Bloglove is in the air... #saveadland

When I started this blog, in early 2009, I decided I had better carefully study the style and success of some of the more popular ad bloggers. Quickly, I realized that there was a small group who I ended up reading most often: AdFreak, Copyranter, Adrants, Adland, Osocio and (of course) Ads of The World - the place everyone goes for content.

As I found my voice and my niche, I also found that these blogs were run by a close-knit fraternity of ad nerds who were completely modest and approachable. Tim Nudd of AdFreak is an Anglo-American family man who balances being edgy and fun with the demands of representing a corporate brand. Steve Hall of Adrants is an apparent ad convention junkie who also writes for Playboy's "I just visit it for the articles" blog. Åsk Wäppling of Adland is a Swedish design nerd and single mom who is the veteran of the group (having blogged since 1996). Marc van Gurp of Osocio is a Dutch family man and digital designer who has a passion for great work that inspires social change. Ivan Raszl of Ads of The World is a Hungarian family man, designer, and now New Canadian. Even the anonymous Copyranter, the cynical Rorschach of the group, is surprisingly humble and accessible and on his comments thread.

It has been a pleasure to find myself accepted into this group, even though I'm a noob and don't have a massive following. All of the above have shared content from this blog, from time to time,  and have respectfully linked back. Tim and I chat frequently on Google. Steve runs a Facebook club, of sorts, for fellow enthusiasts. I flirt shamelessly with Åsk on Facebook. Marc and I are now good friends (although we've never met in person) and collaborators on Osocio. Ivan and I just recently had a meet-up at a pub when I was doing focus groups in his new home base. And Copyranter, he occasionally gives me a nice shout-out.

But the real sense of community occurred to me just today, when Åsk found herself at the business end of an unpayable server bill. She put out an appeal, and... well... I'll let her tell it:

"We've raised $1,287.15 for the $2,658.50 so far, but that's not even the best news here. The best news is that so many of you care enough to retweet and donate and post blog posts and tell your friends. I honestly wasn't expecting this much love, and I am humbled by it.

@Adfreak asked everyone to please help save us, @agencyspy put a link in their tuesday morning stir to longtime adgrunt Purplesimon's appeal post. I didn't ask @purplesime to do that, and I didn't ask @imperica to post this appeal post either. I'm grateful they both did. 

Turns out that Imperica have a good grasp of how much I do here (read: everything), and some readers revealed they had no idea. Thus came the tweets showing me building hardware (acme, apex and acme again) which was quite fun for a bit. At least for me. :)
Even the End days of advertising joined in making a special sarcastic toon just for adland. Sweet. 

And to top it all off, my ex-ex hosting place Memset contacted me over twitter to see if they can help. They must have forgiven me for almost taking down their network a few superbowls ago. 

And today, Amazon in Ireland phoned us up, they've not just extended the deadline, they're going to help figure out how to make a better setup that won't cost a fortune each month."

It's a Festivus miracle!

So I'd like to do my part to give back some blog love as I entreat those of you who also love reading or writing adblogs to donate now to keep the lights on at Adland. (I hear those Swedish winters are really damn dark, too!)

And thanks to all my adblogging friends for teaching me the ropes.

The most confusing thing I have seen all week

Fortunately, it's only Monday morning.

It's an ambient idea from CP+B Canada, for Tourism Toronto. But what is it?

According to the submission on Ads of The World:

"In order to curate the vacation photos Toronto visitors take and put online, we unleashed 21, 8-foot snowmen designed by top contemporary artists and placed strategically at key tourist spots in the city. When you take a photo with the snowmen, a famous Toronto scene is featured as the backdrop. And to encourage the photos would be shared, Tourism Toronto is donating $2 to Starlight Children’s Foundation for every snowman photo uploaded to the campaign’s Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/visittoronto, up to $50,000. And, we’ve integrated each photo takers’ network, by offering another $1 for every ‘Like’ each photo generates, further expanding this campaign’s reach. To date, more than $24,000 has been raised."

I would like to point out that this submission comes from a country in which English is frequently spoken. "In order to curate"? Okay, that's just shitty jargon. But the rest of the write-up is similarly convoluted.

They set up giant snowmen in popular Toronto tourism photo op sites, then provided a fundraising incentive to share them on Tourism Toronto's Facebook page and get their friends involved. Was that so hard to say?

I am amazed that such a famous agency brand would leave the adblog PR to someone who don't write good.

But the most confusing thing about it all is this:

Why does the snow"man" have a vulva?

F'd Ad Fridays: Poorly Photoshopped naked older women for charity

The women's auxiliary of the Lake Helen American Legion Post 127 in North Florida needs to renovate their kitchen. They saw the movie Calendar Girls. One of them has a nephew who knows Photoshop.

Voilà!

Ladies, I salute you.

Is your charity of choice charitable to your beliefs?

An old high school friend posted this screencap on Facebook, with the caption "note to self....find a different charity."

This got me thinking about how complicated charity and fundraising is these days, with our diverse and conflicting religious and secular agendas and beliefs.

The Salvation Army is, after all, a pretty conservative religious organization. I knew some Sally Anners growing up, and they had to sign contracts with the church that they would never do bad things like smoke or drink (which is why our neighbour stashed his smokes and beers in my parents' basement). I didn't really expect them to be down with the rainbow.

At the same time, I've learned from experience that the social media outrage of the day could be outdated, out-of-context, or just plain made up. So I did my own lookup. Here is the American Salvation Army's position paper on homosexuality, in full:

Homosexuality 

The Salvation Army holds a positive view of human sexuality. Where a man and a woman love each other, sexual intimacy is understood as a gift of God to be enjoyed within the context of heterosexual marriage. However, in the Christian view, sexual intimacy is not essential to a healthy, full, and rich life. Apart from marriage, the scriptural standard is celibacy. 

Sexual attraction to the same sex is a matter of profound complexity. Whatever the causes may be, attempts to deny its reality or to marginalize those of a same-sex orientation have not been helpful. The Salvation Army does not consider same-sex orientation blameworthy in itself. Homosexual conduct, like heterosexual conduct, requires individual responsibility and must be guided by the light of scriptural teaching. 

Scripture forbids sexual intimacy between members of the same sex. The Salvation Army believes, therefore, that Christians whose sexual orientation is primarily or exclusively same-sex are called upon to embrace celibacy as a way of life. There is no scriptural support for same-sex unions as equal to, or as an alternative to, heterosexual marriage. 

Likewise, there is no scriptural support for demeaning or mistreating anyone for reason of his or her sexual orientation. The Salvation Army opposes any such abuse. 

In keeping with these convictions, the services of The Salvation Army are available to all who qualify, without regard to sexual orientation. The fellowship of Salvation Army worship is open to all sincere seekers of faith in Christ, and membership in The Salvation Army church body is open to all who confess Christ as Savior and who accept and abide by The Salvation Army's doctrine and discipline. 

Scriptures: Genesis 2:23-24; Leviticus 18:22; Mark 2:16-17; Romans 1:26-27; Romans 5:8; I Corinthians 6:9-11; I Corinthians 13; Galatians 6:1-2; I Thessalonians 4:1-8; I Thessalonians 5:14-15; I Timothy 1:15-16; Jude 7 

Recommended for approval by the Commissioners' Conference
Approved for use within the USA by International Headquarters

So they don't accept any sex outside of heterosexual marriage as godly, but abhor discrimination based on the sexuality of others. It's actually a pretty friendly sort of hyperconservative sexual morality they've got there.

The Canadian version is even more smiley:

The Salvation Army upholds the dignity of all persons. For this reason, and in obedience to the example of Jesus Christ, whose compassionate love is all-embracing, The Salvation Army does not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation in the delivery of its services. 

The Salvation Army believes that God’s will for the expression of sexual intimacy is revealed in the Bible, and that living fully in accordance with biblical standards calls for chastity outside of heterosexual marriage and faithfulness within it. We do not believe that same-sex attraction is blameworthy and we oppose the vilification and mistreatment of gays and lesbians. We believe that we are accountable for the ways in which we express our sexuality. 

While recognizing the challenge that this presents, The Salvation Army believes firmly in the power of God’s grace to enable all to live in a manner that is pleasing to Him. 

In keeping with our mission, we are committed to proclaiming the good news of salvation, the forgiveness of sins, and transformation by the Holy Spirit. We welcome all seekers of faith in Christ to explore Salvation Army church life. 

The Salvation Army, Canada & Bermuda, November 2011

It basically states that they don't believe in homosexual marriage or even sex (nor pre- nor extramarital het sex) but that they believe what you do in your bedroom is between you and god.

I can't really get mad at an organization that tries that hard to reconcile the impossible morality they impose on themselves with the desire to maintain a christlike relation with the outside world. I have certainly seen a lot worse.

So, in my moral opinion, you can choose to donate to a church that disagrees with your sexual ethics but will fight to protect them from discrimination, or not. That's between you and your own beliefs.

Update: Kerry sent me a link to an article about how Salvation Army organizations have, outside of policy, worked actively against gay rights.

Trick or Read: UNICEF now using QR codes for digital donations

Ah, yes! The UNICEF box. An important part of the Halloween routine. After you got your candy, you'd get a handful of pennies in that flimsy cardboard box. Then you'd bring it back to school for rolling and counting.

Via Polite Dissent

I haven't spotted as many UNICEF boxes at my door in recent years, and I was wondering what had become of the "children helping children" charity. After all, it's not like a handful of pennies buys much these days, even in the developing world.

Turns out that UNICEF Canada discontinued the program five years ago because "Coin is very labour-intensive."

Is that the end of the tradition everywhere? The Cause Marketing blog today answered my curiosity: UNICEF USA has gone high tech.

"...the United States Fund for UNICEF has embraced a slick new way for kids to Trick or Treat for UNICEF. 

Today kids can Trick or Treat for UNICEF, raise good sum of money and never touch a single nickel of it. 

This Halloween the kids can print out a canister wrapper like the one at the left which features a QR code. When people scan the code using their smartphone they can make a direct donation to UNICEF 

What if the person who answers the door doesn’t have a smartphone or the necessary QR reader? 

Well a persistent Trick or Treater also knows that people can text “TOT” to UNICEF (864233) to make a $10.00 donation to Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF. The $10 will be added to donor’s phone bill."

I'm a little skeptical about this approach. While QR codes have become a ubiquitous part of the print communication landscape, shortening the gap between it and the digital world, some feel they have already jumped the shark. Will the average suburban mom or dad really whip out a smart phone at the door?

The texting plan, however, is much more likely to work based on my experience with the medium.

And what about the whole healthy competitive aspect? We used to compare the weight of our UNICEF boxes when we brought them into school. It was part of the fun.

If someone is going to donate $10 per text, they are maybe going to do it once for the entire night. The donations would then no longer be a matter of how many kids came to the door with boxes. One exposure to the QR or TOT code might trigger an end to the night's donations. How will the other kids feel when they are told they're carrying the boxes for nothing? And how many dishonest but polite people will say they already gave?

I think it's great that UNICEF is embracing change. But I think they've lost their connection with the kids. The money was only part of it for us. What was really important was the reminder, during a night of gluttony and greed, of how lucky we really were. I hope that is not lost on today's Halloweenies.

Hope will beat cancer someday, Terry

To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Terry Fox Run, artist Mike Zavacky (who is also an Art Director  at McMillan) created custom replicas of the original Marathon of Hope tee.

For those who don't know, Terry Fox was a Canadian national hero who lost a leg, as a young man, to a rare cancer. With a determination many of us can only dream about, in 1980 he attempted to run clear across Canada on his artificial leg to raise awareness and funds for cancer research. After 143 days and 5,373 kilometres, the disease struck him down again. He died in 1981.

The reason Canadians (even those born after his death) revere the memory of Terry is because his struggle represents something great about the human spirit. When he couldn't go on, he urged others to pick up the torch:

"Even if I don't finish, we need others to continue. It's got to keep going without me."

And so it has. Here is Zeke's shirt modelled by a little boy (who coincidentally looks a lot like me). He will wear it on his school's Terry Fox Run today.

Donate to the Terry Fox Run here. As the man himself said, “If you’ve given a dollar, you are part of the Marathon of Hope.”