In a recruitment ad, India agency Concept Communication wants your testicles. Yes, that's what they want. In fact, the headline of a recent recruitment ad reads, "Testicles Wanted." After that not so subtle reduction of potential employees to nothing more than a body part, the copy goes on to empathize with advertising professionals who are apparently sick of being called names such as "postman" (must be an Indian thing) and "person without balls." Somehow it's still perfectly OK for the agency to recruit a sack of bloated balls instead of an actual person.
more »
Postini just released a few updates that include contextual email security. If your email, or an attachment to it, has a social security or credit card number in it, the message will be automatically gobbledy-gooked as it wizzes through the tubes.
If this all doesn't go to shit, Google will probably debut Postini-esque security offerings for wikis, blogs and instant messages, says Google rep Adam Swidler to Internet News.
We know Google's really married to this "contextual" thing but we just wanted to point out "contextual" can give rise to both appropriate and inappropriate algorithmic activities. Observe the dumb-fuckery resulting from bad (or maybe just inopportune?) contextual advertising: 1, 2, 3, 4 (and we could go on).
Eric over at Ideas on Ideas wrote a detailed post about how Microsoft could reposition itself to appear less stodgy and scary for the consumers of tomorrow -- er, today. (Or yesterday?)
A few key points include positioning around power, cutting the crap and embracing the consumer, which are everyday proverbs we should all know by heart at this point.
The piece also includes some notes for Steve Ballmer.
Here's our advice: stop scaring us, Ballmer! This is the kind of crap that lost Howard Dean his bid for president.
Also, maybe Microsoft could learn a little about loosening up by examining its fan spoofs.
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.
more »
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.
more »
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.
more »
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.
more »
|
