What a stalker

A post i found on someone's Xanga.

I finally found out her name

It's Mandy Amano. You know, "Pepsi Girl"? Like the girl on the Pepsi-iTunes commercial during the Super Bowl? As with any guy that watched it, I instantly fell in love. My mind switched into stalker mode -- just had to find out more about her! Turns out she already has a popular fan-blog right HERE made by an adoring fan (stupid punk beat me to it). Combined, she only had less than 10 seconds of air-time in the commercial but her impact has been tremendous, and her appeal partly comes from her comic book loving background. Now that I know I have to share her with 10,000,000 other stalkers, it cooled off my passion a bit.

But today, I was sitting at the bus stop just thinking about her and wondering what the odds would be to run into her. I stared around around the corner to see if I could jinx myself to make it come true, but after 10 minutes... nothing. So the bus comes and I'm now in a downtrodden mood. As I clamber up the steps into the empty bus, I look up... and WHoA! There she is! Or at least a look-a-like. She blessed me with a smile but I totally lost my balance (must have blushed too) and all sense of direction as I picked out an inconspicuous seat -- not too far away but not too close. As (un)fortune would have it, a fat lady sat in between us and blocked my view. But that's ok, I think I was fidgeting and nervous the whole time. Eventually I had to part from that bus but this incident totally made my day . I'm so easy to please.

Creepy.

So in semi-related news

That Diet Coke Girl? Her name is Nicole Vicious according to this and this.

Her name is Nicole Vicious... She is an actress from New York and one of the sweetest girls to work with!

The more you know!

Added: Or maybe it's spelt Vicius.

this is what the internet needs right now. innocent, happy, cool, sweet girls..on rollerskates ;)

- ThatDietCokeGirl

Beverage blogs

I found an article on clickz.com that mentions this Pepsi Girl blog. It's a good read. Here's an excerpt:

Affinity brands have long generated their own word of mouth and Web content. Consider at brands such as Apple. Consumer products companies have it, too. Check out the recently launched Gatorade blog and the popular That Pepsi Girl blog for examples of unlikely customer/fan work. These sites may not be as flashy as commercially produced viral stuff (see Viralmeister for examples), but in many ways they're actually better. They're authentic, or very accurate facsimiles of authenticity.

- Can Viral Marketing Be Serious?

Read more

So we have a Pepsi blog and Gatorade blog. No Coke blog? Somebody's gotta be a Coke fan out there.

That Diet Coke Girl?

Found a post on another blog comparing one of the new Diet Coke TV ads, 'Sparkle' (see the ad here), to the Pepsi/iTunes ads:

First off, Diet Coke now has Splenda. Its a Nutrasweet like artificial sweetner. But this lead to a few of their new advertising campaigns with the likes of Adrianne Brody doing the "Bounce". But the important thing is in one of the latest commercials to come out last week was the "Sparkle" commercial. U can see all these at the Diet Coke Website under thier little commercial section. Now the Wang has noticed that unders "Sparkle" they go with the hip route, using a song by Oakenfold and even using this yong blonde girl. I think this is Coke's answer to the Pepsi Girl, Mandy Amano of superbowl ass shaking fame. Still i think the blonde care-free roller skate look, works with the sunset and the Santa Monica beach look. And the Wang likes. So if the cola commercial battles will lead to cute girl intro casualties like these, then the Wang says let the War of Colas begin!!

- worldwidewang.org

So... anybody know who That Diet Coke Girl is?

;)

IMDB links

Mandy's IMDB profile was recently updated again with more info and some miscellaneous Mandy links (including this site!) amongst other things, but more interestingly, a Yahoo! Group dedicated to her (and nope, i didn't make that one!). So check it all out.

Added: Oh and just recently, Mandy was also featured as Artist of the Week over at AArisings.com!

This blog is not a piece of viral marketing!

Or is it?!

I found a pretty interesting post about this Pepsi Girl blog over at Clive Thompson's blog, who also writes for The Boston Globe, The New York Times Magazine and Wired, among others. Here's an excerpt.

During the Superbowl, Pepsi ran an ad called "Pop the Music", which technically was supposed to be a spot for its iTunes tie-in. But the commercial inadvertantly made a star out of a Mandy Amano, a woman who appears in the ad for about three or four seconds. Geeks swooned over her and began posting frantic mash notes on discussion boards planetwide.

Read more

Also, Brand Noise reports:

People are dedicating serious time to following the every move of the models in commercials. The two current objects of desire are "That Pepsi Girl" and "The Blonde Old Navy Girl". These sites demonstrate the new "layered" reality to advertising.

Read more