The Spirit of the Times

So while I was at work today, I found out that Barack Obama will be announcing his choice for running mate soon. The weird thing was that I found out first via Twitter. Then about an hour later I saw it on Digg. I had even been to nytimes.com twice already this morning, and saw nothing there.

I just signed up for Twitter while at ad:tech last week (because I'm determined to figure out what the appeal is - still tbd), so I'm not an avid twitterer. Yet that was how I found out about the VP annoucement, so I guess you can score one for the latest shiny object.

This "Be the First to Know" thing seems pretty cheesy to me. Kind of like admiring a home run while you're still in the batter's box, or doing a ridiculous touchdown dance. Act like you've been there before.

Postel's Law

While I have to admit that I now have an odd curiosity about what's being written on the /b/ message board discussed in this NYT article, I'm also completely disturbed by the people profiled in it.

I also found this passage especially interesting:

In 1981, he formulated what’s known as Postel’s Law: “Be conservative in what you do; be liberal in what you accept from others.” Originally intended to foster “interoperability,” the ability of multiple computer systems to understand one another, Postel’s Law is now recognized as having wider applications. To build a robust global network with no central authority, engineers were encouraged to write code that could “speak” as clearly as possible yet “listen” to the widest possible range of other speakers, including those who do not conform perfectly to the rules of the road. The human equivalent of this robustness is a combination of eloquence and tolerance — the spirit of good conversation.

Not bad advice for a planner. What other applications of this could there be?

ad:Tech Chicago notes

In between sessions I almost bumped into a man walking with a cane who looked lost. His name tag said Ron May, as in The May Report. That brought me back several years. If you don’t know Ron May, his May Report is kind of like The Delaney Report (which, sadly, is nothing like the Colbert Report). If you don’t know The Delaney Report, it’s kind of like the advertising version of Jackie Harvey’s “The Outside Scoop.” And if you do know Jackie Harvey, you're my kind of peoples.

My only other name drop from Day One was Steve Hall from Adrants. Keep up the good work, Steve.

My quick rant about attending conferences: 95% of the questions asked in the Q&A are awful. It’s always, “My situation is that we got a 7.5% increase in clickthrough when we expected only 3%. How were we so successful?" Or, "Here's an obnoxious question that is ultimately unanswerable. Please squirm through an answer." Or, "I don’t have a clue what I’m doing, where do I start?”

By far the most interesting company/business model that I heard about today is Lemonade. They allow you to create a widget that shows what products you like and recommend, and then embed that widget in your social networking site or blog. If/when people click through your lemonade stand to buy the products, you get a cut of the sale (details). I’m sure the cut is small, and how many people will really click through to purchase, but it’s a cool concept. People get an easy way to show others what good taste they have, retailers get yet another affiliate program (and we’ve seen many successful affiliate programs), and the Lemonade folks do nothing but provide the webservice that sucks up products and spits them out on Facebook. Kudos Lemonade.

So the CEO from Lemonade told a story about how the leader of Nepal decided he wasn’t going to measure his country’s success by GDP, he wanted to measure GDH (“happiness”). Moral of the story – really think about what you’re measuring. What really matters? Maybe Americans do care about productivity more than happiness, but if you have an awareness campaign, does ROI matter?

I was floored that at the end of the “The Banner is Dead: Digital Advertising Strategies in the Age of Earned Media” session, the moderator asked the panel if the banner was dead. OK, her actual question was, “What % of online advertising will be banner ads in 2010?” The woman from Nokia said, “What % is it now?” and when the moderator said for you (at Nokia) it is probably 85%. She said that it would probably not change significantly by 2010. The Lemonade guy said that a banner is nothing more than a container for an idea, so it doesn’t really matter. He doesn’t really care what the containers are; the ideas will always take precedence.

Biggest joke of the day: the agency guy says that Diet Coke Plus program was a success because it had 12,000 downloads, across 5 different free music podcasts. If that's a success - what's a failure?
I’m going to find numbers as examples of stupid groups/apps to use as comparison for “successful” campaigns. My hypothesis: There will be more fans of REALLY stupid things on Facebook than the most popular brands. To be continued...

Thank you, come again.

In a bizarre turn of events today, I found myself without anything in particular to do. It was at about noon, and I was at the coffee shop. I had already caught up on my email for the morning and was reading digg.com. I saw this article about how several 7-11 stores across the U.S. had been converted into Kwik-E-Marts as part of a promotion for "The Simpsons Movie" that comes out later this month. Since there was one here in Chicago, and I didn't really have anything to do, I decided to check it out.

The Art of Analog

This is just too cool. To see many more like this, click the video to open in a new window and see the others in the "More From this User" box.

The best a man can get?

I think I'm pretty forgiving when it comes to bad advertising. I'm naturally interested in all ads, because I'm curious about the strategic approach they use, so I'm probably more willing than the average person to find something good in a bad ad. But every once in a while, an ad comes along that is so bad that it drives me completely insane.

There is a new spot for Gillette deoderant that starts off with a closeup of the product and a voiceover that says, "Guys like technology." The deoderant package then sprouts three CGI limbs that make it look like a swiss army knife - somehow these represent three qualities of the product that are "technology." Enter hunky pitchman from the shower, followed closely by his towel wrapped babe. The deoderant snaps shut and the woman gasps as though she's been frightened by the man's newfangled tech toy (yes - the deoderant). There are so many things I find obnoxious about this ad that it's hard to know where to begin.

Let's start with the opening salvo - "Guys like technology." So are we to presume that they're talking to the ladies then? I thought this was an ad for a men's product? Ok, for the sake of argument, let's assume that they're trying to ostensibly reach both men and women. Why do you have to beat us over the head with "Guys like techonology"? Who are you trying to convince? Me? The client? The CCO? It's almost like the copywriter given a brief that said "Make sure to remind them that they like technology before you show them how the product is just like technology." Which leads me to my next question, what the hell does deoderant have to do with technology? Honestly, I don't remember what the three "tools" that open up off the deoderant stick represent, but they sure did look cool. If I see this ad again I'll note what the tools are and update this post, but it doesn't really matter. The bottom line is that it's deoderant, not the new iPhone.

I guess what really bugs me is the way the ad speaks to people. To men, it says, "Hey - you like tech toys, and this is just like those. So you like this too. Don't ask why, you just do." Worse yet, to women it says, "You're probably too dumb to understand why, but your man loves tech toys. I know you're afraid of them because they intimidate you, but just buy this one for him. He wants it."

Just a few weeks ago I bought an old ad for Leo Burnett off eBay. The copy speaks to the Gillette ad above pretty well.

Off Target

This is two weeks old now, I've been meaning to post about this for what amounts to an eternity in blog time. But here I go anyway. I went to the Barack Obama rally at UIC the day after he announced his candidacy in Springfield. His bus was late coming in from Iowa, so there was an unusually long build up for his speech. When he finallly came out, the crowd of about 8,000 (I was amazed that there were empty seats for this free event) was ready to show him love. About 10 mins into his speech, a group of students (or just youngsters) gathered at the railing of the upper level and began shouting anti-Iraq War chants in unison. Obama was in the middle of talking about healthcare, but the protesters were so loud that he couldn't speak over them. The crowed booed, and Obama said to them, "OK guys, you've made your point. I'll get to that, but right now I'm talking about healthcare." I thought he handled it about as well as anyone could.

My problem with it is that the idiot students were pulling this on probably the single most sympathetic politician to their cause. The most prominently vocal candidate against the war, Obama has even suggested a timetable for getting out. Couldn't these students find a more appropriate target for their angst?

Tweedy's Insight

A guy I work with loaned me Jeff Tweedy's live tour DVD called "Sunken Treasure." If you are a Wilco fan, you'll love it. If your not a Wilco fan, watch it. My favorite moment from it came at one point while he's tuning his guitar between songs. People in the crowd are yelling song titles at him that they want him to play. He laughs, and says "That's what it sounds like inside my head..." All these competing voices trying to get their songs played. He continues by saying that his alltime favorite moment like that was a guy who yelled out, "How did you get so insightful?" Then he says (I'm paraphrasing) "I said something like thank you, but I really think insight is probably overrated and that being true and authentic is probably much harder. And the guy yells back, 'That's very insightful.'"