Kathlyn Clore

Think legacy media brands are not reinventing and repackaging themselves?

Check out some video and print ads I’ve found online promoting news products from Russia Today to O Globo (Brazil) and TV3 (Estonia).

A slick Simpsons parody advertises Estonian news (Thanks for the tip, RFE). I was told via Twitter that the ad was very believable in its portrayal of Estonian life (kidding!).

In Belgium, this quirky ad showcases an artist frying a steak to promote cobra.be, a culture site with content from Belgium’s state broadcaster. The theme in this campaign seems to be that whenever someone famous in Belgium - like actress Marie Vinck - Cobra.be will be there to cover it.

These nice videos (with subtitles, helpfully!) come from Brazil, where they promote O Globo. It is the biggest newspaper in Brazil.

This one is my favorite. I love the action of the “mouse” picking up trash or helping students. The ad shows the paper as a partner for motivated citizens.

This one promotes O Globo as being more than “just the paper” in a newspaper

This cheeky ad comes from France, where it advertises Le Monde Magazine. The tagline is “Bring the world into focus.” It seems to be a big hit online; the two YouTube versions of it that I’ve found each have more than 50,000 views.

Finally for now, these ads promoting the international TV channel Russia Today are causing a stir in the United Kingdom. The theme here is promoting Russia Today as a channel whose journalists ask tough questions and challenge commonly held beliefs.

In honor of my sister arriving from Chicago today to run the Big Sur Half Marathon with me here in Monterey, California, here are two viral videos depicting the City of Big Shoulders.

First is a time-lapse sequence of bridges raising over the Chicago River:

This one shows the view from an El train circling the city. It is actually a TV commercial for Budweiser, but is mainly cool for the song (a Beatles ditty sung by The Hours) and views:

I love the “Get the lab” remark at the end.

Problem is, this is just a cute skit. What does it have to do with Jim Beam?

Scroll through the comments at this AdAge brief. They indicate Jim Beam has terminated its contract with the agency that produced this.

Last week at the Online News Association I became convinced the mobile web is the most exciting platform for the future of journalism. More on that later.

And I don’t think the generation of people who will come to rely on their smart phones for like, everything, is the crappiest generation - as this guest on the late-night chat show Conan O’Brien says.

However, I like everything else he’s saying on this funny four-minute viral video. It basically amounts to: Rapid-fire technology is cool, but… Let’s just all keep breathing, kay?

“It’s going to space!!! Will you give it a second to get back from space?!”

“You’re sitting in a chair, in the sky!!!”