Just a reminder, the next likemind is here, this friday, feb. 16, 8am at Panera off 75.
for all you new media mavens, advertising folk, bloggers, chatty types and morning people, come out and get some coffee (provided by anomaly) and conversation.
Do it.
Go to likemind.us for directions and additional info.
Over
the past few days I've been skimming through the book, "The Age of
Television," written by Leo Bogart in 1956. It shifts easily between the
prophetic and the depressing.
"Commercials on television, as on radio, are accepted by the audience as part of the nature of things. The public's attitude toward them, from the available evidence, seems to lie somewhere between uncritical apathy, and positive interest."
Does this still hold true today? Or has this always been some form of lackluster defeatism, as if the advertisers conquered the consumer? While this would probably still ring statistically true today, I have serious doubts whether I want to put my name on something that will only be begrudingly accepted. You tell me, can you call it uncritical apathy, or is it just the tone of the defeated?
But, he moves on to these stats that suggest in those days advertising, it was
more likely to skew towards the 'positive interest' side of Bogart's scale.
"In Lexington, Kentucky, McGeehan and Maranville found the public generally willing to approve television advertising. 74% said there was about the right amount of it. 81% called it, "clever," 74% "powerful," and 69% "helpful," in a series of multiple choice questions.
In Whan's 1952 Iowa survey, only 26% of those interviewed answered "yes" to the leading question, "Does any of the advertising on television annoy or irritate you?"
More recently a Trendex survey of 1000 television homes found that 90% of those interviewed said they "liked" the last commercial they heard."
Holy shit. How the hell did we go so wrong? I'm seriously shocked. We had trust, we had interest, many liked us and wanted to hear from us. But too many took the easy way out, and we're left with the tattered leftovers. I guess you could call us the George W. Bush of the business world.
From the indie-pop haven of Austin, Texas emerges our next Tune In victim, Tacks, the boy disaster. They remind me of a mash-up of Brendan Benson and Of Montreal at their most subdued.
From the Austin Chronicle, after rating TtBD's Oh Beatrice as the number one album out of Austin in 2006,
"To be sure, the indie-pop foursome seemed to emerge as if from nowhere, garnering local attention, praise from a universe of blogs and even some Austin-area radio play. But their seven-song debut EP, Oh, Beatrice, evidences a songwriting talent of astonishing maturity. Tacks effortlessly navigates across a vast range of pop sounds, with richly-textured songs whose accessibility is rivalled only by their musical depth."
Go to MySpace to hear more, or listen to a couple mp3's below. Also, you can see a clip of a video for "Forget me not."
Tacks, the boy disaster - Forget Me Not.mp3
Tacks, the boy disaster - Matilda.mp3
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_trXMhNqY3s]
Well, it only took a few days for us to push the Sales Genie into action. At least that's the way I like to see it. I will have to give it to the folks over at InfoUSA (the parent of the genie) for quickly fixing their firefox problem as well as for paying attention to the blogosphere. I've been seeing some regular visits from their offices in Omaha, so you know, kudos and all that. Listening is step 1.
I'll be waiting for my fat consultancy check...
It should also be noted (as Phil points out) that the piece of shit ad actually worked. They needed 700 new subscribers to break even, and so far they've gotten 10,000. It's a sad day for our profession. I guess they come from the train wreck school of advertising. I hear Cartoon Network is also an alumni.
In a related note, Matt pointed out in the comments that Walmart had a similar firefox problem.
Luckily they fixed it, too.
Well, sort of.
2.6 million dollars buys you this terrible waste of time...
But to make matters worse, you assume I use Internet Explorer and go here,
But instead I use firefox, and go here.
Sales Genie, you guys need help. Bad. It's time to give up the in-house pipe dream, and let the professionals get to work. At no point should you have been embarrased so badly by that ill-fated Super Bowl ad, and doubly shamed by ignoring the 70-80 million of us using firefox. For a company started with 100 bucks, you should be spending your money more wisely. Call my cell phone at 214-893-4622, and let's get you guys back on the right track.
Is there any question who the biggest loser of the night is?
No, there's not. It's Anheuser-Busch. What a pathetic bunch of ads. Really, all, yes ALL of them sucked ass. Maybe not the worst of the night, but when you're spending 20 million dollars or so within a couple hours of advertising, I'd expect to see at least one memorable thing. They came close with the false Dalmatian spot, as it at least looked promising in the beginning. Unfortunately, it fell pathetically flat.
And, in the loser's lounge, AB is joined by Sales Genie, Revlon, Garmin, FedEx, and cars in general. Also, Doritos proved my theory that advertiser-backed CGC is fucking dead. Thank the lord. Seriously, I've never been so annoyingly bored. The Sales Genie ad below gets worst ad of the night. Did an agency create this, or some in-house hack? On the biggest advertising stage in the world, probably not a good idea to waste our time with this filth.
The big winners for me were Careerbuilder.com and Coke. CB.com for flawlessly replacing the monkey spots with another campaign oozing with legs. From strategy to execution, spot on. And, Coke for probably the best group of ads on the night. Of course, most of us had already seen them on the web, but regardless, they're brilliant. All of them set this smile-inducing tone that's hard as shit to pull off without sounding cheesy. I think it's safe to say that Wieden has overtaken CP&B as the best creative agency in the states.
My top 8.
1) Coke - Give a Little Love
2) Careerbuilder.com - Office Survivor
http://lads.myspace.com/videos/vplayer.swf
3) Careerbuilder.com - Promotion Pit
http://lads.myspace.com/videos/vplayer.swf
4) Coke - Old Coke Revisited
http://lads.myspace.com/videos/vplayer.swf
5) Coke - Fantasy
6) ETrade - Bank Robbery
7) Sierra Mist - Beard Combover
8) Snickers - Kiss
And, the honorary win goes to MySpace.com for putting these all together in one place, and allowing for easy embedding. Seriously, why the fuck would anyone use cbs sportsline if they only offer real player and no embed code? Just fucking stupid.
Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but it sure did seem like a ton of CBS promos. Some empty inventory maybe? All in all, a distressing night for traditional ad-men all across the world, and a few hours of content smuggery from new media mavens such as myself and most of you.
**Update: YouTube also has a nifty little super bowl ad round-up here. But, since coke didn't upload all of their ads, and the absolute fools at careerbuilder.com disabled embeding, I couldn't switch them all over. Now I feel bad for rating their ads so highly. What a dumbass amateur mistake. I feel bad for giving them extra exposure if they don't really want it.
If Neutral Milk Hotel made babies with Deathcab, their spawn would sound similar to Page France, the music from the mind of Michael Nau. They sport all the lo-fi Texas twang and indie sappiness that keeps me so rooted in the music of my home state, even if it actually comes from Maryland, of all places.
It's just plain, good-old hammock music. It's understated, but since I've gotten my hands on it, I can't get through two songs by anybody else without finding myself missing these guys.
Unfortunately, no proper music videos, but I did find this video from New Year's Eve. In case you can't handle the crappy sound, here's a few songs for your ear-y nourishment. And there's more on MySpace.
Page France - Windy (mp3)
Page France - Jesus (mp3)
Page France - Chariot (mp3)
On the urging of the badassist of the badasses, Vaspers the Grate, Captcha is gone. Be so advised when commenting. You get to skip a step, but you also don't get the extra editing time.
Everybody good?
