UNO

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.