Subaru ad serves up old-timey sexism

If they had web ads in the 1950s, I'll bet they'd look like this:

This ad, which compounds its failure by having a bad link, was spotted on Fark.com. 

There's also a banner:

I guess the archaic humour is supposed to be ironic. It might have worked for a beer brand, with the explanation "we're making fun of that sort of thing", but for a major automotive brand it's a lemon.

Posthumous baptisms countered by posthumous gay "conversion"

Huffington Post reported today that a radical group of Mormons in the Dominican Republic have declared famous Holocaust victim Anne Frank, who was Jewish her whole short life, "baptized by proxy" into their church.

As bizarre and disrespectful as this practice is, it was only stopped by the mainstream Mormon church after an agreement reached with Jewish religious leaders in 1995, and church leaders continue to apologize for renegade baptisms.

That's not enough for one group of anti-Mormon internet pranksters, however. They have set up as site called "All Dead Mormons Are Now Gay"

The site specifically adds, "*Holocaust victims are not eligible for conversion."

The site mines a Mormon database to give you the name of a random deceased Mormon who you can "convert" to homosexuality. Considering that homosexuality is a sin in their religion, this is quite an awkward position to be in.

Personally, I don't think religious intolerance should be fought with religious intolerance. Plus, equating sexual orientation with religion makes it seem that both are by choice — which is exactly how people against gay rights tend to see things.

But hey, I found this link on Fark. So what can you expect?

A Case of Blondes

These are all over Bank Street this week. I assume they're all over urban Ontario:



Here's a close-up.



Yeah, I get it. The Paris-esque socialite is the wrong blonde to bring to your May 2-4 cottage party. She'll be all "That's Hot!" when you and your buddies are all "Let's play drunken fireworks tag!" And she'll probably complain about the bugs and, by day two, your manly odour.

But this ad also made me wonder if the "blonde" beer jokes have worn out their welcome. For one, they're sexist. For another, they're cliché. And perhaps more alarmingly for a Copywriter, they're based on a pun — the lowest form of ad humour.

But, from my new buddy Hamish's Skinny Blonde in Australia to more subtle brands like Toronto's Natural Blonde, the international beer industry will never be at a loss for blonde jokes.

Let's have a look:













"What's the deal?" some women may ask. The fact is, the association of drinking and sex is pretty hard-wired in the average young man's brain. As Drew Curtis, founder of popular (and sometimes damn funny) news discussion site Fark.com says in his bio, "Drew likes boobies and beer. That's pretty much it."

It's kind of embarrassing to be such a simple-minded folk,for us men. But despite being unoriginal and possibly offensive, I'll bet this latest blonde joke will be quite effective in driving sales. Among men.

BTW, I consider it no coincidence that my GIS for "blonde beer" turned up as many pictures of Paris Hilton (and soft-core blonde women) as it did of actual beer.

Possibly the worst Internet ad I have ever seen (and clicked on)

Caught this ad on Fark.com. I know their rates are pretty cheap, but I can honestly say I have never before seen an ad try less hard than this to get me to click.

I've seen centred default font before. I've even seen red asterisks used for emphasis. And "engrish" copy. But I think it's the hand-drawn arrows and circle around the URL that make this ad epic bad.

So of course I clicked it. Let me spare you the effort. It took me to this page:



And for some reason, I clicked again. Here's what I got:

Hi I am Mukesh, your stress help. What I have is unique tips for how you can be always stress free. It is very important that you are stress free. You are happy and have control of your life.

My friends call me stress free mentor. In last five years I help many people to be stress free. I am a cancer survivor. I fought cancer since 1995. I had three surgeries and my speech is impaired by this. I had tones of stress. I search and spent lot of time and money for stress relief. By experience I found some simple things which are good for managing stress.

You have shown interest and I will send you my paper ‘How do you invite stress’. You simply email me with your name and email and I will send you link to download paper. Read ‘How do you invite stress’ and you will feel better.

And no campaign would be complete without 100% authentic testimonials, such as:

"this is the guide am expecting for a long time i mean to get rid of my stress. thanks. good work. fabulous thinking."

"Good guide for relieving stress to enlighten life which is very stressful. Thanks for writing such a marvelous guide.

"Dear Mr Shah: I applaud your effort in attempting to create a tool for assisting people in relieving one of the most prevalent health problems that plagues society. Unfortunately, the book does not come across as a professional product. Having good conversational command of the English language is one thing, the ability to communicate well in writing is quite another. My advice to you is have someone who is a native English speaker rewrite the book for you."

Yes, that last one is really there.

So here's to you, Mr. Mukesh Shah. You are either the worst marketer of all time, or the best. After all, you certainly sucked me in.

A portrait of the blogger as a young man

What prepared you for Web 2.0? I just took up this blog recently, but I've actually been preparing for it my whole life.

One of the biggest problems we face trying to get clients into social media is getting them to create their own content. "I know I should have a blog, but what would I write? How often would I have to do it? I don't have time!"

Most people are afraid of the blank page. Writers embrace it. We're the kind of people who never shut up about the latest insight or anecdote we've added to our magpie nest of a brain. Writing it down is just one more way to let it out. So here goes:

How do you become a natural writer? For me, it was good old pen-and-ink letters in high school. Nobody does it anymore, but regular correspondence is one of the best ways to get in the habit of writing even when you're not naturally inspired. I had one regular person who I wrote to, and who wrote back, weekly for years. It really got me in the rhythm even if it didn't improve my crabby handwriting.

In university, it wasn't the essays that refined my skills, it was the school paper. For about three years, I wrote concert and record reviews for the Queen's Journal. They were your typical sloppy, self-indulgent student journalism, but what could be more blog-like? Plus, concert passes gave me great cache to get dates and provided me with impressive stories to tell. The work also gave me a portfolio, which would serve as my pass into the working world after I dropped out.

In my early 20s, I eked out a living as a freelance Copywriter, paid by the column inch for advertorial to fill space between ads of "special features" for the Kingston Whig-Standard. Not exactly world-changing stuff, but I got to interview people from all walks of life, and tell their stories. Puff pieces. But it taught me insight.

At 25, I got my first agency Copywriting job. As a junior, I was tasked with lots of newsletters and brochures, as well as this new thing called a Web site. Even as I quickly progressed to "real" ad writing, as an Ottawa agency guy I was never able to leave long copy assignments behind.

So that's the professional writing story. What about social media? In 2001, at an agency that was on its was to imploding after the high tech bubble popped, I happened upon two web communities: Fark.com and Plastic.com. Both seemed like good sources of weird news and insights, so I started to lurk on them.

Fark.com is a news aggregator, but is better known for its comments sections. These are hardly learned discourses on the news of the day, but rather sophomoric collections of trolling, in-jokes, and abuse. At the same time, they formed a sense of community like the regulars at a bar. I went there to joke around, let off steam, and occasionally make a point. (I'm actually quoted twice in the Fark book.) Eventually, as the community grew, Fark's originator Drew Curtis started TotalFark.com, a subscription site-within-a-site. For five bucks a month, you can see all the links submitted (hundreds a day) and comment on the published ones before they become publicly available. But the real attraction there is TotalFark discussion, or "TFD", which is a pretty random discussion board where the smaller numbers have regained the sense of community that Fark had in its earlier days.

Fark is one of those sites that can be considered a real time-waster, but for me it has been great training. To keep up in an active thread, you have to think fast. If you get arrogant of short-sighted, people call you on it. And if you pay enough attention, it keeps you updated on all the geeky online trash talk and trends.

Plastic.com is another story. There, users submit positions on trending topics in mini-blog form, complete with primary and background links embedded. Then elite users vote the best submissions to the page. That was real blog training, with immediate rejection for poor or lazy submissions, and praise for good ones. I was able to make enough strong submissions and comments to gain the amount of "karma" points from other users that would let me be elite too.

Plastic went "out" for a period a few years ago, when founder Carl Steadman walked away from it suddenly, and even though it came back, I never really got back on it. I guess I just moved on. But it's still there, with the same logo, icons and arguments as ever.

And now I'm here. And on Twitter. And Facebook. My long journey has taught me to be quick, be relevant, and (sometimes) be funny, but most of all it's taught me to BE THERE.

If you're wondering how to get going in social media, my advice is simple: Start writing, and see what people think. There's even a convenient comment box below.