In the press room at ad:tech I met a guy called Frank Nein of OrionsWave, who observed the ad and marketing sectors are falling into turmoil -- spinning uncontrollably into hell, sifting through the din in search of equilibrium in a world gone self-publish and multi-platform.
And I can't stop thinking about Chris Franklin of Big Sky Editorial, who laughed at the idea of a viral ad. "All ads are viral!" he'd said. The point he made was that in order for an ad to succeed, it should be watchable again and again.
How many of our frenetic new manifestos are ideas that have always been there, or at least should have been?
With that, and as a kind of tribute to the future, I give you the Tootsie Roll ad. I couldn't count on my fingers and toes how often in childhood I saw this spot.
What's awesome about it is, most everyone I've met who's roughly my age still knows all the words to the song. We enjoyed watching it then; a lot of us still do.
And in our lifetimes, we ate a hell of a lot of Tootsie Rolls.
First ad:tech session of the week: Media & Entertainment: Programming, Distribution and Advertising in a Multi-Platform World.
Moderator Ira Rubenstein kicked things off by cutting to the chase. Observing that the "old media model" revolved around scarcity, he asked how panelists make media buying and planning decisions for a show like Heroes when you can watch it on NBC, Hulu and Joost.
What followed were a bunch of really good-sounding quotes if you're a fan of the collected works of Seth Godin. Understand your audience! Follow the good content! What is your consumer looking for?
But then the wind changed. And the boys ran with it!
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There's really no mature way to say this. Tuesday night's party scene at ad:tech New York ROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOCKED! OK, now that we've got that idiotically juvenile behavior out of the system, let's move on to what you missed if you weren't out last night. Three. Count them. Three pulse pounding parties filled with your fellow industry mates. Three. Count them. Three smaller, elegantly reserved early evening cocktail parties during which actual conversation could take place and did. And one. Count them. One one-on-one drink (water, if you must know) with New York's finest - and very successful- media publisher, Laurel Tobey of mediabistro whose company was just purchased by Alan Meckler's Jupitermedia.
 OK, so that was it. There you go. What was that? You want to know more? OK, our arm is easily twisted so here you go. Ready? OK. WTF? That sounded like a cheerleader. Sorry about that. Apparently we need one to help wake up this morning. Why, why are we telling you this? And who the hell is we? It's just me, Steve Hall. Royal "we" dispensed with for now. WTF were we talking about? Oh, right, ad:tech parties.
So Laurel and I met in the Hilton Hotel bar to chat about business and what's going on in the media space, the ins and out of publishing, hosting industry parties, how publishing has dramatically changed over the past few years and how much fun it is to be in the business right now. Countless familiar faces passed by as we sat there including Laredo Group's Leslie Laredo and eMarketer's Crystal Gurin.
 After Laurel and I finished our waters and conversation, we headed over to the AdBrite party held in the Hilton Hotel's Estruca restaurant where, amidst free flowing martinis, the dreaded PowerPoint-ish presentation was given to those who, for better or worse, were more concerned with socializing. To say the least, AdBrite's Dan Madden (I think) had a tough time keeping the audiences attention. I'm not complaining though. It was a great party. If you really want to see a bitch session about industry parties, events, their structure and the behavior of those in attendance, there's a nice rant about the recent Boston Ad Club's Hatch Awards here.
After the AdBrite party, Laurel and I split ways. She headed off to some founder's party because, well, she's a founder and all and I tried really really hard to find Flute where Adverb Media was hosting a party. Unfortunately, I'm apparently and idiot and couldn't find the place. So apologies to the fine folks who sent the invite.
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Overheard on the press room floor:
"The whole point is to remain agnostic."
Digital advertising and spirituality: two sides of the same coin?
Yesterday Facebook unveiled its online ad plan to New York advertisers hither and yon. Here's the scheme prematurely hearkened as a contender to AdWords: advertisers can make their own branded pages!
For free!
And that's not all.
You can also buy banner ads -- LINKING TO YOUR PROFILE PAGE!
Overwhelming? Something like that. But it would be wrong to say Facebook disappointed its masses. It did toss in an analytics feature, after all, and friends can actually endorse stuff they recently bought, which then appears in news feeds.
That last part might be the most meaningful aspect of the announcement. If there's anything the inception of WOMMA taught us, it's that word of mouth has been a wildly underrated resource that fuels the success of any company. Our industry has been hard-pressed to generate WOM in a way that doesn't alienate buyers -- or worse, ring inauthentic.
So kudos to the Facebook team for thinking outside the box. We'll see how this simple idea affects the online ad mix.
Trevor Cawood, the visual effects guy behind Citroen Transformer and Nike Evolution, is now a full-on commercial director. Having recently been signed to Biscuit Filmworks, he was kind enough to upload his first short film: Terminus.
In appropriate VFX short film fashion, it opens with a concrete-like creature harassing a "1970s businessman." As the 8-minute film progresses, the businessman finds that colleagues are also being picked on by inanimate objects from the corporate setting: luggage conveyor belts, bland abstract art sculptures, etc., etc.
Is this a commentary on our growing intimacy with the office, resulting from new technology? Or is it a bleak view on how passive we've become? Whatever your take, criticism sure gets more interesting served with a large dose of CG.
Cawood also co-founded Vancouver-based Embassy VFX, the digital effects studio responsible for the Tetra Vaal short film that duped everyone into thinking military occupation droids were being shipped out to South Africa.
ad:tech NY is packed. Is every New Yorker in advertising?
I'm not going into huge detail about last night's shenanigans since Steve already bared our souls (curse you, AIM!). This is more like a moody play-by-play of stuff worth noting.
For reasons not worth discussing, listening to Like a Prayer always puts me in a state of religious ecstasy and self-loathing. These aren't feelings you want to have over breakfast while hung over. Which leads to the question: who buys the Muzak for hotel dining halls?
Flash back to Monday evening, the reason for said hangover. As Audrey said in Breakfast at Tiffany's, "Quelle night!"
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Think a :60 ad is pushing the limit? That's a speck on Dubai's extra-large ad landscape.
To promote its new non-stop route from Dubai to Sao Paolo, Fly Emirates has launched the world's longest ad to match the 14 hour 40 minute flight time.
Called Non-Stop Fernando, the web push features Sao Paolo native Fernando Ferreira, raving about all things Brazil in a single 14 hour and 40 minute take.
Fernando was kind enough to load a trailer on YouTube. He also provided a log of topics -- ranging from dancing Bossanova to Brazilian cooking -- so ADD-impaired flyers can cut right to the "good" stuff.
While I can't comment on the MediaWhiz Poker Party because I didn't go, I can say all the parties Monday night at ad:tech New York were quite good. Adrants Co-Editor Angela will have an interesting story for you about her experience at the Pascha party and in lieu of the usual litany of we did this, then this, then this and went here and then here and then here, I just got lazy and all I'm going to do is share with you the morning-after IM conversation I shared with Angela. After all, why rewrite something when you don't have to? We like to be efficient like that around here. OK, so it's lazy but efficient sounds better. Come on. We're hung over!
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"They're Greeeeeeat!" Oh wait, that's "a Tiger in Your Tank!" Oh wait, that's a guy in a tiger suit next to a cheerleader standing in front of the Traffic Marketplace booth on Monday during ad:tech New York. What tigers and cheerleaders have to do with whatever it is Traffic Marketplace does, we know not. But it seems to have attracted the attention of conference goers who at least stopped and looked. That's gotta count for something.
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