Firebrand Goes Beta, Still Leaves Us Flummoxed

  • 2 min read
firebrand_beta.jpg

Maybe we’re stupid. Maybe we’re dumb. Maybe we’re old school but we simply can’t understand why the creators of Firebrand believe it will amount to anything more than a great resource for the ad community to see each other’s commercials. Really. Do you know anyone outside of advertising that would actively seek out a website or a cable channel to view commercials, the very thing they are so blissfully skipping with their DVRs? Please. Tell us. We want to meet one of these gluttons for punishment.

Oh sure, Firebrand has wrapped itself neatly in the whole social media/consumer-in-control fleece blanket and has done a wonderful job creating an easy to use, categorized interface with a helpful search function but when the historical behavior of modern day humans is to avoid most ads like the plague, we can’t see Firebrand as anything more than a passing fancy especially when its entire business model seems to rest on a dying method of advertising.

It’s almost like someone in the conference room said, “Fuck it. No one’s watching our commercial so let’s just create a branded destination, wrap it in hipster clothing and make it cool.” Uh, no. Ain’t gonna happen. But like we said, maybe we’re stupid, maybe we’re dumb, maybe we’re old school but it’s just not clicking for us.

Earlier, we wrote, “With investors such as Microsoft, NBC Universal and GE’s Peacock Equity Fund along with distribution through VNU’s AdWeek, Firebrand won’t go out without a fight. No doubt, it will be voraciously consumed by those in the industry but we simply can not envision the average person watching a VJ spin commercials. We just can’t. Of course, we could be totally wrong. It’s not like we haven’t been before. In fact, we hope we are wrong. Maybe the hot host with cleavage will do the trick.” Indeed.

We’d love to see Firebrand’s cups runneth over with pulchritudinous success but this feels too much like 1999-style irrationally exuberant idiocy – a great way for for a few people to make money while investors wonder where the hell their money went.

Like we said, we could be wrong.

In it’s beta invite email, Firebrand wrote, “We’ve got to be crazy. Did we miss something? Is that a typo? Where’s that link go? What’s that button do? Clearly we need a fresh set of eyes on this thing.”

Exactly. See above.

Picture of Steve Hall

Steve Hall

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