Edvertising Feilure

Teaming up with an ESPN service to get to try to give your new brand a boost? We've already seen one pay-for-our-shit service from ESPN go down the drain. ESPN Mobile worked about as well as Larry Brown in New York -- both lost about $40 million by admitting the project was a failure. Undeterred by ESPN Mobile's collapse, Philips is teaming up with ESPN to provide Insider news for free every so often throughout the next couple of months. As you might have expected, however, this couldn't have gone off without a minor hitch somewhere. It's not just that ESPN Insider is awful -- their NBA "insiders" don't really extend past Chad Ford -- but even the advertisements about their service are sloppy, too.

Exhibit A:



Maybe the Clippers are signing an unknown undrafted free agent named Kamen to a $50 million deal, maybe ESPN's NBA Rumor Central once reported that a Kamen is getting $50 million, or maybe Chris changed his name in the off-season. At least they didn't do something like this.