You can't call yourself a new media advertiser if you're not hip to the jive, and ad:tech is a great place to brush up on this crucial skill-set.
But it can be tough to keep up. With that, I give you the 2007 edition of the Official ad:tech New York Ad-Jive Dictionary. Use this knowledge well, and you're sure to be the life of the break room.
Better still, you'll confirm your CEO's conviction that burning $5K to send you to an ad conference was a very intelligent idea.
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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.
Overheard on the press room floor:
"The whole point is to remain agnostic."
Digital advertising and spirituality: two sides of the same coin?
Apparently tiny, cover-nothing thongs can actually make you hot (temperature hot, that is) according to this French Perrier ad featuring a woman in a thong seemingly cooling her overly hot ass with a bottle of the stuff. This sort of advertising is still acceptable (thankfully in some respects) in places outside the U.S. and God forbid if we American get gratuitous and degrade women (and men) into objects of desire.
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Today, a group of privacy groups declared war on advertisers by asking the Federal Trade Commission to establish an online Do Not Track list similar to the offline Do Not Call list. The Consumer Federation of America and the World Privacy Forum, among others, want marketers to stop using cookies which enable behavioral targeting.
There has been much debate on the merit of cookies and their use to track online behavior. Marketers argue it makes the online experience better because ads are more closely targeted to the individual. Privacy advocates claim advertisers have no business collecting information about where on the internet someone has gone unless consent has been given.
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Some spam out of the Adrants mailbag:
Experience the most mind blowing muliple orgasms ever with the one and only.... Jack Rabbit Vibrator!
Check out the vibrator made famous by Charlotte on Sex and the City.
Discover why Charlotte wouldn't leave her room for days until Sarah Jessica Parker burst in and wrestled it away from her.
We're going to be honest. Shortly after seeing the Sex and the City episode mentioned, we bought a Rabbit. This is one instance in which the hype is sadly misguided.
With virtually no load or lag time whatsoever, today we blew two hours of our workday watching Sideways online.
We didn't need to pay for, illegally download, or sacrifice precious computer space for it.
And while the occasional :15 or :30 ad cuts through our experience, we're willing to deal. The content is worth the trouble.
This is all part and parcel of Hulu beta, a valiant joint effort between News Corp. and NBC Universal.
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Of all the forms of product advertising in the world, we hold a special place in our hearts for personal hygiene efforts.
They walk this terrific moral and social line that's bound to result in lots of misunderstandings and wince-worthy ads. (Consider the moral dilemma sparked by the Dove and Axe campaigns. And the ads from when Lysol used to be a douche!)
For client Ban, Enlighten gives us Feel Ban Fresh. Follow the drama of small town Stinkton Heights, where everyone smells terrible and our protagonist, An Inconvenient Girl, tries unraveling the underlying problem. (On her MySpace, of course.)
It's times like this when we actually see Peyton Place in an idyllic light. Because while it housed plenty of skeletons, it lacked cheesy product promotion. ("Go Skunks!" Really?)
Previously on Adrants. Everyone who works in marketing and any business touching it should take the time to read this article. On CBSNews.com, Dick Meyer wrote an editorial hammering home points we've touched on here before such as the portrayal of men as idiots in advertising, the hyper-political correctness foisted upon the industry and society at large and the acceptance, what scholar Charles Murray relates to "ecumenical niceness," of kids dressing and behaving like thugs fueled by marketers and the entertainment industry elevating "thug culture" to culture at large. If that's a lot to digest, just read the article and think long and hard about what cultural imagery you mirror in your marketing. Don't cop out using the tired, "Oh we're just identifying with culture," and turn a blind eye to what you are perpetuating.
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Over the years, we've commented on the emasculated, sole-searching, directionless, man syndrome made famous by those Verizon Dumb Dad ads. Writing in Entertainment Weekly about how today's man just won't grow up and how he's portrayed by show creators and advertiser as a aimless, child-like buffoon, Mark Harris captures, perfectly, the ironic attraction of AMC's Mad Men.
He writes, "...the 35ish Don Draper is a New York advertising whiz with a wife, a mistress, unquenchable ambition and not an iota of little-boy-ishness; in fact, he's determined to grind his inner child into dust and obliterate any trace of vulnerability...He's a relic of an ancient civilization, and a flat out terrible role model. But in his struggle not to lose his soul, he is also, indisputably, a grown up. No wonder he suddenly seems like the sexiest thing on television."
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