[RearView]

Truly Nolen launches comic book-themed advertising campaign

Truly Nolen announced a new series of comic book-style television ads featuring termites, cockroaches, ants and bedbugs as the villains and the Truly Nolen team as the heroes. The ads also give the company’s signature Mouse Car, which was first introduced 50 years ago, a new contemporary look and feel.

"There’s a strong affinity and nostalgia for the old Comic strips that brought us so many famous characters and villains," said Michelle Nolen Senner, head of marketing and advertising for Truly Nolen. "So we wanted the familiarity with our Truly Nolen Comics’ series, but we wanted something that didn’t look like anything else out there."

The first ad in the series features a roundtable meeting of a bug crime syndicate somewhere in a secret hideout declaring: "All of the families go to war against the two legs," referring to humans. In another frame, a sinister military dictator-like termite proclaims: "We will leave nothing standing!" The Truly Nolen team is then summoned to vanquish the villains, with a notice to viewers "To be continued."

In other installments, the revamped Truly Nolen Mouse Car will be part of the evil-fighting superhero team.

"Using animation gives the commercials a broader look so that it can run in markets across the country and viewers in Massachusetts won’t see an ad that looks like it was shot in Florida," Senner said. "It’s a creative way to solve a logistical issue, and build a national campaign that has the potential to rise to the iconic level of characters such as the E-Trade baby or the Geico Gecko."

Tucson-based Motto Productions produced the ads. The first one has started running in selected markets in Florida and Arizona. As the campaign rolls out, Truly Nolen plans to hold a nationwide contest using social media to ask students for suggestions for future installments.
 

*****

Why some people are mosquito magnets
With more than 350 compounds isolated from odors produced by human skin, researchers have barely scratched the surface behind a mosquito‘s preference for certain people, Joseph Conlon, a medical entomologist and the technical advisor to the American Mosquito Control Association, told MSNBC. Although it may all boil down to human odor and genetics — studies of twins have revealed they tend to be attractive or repellent to mosquitoes in the same measure — it‘s more complicated than that.

Conlon says the latest thinking is that it might not be about what makes people more attractive to mosquitoes, but what makes them not as repellent. It could be that individuals who get less bites produce chemicals on their skin that make them more repellent and cover up smells that mosquitoes find attractive.

Mosquitoes don‘t bite you for food, since they feed off plant nectar, Conlon explains. Females suck your blood to get a protein needed to develop their eggs, which can then send more pesky insects into the world to annoy you.

But keep this in mind when you‘re outdoors this summer: Mosquitoes are more attracted to people after they drink a 12-ounce beer. It could be that people breathe a little harder after a cold one or their skin is a little warmer, suggests Conlon. But that won‘t stop him from having a brewski, even though he considers himself a mosquito magnet.
Source: MSNBC