While everyone's fawning all over Google's purchase of YouTube, the poor guys over at pipe and tube equipment company Universal Tube whose web address is utube.com wish the party would end because, apparently, several million people can't tell the difference between YouTube and Utube causing the company's president Ralph Girkins to tell CNN, "It's killing us." Indeed it is. The site is currently available. Hey Google, help a little guy out. Send a spare server or three over to these guys so your $1.6 billion party doesn't put this guy out of business.
One has to wonder whether or not Agency.com's Subway Video fiasco might not have turned out better if they took this tack when they did their man on the street interviews. At least they might not have offended that Amish guy Hassidic Jew. Oh wait, it wasn't the interviews that did it. They crucified themselves but whatever.
Adrants reader Nicholas Hall points out Will McKinley likes to go to Subway but he only goes for the Diet Coke. It's his "delivery method of choice for the precious elixir caffeine." He hates the food but loves to go to various Subway's throughout New York for his caffeine needs. The other day, as he was leaving a Subway, he was approached by a guy with a video camera and a microphone who wanted to talk to Will about his Subway experiences. Will offered that he might not be the best guy to talk to as he has no love for the place but the guy, undeterred, offered Will $5 and said, "I'll pay you $5 to say something good." So Will thought for a second, said sure, and decided to lie about hw much he loved Subway. Score one for that marketing organization.
Will didn't stop there. When asked his favorite thing about Subway, Will invented a new tagline for the place, "Subway is healthy, fast and cheap. Just how I like my women."
No doubt, we're the last people you'd expect to comment on English grammar so we're not going to. We're going to let Adrants reader Michael Scott take the floor and tell us about his efforts to try to get Infiniti Canada to correct the grammar he claims is wrong in this ad
Here's a copy of a plea I sent to information.centre@infiniticanada.com two months ago......and again today:
SUBJECT: Your "All that's missing ARE the wings" co-op newspaper advertisement
Please, pull the ad from your co-op kit and replace it with a corrected version........(or, alternatively, advise all dealers to stop running the print ad.) (The ad appeared in Tuesday, Oct 10th's National Post, page A6, over your dealer Woodchester Infiniti's name.)
If this ad is going to live on........the headline must be corrected to read, "All that's missing IS the wings."
In its current form, I'm sure you are repelling more potential buyers than you are attracting. (I know it throws ME off my lunch every time I see it!!)
The subject of your headline is the word "ALL"........not "WINGS". Therefore the verb "is" must be used to agree with the subject, not the PLURAL "are" as it now reads.
Apparently you don't trust me as a source of English usage. I wrote to you about this a couple of months ago as well as to your agency, but the ad continues to run in its gut-wrenching form.
Please consult someone at your ad agency who is over the age of 40 and who learned how to speak English back in the day when teachers cared and/or knew the difference between good and just plain WRONG.
So there, Infiniti.
We all know that an agency's own website usually falls to the bottom of the list when it comes to priorities but the creators of this Indian agency's website forgot to bother with basic copywriting, proofreading, translation and, well, just about everything else when it crafted its homepage verbiage. Yes, yes, we shouldn't pick on a company for not knowing English when we Americans are the worst offenders at knowing other countries languages but a simple call to, well, anyone in any English speaking country could have helped these guys out quite a bit.
UPDATE: We've been had. Apparently, it's all just a witty promotional site for an LA-based agency called Kiwi.
Trendhunter tells us Nashville nightclub, On the Rocks, has established a dress code that bars entry to those wearing clothing from brands which appears on its list of unacceptable attire. The list includes ECKO, Southpole, ENYCE, Sean John, Phat Farm, FUBU and several others which some say suggests racial profiling because of the genesis of some of those brands. Well, at least it will keep people from showing up in cheap, Berkley & Jensen discount jeans because, after all, style is way more important than race, creed, color and economic status, right?
We just love when we get "personalized" emails from PR folks like this one from LA agency Fanscape which, apparently, did a considerable amount of research to determine the subject matter of each site they sent the release to so they could properly personalize it. Writing to Adrants which, apparently research determined to be a site that focuses on sporting news, the email read, in part, "It would be great to get a mention about AT&T Home Turf, including the Roy Williams segment, up on your sports site as either a news item or feature. Photos from the AT&T shoot are also available. The Roy Williams episode, as well as past "webisodes" are available here: http://www.attblueroom.com/sports. Take a look and let me know what you think!"
Well, you cut and paste buffoons, you ask what we think? Well, aside from the fact it took no less that three minutes, 7-8 different screens and innumerable confusing navigational issues just to find this video which carried the educational side text "THIS IS AN INTERACTIVE VIDEO" as if a person couldn't figure that out on their own, you might want to update your press list so you can craft oxymorons like "personalized mass emailings" that carry at least a modicum of intelligence.
With MySpace so five minutes ago and podcasts already dead, it was only a matter of time before new student, that oh so Scientology-sounding Second Life, moved to the front of the marketing class and tongue wagging marketer and ad agency students took notice. Last week, student Leo Burnett hooked up with student Second Life to make an Idea Space for the agency's 1,600 creatives to interact in because, after all, in a digital world, no one wants actual human contact any more unless it's with a Second Life virtual hottie.
YesButNoButYes decided to check out Leo Burnett's home and did a search but came up with nothing except a resident who calls himself Leo Burnett and belongs to The BDSM Forum. Not exactly the sort of world the real Leo Burnett would play in but an important lesson learned for those attending the Second Life marketing class: make sure the world you are entering doesn't already have a person with your name who likes kinky sex. That is, unless you're into kiny sex as well.
Juicy Couture released a weird print ad featuring old women with cotton candy hair standing beside a more conventional model. Hmm. Well, we knew Sophia was going soon, but couldn't they have done a better job of replacing her? - Contributed by Angela Natividad
Lots of us in the business think it's really cool to create those directionals or location-specific ads that work really well when they're placed in specific locations. However, lots of us also seem to think creating hundreds of versions of the same, cool, location-specific ads and placing them all over the place is a really good thing too. Hello, Media Department? Meet Creative Department. Hello, Creative Department? Meet Media Department. Talk amongst yourselves.
The Ambiguously Effective Idea that Just Won't Die is back and nebulous as ever. A stock called TMXO leaped 31% on September 5 after somebody sent out a GIF with one of those wildly appealing messages that you discover in your e-mail twenty-six times a day.
Apparently "stock spam" can artificially spike a stock by 4.9-6 for the average spammer. So why did TMXO do almost five times better? *Sigh* Because of subliminal advertising: that seemingly innocent GIF consists of four frames, only one of which is the message you think you see. The other three spout BUY BUY BUY BUY BUY.
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