ad:tech Chicago's "Love for Sale -- How Great Creative Seduces Its Target" session was broken into two discernably useful parts: statistics on online dating, and seduction as a metaphor for marketing.
We'll begin at the beginning.
The Online Dating Crowd
Accompanied by Liz Ross of Digitas US, Fusion Idea Lab's Matt Brennock regaled us with both statistics and close-to-home anecdotes -- the kind that's fueled many a romantic comedy.
I heard one guy say the pair had great chemistry, and he commended them for "[opening] the kimono" the way they did. Given the topic matter, and Brennock's zeal for reminding us (first once, then twice, then...) that men really do just wanna get laid, the geisha metaphor was oddly appropriate.
Some stats:
- The average online dater is 42 years old.
- Match.com remains tops, with 3.4 million uniques/month, but people increasingly drift away from these big-box dating sites and into more niche fare: j-date, veggiedate, Christian singles. (AdAge blogger Kelly Eidson seized this opportunity to send me a link to STD Match, a dating site targeted to people living with sexually transmitted diseases. There are also -- as if you didn't know -- ethnicity-specific sites.)
If the world wasn't our oyster before, the marvelous advances of the internet, coupled with mankind's enterprising creative spirit, have ensured it certainly is now. There's a match worth blogging.
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He-said, she-said now officially out of control as ad blogs jockey for credit on who broke what when. Read the latest update that includes the statement from WWF on AdWeek. Plus, check out Ad Age's article with a great response from Ken Wheaton in the comments.
We're confusing the issue here by focusing just on timelines though, or DDB and their creatives, or what WWF knew and what they knew and when they didn't know it. There are a lot of factors at work. (Blaming creatives who support scam is like, well, pick your metaphor: A shark for being a shark, a perv for hanging around MySpace, etc.)
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Talk about a headline. What's better than AIDS? Getting screwed by an infamous world leader of course. George Parker has a campaign from Germany called AIDS is a mass murderer from Regenbogen e.V. in conjunction with German agency das comitee. Hitler, Saddam Hussein and Joseph Stalin stand at the ready to service the people. (Ouch.) It rivals the DDB 9/11 party going on for shock value, that's for sure--and it's just as misguided, falling into the same cliched trap. (NSFW clip after the jump.)
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Just wondering if Visa knew how inspired the casting choice for voiceover was when they selected Mr. Inner Freak himself. (After the jump.) Of course, this plot twist wouldn't be complete without a little contextual madness. Clicking the article brings up this Responsibility Project takeover. Ouch.
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At the risk of using up Steve's bandwidth, let's talk scam, the "other" four-letter word blowing up big this week. So there's a TV spot to go with the real fake WWF ad (After the jump.) Read the reactions here, here, here, here and here. Even Brazil lobbed one back.
Rather than rehash the same points (too much), consider a few other things at work.
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GET YOU SOME! Nice little quiet topic to bring up, innit. More than a few ad blogs have covered this (as I also did with the AdPulp gang on a recent episode of the Beancast). Only reason I'm beating a dead horse, besides looking for traffic, is that two new services sent us releases about what they do, which would be... crowdsourcing! Tongal (video below), and GeniusRocket.
Whether it's good to open up your marketing to the masses or whether designers are prostituting themselves, we can go back and forth all day. The arguement for it though oversimplifies several things, specifically, it fools people into thinking they'll have total control over all aspects of their work, and that's simply not going to happen. (Quite the opposite actually.) But another thing comes to mind.
FF >> 20 years at a crowdsourced student logo for the next Nike while its bitter creator wonders why they ever gave it away in a $200 contest. Look on the bright side: It'll make a great post for an ad blog.
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As they should. Getting caught up in the spec ad hoopla earlier, we linked to a 9/11 themed campaign done by DDB Brazil on Ads Of The World via Agency Spy. Alan Wolk via Twitter then tipped me off to the official response (after the jump).
Lest I get AdRants in any trouble over a previous incident involving a submitted ad, ahem, this shit goes on all the time at a few specific sites and nobody does anything about it. Sure seems like WWF would be able to sue in this case, because what applies to one ad blog applies to all.
But this isn't about spec work per se.
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I admit it: I was eavesdropping.
Me and a crew of other bloggers invaded the press room early today. We were setting up our things, chatting about nothing, when I overheard something really interesting.
I looked up just as the guy was finishing his surmise: "In the future," he was saying, "I think people are going to wonder what the need was for keyboards. Or why we needed dial-up to access the internet. It will be free, and everywhere, like air."
This struck me as simple but inspired. I put my glasses on, checked out his tag: Rishad Tobaccowala, CEO, Denuo. It hits me: Hey! This is the guy who's doing the first keynote!
So I sit and futz with my thumbs for awhile, and finally I get up and walk over.
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- Fuel loses fuel.
- MCD gives those hardworking kids a day off in the city.
- Well, that didn't take long. Long live Teddy's dead legs.
- Fake WWF campaign lands just in time for 9/11!
- Where the white women at?
We all want to sell the world. A new doc out takes a look at the iconic "Guerilla Heroico" y'all know and love, Che Guevara for the new kids, and, which most of advertising has exploited quite nicely. With takes from people like Antonio Banderas, director Trisha Ziff takes a look at the origins of the initially copyright free image that now sells everything from Hope to coffee mugs. (Below.)
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