-paved-with-astroturf/

Road to Firebrand Monday Press Release
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=SPORTNET.story&STORY=/www/story/01-21-2008/0004739662&EDATE=MON+Jan+21+2008,+08:00+AM
http://press.firebrand.com/?p=63

YouTube Group: http://youtube.com/Firebrandtv
MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/FirebrandTV
Facebook Group: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5967126396

Road to Firebrand Monday Spots on YouTube
http://youtube.com/watch?v=C8rYZWReyzw
http://youtube.com/watch?v=iEXhigptdM8
http://youtube.com/watch?v=c8fwNMrBvMk

ION Television
http://www.ionline.tv/schedule.php

Firebrand on TV Guide
http://www.tvguide.com/tvshows/firebrand/292213

The Firebrand Site (All Commercials, All the Time)
http://www.firebrand.com/

The Road to Firebrand starts next week on ION (at 11PM every weekday night) and online at Firebrand.com. Firebrand loves working with me because I love commercials more than I love television. I am an evangelist. This week, they’re coming down the pike with something called The Road to Firebrand, “the multi-million dollar media buy will include spots on cable networks like MTV, G4, Sci Fi and VHI, as well as online video placements on TVGuide.com, YouTube, MySpace and Facebook, among others.” Check it out — it’s quite good and highlights all of our favorite stars from a lifetime of TV commercials and ads — true icons. Here are the teaser spots: Pregame, Kickoff, and Half Time:

Pre Game

Kick Off

Half Time

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
PR Contact:
Dawn Rowan
646-747-3600
dawn.rowan@firebrandtv.com

Press can access images and further information at
http://press.firebrand.com

FIREBRAND LAUNCHES FIRST NATIONAL AD CAMPAIGN:
“THE ROAD TO FIREBRAND MONDAY”
WHERE ONLY THE GREATEST COMMERCIALS GET TO PLAY

All-Star Campaign includes the Caveman, the St. Pauli Girl, the Crash Test Dummy,
Mr. Peanut, Bob’s Big Boy and Mr. Clean, among others.

New York (January 21, 2008) – Firebrand, the hottest spots from the coolest brands, on TV, web and mobile, will celebrate “the Holiest Day in Advertising,” with the launch of its first national holiday campaign, “The Road to Firebrand Monday.” The multi-million dollar media buy will include spots on cable networks like MTV, G4, Sci Fi and VHI, as well as online video placements on TVGuide.com, YouTube, MySpace and Facebook, among others.

The Road to Firebrand Monday campaign begins today with at least three new commercials– PreGame, KickOff and HalfTime – on-air and online over the next two weeks, driving viewers to tune into Firebrand, starting January 28th on ION TV (weeknights 11PM/10C). And all that week on TV, web and mobile, Firebrand will begin showcasing playlists related to the Big Game.

The campaign culminates on the first annual “Firebrand Monday,” February 4th, the day after the Big Game. On TV, the hour will be dedicated to major ads from the Big Game, featuring Celebrity CJs such as Reebok’s “Office Linebacker” Terry Tate and Carmen Electra, who makes her Big Game debut in an ad for Hershey’s “Ice Breakers.” All content is downloadable on mobile devices, iTunes and Firebrand.com. And that morning, Firebrand.com will have only the best of the previous day’s commercials ready for download, allowing viewers to share and rate them all, and to decide for themselves which spot wins the coveted “Firebrand Water Cooler” trophy.

“The Big Game has always been the holy grail of advertising and Firebrand celebrates that,” says Shari F. Leventhal, Chief Marketing Officer. “Most people watch the big game with hopes of seeing the best, most creative commercials the ad industry can serve up. The greatest commercials get to play every day at Firebrand. So the Firebrand Monday campaign is our way of saluting the best of these commercials, past and present, as well as the famous icons that make commercials so memorable, and in many cases, a part of pop culture.”

Viewers watching the Firebrand Monday commercials will be treated to a series of spots featuring a parody of some of the most popular commercial icons including Mr. Clean, Mr. Peanut and the Cavemen, among others. The icons are placed on a football backdrop, either behind the scenes getting psyched up for the game, in the locker room, or huddling conspiratorially on the field. No matter how you slice it, Firebrand delivers an entertaining tribute to what has become advertising’s greatest sporting event.

The fun continues for a week starting Firebrand Monday to the following Monday where every spot that is viewed, downloaded, emailed or embedded earns the viewer a chance to enter to win cash.

Major investors in Firebrand include Microsoft, NBC Universal and GE’s Peacock Equity Fund. Firebrand can be found at www.firebrand.com <http://www.firebrand.com> , and weeknights on ION television network at 11 PM/10C and on www.itunes.com <http://www.itunes.com> . For additional information, check out http://press.firebrand.com.

Firebrand. Where only the greatest commercials get to play.

###

Firebrand Multimedia

• Road to Firebrand Monday

  • Half Time 30secTV
  • Kick Off 30secTV
  • Pregame 30secTV
  • Road to Firebrand Monday-JPG

• Screenshots of Firebrand

  • Firebrand Logo-AI
  • Firebrand Logo-JPG
  • Firebrand Logo-SWF
  • Firebrand Search
  • MOBILE
  • SYNCHRONOUS
  • TV
  • WEB

• Firebrand Social Media

  • Del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Flickr
  • iTunes
  • Myspace
  • YouTube

2007

November 27

Just What The World Needs Now

David Burn, AdPulp
(read more…)

Firebrand Makes Its Debut As The First 3 Screen, Multi-Platform Network Dedicated to Commercial Culture

Alan Weinkrantz, 3 Screens.net

(read more…)

November 26

Can Firebrand Make Commercials Hot?

Chris Albrecht, GigaOm

(read more…)

Firebrand Makes its Debut as the First Multi-Platform Network Dedicated to Commercial Culture

create magazine

(read more…)

Commericals as Content

Charles Sipe, Cool Marketing Stuff

(read more…)

Forget about the Super Bowl Ads

By Tarik Moody, RadioMilwaukee’s Diggin’ with the Architect

(read more…)

November 15

Firebrand movie includes work!

Be.Interactive

(read more…)

FirebrandTV; A Great Way to Waste Time at Work

Marketing Conversation

(read more…)

Fond of commercials? This post is for you

VOIP

(read more…)

November 14

In (Mild) Defense of Firebrand

grokdotcom

(read more…)

For the birds

Make The Logo Bigger

(read more…)

Firebrand – For those without enough commmercials in their life

Movie Marketing Madness

(read more…)

November 13

Firebrand

Be.Interactive

(read more…)

November 12

all in one place

zefrank

(read more…)

October 10

Influx Interview- Shari Leventhal- Firebrand

Influx Insights

(read more…)

October 1

Brands on fire

‘Cross The Breeze

(read more…)

September 26

Firebrand Shows Ads The Way MTV Used To Show Music Videos

By Rohit Bhargava, Influential Marketing Blog

(read more…)

September 25

how firebrand lit a blog on fire

Brand Flakes for Breakfast

View Full Article

Firebrand All-Ad Video Network Set to Debut

By Kamau High, Adweek

(read more…)

Commercial Culture Gets Its Due

Brand Noise

(read more…)

Brands on fire (with a little help from crayon)

By Greg Verdino, Greg Verdino’s Marketing Blog

(read more…)

Life after the 30-second spot?

By Joseph Jaffe, Jaffe Juice

(read more…)

Consumers Gain Greater Control As Brands Get Fire

A Media Circ.us

(read more…)

Firebrand Preview Launches during Advertising Week – Love Coverage

By David Berkowitz, Inside the Marketers Studio

(read more…)

Firebrand – Extremely Ambitious Advertising as Content Destination

Karl Long, Experience Curve

(read more…)

Microsoft, NBCU Back Venture That Turns Ads Into Content

By David Goetzl, Media Daily News

(read more…)

Commercials serious business at Firebrand

By Alex Woodson, The Hollywood Reporter

(read more…)

TV Commercials Redistributor Firebrand Raises Funds

Submitted by Mark Hefflinger, Digital Media Wire

(read more…)

Firebrand All-Ad Video Network Set to Debut

By Kamau High, Brandweek

(read more…)

Tech company offers commercials only

By Amanda Fung, Crain’s New York Business.com

(read more…)

NBC: That’s Advertainment

By Stuart Elliott, The New York Times

(read more…)

I am burning through a couple-few seasons of Sleeper Cell from Showtime.

I am super impressed by the show but I am confused as to the memetic and propagandic — read political — agenda of the show.

Does anyone have any insight into this raw television show, this rugged, well-acted, show about terrorist “sleeper cells” in the United States, and the women who love them?

I am curious as to your take — I can’t tell, and I am pretty good at sorting out message agenda …

Is Sleeper Cell pro-war, anti-war; is it pro-Islam or anti-Islam; or is it one of those super-rare “balanced” works?

The show is so well-acted and so well-produced, that I would really like to know what the show intends to say and convey.

Either way, it is very fine story-telling.

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“Can you really get a good home theater projector for $499? No,” via Gizmodo on the BoxTV. Harsh but good.

ZOOM From Wikipedia

ZOOM was an American educational television show, created almost entirely by children, which aired on PBS from January of 1972 to February of 1978. A new version of the show, also on PBS, premiered in 1999 and ended production in 2005. Both versions were produced by WGBH-TV in Boston. Christopher Sarson was ZOOM’s creator and original producer (1972-1974).

ZOOM encouraged children to “turn off the TV and do it!” On the show, a rotating cast of seven kids (known as ZOOMers) performed various activities such as games, plays, poems, recipes, jokes, and science experiments, all suggested by viewer contributions. The performers in the original series were known for wearing striped rugby shirts, and for performing the show barefoot. The mail-in request became a pop culture reference for its musical exhortation to, “Write ZOOM, Z-Double-O-M, Box 3-5-0, Boston, Mass 0-2-1-3-4: send it to ZOOM!”. There was also a language game on the show called Ubbi-Dubbi and another called Fannee Doolee.

ZOOM was a new kind of series when it premiered on January 3, 1972. Unlike other children’s fare at the time, it was for the most part unscripted. Far from seeking to capitalize by making stars of the child actors, the contracts prohibited them from making any television appearances or doing commercials for three years after they left the show.

ZOOM was intended to inspire children to be active investigators, creators, and problem-solvers as well as introduce them to the principles of ethnic diversity. The show’s ZOOMSci segment, for example, featured on the later incarnation, encouraged viewers to try the activities shown on ZOOM and to send in their results.

When ZOOM made a comeback in 1999, parents who had grown up watching the show could now share it with their own children, and found that it was very much the same as it had been in the 1970s. The theme song was similar, there was still Ubbi-Dubbi, and the ZOOMers continued to play games and perform skits suggested by other children. While the ZOOMers would occasionally appear barefoot for certain games and skits, the entire show was no longer performed barefoot. With the advent of the Internet, the “0-2-1-3-4″ jingle was rarely sung, supplanted by one that emphasized “PBSKids, dot org!” Also, when reading aloud the names of contributors, the later version provided only first names and abbreviated surnames (e.g., “Paul T.”), presumably as a compromise between crediting the children and meeting modern privacy expectations for child safety.

The show was last filmed during the summer of 2004, many episodes taking place off of the ZOOM set. The decision to cancel the show was largely due to falling ratings, with the last season’s ratings down almost a fifth from the previous year. There is currently talk of putting ZOOM on either PBS Kids Sprout or a soon-to-be 24-hour digital PBS Kids Go! Channel.

The first ZOOM series lasted six seasons (1972–1978) and featured 49 ZOOMers. The second ZOOM series lasted seven seasons (1999–2005) and featured 32 ZOOMers. At the end of every season of the second series, cast members who had grown too old were replaced by new cast members.
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Originally funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, The Ford Foundation and McDonald’s, ZOOM lost its funding in 1975, after the end of the fourth season. It was off the air from the summer of 1975 until January of 1976, when it was brought back in reruns.

Some PBS stations continued to broadcast reruns of the series as late as early 1980.

During the 1970s version of the series, WGBH never disclosed the ZOOMers’ last names, which was likely part of the producers’ policy of just using ordinary kids who would be likely to stay ordinary kids; this policy also included a contract, in which the ZOOMers would not appear on television for five years after leaving the show.

Theme song

1970s Version

(spoken)Cha cha cha, ZOOM!
Come on and zoom, zoom, zoom-a zoom!
We’re gonna zoom-a, zoom-a, zoom-a zoom!
Everybody’s movin’ it, everybody’s doin’ it,
Everybody’s writing the show, yeah!
So would you zoom, zoom, zoom-a zoom?
Come on and zoom-a zoom-a zoom-a zoom!
I’m (name of ZOOMer)!, etc.

Each introduction in the roll call is followed by a few quick slides of that particular ZOOMer in various poses (often in a silly fashion).

Who are you?
What do you do?
How are you?
Let’s hear from you…
We need you!
We’re gonna zoom, zoom zoom-a zoom!
Come on and zoom-a zoom-a zoom-a zoom!
Come on, give it a try,
We’re gonna show you just why,
We’re gonna teach you to fly high!

Come on and zoom!
Come on and zoom, zoom!

These last two lines were repeated until fading out. In the early seasons, after the kids left the stage in the closing credits, it was often replaced after a few times with an instrumental version.

Second Generation Version

Come on and Zoom, Come on and Zoom,
Come on and Zoom, Come on and Zoom,
Come on and Zoom, Zoom, Zoom-a, ZOOM!
ZOOM! ZOOM! ZOOM!
Come on and Zoom, You call the tune,
Come on and Zoom, We’re starting soon,
Come and Zoom-a, Zoom-a, Zoom-a, ZOOM!
ZOOM, ZOOM, ZOOM, ZOOM,

I’m (Zoomer’s name)

We’re all plugged into one world now
So let’s talk, we want to hear from you
Come on give it a try!
And if you like what you see, turn off your TV,
AND DO IT!
ZOOM (x5)

Come on and Zoom, Come on and Zoom,
Come on and Zoom, Zoom, Zoom-a, Zoom
Come on and Zoom, Come on and Zoom
Come on and Zoom-a, Zoom-a, Zoom-a, Zoom!

ZOOM!

In 1974, A&M Records released an album of songs from the show entitled ZOOM (LP OCLC 3060311; cassette OCLC 18900529). The master number for the album was SP-3402. There were at least two books published for children that were based on the 1970s ZOOM series.