Ad #1

Here we have two things I typically don’t care for. American cars and Shaqnosis. And while this commercial hasn’t changed my mind about Buicks, I do think Shaq is a little bit more entertaining now. Break it down, this commercial starts off with the unexpected. “Shaq, size authority.” Not a certified title, but obvious and kinda out of step with the Buick persona. Then of course there is the usual car ad blah blah blah spoken by Shaq rather than the car-porn voice over guy. Then Shaq is in the car and essentially lays down some shit on all the Priustopedes and other hybridia.

Dang! Did you feel that? TOM SERVO. Shake hasn’t handed down that much dominance since Kazaam! (What up, Hattie!)
The ad could have ended right there and been 100% , but whatever the creative ends there, so fuck it. It’s a sensible ad and should grab the attention of a lot of people who probably have never noticed Buick before.

Ad #2

Watch this:

Okay, so there are only a few possible times when the question, “Is that rain?” makes sense:
• If you are a child who has lived a life sheltered from rain. Never having experienced precipitation, and only having heard the word “rain.”
• If you live in the desert. But if that’s the case, you tend to ask with a different inflection, “Is that…rain?”
• If you just woke up.

Let’s rule out the obvious.  Zooey D has not lived a life sheltered from rain. Even though a quick image search couldn’t come up with a pic of her in the rain, I’m going to stand by thisassumption. To rule out the second option I draw your attention to the flowers and greenery outside of the window as well as the forecast projected on her iFone. She is not in a desert.

So maybe it’s morning. Fuck, it has to be. ZD is still wearing pajamas. This makes sense now, right?

Wrong? I want to order some tomato soup. Tomato soup for breakfast? I mean it’s morning and you’re in your pajamas and you’re gonna scarf some Tomato soup? Unlikely, mama. Mornings are for waffles or puffins or toast and free range, antibiotic and hormone free eggs. Tomato soup? You don’t want to take in that much sodium early in the morning. You trying to get bloated? You wanna live in those pajama pants forever? Is that what you want, Mama? NaCl?

But her excuse is that she doesn’t want to put on real shoes? I guess imaginary ones are totally fine.

If I were walking down the street and someone said, “Oh hey, there’s Zooey Deschanel.” I would think, ‘Damn, I want to see this.” However if somebody said “Hey there’s Zooey Deschanel, putting on imaginary shoes,” I would think, “Of course she is. She’s quirky. Oh hey, there’s Bagger Vance.” I should also admit this is Madison and public quirkiness hardly even phazers-to-stuns me anymore.

Up next ZD opts to put off cleaning her house. Let’s assume she slept late. Maybe it’s 10:30 in the morning. And she is already putting things off. At least pretend you are going to take care of it until like 6pm. Then you can put it off. The ante meridiem ambition lack is not a good look. With zero drive, how are you going to quirk it out.

Lastly, dancing to Shake Rattle and Roll. That’s the forwarding thinking, Apple ingenuity we’ve come to respect. Whatever it’s still better than the Rock God ad.

If you add up all the elements of this commercial, you might start to think ZD is kind of an apathetic person. Compare this to Samuel Jackson’s iphone ad. His makes sense. His is about getting some ass, and hers is about being a shitless layabout.

Full fucking weekender at Tyrone’s Basement. Let’s break it down by the numbers:

• 2 minute park laps
• 300 vertical feet
• 5 minute chair rides
• 62 degrees
• 144 ounces of PBR
• 9/10 on the Frank-Wolf Ball Sweat Scale

After two days of hard jumping into slush, my body hates me. But this is just training before I get to Tahoe for a five-day snow orgy. I gotta be honest, I wasn’t feeling a need to carry the Cheetah out there. But now I’m reconsidering. I can’t be riding a 157 park deck in the steep and deeps at Kirkwood. Shit. Now I’m carrying 3 boards out there. Why is this anything to complain about?

I should also mention that I spent the weekend riding the Parkitect:

This thing is fun and I could ride it switch. What more do you need? I guess I could say that it also had some mad pop and kept me landing like a feline. The 157 felt just right, and frankly I can’t wait to get back out on this thing. Was it better than my Mr. Nice Guy? I think it might be.
Whatever, Hooner also talked about this deck in a little more depth. Read what his mouth says here.

Lunch:
Complex is fucking worthless. Today their lead article is about the 50 best slogan tee shirts ever. Check this:

Lahnk

Essentially they have compiled “50 movie quotes people say” or “50 reasons you should watch Two and a Half Men.”

But wait there’s more.

It was just last July, that the same publication told you these slogan tee shirt were the 39st worst thing that ever happened to men’s fashion. BOOM 7 months later, they’re endorsing ‘em. 11/10 on the Frank-Wolf Hackosity scale.

Milk Break:
I know men’s snowboarding is supposed to be so much cooler to watch, but I can’t even count their spins anymore. And for the most part, watching snowboarding on TV has a 90% chance of being 100% boring. On the other hand, I think this mamajamma has like 3 tons of style riding with her.

You see the way she’s down on those landings? Dragon ass. Then just bang-bang back up. I’ll watch her ride snowboards all day.

Dinner:
This iFone ad is stupid.

Lets examine:
1. 14-years olds with iFones are fucking bitches, all of them. People who use Siri and aren’t driving are idiots.
2. If you have to ask were a music store is, give up. True musicians can just feel where the shops are. I cannot sense this, that is why I am not a musician. I’m just going to assume RockGod went to Guitar Center.
3. You need to know how to play something? Maybe while you were at the music store you could have picked up a couple of playbooks. I bet Siri forgot to mention that, didn’t she. You brainless twit.
4. Migraine Headache is a shitty band name. But probably perfect for a band that gave up on Zeplin and went to covering The Clash. Get a really name like Prodrome or even just Migraine. See that, shorter names with similar subject matter and way more aggressive. Toughen up, dude.
5. Siri, please tell Julie and Kate, this band isn’t playing at “THE garage.” The band is playing at “A garage, “HIS garage,” or better yet “HIS PARENTS’ garage,” tonight.
6. Way to play with you back to your audience, asshole. You’re no Miles Davis. You’re also no Rock n’ roll fun.
7. RockGod? With an ego like that I have a feeling Julie and Kate are going to be really unimpressed when you send them a few dick pics. If you wanna be a real rock god, shoot yourself in the face.

Steve Jobs must be so proud of his company.

Dessert:
Oh what? You want a dessert too, fatty?

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: