John Deere Wants Shirtless Farmers For Campaign

Minneapolis-based John Deere agency Mackenzie is looking for farmers for an upcoming John Deer ad campaign. The agency wants "real farmers, with farmer tans, well-formed paunches, and tattoos." A newspaper article states male farmers will photographed shirtless and should be between 25 and 55. There was no mention of 35 to 55 year-old, shirtless female farmers.

Syndicate Announces Show Details

IDG World Expo has released details of the "Syndicated Company and Product Environments" conference track at Syndicate, scheduled to take place December 12-14, 2005 at the Hilton San Francisco. This track will discuss how companies of all sizes, from corporate titans like GM to neighborhood book stores, are syndicating all kinds of content in pursuit of real business goals.

The Syndicate conference shows how syndication and social media tools such as RSS, blogs and podcasts are helping to change the way businesses do business. The "Syndicated Company and Product Environments" track is one of four tracks, and it is geared to help companies learn how to better interact with and directly inform their customers.

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WSJ: Adrants A Best For Coverage of Madison Avenue Ups And Downs

In a November 16, 2005 Wall Street Journal article, "What the In-Crowd Knows: From Hollywood to Wall Street, Our Guide to the Blogs Insiders Read to Stay Current." Adrants was named, "One of the best ways to keep up on Madison Avenue's ups and downs. Published by Steve Hall, a former ad-agency employee, Adrants covers topics ranging from urinal advertising to the news of the day, all with a bemused tone. The site also provides links to breaking-news stories featured by other Web publications. John Osborn, president and chief executive of the New York office of Omnicom Group's BBDO Worldwide, is a fan." We humbly thank Brian Steinberg from the world's foremost business publication and Mr. Osborn for their kind acknowledgments.

Liberal Ad Network Boots Bloggers, Threatens Advertisers

While all politics are, well, political and most conversation between various entities clinging to one ideological party or another amounts to nothing more than bickering between middle school kids trying to prove who's cooler, a situation has arisen over at the BlogAds Liberal Advertising Network that's causing a bit of bitchy buzz. Rogers Cadenhead reports he's been kicked out of the network, along with Retort, Raw Story and Smirking Chimp, by network organizers Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos and Chris Bowers and Jerome Armstrong of MyDD which I always thought was a blog about bra size but, surprise, actually focuses on politics.

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Pop Ups, Insanely, Still Deemed Worthy of Award Consideration

The Web Marketing Association has announced it's accepting entries for the 2006 Internet Advertising Competition Awards, the ad industry's award competition dedicated to online advertising. Awards will be presented within each of the industry categories and advertising formats such as online ad banners, interstitials, rich media ads, email, online newsletter campaigns, microsite/landing page, integrated ad campaigns and even ads the client didn't choose.

Unfortunately, oddly and sadly, pop-ups are also included in the competition. No industry entity should acknowledge this bastion of marketing idiocy which amounts to nothing more than utter disregard for human preference and which represents the lowest form of scum this industry has yet to rid itself of.

ad:tech Shanghai: Growth Seen in China

iMediaConnection's Kevin Ryan is in Shanghai this week at ad:tech and reports there's tremendous interactive marketing growth occurring in China and things could dramatically heat up in a year or two. While the conference was much smaller than the recent New York ad:tech, Ryan reports search engine marketing is alive and well as is online commerce in the form of online shopping. U.S.-based shopping site Smarter.com has entered the market and, according to Ryan, will "focus on fashion, baby and maternity, pet supplies and sporting goods among other key categories in Japan, while Chinese will focus on 3C channels (computers, consumer electronics and communications.)"

MTA Promotes Holiday Bonuses

Random Observations points to the new MTA "Holiday Bonus" ads which offer bonuses on New York's buses, trains and subways from Thanksgiving to New Year's Day. It's that warm holiday feeling all over again.

Agency Kills Sacred Cows in Ad

Yesterday, ad agency The Gate Worldwide ran an ad in The New York Times which killed a bunch of advertising sacred cows such as "Never say something offensive in a headline," Clients should be charged based on hours worked" and " It's OK to act like a jerk if you're talented." The ad, which carries the headline, "Death to all sacred cows" along with the image of a cow with a gun pointed at its head, goes on to explain the agencies compensation system which involves three levels; idea compensation, commodity-based execution and a bonus structure that rewards both agency and client. It also impresses upon potential clients the importance of properly selling a proposed idea up the client side ladder which, if accomplished efficiently, can result in the agency offering a discount for time and money saved. It's not that these ideas are new but they are just packaged so well that it's worth calling out.

The agency's website includes seven "gateisms" offered as guiding principles for great advertising.

Essence, Viability, Definition, Sense of Buzz and WOM Debated

After reading Tom Hespos' MediaPost Online Spin entitled Buzz Marketing Makes No Sense and browsing through the 55 or so responses to the article, it's clear that, in essence, word of mouth and buzz marketing are no different than "normal" advertising in that both involve bias, whether paid or unpaid. There is an influence present as in all advertising which, itself, is inherently bias. It is not free-form human interaction but is the "commercialization of human interaction" as one poster in the replies said.

What WOM and Buzz do is place the advertising message in the mouths of people rather than the mouths of marketers. We can argue endlessly as to whether that is a good thing or a bad thing but I think we can all agree that there is a non-natural bias interjected into human interaction when WOM and Buzz are present. Whether full disclosure is present or not, in WOM and Buzz an element other than pure opinion is present. The fact that the bias is disclosed may, for some, make the interaction palatable. For others, anything introducing bias is unacceptable.

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Lugz Beats Crap Out of Eminem

While Apple and Lugz lawyers battle it out over whether Apple's agency TBWA\Chiat\Day copied a Lugz commercial for it's own Eminem commercial, good 'ol consumer generated media has taken the fight, appropriately, to the streets in another commercial which pits Eminem against the Lugz dude who gives Eminem a swift boot out of the frame to take back what was, apparently, rightfully his to begin with. If you ask us, Lugz should finance a campaign and run this thing.