Less than a week until Ad2′s swanky fundraising soiree! Need more info on the party? Read on, and be sure to register by tomorrow or pay $5 more at the door!
Here’s the scoop:The fourth annual Fire & Ice Soirée will be held on Friday, November 20 from 7-10:30 p.m. at Newport’s Carnegie Event Center. That’s right, Ad2 is all grown up. No casual Thursday afternoon after-work get together this year. In 2009, we’re going cocktail chic as we take over both floors of the Carnegie. The top floor will be hotter than Hades with fiery lights and decorations, plus a bar serving signature Fire and Ice cocktails. A DJ will keep the dance floor hot and count down the top hot/cold song picks (which you can vote for here!). Downstairs, the ice lounge will feature blue decorations and a full bar. Appetizers and deserts will be served throughout the building.
Cost is $20/members or $25/non-members. Couples with at least one Ad2/ADCLUB member pay $40, or $45/non-member couples. The member rate is also extended to members of the American Advertising Federation. All proceeds go to Ad2 Cincinnati.
To pre-register, visit www.ad2cincy.org/fireandice. Pre-Register by 5 p.m. on November 15 or pay $5 more at the door the day of the event. For more information, call 513.984.9990.
More on the song voting: We’re letting attendees vote for their favorite fire- and ice-themed songs before the party. Vote at the address listed above, and the top five will be played at the event. Want to rock out to “Hot Blooded” or sway awkwardly during “The Heat of the Moment”?
EDIT: We’re adding an after party! Once we’ve closed out the Carnegie, head over to GameWorks at Newport on the Levee down the street. We’ll have half price appetizers and drinks just for Fire & Ice attendees!
You know what’s lame? Celebrity tantrums. Okay, any tantrum is annoying, but celeb tantrums most especially. For a bunch of millionaires who spend their days drinking lattes and wrecking an endless supply of Range Rovers, these people sure do gripe a lot.
But seriously, ever since agencies figured out that we could watch a video and perhaps, for just a second or two, not think it was just a big ol’ ad, they’ve been pumping out the fakery.
What were we supposed to do with Jim Brewer freaking out on the set of his Pizza Hut commercial, or Seth Green freaking out about a Butterfinger? “Whoa, they’re so mad! Look at that! Oh wait, you mean they’re not mad? They’re actors and they’re just acting? Okay, well…hmm, that’s done with now. Moving on.” If these guys were actually in a commercial you’d think they were sellouts (Jim Brewer aside because, come on, even Goat Boy needs work), but a viral freakout, how cool is that? They’re, like, totally poking fun at their image I guess!
Not to be professor video over here, but the audio in the Pizza Hut video is too good to be something shot on the sly. Even if Brewer was wearing a mic, the audio would have been going to a different source and wouldn’t have been as clear as it is.
The Seth Green video is a bit more extreme, and, depending on where they viewed the video, possibly could have fooled his fans into thinking his personal belongings were stolen. But now we know this is all over a Butterfinger. We were supposed to find his Butterfinger and win money. (A “vintage” one at that. Is that a real thing, a vintage Butterfinger? Ah yes, *smells wrapper* 1967. Good vintage.) And it would have been even worse to have fallen for the prank: All that screaming, just for a candy bar ad? I’m not sure it’s worth the solid gold Butterfinger bar they’re promising for helping to “find” the purloined candy.
And of course, a few weeks ago, networks from E! to CNN were devoting time to the video of Matt Damon yelling at Adrian Grenier on the Entourage set. Honestly, he can yell at Adrian Grenier all he wants, fine by me, but the point is, it got people talking/tweeting. If the 0-to-60 freakout isn’t clue enough that it was fake, they very conspicuously sneak in the name of a website while things are relatively calm and listen-able. Visit the site and you see an intro video with children from around the world and the same text Grenier was speaking. In the corner is a box that reads “Entourage Supports the Cause” and even links to the freakout video.
Look, we can all get behind providing water, food, health care and education to the disadvantaged peoples of the world. At least this is for a far nobler cause than Pizza Hut or Butterfinger, but that doesn’t mean that it’s okay to freak out if you’re freaking out for charity. Yes, this video attracted myself and I’m sure plenty of other people to a website and organization I hadn’t yet heard of. And yes, I suppose Matt Damon had to drop so much salty language “for the kids” because this is Entourage, and, to jaded audiences, it’s not cool to just say you support a cause, so you have to curse and throw in a few celebs. But the tantrum trope is so tired! David O. Russel and Christian Bale did it for real and it was bizarre, ugly, uncalled for, any combination of those. Doing it for fake just shows how standard it’s become; they’re using our love of tabloid news, confrontation and pinch of physical aggression to market to us. Don’t yell and hope we listen. Just talk to us. Speak our language. And if yelling is our language, what’s the say about us?
I realize that most would write about any sticky jingles in a blog called, Fail/Fail Wednesdays, but sometimes corporate-sponsored melodies do a good job. Not only do they help sell a service or product, they help keep the world entertained.
FAIL: BeepBeep.com
Time Warner has an endless stream of crap coming fro their creative department, but one turd is the by far the smelliest: the jingle to promote their website: beepbeep.com. They have somehow managed to turn something exciting (buying a car) into something horrific (listening to the jingle in their commercial).
Lucky, for you, I managed to get a hold of the creative brief that started this monstrosity. Take a look at the details below.
Client: Time Warner – beepbeep.com
Brand Equity: If Time Warner were a person, it would be someone who survived the Great Depression, but never got over the whole stinginess thing. This person LOVES jingles from the 50′s, but is also entertained by moderncelebrities such as “Ken West” and “that one funny guy from Saturday Night live with the curly hair. Yeah, I think his name is Annie Sandberger! He’s a funny guy.”
Target Audience: Young car buyers who are entertained by nails scratching on a chalkboard.
Objective: Just make a commercial for beepbeep.com on TV. Maybe if we play it enough times, people won’t know where else to research car buying.
Ad Requirements:
-MENTION THE ROADRUNNER! DON’T FORGET THE ROADRUNNER!
-Needs to have a jingle
-Video quality needs to resemble a streaming video on a 28.8 kbps modem connection to the internet.
This creative brief made such a horrible ad, I could not even find it in YoutTube. If you really want to see it, though, just watch about 15 minutes of cable TV and you’ll probably run into the ad that features this jerk:
Sellout.
WIN: Freecreditreport.com
What’s more entertaining than checking your credit? Here’s the list I’ve compiled:
-Getting punched in the gut
-Falling down a flight of stairs
-Watching the movie Bruno
The creative team had a very difficult task to get people to check their credit scores, and they were pretty successful with a mini-series musical about checking credit. What was once a painful topic (checking credit) is now more fun with the help of music. Here is my favorite of their ads:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HksXMVhxdxY
Last week’s Ad2 happy hour at Tino Vino brought out most of the board, as well as the end of the seasonal summer wine. We sipped on $4 glasses of wine with names like Exotic Fruits-infandel and Cherry Pinot Grigio and snacked on an array of cheeses as Juno, a cute little dog who’s never missed a table scrap in her life, circled our ankles. As always, there was some no pressure networking. It’s always nice to see new faces. Even convinced a few to wipe the cobwebs from their Twitter accounts.
Plenty remarked that they’d passed by Tino Vino several times but didn’t know what exactly was inside. Heather Stang, Tino Vino’s general manager, gave us a brief talk on starting up the homey winery, which has been in business for a little more than two years. She explained that they (it’s run by a group of friends) were lucky to start off with a friend who had a lot of capital, but since then, location has played a big role in their success. You can make your own wine there too (make sure you have to have space for 30 or so bottles at home!), and though no one from Ad2 did that night, some kicked around the idea of doing it in the future.
We may have classed it up at a wine bar this time around, but be sure to join us October 8th to live it up Bavarian-style. We’ll be at the Strass Haus on Covington’s Main Street from 6-8pm.
In lieu of the massive lighting storms last night, I am paying homage to the brand that iconicized a streak of lighting: Gatorade.
WIN: Is it in you?
To the average bear who only uses the gym to make fun of people working out, the old Is It in You? campaign from Gatorade was probably disgusting. It featured bodily fluids replaced with a tasty drink full of sweet sugary goodness. To an athlete, however, bodily fluids (particularly sweat) are not just something that is excreted. No. It is something that is hard earned. Sweat is the result of determination and perseverance to conquer pain and achieve athletic glory.
Gatorade’s Is It in You? campaign precisely addressed how athletes value sweat. Then they swapped that endearing fluid with their own product. Disgusting? Maybe. Brilliant? Yes.
Fail: G
Really, Gatorade? Was “atorade” too difficult to pronounce? Or were you inspired by Chevrolet when they shortened their brand to Chevy? Either way, bad idea. The new name helps people forget the team that brought this brand to to the national stage: The Florida Gators. It also moves the branding away from inspirational athletes to just the pronunciation of a single consonant. Maybe some think that the new name is baller, but not in my house.
Watch an ad here.
We are all über-connected. For most of us, it’s completely expected that our potential bosses are going to look at our Facebook photos before the job interview [note to self: un-tag all those pictures from last month at Final Friday], read our Twitter feeds for potentially alarming overtones, and Google us to find that terrible, terrible editorial we wrote for the newspaper in undergrad. The more savvy of us, of course, have figured out that if we’re active on the Internet – blogging, tweeting, Tumbling, Facebooking, Favring, Flickring, and Digging – we can harness the power of organic search to become a recognized Internet presence, and hopefully garner the attention of a firm that we love and we want to work for.
But it’s a seductive game, one in which you have to pick your battles wisely. Here’s a list of things to consider when
Do you use web 2.0 to get gigs or promote yourself to employers? How do you do it? What works? What doesn’t?
Welcome to the new and improved Ad2 Blog! Check back daily for updates on chapter events as well as topics relevant to advertising and marketing.
Events This Week:
Thursday Night (8/27) check out the Ad Club Happy Hour at DOV Graphics. 5:30 – 7:30pm.
Save the date! September 9th – Ad2 Happy Hour at Tino Vino in Hyde Park, 6pm – 8pm. More details to come…
Tuesdays are designated top-ten days here at the Ad2 blog (or, more likely, a top six, top nine, or however many items we need to make a good list).
When I asked friends in the marketing/advertising worlds about overused marketing buzzwords, the most common response was, “Pretty much any word that a marketing firm uses,” or, “All of them.” And I have to say, they’re right. We’re all in the same business, yet we’re so weary of what any of us has to say. We read press releases and other marketing materials with a cynical eye. This could be because that, despite being sick of the blahwords buzzwords, we keep reusing them. C’mon, everyone! Break the cycle!
Taking that into consideration, here are five of the many, many buzzwords that need to be given a rest. I’ve also provided some alternatives (depending on context, of course). I’ll take your comments to round out the other five.
Dynamic Interesting that a word Merriam-Webster defines “powerful,” or, in its second definition, “marked by usually continuous and productive activity or change,” has become so tired and limp. We describe so much as “dynamic” that it’s become flavorless. And where’s the power in that? Dynamic options: Vital, high-powered, powerful, multi-tiered/layered, indispensable. Strategic This one’s flawed from the start. If I’m your client and hire you to plan a product rollout, or a new ad campaign, etc., it darn well better be strategic. What else am I paying you for? Replace “strategic” with synonyms like calculated, deliberate, tactical, and intentional and you see how silly it is. If you’re not working strategically, you’re probably not carrying your weight. Strategic substitutes: See above!
Organic This one’s tricky. It’s useful when describing something that forms in a manner similar to animal or plant life, but it’s become a runaway buzzword. Can we save this one for food products and carbon-based life forms? Organic can refer to something that develops free from outside influence, yes, but since environmental and green (a word that would also be on notice if it weren’t so important to, you know, save the planet) terms are riding a tidal wave of popularity right now, this one’s getting a little worn out. And aren’t we all about conservation these days? Organic alternatives: Fundamental, integral, living, primary.
Robust This guy is on a tag team with dynamic. They’re not quite the same thing, but they’ve become interchangeable nonetheless. Sure, we all like programs (or, cringe, solutions, but more on that later) that are workhorses. We have a lot to do and seemingly increasingly less time to do it in, so we need software that can handle heavy workflow, marketing plans with timely and far-reaching ideas (“Robust legislation” is also a term heard fairly often if you’re a politics-junkie). It’s a good word, but it’s in danger of becoming as blasé as dynamic, so let’s give robust a rest. Robust variations: Complete, solid, vigorous, healthy.
Solution This might be the biggest offender. “Solutions” is thrown around so much you might not notice it anymore; it’s a part of everyday marketing/business conversations. But plug it into a real, everyday sentence and you notice how inane it is. “I need to stop by the grocery for food solutions.” (Though this would likely be gussied up to “epicurean solutions” by a PR person.) “Let’s go to the mall. I need a clothing solution for my high-school reunion.” No, you just need a dress, just say that!
Or, as an Addy Award-winning friend put it, “Solutions? What are we selling? The answers to your math homework?”
I realize the proliferation of this word has to do with the need for intangible services in an increasingly less-physical and more-digital world. But if you can’t provide a concrete explanation of what your company does, who else can? Solution solutions: That’s up to you. Put distinct words to what you do!
So what else should round out the list? Other offenders include synergy, emergent, turnkey, unique, one-stop-shop, viral, audience and the ubiquitous phrase “in these tough economic times…” Add new nominees and leave your vote in the comments!
Image courtesy of New York Times
What’s clear, cheap and littered the city of Venice? Bottled Water.
As major consumers of bottled water, Venetians experienced a pollution problem from clear plastic bottles. The city decided enough was enough and branded its own city water to compete with major bottled water brands.
Most environmental campaigns use the green crutch to sell a product or service. However, the Italians rose above cheap tactics and resorted to smart branding to get their point across.
Good for them! A definite win.
I realize it may be immoral to kick somebody while they’re down, but General Motors is just too easy of a target. Before they went bankrupt, they tried to position the Tahoe Hybrid SUV with the rest of Hybrid vehicles. Even though it gets worse gas mileage than an average sedan (about 22 mpg combined), they were trying to tout environmental consciousness. Major Fail. Watch the ad:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l60gbnpILEk&feature=player_embedded
This week’s winner is a fresh ad for Nike. It features the basketball superstars Lebron and Kobe. The ad drops the risk of asking an athlete to act by switching them with muppets. Good direction and copywriting give excellent entertainment value. I watched this a couple of times (despite the annoying kid). Click here for the win.
This next one is a double, nay, triple failure. Although it’s not the newest advertisement, it has irked me for too long. I need to get this one off my chest.
First Failure: The advertisements asks Bill Gates to act and be funny.
Second Failure: Seinfeld tries to be a little too Seinfeldy.
Third Failure: This money was wasted during the Super Bowl.
In case you don’t know what I’m talking about, click here for the travesty.