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.

Obama creating jobs by putting creatives out of work?

Adland brought to my attention a truly ironic move by US President Obama's 2012 re-election team: unpaid crowdsourcing for a new campaign promoting job growth.

From the Art Works site:

"Obama for America is seeking poster submissions from artists across the country illustrating why we support President Obama's plan to create jobs now, and why we'll re-elect him to continue fighting for jobs for the next four years.


Your poster can address the broader themes of the President's plan or pinpoint a specific aspect, from supporting small businesses to rebuilding roads and bridges for the 21st century. For more on the desired specs, read the creative brief.


We'll pick the 12 best submissions received by November 4th, 2011, then put the finalists to a vote. Three winners will receive a framed print of their poster signed by President Obama and a limited edition of their poster will be sold in the campaign store."

Here are a couple of gems from the "Creative Brief":

"You hereby represent and warrant that all equipment, materials, and facilities used to produce your poster are owned by you and were not provided by a corporation, labor union, foreign national, or federal contractor. Any disposable materials purchased specifically to produce the poster will be treated as in-kind contributions to Obama for America."

I'm sure this one is being violated repeatedly by people who cannot afford to have their own equipment outside of the office.

"All submissions will become property of Obama for America."

And for all that, here's what you win:

"Three (3) winners will receive the following prize: A framed copy of the Poster (defined below) signed by Barack Obama and all or part of the winner's Poster will be used and displayed on Sponsor's website and/or in other Sponsor advertising or promotional material (to be determined in Sponsor's sole discretion) associated with Sponsor's political advertising efforts (approximate retail value: $195)."

When a country's economy goes bad, the marketing industry — including ad and design creatives — is the canary in the coal mine. Companies in trouble tend to cut marketing budgets early on as they struggle to reduce the bleeding. Agencies lose revenue, then lay people off (or even shut their doors).

There is nothing creative professionals hate more than a paid work opportunity being given over to free crowdsourcing. The Obama campaign is well-funded, too — Adland says they have "$60 million cash on hand in campaign funding".

Creating jobs means supporting professionals who depend on a certain trade for a living. But this contest asks ll entrants to give away their work for free even if they don't get any credit for it. By undermining the value of concept and design, the Obama campaign has thumbed its nose at one of the USA's most celebrated industries.

And when you piss off creatives, you can get some very creative responses.

F'd Ad Fridays: Danish energy booze hates your boobs

According to Adland, Danish energy drink/alcopop Cult Shaker has been shut down by Denmark's ad authority over an online contest that invited drunk and overstimulated fans to upload pictures of their breasts and be rated for winning free breast implants.

Shaker apparently has built its entire brand around showing nude female (and now male) torsos in its ads. Voting actually ended in the summer, but now the company has been forced to offer a cash equivalent instead of surgery. (They also offered free drinks to anyone willing to flash the bartender.)

What a weird contest. Not just the sexist exploitation, but also the idea of asking people to rate the breasts "most deserving" of enhancement. Not exactly a compliment, is it?

The disturbing adolescent world of Duke Nukem

Adland reports that this trailer for Duke Nukem Forever has been banned from British TV during primetime.



The ASA said, "In regard to the scenes of violence, the ASA admitted that the ad was not overly graphic for broadcast after 9pm. However, the ad watchdog said that the scenes showing "women's naked bodies and their very sexual movements and gyrations were overly sexually explicit" for airing at 9pm."

I'm not a gamer myself, but I try to keep up on pop culture. This game is a revival of the Duke Nukem character of the'90s, who was an over-the-top send up on action stars of the '80s, particularly Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone.

Whatever you think of the genre, as a teenage boy at that time it was lots of fun. The bad guys were cartoonish, and the good guys were tough and funny.

But the Nukem game added an extra pop culture element that was missing from those films: women as commoditized tits and ass as reward for the ero. For that, you had to go to sci fi fantasy sources like Heavy Metal.

It's hard to believe this guy was played by John Candy.

The game then combines two major instincts shared by many teenage boys — sex and violence. Nothing new there. The whole post-Vietnam war movie genre is based on the idea of bloodily annihilating scores of faceless, dehumanized foreigners. Sometimes that includes the real war activities of raping civilian women or else taking advantage of locals driven to prostitution.

"Me love you long time!" from Full Metal Jacket

The Duke Nukem world makes the awful human tragedy of warfare even more accessible to boys with somewhat of an undamaged moral compass. The dehumanized foreigners are truly inhuman—they're aliens. And instead of violating or paying women for sexual rewards, Duke enjoys free beer and shows from another professional class of sex worker — strippers.

One gamer has been helpful enough to record some of the "mature" highlights of the game and post them on YouTube:



In addition to the strippers, it has Duke getting hammered at the "club" and getting blown in a glory hole immediately after urinating (you actually thought that was a woman, Duke?) But don't worry, there's vicarious rape too, as the  lesbian incestuous twins kiss each other then get kidnapped, sexually assimilated, impregnated and exploded by the enemy.

Their last words? "We'll get the weight off, in like a week! We swear!"

Like I said before, I was a pubescent boy once too. And the over-the-top humour is obvious. But part of me hoped that the portrayals of men and women in popular youth media would get better, instead of worse, in 20 years. Fortunately, I believe most young het men are still capable of growing out of these ideas. Especially when they reach the maturity level where they are capable of interacting with real female humans.

Orangina's serial tackler is unbearably annoying

Video via Adland (Flash):

Orangia - L'Ours Orangina vs La Bimbo - SERIAL PLAQUEUR - (2011) :30 (France)

This is part of a rugby-themed promotion on Orangina's French Facebook page. Apparently, users get to choose the next victim.

I'm wondering how many people are going to be offended by watching a bear jump a woman on the street for the crime of appearing shallow. And the sexualization of the whole scenario. Not sensitive to assault victims, even as a joke. And it's cheap humour.

Her screaming is also disturbing.

And then there's that awful "Yeahhhhh!" noise it makes.

Awful.

F'd Ad Fridays: Is "Facebook Official" a joke or what?

Everything about this video screams "parody".

The opening.

The hair.

The androgyny. (And the hair.)

The cheesy moves. (And the hair!)

The token diversity. (And my God! The hair!!!)

The dance moves.

The product placements.

And the Rebecca Black league dancing.

When Adland's Dabitch first shared it, I assumed it was a joke. Then I hoped it was one. Then I prayed.

Then I read this article on Perez Hilton:

Is this a joke? This has to be joke.

TELL US THAT THIS IS JOKE!

It's been a long time since the world has had a talented, relevant, five-piece boy band thrusted into their face, and perhaps with good reason. There's some much to live up to - NKOTB, BSB, NSYNC - how could any newbie group every dream of competing. Maybe with a little help from a former boy band member…

Lance Bass would like to introduce you to his new boy band, Heart2Heart. Their first single, Facebook Official, hit the web this week, and it's getting a lot of attention … because people are trying to figure it out!

What is this? Is it a parody? An homage to 2Gether, perhaps? Or has Lance fallen into RB-Rebbecca Black territory? You know, like, he's completely serious with this - the video, the costumes, the horrifying lyrics - and people will jump on board only because the enjoy the sheer ridiculousness of it!

Nobody can tell if ex-'N Syncer Bass is serious or not. Everyone from Queerty to Business Insider is speculating. And that's kind of brilliant.

See more at the band web site 

Creative team threatens to "get gay married" if they can't land a job

What a clever, but terrible, idea.

Creative self-promo pieces are usually pretty kooky. In this one, according to Adland, Charli Hoffmann and Alex Otis threaten NYC agencies that they will have to get married to keep Charli in the country unless the Hoffmann can renew her work visa before October 7 by landing a job.

It's funny, if two straight girls making light of the struggle to get same sex marriage recognized in NY doesn't irk you. Your call.

The joke works in the ad world because creative teams do become like married people after a time, no matter what their sex or orientation. But putting intent to defraud U.S. Immigration on a Facebook Page?

Not a smart move for a foreign worker these days. Even in jest.

Good luck with that.

F'd Ad Fridays: Kopywriting Kourse teaches you to rite good

Saw this on my Facebook:

But today it's only 75% off. But even if it reaches 100% off, it's probably a bad deal. It takes you to an obvious spam site.

Dabitch from Adland also tells me that the image is stolen from here:

F'd Ad Fridays: Sunblock is ineffective as spermicide

(originally seen on Adland.TV, but the image is linked from Copyranter)

F'd Ad Fridays: "F" is for "Fart joke"

And this one goes on way too long.



The worst part is listening to it at your desk on speakers. Oh well, at least your coworkers won't be bothering you for the next 20 minutes or so.

Tip via Adland

F'd Ad Fridays: Offensive salon campaign confuses ads with art

Progressive ad professionals are faced with some real conflicts. On the one hand, we want to be socially responsible contributors to a society of equal rights and respect for all. On the other hand, as part of the creative class, we despise censorship of artistic expression.

So when this months-old campaign from Edmonton suddenly exploded on the ad blogosphere this week as a Copyranter post, it caused quite a bit of anxiety:

The ad appears to make the joke that even though this woman is in an abusive relationship with a man who both beats her and gives her expensive gifts, at least she has a stylish hairdo.

Quite predictably, it caused outrage. How could anyone be so insensitive to such a horrible problem?

The advertiser, however, instead of taking the usual about-face, actually defended the approach:

Store owner Sarah Cameron said the point of the ads was to spark controversy, but they were never meant to target or attack anyone.

“It might strike a chord, but as the way our society and community is getting, we keep tailoring everything because everyone is getting so sensitive,” said Cameron.

“Anyone who has a connection or a story behind anything can be upset or have an opinion. We are not trying to attack anyone.”

Adland provided some context by showing the complete campaign:

Look good even when being frightfully blue collar.

Look good even when turning tricks in an alley.

Look good even when having to deal with icky old people.

Look good even with road rash.

Look good even when... WTF?

The salon accuses detractors of not appreciating the ads' artistic merit:

“We wanted to push limits,” said Cameron.

“You see the picture, you think it’s a nice photo and then you see the controversy.”

“We just like art, and it’s also objective.”

I think she meant subjective. And that's where I see that cognitive dissonance coming into play.

If confronted with this project as a photo essay, and told that someone wanted to stop it from being exhibited, I would probably defend it. Yeah, really. It's disturbing and upsetting and offensive, but that's part of what "art" is supposed to do. Like Mariel Clayton's psychopathic cannibal Barbie work. Art is supposed to make us think and feel things, sometimes awful things.

But this is advertising, and that is the problem. Advertising is not art, no matter how hard we try to claim it is. Advertising is a commercial message designed to promote a brand. And it doesn't have the same protections that "real" art does, because it is bounded by other regulations and expectations.

If unbranded, this photo essay would make a social statement about the superficiality of a looks-obsessed culture that's falling apart. As an ad campaign, it is sleazy and misjudged because it is cynically selling the very looks-obsessed culture the photos would otherwise be critiquing. The headline transforms it from provocative statement to tasteless joke.

What a confusing world we live in.