Back Home

Apple Shout Out

Went to register the new popcorn maker last night. Now, these registration cards (which thankfully had an online option instead) are really just marketing surveys. They just want to know who their customers are so they can make more stuff that you'll buy. Which I'm fine with.

But I always find it interesting to see what kind of information they value. Question #25 jumped out at me. It covers everything from speaking Spanish to your household pet preference. And it specifically calls out if you are a Mac owner (a box I proudly checked, of course).

And this is for Cuisinart, a company that makes cooking gadgets and cookware. Not sure what sort of cross-tabulation makes this question useful.

Blu-Barred

I will be SO happy when Blu-Ray becomes ubiquitous enough that they stop putting garish blue banners and "high def" over everything. Gah!

Oh wait! Or they could find SOMETHING THAT LOOKS DECENT!

Their Ecosystem Is Run By Idiots

Back in November of 06, I offhandedly referred to a video from an internal Bank of America meeting where they re-wrote U2's "One" to talk about a recent merger in the "card business". It was pretty bad, but at least the performers were pretty talented. And you could tell what song it was ripping off.

But I think someone in Microsoft's sales division saw it and said, "Oh, we can make an internal 'rah rah' video WAY worse than that. And we'll spend a LOT of money to make it really craptacular."

WARNING: this is just painful from start to finish.

Compare & Contrast

Sometimes I hate my profession.

"Like last year's, these ads are simultaneously horrible and good, beacuase the "Glengarry Glen Ross" crowd doesn't care whether the cartoons—written by founder Vin Gupta—are funny (they aren't) or verging on racist (the "comical" Indian and Chinese accents!). No, salespeople just want leads and will flock here to buy them."
—Advertising Age (2/4/08) on SalesGenie, giving the ads 3 out of 4 stars

Really? Because bottom-line sales slaves will use their service, that makes the ads good? I tend to think advertising doesn't talk in a vacum or some sort of "cone of silence" shared only with your intended targets. There are a lot more people than just the target that is affected by advertising.

Let's let some other ad folks remind us of what we should strive for.

"I’m appalled by those who [judge] advertising exclusively on the basis of sales. That isn’t enough. Of course, advertising must sell. By any definition it is lousy advertising if it doesn’t. But if sales are achieved with work which is in bad taste or is intellectual garbage, it shouldn’t be applauded no matter how much it sells. Offensive, dull, abrasive, stupid advertising is bad for the entire industry and bad for business as a whole. It is why the public perception of advertising is going down in this country."
—Norman Berry

And for good measure, let's throw in a little Bernbach. Because you can't ever have too much Bernbach.

All of us who professionally use the mass media are the shapers of society. We can vulgarize that society. We can brutalize it. Or we can help lift it onto a higher level.
—William Bernbach

Maybe I'm just bitter because my five-year-old daughter recently, out of the blue, said,
"Daddy, the people at Stoufer's say dinner shouldn't just taste good, it should feel good."

TPQ Thursday

In honor of Daphne.

Category: Fads
Question: What adjective was bestowed on Nuprin pain reliever by a 1980s ad campaign, along with "little," "better" and "different"?

Get The Door. It's Domino's New Ads.

Since I know Pudge loves trendy hipster advertising so much, I feel obliged to post these. New work from industry darling CP+B.

HT: Copyranter

Pop Culturearific

As AdGabber said, "So where do you find taser guy Andrew Meyer, "leave Britney alone" guy Chris Crocker and "um...the Iraq" Miss Teen South Carolina all together in one place? In an AOL commercial for its new AOL News site, of course."

Be Ye Glad

That you don't have to live in Orlando and endure all the kitchy, junky holiday advertising for the various shows in town. Ugh. Click image to enlarge. I mean seriously! How many things have to be going on at once in there? And I didn't know Santa visited the baby Jesus. Must be from one of those "new" gospels they found.

Honestly Selling Out

Apparently my wife and I aren't the only people on the planet who feel the Beyonce DirecTV commercial is asinine, annoying, and... atrocious. And abysmal.

I'm currently watching a Discovery Channel documentary about Australian marine biologists who are trying to capture, and raise in captivity, the Architeuthis, or Giant Squid. After many years of unsuccessful attempts, they finally found and transferred to their ship eight larvae, and there was much rejoicing and popping of champagne and stuff. But by the time they got back to their lab, all of the larvae were dead. The lead biologist, Steve O'Shea, gave a final speech about how he's not going to give up. I got kind of teary-eyed. Then that Beyonce ad for DirecTV came on where she sings "Lemme Lemme Lemme Up-Grade Ya," and I ripped my TV off the wall and threw it away. —Ken Tremendous of Fire Joe Morgan

Absolutely.

Cleaning Off The Camera Phone

Let's see what the ol' brain thought was funny, interesting, odd, or cute over the last few weeks...

Driving to the grandparents and Kaylee didn't even make it onto the freeway before falling asleep. Nor did she get through more than one bite of her breakfast.

Got to visit Josh & Tina a few weeks ago, meet their baby, and do other assorted fun things (photos of bats and butterflies to come). This lovely sign was by the pool at our hotel. A little... dramatic, methinks. I mean, your whole head popping off?

Saw this product in Walgreens. Apparently it's a "Hot Buy".

This was from the tail end of a photo shoot on Monday at work. The surreality (surrealness?) of lighting a light was not lost on us.