But today was more like this:

]]> http://rumorator.com/2011/08/i-will-throw-the-this-whole-damned-workstation-through-your-car-window-if-you-ask-me-about-this-project-one-more-time/feed/ 1 http://rumorator.com/2011/02/on-advertising-part-2/ http://rumorator.com/2011/02/on-advertising-part-2/#comments Wed, 09 Feb 2011 22:58:44 +0000 rumorator http://rumorator.com/?p=1367 Yeah, I watched the Thuper Bowl and I watched all the commercials that went with it. Then, the next day I went back and watched all the ads again. I still think this one from  Fiat was the best.

But Fiat hasn’t exactly been ON lately:

This one debuted during the Golden Globes and certainly was to appeal to women, but it drops the ball with a few elements:

• This ad is about style, Eminem’s ad is a about pride. Pride is something you work for. Style is something you buy.
• The voice over artist isn’t consistent.
• “Imported From Detroit” is missing
• Oh yeah and this from 2001:

I thought the underlying problem with American cars was that they were slow to adapt to what foreign cars did a decade earlier.

They still are.
‘MERICA!

I hope no one minds if I take a minute to discuss advertising. I’m not going to deny that advertising is 9-parts snake oil salesmanship and 1-part trying to bang your girlfriend, but there is a breed of people who often are worse than advertisers. They are the Advertising Analysts.

If you thought my shit was meta, you gotta understand what they do. META-META. They will write three-page analysis of how good or bad an advertisement was. Let’s cover that again—They will be the buzz, to something doesn’t deserve a buzz, or at least that’s they what they’re buzzing. Case in point, this tweet from @augieray (former Milwaukeean):

Here’s the backstory, Kenneth Cole made some crack on his company’s twitter account about how Egyptians were rioting to get his new spring line. The overly sensitive ‘Merican crowd called foul, so KC pulled the message and issued an apology. It may not have been the smartest tweet to drop, but they remedied it. And I think it’s pretty safe to say that no one is rioting for Kenneth Cole’s spring line, No one  is in line for this third world, mass-produced gear. Kenneth Cole is how the Target crowd gets dressed up.

And yet, these were probably the same people who were calling for the dude’s head. To my knowledge no actual Egyptians were like, “Awww Kenneth Cole, you insensitive prick I will never buy another one of your crappy 2-piece leather belts again.” Probably because they were dodging rocks or taking shots at Anderson Cooper (these Egyptians are smart, they know who the real enemy is).

If you follow Augie’s RT-ed link, you end up at an article supporting the argument that in time, no one cares.  And it is super true in this case, no one cares because it’s not relevant to anything anywhere. Except for meta-meta ad analyst, they’re still talking about it like matters, therefore proving themselves wrong.

In other advertising news we’ve got that shockingly shortsighted Tibet ad from Groupon that aired during the Thuperbowl. This thing was pretty bad, and I’m saying that as someone who is actively working to put the word “Cunt-o” into common vernacular. But did it change anything? Nope. Advertising analyst want to make a big deal about how bad it was? Well then do something about it. Who are you educating on what is going on in Tibet. Is what Groupon did any more damaging than ‘Merica’s support of the Chinese government that is destroying Tibet. Groupon ran a pretty stupid ad, but in the long run what they did might help raise awareness for the people in Tibet. No news source seems to be concerned with what the Chinese government has done over there. At least this ad has brought ‘Why tibet matters” back into the popular discourse. And for what it’s worth I totally got a killer deal on some table tennis time from Groupon Monday morning.

Let’s go back to that tweeted image for a minute: the tweet, just above AdAnalyst, that’s the tweet that actually matters. There are very few marketable snowboarders. We’ve got Shaun White, and well Shaun White for Target (I can’t wait for his Kenneth Cole collabo!). I think the Xgames proved that. I think sponsorship has a solid return on investment, better more photographed riders will get a company’s name out there more. Pro-Modelism, on the other hand, that’s totally worthless. Unless you’re Shaun White for Target.

Moral of the bloggery: Groupon is the new Beastie Boys, and Origin blobviously has this shit figured out.

DOS!

We’re going to switch gears for a minute now and talk about music. To all my shitbagged Portland readers, you need to plan on being at Doug Fir on the 28th of May. You’ll thank me later.

Then there is this. I’m not a fan of this video, and my verdict is still out on the song, but she’s from Milwaukee so watch this shit at least once.

Melissa Czarnik “Love Train” from Hyperdrive Motivator Productions on Vimeo.

This thing is strong. And it was created by some grown up shreds. Excellent work by Ocupop. If you haven’t got a clue, get more smarters: W3C

Article 2:

Still keeping my fingers secretly crossed for SIA. If it doesn’t happen, I have to mail some beers to This Guy. I’d rather pick up some free Silver Bullets from the Salomon booth and tell him I bought his beer. Then together we can go eyeball the ladies at the Nobis booth. NOBIS. Canadian. Not Nomis.

Article 3:

You know how you can tell the Olympics are crooked as fuck? They call the Dew Tour and the X-Games reputable. For real:

Just to get it straight, this excerpt came from TWsnowboarding. So really it’s TWsnow that thinks the X-Games and the Dew Tour are credible series of events. Maybe I’m wrong, but aren’t these invite-only events? There is no open format to them. It’s essentially like asking for input on labor unions at a meeting of the Fortune 500. For real if your sponsor is spending piles of money to promote you, you get to go. Blanco spends his off-time building houses in for Disney and trying to figure out where he’s going to dump the girl’s body when his Gator apprenticeship is complete, and the X-Games goes on fucking standstill to see if he announces to his facebook fans that he’ll be there.

The good news is that el Blanco “Likes” the X-Games.

Yet Andreas Wiig can’t get an invite?

On the other hand the Blanco, one of the best jock-pipe riders in all of snowboardering isn’t even playing in the dew tour, for the winter at least. It makes me wonder if Red Bull sponsors his snowboarding career, but not his skate endeavors.

Amendment 1: Key points to take from todays bloggery:

• This is the most editorial content TWsnow has put out since 1993. But they still kinda, sorta fucked it up.
• Blanco is gonna crack.
• The Credibility/Legit Scale looks something like this:
  The FIS < Transworld Media < The IOC < X-Games < Dew Tour < Shayboarder < Nicholas Cage’s Career* < Snowboarding Companies as a whole < The Blanco < Rumorator.com < Omar <  Anne-Flore Marxer

* Nicholas Cage’s career inserted as a fixed point for positioning.

I never thought I would say this but, “fuck yeah Herr-meez!”

SoCal:

Madison:

Seakkle:

And back to SoCal:

2. Waiting to hear back from Lorenius regarding the Rally to Restore Sanity. In the meantime, I think I’m going to start buying more Flying Dog Beer.

And that is how proper marketing is done.

3. Seriously, go vote this country forward.

• Make QR code stickers that redirect to subversive articles about Whole Foods. Put these up at the registers of your local Whole Foods, so people can hit them while they are waiting for the crapsuck hipster to bag up their organic, Mexican vegetables.
• If you work in the printing industry, start changing the QR codes to redirect to porno, Put those redirects on everything. They’ll go out to customers because no one is checking these. Trust me.
• QR codes that redirect to articles about how print is dead.
• Next time you’re on a plane, stick a QR code to your armrest, because the cleaners won’t get that off. Have it direct an always streaming version of Alive.

Great ideas right? Wrong. No one gives a fuck about QR codes because it’s just an extra step. Brooke does a banger job of telling us why these thing don’t work over on her blog.

The people who really love QR codes are Account Execs. because it’s something else to sell. I once sat through a meeting where Account Execs were going on about how this is the new thing in marketing (At the same meeting it was suggested we start getting out of Google, and getting into Hakia). That was two years ago. I still have yet to ever scanned a QR code. Fuck. Two years ago the Milwaukee 99 awards program had a QR code on the cover. That program is still in my magazine rack, and I still have not bothered to access whatever gem of information it offers. Then last week Deliver Print Magazine (Which I do not subscribe to) shows up in my mailbox with this cover.

What’s really funny is that I took the 5 seconds to take a picture of this rag, but wouldn’t QR code that shit..

I’m a sucker for marketing. I started buying old spice lately, I bought Nike boots, but marketers still haven’t convinced me to ever scan one these things.

Rumorator’s honesty box: QR codes are weak and I’ve been using Old Spice since I was like 18, with only a couple interruptions. Also Burt’s Bee’s spray-on deodorant does not offer all day protection.

Seconder:

It seems that our good friend Greg Machotka has been talking to CopyRanter:

While you’re over there, you should probably leave some comments. You should also click on those links to Knockaround glasses and Forum.

However, I am going to leave you with this today:

The Private Family Foundation that paid for this add would like to remind you that only minorities commit voter fraud. They would also like to let you know they went with the “Fuck a high-resolution image” option when making this sign.

The last thing we should take away from this ad is the overarching feeling that while you maybe behind some really shitty looking bars, imprisoned with two other faceless criminals, your words can forever be free. You can be your own Mumia Abu-Jamal.

The Earthers are talking about this commercial.

It’s not that great of a commercial. It’s not cutting edge. There are no jumbo-jugged women trying to get me to buy beer. There’s no flame throwers or overturned tugboats in a desert, not so subtly telling me I’ve got a small peen. Where’s the fucking truck-porn?

Actually, its got 5-fucking-zero zero zero times more attitude than any other commercial I have seen lately.

Plus, it spawned this this image:

The photochop job is leaning towards substandard, until you factor in the mini-Hamlett ice. ACE!

The Evening Edition

I’d say that’s about a cord of wood back there.