Even though I like to wear tin foil hats and enjoy it when people call me a consipriacy theorist, call me crazy but I just noticed the Sound Relief logo looks quite a bit like an altered version of the Firefox logo. Simply rotate it and punch up the black in the logo and well, what do you think?

I’m never one to kick a charity, but given the charity concert is around to raise funds for the devastating bushfires that swept across Victoria, it does make sense to have a “flame-like” motif across the earth. But on the flipside, Firefox, being an internet browser with a “Fire Fox” as its emblem can also stake equal claim to the visual.

It could just be me, I could be mean, but I saw the logo and thought, hmm… that’s a little familiar. I’m just saying…

As a Gen Y, I made a very big move yesterday. I deleted my Facebook account. Cue collective gasp from all the Under 25’s out there (and a smattering of the switched on 30+) I think it was a long time coming really, I had become sick and tired of the way a social networking site was actually making all of my friends quite anti-social. Oh and those friends I’m talking about would be the real ones – not the ones who just added me to boost their friend numbers – yeah I had collected about 100 of those ones.

It became clear to me that I was using Facebook far too much and for evil rather than good. Sounds a tad melodramatic no? The answer to that would be yes, yes it does. But it’s true. I had been using Facebook to track certain friends and see what they were doing and I didn’t like how I felt when I’d read comments on their pages and get twangs of pain or fits of jealousy. Quite simply I hated who I had become because of something as petty and stupid as a website.

I remember feeling the same way about MySpace – and then hey presto – a month after the feelings began I deleted all the content from my page and abandoned ship. There’s still a ghost of my former profile there because MySpace refuses to delete my account even after all these years (I think it helps them maintain the illusion that there are actually people still using their site)

For me, there’s that curiosity of what the final page looks like when you’re about to say sayonara to a website. For MySpace, it was a simple screen that asked if you were sure you wanted to delete your account, and then with a click of a button you were gone. Facebook does things quite differently, and true to form tries to guilt you in to sticking around. First up, they run about five photos across the top of the page that feature you and your friends (thanks to the joys of tagging) – and they personalise it by saying “John will Miss You” and “Michelle will Miss You” etc, etc.

If you make it through that emotional hurdle, they then ask you to select the reason you’re leaving from a drop down. As soon as you select an option it gives you a counter-reason why you shouldn’t leave. So if you selected “I’m leaving because I get too many emails from Facebook” their answer is “Well how about you change your settings here and we’ll contact you less often?”

In the Web 2.0 world that would generally be considered a cute personalisation feature that really brings your website to life. When it comes to a monolithic social networking site it screams of sad desperation. They know that it just takes a handful of influencers to mark the beginning of the end of a social networking site and then before you know it Facebook founders will be kissing their Maserati’s goodbye, packing up their uber-nerd-cool offices and find themselves poking around in the dark again.

So you might wonder (or you might not, but I’m going to tell you anyway) right now how do I feel? To be honest, a little empty. My fingers are itching to type in that URL and hit “reactivate” my account – that’s the clincher there, with Facebook they don’t let you actually delete your account, they simply put it to sleep in case you change your mind one day. It’s interesting. I’m a little on edge, I’m a little emotional and I for one can’t believe I’d ever be like that over a website.

I’ll agree that Facebook does do one thing well, it uses your friends and lots of loving things like pokes and smiles and tagged photos and gifts and cute little video posts to make you feel like it’s more than a website… it’s a member of the family you just can’t live without. It emotionally blackmails you right to the very end. They want you to know that getting rid of Facebook would be like euthanising the lame family dog – and nobody really wants to do that do they?

See ya Facebook… I’m off to have a real conversation.

PS. Check out this site http://thedisgracebook.net/ – the tagline says it all “Surprise! You just ruined your life with Facebook. Well played.”

Hmm, I came across this video on me old mate YouTube the other day for SPURT – a lolly that enjoyed short-lived popularity in Australia in the 80’s. Besides that typical lame-o-licious style of 80’s advertising, the funniest thing that got me was not only how innapropriate the name of the product was, but how bad the advertising copy was that went with it.

“It’s hard on the outside and it’s just waiting to spurt liquid on the inside… SPURT…. What’s in the middle of yours?”

Umm, excuse me? Now sure, I might have a dirty mind at the best of times but something’s gotta give. Then again it was the 80’s…

But then when I was traveling last year I discovered a whole bunch of products with weird names – maybe it was the ice cream with two round cheeks called BUM BUM that I stumbled upon in Vienna, or another ice cream called TRAMP found in Germany.

Have you ever found any products or advertisements that you think are just weird? Let me know here

… and SPAM is turning Seventy. Coincidence? I think not…Spam’s 70th Anniversary website

Every decade has certain things that define it, and social networking sites have to be the thing that define the new millenium. In the 90’s MySpace was nothing but a glimmer in some nerds eye and Facebook, which turned five at the weekend, was a scrawled idea in a Harvard student’s notebook.

Now while there’s no debating that social networking sites are useful for users to interact with each other, they’re also very useful to advertisers. Sites like Facebook are essentially private diaries made very public. It’s on these sites you’ll find photos of your friends getting drunk and doing stupid things, people realising they haven’t been invited to a friends birthday and ex-lovers Facebook-stalking each other to keep tabs.

To advertisers, social networking sites are virtual gold. At a click of a button they can isolate demographics down to infinite details beyond whether you’re male or female, single or married, gay or straight. So theoretically (and stereotypically one might say) if a new record label wanted to talk directly to gay men who like Kylie Minogue, a simple Facebook search would reveal exactly who the poor souls are and bingo, there’s your audience.

So you can see why Facebook, which relies heavily on cash flow from advertisers in order to host the trillions of data we upload, would need to step up and monetarise their offering.

Now comes the news that Facebook, by way of being the biggest social networking site in the world, will now also become the world’s largest research database. For a fee, firms will be able to track exact data on Facebook users down to the most specific of searches, and given the extent to which some people update their pages (sometimes, three, four times a day) they’ll be sitting on top of a gold mine of data.

The solution seems simple right? If you’re worried you should just says thanks for the memories and shutdown your Facebook profile page. But that leads me to my next thought… if I were to become a total black sheep amongst friends and shut down my Facebook site, wouldn’t advertisers just find a new way to target me?

Of course they will. When one door shuts another opens and that’s exactly why the industry has thrived for years. So I’ll continue to sell my soul (and my status updates) to Facebook until (just like MySpace) I get bored, log off and find a new distraction in life. Perhaps a puppy will do the trick.

My hats off to those clever marketing guys in the US behind Burger King.

From the same brains that brought you FLAME – the essence of a Whopper in a fragrance – and legendary viral ad Subservient Chicken - comes a new campaign that questions exactly how many of your Facebook friends actually are your friends.

Hot off the presses comes a new campaign by Burger King called Whopper Sacrifice which asks users to delete 10 of their Facebook friends in exchange for a complimentary flame-grilled Whopper. Adding insult to injury, the delete friends will be informed by Burger King that you ‘love them as a friend, but you love Whoppers more’

Unfortunately for a lot of social scensters out there with friend collections made up of more than enough ‘fake friends’ the offer is only limited to one burger per person. Ouch.

Generally, I am not a big fan of people or organizations that see, or cry, racism, or sexism, or something-ism or the other, in almost anything, even if none was implied.

However, I also strongly believe that, regardless of the (low) merits of political correctness, it is imperative for businesses, especially those in communications or consumer industries, to be cognizant of how their work(s) may be perceived. Sometimes, a racist, or bigoted, or sexist, person may deliberately create advertising, or TV characters, or movie situations that play up stereotypes. Other times it is sheer cluelessness that leads to the same results.

The latest example of such, most likely clueless, MADvertising came into my Inbox just now. It is a Sports Authority electronic promotion for Under Armor brand sportswear.

What amazes me about this image is the deliberate or inadvertent combination of racism, sexism, stereotyping as a big, strong, and apparently determined Black male is seen running after (or behind) an obviously weaker (single?) white female. Even worse, look at the expression on her face. She is not out running in a determined manner of an athlete. There is almost an expression as if she is concerned and stressed, and looking for shadows on the ground to see if someone is coming after her.

Yes, I can be accused to seeing imagery that is not there and imagining these issues where none were implied. But, that is the whole reason I call it MADvertising. Smart communicators and marketers avoid such potential pitfalls to the best of their abilities. This particular ad surely could have been done a lot better.

What do you think?

===

PS. This comment generated a lot of comments, as you can see below. I am quite amazed, and amused, by some of them, but displaying them regardless of the personal attacks. As can be seen, everyone’s comments have been posted…. even the ones from the same ‘anonymous’ using the same computer a few minutes apart.

It is also interesting to see many people completely miss my referring to this as most likely an example of clueless advertising (the world is full of more examples than just this) or MADvertising.

I think people also miss that I am personally sick of political correctness (or of pandering to particular races that a lot advertising is now doing). I am also sick of having to squint my eyes to read English instructions on product packaging because half of the space has been given up to Spanish. I detest having to choose between English and Spanish when I call banks or other companies’ phone numbers. This is America. We speak English. I feel if an organization has so many customers of a particular language or ethnic group then they should set up a separate 800 number for them instead of making their (most likely) 90%+ of English speaking customers to have to select what language to speak in their own country.

But, that does not mean I can claim there is no racism here. (I will be accused of being racist for the above comment, while being accused below of seeing racism where it does not exist!)

I do raise eyebrows when I see particular ads where, for example, the likelihood of seeing Black models tends to be higher if the ad depicts some sort of stupid behavior. Again, it is not only Blacks shown doing stupid things. There are plenty of ads showing stupidity (in the name of humor) with models who are white males, females or even groups of people. (I will post something about those separately later).

But, everyone’s comments are appreciated and are being posted here…. including the moronic ones.

Imran

Flo on madvertising posts a number of the day.

216748…

…The estimative total man hours spent on the production of a television commercial with a duration of 30 seconds.

Fascinating on so many levels.

…in Deutschland, bevor ich das Abenteuer China beginne. Da gibt es natürlich viel zu tun. Um genau zu sein warten 26 Punkte auf meiner To-Do-Liste und doch gab es nichts wichtigeres als mich als Blog-Daniel-San durch meinem Blog-Miyagi °flo in die Welt der Blogs einführen zu lassen. Naja… 26 Punkte sollten auch in 27 Tagen machbar sein…