In a move aimed at bringing teens who liked "High School Musical" into their stores, retailer Sears announced late last week plans to produce a similar piece of crap a new movie, entitled "An American Mall." It's a tweenie-little-film, based on a group of "young adults" who work in a mall over the summer.

ShopTalk reports via the Chicago Sun Times that the move comes amid Sears' botched share buyback and waning support from a once virulent consumer base. Business in the first quarter of this year was...horrible. The company suffered losses in the amount of $56 million.

More on the movie:

"Scenes were shot in a Sears store and characters wear Sears clothing. Of course, extras carry Sears shopping bags in the background.

But the partnership is much deeper than just a movie musical. 'A multi-layered integrated marketing campaign built around the movie targets the core MTV audience on-air, online and in stores — in time for the back-to-school shopping season.'"

Speaking of back-to-school, Sears hopes to further entice teens with the face of teen star Vanessa Hudgens, who starred in High School Musical. And breathe.

More after the jump.

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Thanks Illegal Advertising, for this fantastic spot.

Following yesterday's post on about Meteorite's "Dirty Water" campaign, our friend Paco sent me a link to this Euro campaign, which won two gold, one silver and a titanium Lion this year at Cannes. The agency responsible — Mortierbrigade Brussel, Belgium.

To attract attention for the cause, a young boy dressed in shorts and a tank top could be seen running into prime time TV shows (live programs, with hosts) only to drink the water that sat in front of the hosts, or their guests. The boy chugged the water and ran off.

In three days, the boy had been on enough programs that a stir was created. In just six days, people donated the equivalent of $5.24 million dollars. Considering the relatively small size of Belgium, that's no small feat.

The viral piece was meant to highlight the disparaging situation for the 1.1 billion people that don't have clean water, and the fact a child dies every 15 seconds from a lack of clean water. The agency's client 'Music for Life' and their partner, The Red Cross, did more for clean water in a week than anyone could have imagined.

More info on the whole thing after the jump.

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Heroes star Hayden Panettiere has a music video for her song "Wake Up Call" and it is all over the internet today. It's been met with much criticism. Rightfully so. The song sucks!

You can watch the video if you'd like. But I can save you the agony. There's a barely legal, provocatively dressed girl singing a song that vaguely resembles that song by Paris Hilton "Stars Are Blind" and dancing what can only be described as choreography for Britney Spears post kid number two, pre nervous breakdown.

Thing is, it's part of a Candie's ad campaign. Panettiere is a spokesmodel for the shoe company. This is nothing like the Converse ad Anomaly did. They aren't even showing the shoes in the video. I'll buy a pair of Candie's shoes if they come with the garauntee that she will never, ever, sing again.

AS just got an email about this NY Times article about HBO and Campfires efforts to promote the new show "True Blood". I previously wrote about this campaign and the lengths they are going to in order to promote the show. In May they began sending cryptic letters in black envelopes sealed with red wax to people like horror film bloggers and subscribers to the horror movie magazine Fangoria and such. The above video is of a video blogger talking about the letter she received (it's long, but kind of worth watching to see the direction they took.

Campire has been putting a tremendous effort into this campaign. According to the Times it's needed "full-time attention of six Campfire employees who are monitoring message boards, maintaining a fake blog and coordinating the precisely timed release of new materials." They also mention the 20 freelancers are working on other technical aspects of the campaign.

This is very comfortable territory for Campfire, a production house and advertising agency, whose founders produced "The Blair Witch Project". This campaign will have run for four months by the time that show begins airing in September. HBO's goal is to have the marketing tell as much of the back story as possible so that the series can get right into the story when it begins.

It just seems like HBO is trying really hard to grab another hit series. Has this campaign caught your attention? Are you planning to watch the series?

As I was waiting to watch my previously dvr'd Live Free or Die Hard I saw what I thought was the hokiest commercial until I remembered HBO doesn't show commercials. Turns out it was a promo for a new show airing in September called "True Blood". It's a clever little viral marketing campaign to get folks interests piqued by what is described as a "synthetic blood nourishment beverage"- Tru Blood Beverage. There are some print ads in mags and a couple of cheesy commercials like the one above that direct you to this website.

It's a campaign that works. because people are all over the internet talking about it. I had to check out the site and now I'm interested in checking out the show.

You've probably seen the pin-up campaign for the season premiere of Weeds and the series premiere of Secret Diary of a Callgirl on Showtime.

Ask Dabitch Wappling, a stellar blogger and maven at The Commercial-Archive, Adland, put together the top photo because, as she put it, "(the Showtime pieces [bottom]) were in need of mocking, so (she) posed just like them, albeit with less big hair-styling and airbrushing."

Jump down the rabbit hole.

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California/Amsterdam (eh hem, go "the Dutch") based 72andSunny developed a spot for its Nike "Take it to the Next Level" campaign. We're talking futball, not football.

"Turning Spanish" features England's Spanish premiere league star Fernando Torres.

"In Torres' first year in the English Premier League, he scored 33 goals in 47 games, the best first-season scoring record ever for an overseas player. Because of his unbelievable play, he has become a hero in Liverpool," said Bryan Rowles, creative director, 72andSunny. "England didn't qualify for the European Championships this year, so we thought converting the red half of the city of Liverpool to supporters of Spain seemed like a really fun idea. On top of that, we were curious to hear what Spanish sounded like when spoken with a Liverpudlian accent."

Talk about overbranding. I really hope the spot isn't meant to be a smack in the face for the Spanish. Anyone remember the backlash when David Beckham joined the torro team? Rest assured, there were no Union Jacks flying in Madrileno windows, in a Nike spot or otherwise.

For years, television news has used the "extra" space below and around anchors and reporters to provide audiences with additional information. News tickers, weather bugs, chyrons — these are all words common to news.

But in the last few years, advertisers have begun to utilize the idea for mini-spots, annoying little lower thirds that pop up. TBS is probably the most devious of these criminals. Adage and FishbowlLA covered one such spot for The Bill Engvall Show, which aired during Family Guy. During the episode, Engvall pops on screen and actually pauses the show. More after the jump.

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Well someone noticed that we like to compare similar work and sort of ask you all what you think of it. But it turns out there's another Web site that's taken a lot of the tough "research" out of the mix. So be sure to check it out, and finally answer the "which came first" question that consumes your nights.

It's called Coloribus, and I'm not going to link it because that would be too much work.

But don't lose too much sleep, cuz in the end, you didn't do the work anyway. Snap!