Remember the controversy over Protein World's "Beach Body Ready" ads last year? The ads sparked a firestorm of Twitter protest, inspired vandalism and parody ads, and was eventually banned by the ASA.
The campaign, which Adland's Dabitch described as "trolling as a social media strategy," resulted in huge amounts of earned media and — according to Marketing — £1million in direct sales revenue.
I've never been a fan of the cliché, "there's no such thing as bad publicity," but for brands that are seeking to grow a narrow-but-oppositional target market, it can work.
The advertiser has since made a tepid apology on Facebook, and has promised to take down "some of" the ads. But a follow up survey, published in The Drum, showed that the campaign was likely to increase sales slightly.
Which makes me wonder, are angry social media protests over campaigns like these just playing into the hands of the most cynical marketers? Do activists risk becoming one more channel for earned media?
I'd love to hear some opinions about what's happening, and what could go differently.
If there's one thing that advertising people actually value, it's a brand. Especially if it's one of our own.
So it's no surprise that Åsk Wäppling, the Swedish owner of the advertising blog adland.tv, doesn't want other people using the term "Adland."
Adland is absolutely ancient in internet terms, having been established in 1996 when most ad people were still trying to figure out if the web was good for anything except free shock porn. A young Ms. Wäppling, under the pseudonym "Dabitch," instead saw the opportunity to create an online global ad archive and professional forum, which in this decade Brand Republic, Business Insider, and Fast Company have listed as one of the most influential in the industry. She even trademarked the name, several years ago. And he's been a mentor as I've fumbled my way into the ad blogosphere.
So you'd think it would be pretty clear that "Adland" = adland.tv. Especially among ad industry bloggers.
Apparently not. As you can see from the Google screencap above, venerable industry magazine Ad Age uses the term "adland," in a generic sense, to refer to the industry in several posts. I have no idea if they used it this way in print, years back, but online it definitely infringes on Dabitch's intellectual property. And she's let them know, many times.
Now other people are letting them know. When Ad Age posted "Adland seeks to hire veterans," Dabitch says she started getting resumes. After finding out they didn't mean THAT Adland, one vet let Ad Age know what he thought about the avoidable confusion:
Courtesy Dabitch
(adland.tv ended up helping the guy get some job leads anyway.)
Dabitch has written directly to Ad Age's legal heads, but after receiving what she characterizes as "nya, we won't" replies, she has taken to the court of social media.
She told me, "Now I tweet at them every time they use the word in a headline and I hope the responses take off."
Cheeky. But will it get Ad Age's attention now? (More importantly, will it get the attention of its readers and advertisers?) We'll see. Because there are a lot of important ad pros watching that little red TV.
Adland recently made me aware of a marketing controversy in Germany. Apparently, this smoothie's packaging makes fun of its unappetizing design with the following:
"Limited No 6 - Black Edition. Have you ever helped an ugly female friend -- who's a really nice person on the inside -- get a date? That's how we are feeling with our smoothie here which might be the tastiest we have ever made but who doesn't get the love it deserves because of its looks. We saw no other solution but to turn off the lights so you can fully embrace its inner values."
A sexist joke is always good for some outrage earned media, and that's exactly what has happened, as well as the inevitable "have a sense of humour" defence.
Personally, I can't even work up outrage over this one. It is a cynical marketing move designed to rack up social mentions.
"Hey, you know what would be really funny?" asked the Creative at Grey, NY, to nobody in particular. "If we took these sexy supermodels and juxtaposed them with 'trashy' versions of themselves in the SI swimsuit issue!"
And thus a DIRECTV campaign was born:
What could be funnier than fantastically rich supermodels pretending to be less glamorous people?
A lot, probably. But it's the last juxtaposition that really bothers me. The intention is to show that DIRECTV is for the beautiful, sexy people, while cable is for... you know... others. Like working class housewives, or cat ladies, or or service industry workers.
That's not out-of-touch at all. Not even the slight bit classist. Nope.
Adland shared this seasonal Swedish mailer for retailer ICA featuring a boy in the traditional roleplay of female martyr Santa Lucia, and a girl as the traditionally male stjärngosse (a star boy).
Åsk 'dabitch' Wäppling writes, "For people in the States: This is the equivalent to a boy homecoming queen. Not a transgender homecoming queen. Just a boy homecoming queen."
Personally, I like it. There is no mention of how traditionalists in Sweden reacted. dabitch quips, "They might still be in shock."
Yesterday, my friends at Adland started a fun hashtag thing on Twitter. Called #agencylife, it was inspired by one Adlander's complaint about a typical agency problem. Soon, everyone was doing it.
the answer is, "both". The hashtag brought together creatives and suits, large and small agencies, from countries all over the world. There are no secrets being shared here, just the kind of in-jokes that any industry breeds due to the day-to-day demands of trying to please everybody and manage a stable full of clashing egos.
I was really happy to see one of my contributions make the AdAge post:
Creative Director uses the non-words "virality" "sharability" and "memification" in the same sentence. With a straight face. #agencylife
— Tom Megginson (@CreativeTweets) April 11, 2013
Even better was the response I got from Noise Digital:
Challenge accepted RT @creativetweets: Creative Director uses the non-words "virality" "sharability" and "memification" in the same sentence
— Noise Digital (@NoiseDigital) April 12, 2013
When I was a kid, Mr. Sub was the go-to submarine sandwich chain in Canada. But when Subway arrived in the late '80s, it very quickly pushed the domestic sandwich shop to a marginal position. Mr. Sub ended up playing by Subway's rules, with fresher bread and more toppings, but it's hard to compete when there's a Subway on practically every block.
Now, they've taken a page from Tim Horton's playbook. With the recent resurgence in (dryly ironic) Canadian patriotism, they're hitching their brand to their Canadian identity:
The one above is the better of the two, because it's how we see ourselves.
The one below shows how we think Americans see us.
This campaign caught the attention of my friends at Adland, where author kidsleepy quipped, "This spot makes fun of Canadians and the Canadian stereotype that they are all polite and orderly. Because they are Canadian."
Damn right, eh? Americans (and other nationalities) are often puzzled by our self-deprecating national pride.
One of my favourite Canadianisms is what I call the "Canadian standoff". It's when two or more Canadians approach a doorway at the same time, and end up delayed because each one insists that they other one goes first.
That's who we are. It's not that we aren't proud of our culture; we really are. But we also think that to take oneself too seriously is tacky. So we express our patriotism by showing the world that we are confident enough to make fun of ourselves.
We're all used to sketchy beauty claims by lotions, potions and pills, but this is a new one. Wrangler is apparently releasing a line of "Denim Spa" jeans for women that have been impregnated with extracts that "soothe" or "moisturize" skin. One pair, "Smooth Legs," even claims to reduce the appearance of cellulite.
Infused with algae extracts, retinol and caffeine, the style was clinically tested by the Institut Adriant in France, where after four weeks of wearing the jeans for eight hours a day, five days a week over six weeks, 69 per cent of the panel claimed that the appearance of their thighs had improved.
The Smooth Legs style reportedly lasts for 15 days' wear (or four to six washes), after which a reload spray can be applied after each wash to continue to reap the jeans' beauty benefits. In total the jeans can retain their cosmetic effects for around 67-95 wears, according to Wrangler.
Yeah, about that. First of all, the cellulite cream industry is a great big fraud. There's no medical proof that any chemical can actually reduce cellulite, especially when applied topically. Retinol, which is part of the "Smooth Legs" jeans, can thicken the skin when applied therapeutically, so it may reduce the outer dimples by making legs... plumper.
All that aside, the idea that a pair of cosmetic-soaked jeans could do anything meaningful is absurd. But this is fashion advertising. When have fashion's promises ever been based in reality? Plus, Wrangler has just signed Lizzy Jagger as the "face" of their new line:
I despise this kind of marketing, promising impossible results to gullible consumers. Interestingly, in the UK, the notoriously twitchy ASA has already started cracking down on anti-cellulite advertising. This month, they banned an ad featuring Mila Kunis that claimed its cream could help anyone "Get Mila Kunis' Esquire look" — beside a sexy underpants shot of the "Sexiest Woman Alive" from the magazine in question.
Currently trending, "Warm Wishes from Adland" is an anonymous compilation of 21 bitter and cynical comments about other people's work, compiled from comments on Ads of The World, Agency Spy, or elsewhere. (But oddly, not Adland.)
Tim Nolan, the interactive group cd who heads up BBH Labs, tells AdFreak: "As we approach that time of year where we all wish each other the warmest, we thought we would look at how we, as an industry, extend our 'warm wishes' throughout the year and under the veil of anonymity. After carefully curating some of the worst 'semi-safe-for-work' comments from around Ad Land, we picked our favorites and gave them all a dip in holiday cheer."
He adds: "Traffic has been pretty steady since launching [Tuesday] afternoon. Most of the original visits came in from Twitter and Facebook, since each 'Warm Wish' is individually sharable. I'd say we are more pleased with the 'trending-ness' of it all, rather than being surprised. I mean, everyone likes to share a bit of 'naughtiness' around the holidays."
The picture has racked up over 2,000 comments. And they're mostly negative:
Even the other adbloggers are chiming in:
What makes this particularly tragic for the brand is that their Facebook admin (and entire marketing staff) is apparently too busy being drunk for America to notice or even react.
Oh, and here's my favourite:
Wow. This kind of thing is happening so often, these days, that I think we need a new word:
Socialfreude (n): The perverse pleasure derived from the misfortunes of poorly-managed big brands on social media.
We, as a local advertising agency in Turkey, hereby condemn the unfortunate commercial produced in March 2012 by an advertising agency from our country for a shampoo brand in our country by using the images of a speech delivered by Adolf Hitler.
From a humanistic perspective, it is shameful to use as a commercial material the tragedy of a genocide that caused the death of millions of innocent people and an international problem of gender apartheid which results in oppression and killing of millions of people. In terms of creativeness, it is simply cheapness and taking the easy way out. We are first human and then advertising agency. We never accept any concession on our humanity for the work we do. We refer those who carried out this cheapness to the conscience of the public. We believe that the advertisers and consumers in our country will give them the best answer.
The belief of any publicity is good publicity can be argued, but there is no question about the good and bad people. This is clearly an attempt to make a commercial profit on the grief of millions of people. This is a shameful human weakness. And this is unfortunately done by an advertising agency in this country.
As a matter of fact, if manhood is racism and gender apartheid… if it is to use grief of millions of oppressed and massacred innocent people as a commercial material, we are not men! If those who prepared this are advertiser and if this is called advertising, we are not an advertising agency!
Farkyeri"
The above image is also the landing page of their web site.
And now there's a video, too:
Wonderful way to self-promote while making a real statement. (Coincidentally, the season opener of Mad Men had Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce do something remarkably similar, but against Y&R's racism.)
Adland put me on to a New Orleans blog called NOLAFemmes, in which Coca-Cola is accused of defacing the city's Historic French Quarter and Faubourg Tremé with illegally stencilled road ads.
Blogger Lunanola writes:
"It is my opinion that the City of New Orleans is being pimped out promoted at an unprecedented level (to a degree that gives rise to what could be described as “neighborhood fatigue”). Such heavy promotion rarely occurs without unintended consequences: for example, illegal, ugly, and damaging guerrilla marketing campaigns. This kind of defacement is unconscionable and must be addressed immediately...
Stated simply, the most significant difference between historic beauty and hazardous decay is cumulative, uninterrupted neglect. The continued degradation of the historic heart of New Orleans cannot remain unaddressed, particularly if one considers that our amazing city will be in an ever-increasing spotlight while hosting the 2013 Super Bowl and celebrating its 300th Anniversary in 2018."
"It doesn't take much effort to realize why the woman would be upset. But I'll just go ahead and add more reasons to the list. Like: the lines suck. There is no idea here. And the advertising is a complete wank fest.
If law-breaking is involved don't you think it would be worth the effort to, oh, I don't know, do something creative and smart and even conceptually relevant to the media 'buy?'"
I would just add that they should leave the outlaw marketing to real activists, and go back to exploiting polar bears and Santa Claus.
Adland, the internet's longest-running adblog, has been experiencing some financial troubles of late. They made it through the New Year deadline by fundraising to cover unexpected server fees, only to have their ad revenue rug pulled out from under them by Google Adsense.
"As stated in our program policies, AdSense publishers are not permitted to place Google ads on pages with adult or mature content. In addition to photos and videos which contain nudity or sexual activities, below are some other examples of unacceptable content: * Lewd or provocative images * Crude or indecent language, including adult stories * Sexual tips or advice * Sexual fetish sites (e.g. foot fetish content) * Adult toys or products * Ads or links to external sites containing adult content * Adult links and/or adult keywords within the meta data in the source code of your site"
The offending content? This image, from a four-year-old post in the archives.
Åsk points out that Adsense regularly serves up much more sexually-charged content than this, like Evony's notorious titty ads.
What is going on here? Adland was kicked off Adsense almost a year ago for a seven-year-old post showing an ad with bare bums and complaining about its sexism.
Incredible that lingerie photos, of a type that can be found in any department store catalogue, have been labelled "mature content". Someone needs to get their head out of their ass.
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.
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.
"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."
"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."
"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.
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?
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.
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.
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!
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.
