As they've done at three previous ad:tech's, ad network Bluelithium is, once again, hosting the show's mega-party which will occur Monday, November 7 at 9PM, following the first show day of ad:tech New York 2005. A preview of the invite we snaggged promises its Wishes promotion in which offers people vacations, iPods and shopping sprees. Appearing again, as they did at the first Bluelithium party at ad:tech San Francisco 2004, will be flying acrobats, fire breathers and Cirque du Soleil entertainers.
While the invite doesn't say where the party will be, last year in New York it was held at Show. However, if Bluelithium intends to put on as big a show as they did at their first party, held at San Francisco's cavernous Ruby Skye, Show won't cut it this time. The place is far too small. One thing's for sure, though. You've got to hand it to a company that can stick around year after year, show after show and not disappear like so many others, unfortunately, do. Kudos.
On Tuesday, October 18 at 9AM, I'll be moderating a panel at BlogOn in New York. The panel is called "Can Advertising Be Social." On this panel, the panelists, who include Organic CEO Mark Kingdon, Unilever Brand Development Director David Rubin, Jaffe LLC Founder Joe Jaffe and I hope to discuss the relationship between social media and advertising - the ways in which people have entered what has now become a two-way conversation rather than the former one-way, marketer to consumer bullhorn approach.
It should be an interesting and, hopefully, informative discussion. There's blogs, chat rooms, forums, IM, Wikis, podcasting, social networks and innumerable other methods with which consumers can achieve a voice as powerful and widespread as marketers.
As examples of this newfound consumer voice, there's Jeff Jarvis who, following a bad experience with a Dell computer, took on Dell publicly forcing Dell to respond. Unfortunately, it wasn't much of a response. There's George Masters, a teacher who created a professional looking iPod commercial which raced around the globe. Smartly, Apple took a hands off approach. There's Converse who asked people to submit films about Chuck Taylors. There's Mercedes who encouraged people to send in photos of themselves with their Mercedes which were ultimately featured in the company's ad campaign. The examples go on. People have become socially active with their brand experiences, good and bad, and the level of activity is forcing marketers to join the conversation and, forever, putting aside old methods of controlling it.
Indeed, marketing is in for the ride of its life.
This is a billboard, shot by Flickr user Trev Vg, in Paris for, apparently, a lawnmower maker. We've seen racy ads that get the message across but this one definitely wins the prize for mixing relevance with attention-getting imagery. Those French sure aren't as caught up about sexual imagery as we Americans seem to be.
UPDATE: Apparently this campaign is years old and has already been featured in Archive Magazine. Well, we're just really sorry about covering something so old but we don't live in France and we don't read Archive Magazine. Call us dumb but we still like the ad and thought you would too.
