Well, everyone got what they wanted. Those zany Bill Gates/Jerry Seinfeld ads (see 1 and 2) are out of the picture and now we'll never see what they were building up to. That upsets me. Then again, I didn't whip out the $10 million for Seinfeld.
In their stead, Crispin's hired a dead-ringer for John Hodgman, the stodgy but lovable "humorist" who personifies PC in Apple's "Mac vs. PC" ads. (See Hodgman pose as free pizza in the most recent spot. He's so cute!)
According to Engadget, the new effort is a direct rebuttal to the "Mac vs. PC" ads, which have become part of popular culture. One even starts out with the John Hodgman lookalike saying, "Hello, I'm a PC, and I've been made into a stereotype."
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Guest contributor Frank Sims is Senior Vice President of Publisher Services for Viralytics Media and has compiled a list of items of which publishers seeking acceptance from ad networks should be aware. If you think because he runs an ad network this piece is self-serving, you may be right. Then again, heeding his suggestions would certainly seem to increase your chances of acceptance.
With the big Ad Networks touting ever expanding reach and a firm grasp of the "Long-Tail", it almost seems like a slap in the face when you receive that denial letter stating that "your site is not a proper fit for our network at this time". Well don't worry, it may not be due to the fact that your site has an unpleasant design or inferior content - you may have just broken one of the ad network's 7 deadly publisher sins.
To help guide you through the treacherous submission process, here is a list of the seven things to be aware of when applying to the big CPM networks.
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John McCain makes another one of those verbal oopsies (see a previous noteworthy soundbite) and Team Obama wastes no time whipping an ad around it. Bonus points for mentioning the Lehman Brothers collapse. Way to be timely!
Feels like dirty press to me. Our economy's shit, but it's not a lost cause, and I think that's what McCain wanted to highlight. You cannot save a lost cause.
Still, a fellow blogger points out, "running the economy from a defensive mindset like that is different than having a vibrant economy." McCain's a defense guy for sure -- and defense usually implies lack of leverage. You're trying to protect what's left, not win new ground.
Even so, are we all in agreement that a vibrant economy can be manufactured with Extra-Strength Hope Serum?
- GI Direct hopes to inspire direct mail marketers with Creative Formats, a visul muse that makes direct mail seem rad as scrapbooking. Search by feature, format, market sector or size of run.
- MoveOn.org goes behind enemy lines in hopes of, I don't know, making McCain implode. Meet Billy Mires, bus driver of the "Straight Talk Express." He'll pass on charming yet ironic factoids like how John McCain invented the BlackBerry.
- The anatomy of toothpaste. What you see at left is Colgate Total Mint Stripe. Was it Andy Warhol who said art is whatever you can get away with?
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The Ad Council and the US Department of Energy are using a new ad effort to build a new "energy ethic" for tweens. The campaign's called "What's your excuse?" and was created by Goodby, Silverstein & Partners.
LoseYourExcuse.gov is stocked with tips for saving energy, desktop background downloads and the like. I really love the game, though. Been playing it all afternoon.
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"A lot of girls out there love healthy food. If you want to get into bed with one, check out our debut episode!"
That's the premise for the mDialog-produced show Cooking to Get Lucky. Its purpose is to turn men into gourmet cooking machines that create meals guaranteed to get the girl. OK, so there isn't necessarily a guarantee but that's the hook upon which the show hangs.
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An hour or so ago I read a grisly article about some Russian kids that killed and ate their goth friends. After scrolling down to the end of the piece and feeling appropriately perturbed, I came across the Ask.com video ad at left.
"How can you learn to walk in high heels?" it burbles cheerfully. "Get the answer." I played the video out of morbid curiosity and watched a pair of legs walk, with sass, up until the grand finale -- when the owner of those legs topples over with a scream, followed by cries of dismay.
It remains unclear whether she was eaten after her plummet from grace.
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Anheuser-Busch won its first-ever Emmy for "Swear Jar," a spot where employees at an office add change to a jar every time somebody swears.
Not so unusual, except the secretary's revealed that the money might be used to buy packs of Bud Light for the office, so even the top execs see motherbleep!in' bleep!suckers around every fuckin'! corner.
Produced by DDB/Chicago via Hungry Man. The PR folk say it's been watched 12 million times online and has never appeared on TV.
Once again Bud Light scores with what in waking life we'd call a vocal tic. See a spot it ran earlier this year, when the word of the week was "dude."
Art, movies, TV, books and music have probably depicted the break-up from every possible angle. So if you're an indie artist trying to ride a power ballad to fame, what's a homie to do?
Tap the zeitgeist. Pun intended. For his song Someone Else, Chris Blake claims to have Googled "biggest regrets" and cobbled the results into a music video, which he then posted on YouTube.
Regrets range from provocative ("My reluctance to hold my daughter") to banal ("Spending too much time on Facebook"). I dig the contrast between the words and backgrounds.
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I recently saw this cute rich media ad for Target's "Happy Together" campaign, targeted to college kids.
Its composed of harmonious extremes that appear one after the other, like flash cards: planner + dreamer, night owl + morning bird, extrovert +introvert. The accompanying illustrations remind me of the work of Liling Yu, who created Twitter's FailWhale.
Yu's art totally personifies the Web 2.0 aesthetic: bug-eyed animal friends, soothing pastels, and non-confrontational sans-serif typefaces, all culminating in brands that seem to want to play with us. That Target knows to tap into all this is part of what keeps it young, fresh and lively.
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