By Calvin Palmer

Have you got a brain tumor? I know just the man to help.

Yesterday if you had asked me, I would not have had a clue. But today I received a flyer in the mail from a doctor in Arlington, Texas, advertising that world-class brain and spine surgery was now available to me.

The doctor informed me that he was “excited to bring his passion and skill of world-class brain and spine care to the Metroplex”. It is a great shame that I no longer live there.

I get excited when the Dallas Cowboys win or at the prospect of a trip overseas, a new car or a new camera. Brain surgery, I am sorry to say, just leaves me cold.

World-class brain and spine care, who says so? This doctor does not appear to have any links with any of the great teaching hospitals of the world, although he did do a fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh. I guess that counts for something.

And within the Metroplex, the hospital where the doctor is plying his profession does not have the greatest of reputations. When I needed surgery back in Texas, I opted for Medical City in Dallas rather than the hospital where he practices.

Only in America can a highly-valued profession, in terms of the life-saving skills it embraces, be reduced to the level of thermal insulation or a kitchen makeover for your home.

Unlike the rest of the world where health care is mostly a service; in America, it is a commodity and, as with any commodity, there is money to be made, ergo the doctor’s need to advertise.

I could perhaps understand the logic of this doctor’s marketing strategy if he were dealing with elective surgeries, women who require bigger boobs, a nose job or stomach tuck. But why would a doctor feel the need to advertise surgery for a life-threatening condition?

Surely, if someone is diagnosed with a brain tumor they would be referred to a neurosurgeon by their GP. It’s not like people sit round and say, “Darling, let’s not bother going on a cruise this year, why don’t we both have brain surgery instead? I hear Dr X is very good. He has a passion for world-class brain care.”

And in Black Friday mode, how about an ad that reads: “Let us remove your brain tumor and get a lobotomy at no extra charge.” That has got to be the deal of the century.

American advertising is problematic for me to say the least. TV ads advertise goods and services the like of which would never appear on British TV.

One law firm advertises with the slogan “power to the people”, which roughly translates into “money in our pockets”.

Prescription drug ads always end, after the list of side effects that are ten times worse than the complaint the drug is treating, with “ask your doctor”. I always thought doctors recommended drugs for patients not the other way round.

But again, there is money to be made from prescribing drugs. And the pharmaceutical companies need all the money they can get to pay off the damages awarded against them in various lawsuits.

Strangely, ads for hard liquor do not appear on the network TV channels. At this time of year, I miss the clever and amusing British TV ads for Famous Grouse and Gordon’s Gin. I guess the ghost of prohibition still haunts the psyche of the American establishment. Alcohol is right up there with drugs and tobacco as a big no-no.

And it will take a cold day in Hell before women in tight white jeans prance around on roller-skates or skateboards to advertise Tampax on the American networks.

Clearly in the Disney-inspired mentality that seems to holds sway in America, women do not have periods but they can be prone to brain tumors.

These commercials are really neat… but still they don’t make me to upgrade to Windows 7

Talk to Verizon customers  -  coverage of Verizon sucks.

VERIZON CUSTOMER SERVICE IS ABUSIVE TO CUSTOMERS.

Don’t give your money to Verizon – Liars and min. wage employees who f*ck you over.

When my husband told me that some weird psychedelic dream featuring Drew Brees, Troy Polamalu and DeMarcus Ware playing catch on the front lawn of the White House with President Obama was being shown on television the other day….well I didn’t believe it.  That is until I saw it with my own eyes.

Now I grew up in the era of Regan’s Presidential Physical Fitness, the dreaded multi week fitness torture fest of pinching your skin with a clamp thing to gauge body fat, hanging in the flex arm hang position until the forearm shakes set in, and the shuttle run done haphazardly with erasers so full of chalk dust from the class room that you often left a trail behind you as you ran.  So, while I hated it at the time, the push for fitness by the commander in chief is something that I see as in keeping with being a role model to children.

That said, the slow motion pro football toss fest in the ad for NFL Play 60 campaign kind of creeps me out.  Maybe it’s because I know that deep down Obama’s a basketball fan. Or maybe it’s because he’d really rather be hanging out watching George Lopez on late night….

May advertising awards and chocolate fish* rain down upon the clever people at Colenso BBDO for creating an ad for the New Zealand Book Council that manages to avoid the multitude of cliches available to do with books and reading, and just does something creative and original.

*the internationally recognised token of appreciation amongst librarians

Recently,  two 30 second Tv ads captured my eyes. One is by UNIQLO and the other is by GAP. Both for promoting winter clothes.

The ad by UNIQLO looks like Sci-Fi story. Basically, the ad promotes winter jackets. Suddenly, a “bullet train” of jackets appears in front of people(adults). The place is like in Mars or the Moon. They shock at first, but take own favorite color. No voice, just BGM. When I watched this, I felt like “get a jacket to be cool (actually, at the end, the word said).”

On the other hand,  the ad by GAP is so active. Voices become the BGM. The age of the models is wide range: kids and adults. It is like watching cheerleaders (on the company website, it says “READYFORHOLIDAYCHEER”).

Compare those two, it is stillness vs movement. Personally, I like GAP”s one. The reason? GAP’s clothes look warmer. UNIQLO, well it sounds like I cannot survive this winter without this jacket. The weather is getting colder these days, and I want something made me warmer not colder.

Resource from Youtube

There are some pretty awful ads around at the minute – I won’t even start on the Ferrero Rocher attempt – but one of the worst has got to be for CSL sofas.

TV ads are generally done to build awareness of a brand or product and the memorable ones are usually either annoying or brilliant – this one certainly fits into the second category.

But I just can’t see how it sells sofas – and certainly not how it does it in an effective way.

Memorable – yes, annoying – yes, selling lots of sofas – i just can’t see it!



Advertising Agency: Publicis Conceil, Paris, France
Creative Director: Frédéric Royer
Copywriter: Olivier Dermaux
Art Director: Mathieu Vinciguerra

Llega la Navidad y Mastercard busca promover el uso de su tarjeta con una acción on line centrada en una herramienta que ayuda a los consumidores a elegir el regalo perfecto. A partir de una serie de datos, como la descripción de la personalidad del destinatario y el precio que se quiere gastar, la herramienta ofrece distintos regalos disponibles en Amazon.com. Además a través de Facebook Connect, los usuarios pueden crear sus listas de compras. La aplicación también incluye una calculadora de presupuestos.

Cheryl Guerin, responsable de marketing en MasterCard Worldwide ha comentado en un comunicado que esta iniciativa está en la línea de las tendencias de los consumidores a la hora de comprar: “La utilidad de la herramienta hace más fácil seleccionar los regalos perfectos, usando las aplicaciones de los medios sociales que forman parte de la vida de los compradores de hoy en día”.

El jugador de fútbol americano Peyton Manning y la actriz de la serie “Cómo conocí a vuestra madre” Alyson Hannigan promocionan la aplicación desde la web y desde la televisión con tres spots distintos. La campaña, creada por McCann Erickson, New York, estará en activo durante las Navidades.

Los consumidores que usen la aplicación reciben 10 dólares de crédito en la cuenta de Amazon, que pueden usarse en la tiende de Amazon MP3. MasterCard invirtió 219 millones de dólares en publicidad convencional en 2008 en Estados Unidos, según Nielsen.

Para conocer mas visita www.Priceless.com/giftfinder

Honey, how much could we get for one of the kids?

I love cars. I just wish I had the money (and damn good reason) to get me a kick-ass little sports car, like a Donkervoort or an Exige S. You know, nothing ridiculous, just a toy.

I really love going to Car Shows too, although I haven’t made it out to the Canadian International in a couple years (kids and all, see?), but I’m going to try and make the next one coming up in February. There’s something about seeing a brand new model under those lights all shiny and quietly awaiting the open road that makes the crowds and the shitty food acceptable.

But that’s once a year. The rest of the time I get my fix by google image searches, YouTube searches, 5th Gear (hilarious show), and the boob tube just like everybody else.

I’ve often wished I was the dude throwing the M3 around the turns or the CTS rocketing down the salt-flats, but lately it seems that auto manufacturers are looking to cut costs by cutting their drivers out of the spots in favour of CG models and impossible environments… I think that sucks.

It’s like comparing Return of the Jedi to Revenge of the Sith! Oh sure, Sith had some amazing backdrops and incredible effects, but there’s no way Jedi would have anywhere near the following (even today) if Yoda wasn’t a puppet (I also believe Mark Hamill couldn’t have pulled off such a heart-wrenching performance watching his master fade away if he had to fake it – grin).

It’s not too long now that a company will figure out how to render CG so seamlessly with live footage that we won’t be able to tell the difference (I expect that Avatar may come close), but until that day, I wanna see cars on the street, cars in the dirt, cars bouncing up boulders and drifting around corners.

But when that day comes, what will befall our wonderful drivers? Will they become obsolete? Will automakers leverage technology to reduce insurance and production costs for their new lineups? What other helpless souls will be cast aside as expendable legacy system redundancies?

Will you?

Will current CRM marketing automation one day turn into pay-as-you-go automated corporate-scale marketing strategy inferred from social behavioural analytics, cloud-logged purchase history and geo/persona-targeting from web leads captured through intelligent forms that will put us “marketing types” in the unemployment lines right beside our beloved Professional-driver-closed-course buddies?

Are we too going to be replaced by code-writers and free widgets? For me, I’ve already got a background in computer animation and post production effects compositing, so I should be ok, but the rest of you are screwed.

Maybe I’ll tip a bit of my Starbucks out the window of my Donkervoort as I pass… You know, respect for my homies.

Allegedly, a television ad for Dwight Eisenhower’s candidacy in the mid-1950s was the first of its kind (TV, that is):

the ad

One may be tempted to consider the ad to be hopelessly simplistic and empty, but really, have TV political ads changed much? Okay, they’re in living color.

I do like the implied syllogism in the ad (not to mention the basic left-to-right animation, and the way “Ike” turns into the sun at the end–the sun, a nuclear fireball):

You and I like Ike.
Liking someone suggests that he or she should be the next president of the United States.
Therefore, let you and me “send” Ike to Washington D.C. and the White House.

Great argument! I like Ike’s black-and-white animated add. You like Ike’s black-and-white animated ad. You and I both probably get tired of the song by the time the second or third verse rolls around.

ITV Daytime Sponsored By Confused Dot Com’s current advert is is, and I find this hard to believe, even more annoying than their previous one. It features a group of chronically happy and shiny people wiggling their thumbs while saying:

“yayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

yayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

yayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

yayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

yayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy”

until they run out of breath or ad time, whichever comes first.

I would love to spend 5 minutes with the person who thought this up. Then I would force them to sit and listen to it for an entire day.

I can’t wait for Iron Man 2 to come out! Have I mentioned that I’m a comic-geek? In fact, I get stoked whenever I hear about another super hero movie coming out. And if it’s anywhere as cool as the first one, well…. ssshhhhyaww!

Being born in the early-70’s primed me to be one of those uber-excited chumps who salivates at seeing a preview for an upcoming superhero movie, courtesy of Mr. Stan Lee and his Marvel Universe (have I mentioned that I’m a big nerd?).

Billy Van as Grizelda the Ghastly Gourmet - my fave charater from Frightenstein

In an earlier life I was an extra on a number of TV shows, movies and commercials, and also helped the agency that represented me by working in their office assisting with casting. I got to meet a couple really big stars (Adam Sandler, Tim Allen, and the immortal Billy Van [RIP]) and some then-not-so-big stars (Jim J Bullock, Monika Schnarre, & James Marsden on the set of Boogie’s Diner to name a few) and got to understand the importance of continuity – ensuring that people, props, environment and storyline are consistent from shot to shot, and from camera setup to camera setup (i.e. Same amount of milk in the glass in the right hand from cut to cut – you get the idea).

Which brings me back to Iron Man.

WARNING! If you haven’t seen the movie, well, I don’t give a shit. It was really good and you’ve had plenty of time to see it before now, so tough noogie.

Near the beginning of the movie, Tony Stark (Iron Man) is injured in a terrorist explosion and wakes to find himself a hostage in a cave with a big glowing, humming, metal thing implanted in his chest attached to a car battery. The nuclear physicist/doctor/surgeon who put it in (also a hostage), tells him that it’s an electromagnet that is preventing the shrapnel in his body from entering his heart and killing him. Ok, sure, whatever, it’s a comic book story and that’s totally acceptable in my books and besides, the glowing chest thing is part of Iron Man’s identity, part of his brand, part of his story and reason for becoming Iron Man.

See? There it is! It's the only thing keeping him alive! And it was built and installed in a cave!

Trouble is that was the ONLY time in the movie that shrapnel-part was mentioned. Later on, Stark upgrades this unit a couple times and even unplugs it at one point, but in doing so the only side-effect is a slowing heart rate (or so the audio illustrated)… no excruciating pain from little bits of metal being pumped around his veins or anything! And sure, he could have probably had all the pieces removed, but again, that wasn’t covered, and if he DID get them removed, why does he still need the chest thing at all?

That’s an inconsistent message and at the end of the movie, it stuck in my mind as something I didn’t quite like. It felt like they threw in the whole shrapnel thing to explain away why he has this thing in his chest, and then forgot they said it.

Now you might be thinking that this is a bit trivial and nit-picky and one of those things that the serious comic-book-geeks would get their mom’s on the phone to rant about and get the support they need to make a posting on the Marvel Complaint Board or some damn thing, but my point is this: if the thing in his chest was put there for a reason shouldn’t that reason be consistent throughout the story?

And that got me thinking about marketing messages and advertising. Notice anything lately that has struck you as being inconsistent with a brand or incongruous with what their brand stands for or that just plumb didn’t make sense?

Take Bell’s new-ish (ok, 2007-ish, but it still sucks) advertising and branding: wtf is with the words ending in er? It doesn’t make sense. It’s not tied into ANYTHING. So what’s the point? Where’s the link? Why do I have to think about the point or the link? And where the hell is this going? As with Iron Man’s chest thing, it looks like Bell just wanted to get a new something out there and forgot to explain it to the rest of us.

Compare that to Harley Davidson. They’ve been making bikes for over 100 years and they haven’t tried to tell anybody anything different or obfuscate their core message one bit. They create loud-ass, kick-ass, time-tested, well-built bikes and their evangelical tribe is fiercely loyal. Sure, they’ve dabbled into other verticals (take Buell, for example), but even then they still maintain a consistent and familial message, voice and theme.

"Honey! How much room do we have on the line?!"

If there’s a reason for saying what you’ve said in an ad, great, but please don’t make me try and figure it out. And if you’re going to create a string of ads leveraging this same concept, even better! Repetition works, David. Repetition works, David. But again, please make it tie in somehow to your product/brand/solution/company/industry/tag/washing instructions, anything!

Look at your website, your ads, collateral, sales tool-kits, slide decks and anything else with your logo/brand on it and ask yourself this question: Does it all go together? Is there a consistent message or theme? And if there isn’t, where and when did the train leave the tracks, and how much damage did it cause?

Memories may be short for most things, but if you’re hoping for loyalty and return business from your customers, bank on that memory extending past the last 6-12 months worth of ad messaging (or in HD’s case, decades).

The last thing a company needs is a customer coming back to them with an invoice in their hand saying, “Remember when I bought this you said…”.

***

To completely discredit this post, I plan on seeing Iron Man 2 opening night. I’ll be standing next to the guy whose shirt says: “I’m with stupid”

Long live Stan Lee.

x-mas 2009 campaign for T-Mobile Czech republic
the ad was shot for real in the Prague tram #25 on a late October morning.
with a couple plants and 12 hidden cameras we got the whole tram laughing.

copywriter: Radovan Grezo, Karlheinz Wasserbacher, Andy Jex
art director: Christopher Jones, Michael Ladich, Rob Potts
creative director: Jason Romeyko, Paul Silburn
director: Henry Mason
year: 2009

An expanding, grody pink blob that takes over a suburban home and eventually smashes through the windows in this spot by Colenso BBDO for the New Zealand Breast Cancer Foundation.

The agency also created an installation in downtown Auckland, with an initially tiny blob growing so large it blocked the street. Local white-collar types didn’t seem to mind, and the well-intentioned stunt made the nightly news, drawing attention to the cause.

The New Zealand campaign successfully treads the middle ground: It’s “wacky” enough to catch viewers’ attention and slightly sinister, emphasizing that early detection can avert problems before they grow out of all proportion.

Microsoft is preparing to take over an entire ad break in the X Factor next month as part of its biggest advertising push for its Xbox 360 console.

Microsoft’s UK Xbox marketing director Stephen McGill says: “We believe that the X Factor provides us with the perfect opportunity to communicate directly with our target audience and is the ideal time to educate them about the new games and services on the Xbox console.

The ads are expected to run during the live X Factor show on 14 November, in a deal brokered by media agency Universal McCann.

It will be the first time Xbox has used an entire TV commercial spot to promote its services. McGill says the ads aim to “celebrate the innovation which our latest releases focus on”.

I just had a weird dream in which I ran into “Little Bit of Luck” from the MegaMillions ad, which freaked me out. (BTW, I am still waiting for that little bit of luck to drop in real life.)

This got me thinking: What if people from ads were really all out there. I wonder how they would go in the real world?

Let’s start with the Dentyne guy who says “friend request” when he offers you gum. Dude, friend requests from strangers are annoying enough on Facebook. No-one would ever take your gum, weirdo.

And how about the AT&T mom who washes dirty minutes, and carries them around in her bag and tells her family off about wasting them. Lady, you won’t need minutes where you are going. The padded walls don’t allow any signal – ESPECIALLY not if you’re with AT&T.

And what of the Verizon FiOS guy, always passive-aggressively dissing the Cable Guy? He’s an arrogant douchebag if ever there was one. In the real world, that big “ginger ninja” unit would have throttled him by now. And we know Cable Guy would win the fight hands down…. he has a beard.

— Irish

“A creative from an ad agency books an audio session….. what could possibly go wrong?”

thanks swartperd.

Yesterday on Dave Glover’s radio show, they did the “Sweet Sixteen of Favorite Smells.” One of my favorites included that new car smell. People have commented for decades, “I wish we could get that smell in a can…” Fragrances we like can attract us to make a buying decision. The smell of BBQ has done that to me more than once. It’s no mystery why Bandana uses the tag line, “Smell That Smoke.”

There are also smells that are very unattractive – odors that drive us away. I got a whiff of one the other day. We have plants in the landscaped area of our yard that get eaten by rabbits unless we spray some kind of repellant. My wife was doing the spraying. The smell was so offensive, it almost knocked me over. It was like the ape house at the St. Louis Zoo – in highly concentrated form. Yuck-O!

Bad smells aren’t always so obvious. Sometimes they’re very subtle, but still have a repelling effect. It could be an odd odor at a friend’s house that makes us reluctant to visit – like dog that needs a bath (or a tooth brush).

Of course, I see a parallel in marketing and advertising. Sometimes I’ll see a TV ad that just seems dumb. Or I’ll be confused about what a print ad is trying to communicate. Or maybe it’s the same message that has become dull or flat. It just doesn’t appeal.

What about your message? Are you using the same old ads? Has your message grown stale or flat? If it has, would you even know it? Maybe now is the perfect time to get an evaluation.

Steve Smart helps businesses managers grow their bottom line through improved marketing efforts.

I spend a lot of time listening to the TV while crafting.

I absolutely HATE this commercial with the talking pothole!! The voice just grates on my nerves.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1pNPOZUf10

And what about those that “push” the envelope and seem to cross the line? Like that commercial with the dog bragging about his poop being the best because of his great dog food. Ewwwww.

So much for having a tasty dinner!!

Are there ads out there that irritate you?