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!

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?

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

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.

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.

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

• What is everyone else doing? This can be a double-edged sword, because it’s tempting to make a direct web copy of a web idol’s presence and expect to have the same result. But it’s useful to look at the people who are successful where you’d like to be successful, and look at what’s worked for them. Havi Brooks is a professional coach/yoga instructor/business advisor, but her blog is filled with anything but normal business-speak [just look at her business partner]. Nubby Twiglet, an amazing Portland-based graphic designer, maintains a blog filled with design advice and samples, but also photos of her outfits and her exploits traveling around with a a posse of other fashion bloggers. In both cases, their blogs show that they’re very, very skilled in their fields, but that they’re also not robots - they have personalities and interests outside of work that end up making them better at what they do.
• Consider your input/output ratio. What do you put into it, and what do you get out of it? How is it likely to help you, and how much can you use it to help others? Web 2.0 newbies might want to jump in headfirst, putting a ton of energy into barraging the Internet with how awesome they are via tweet, tumblog, and bookmark, but they’ll soon find that most of the valuable networking contacts they get and maintain come from only one or two channels. Figure out what those channels are, and then capitalize on them. I’ve met some of my clients through Twitter and my own blog. A good friend of mine who does video art and installations meets almost all his collaborators through YouTube and Delicious.com. And an acquaintance back in New York whose Tumblr is utterly fantastic ended up getting a full-time job - as a Tumblr staffer.
• How much of a web presence can you reasonably maintain? Remember, web 2.0 is all about the exchange. So if you’re spending your web time yelling as loudly as you possibly can, people may notice, but they’ll do their best to ignore you. On the flip side, though, if you use the web to maintain an engaging exchange - giving as well as taking - your presence is a lot more likely to benefit everyone, including yourself. So if you don’t have the time or the patience to maintain a dialogue via blog or YouTube or Delicious, consider something more minimal like Twitter or Tumblr.

Do you use web 2.0 to get gigs or promote yourself to employers? How do you do it? What works? What doesn’t?

But it’s not a cure-all. And any self-styled marketing guru who tries to sit you down and tell you about how to “leverage your brand” or “widen your network” or “build your tribe” is ignoring the quintessential rules about how to use Twitter. Here’s the secret, people: it’s about people. Not about brands. Here’s how to humanize it a little bit.

• Direct message spam is lame. Don’t send a “Thanks for the follow!” message to every single person that follows you. Know why? Because you can have a Twitter client do it for you. And most people who send these are doing exactly that—having a robotic Twitter client pose as them for the purpose of seeming more “real.” It’s wholly disingenuous, and I’ll tell you a secret: almost everyone I follow universally blocks the users that spam them.
• …But direct messages have a purpose. Ever been to a party where the host ignores all the guests to get into a inside-jokey conversation with her two roommates? This is what it looks like when you have personal conversations on Twitter in public. So don’t. Send a direct message if you need to tell someone any juicy private details.
• Follow other users with care. Anyone who follows 11,649 people within the span of a day might be looking to expand their network, and a handful of those 11,649 might actually follow you back. But think about it this way: can you really expect to have a meaningful exchange of information with 11,649 people? No, no one could. So why would you follow that many? It just looks sketchy. Seek to improve the exchange, and then follow accordingly.
• Put up an avatar, already. It doesn’t have to be a picture of you if you’re worried about preserving your anonymity. But not putting up an avatar makes your Twitter account look untended, and thus sketchy.
• Feed sparingly. I’ve heard mixed opinions on Twitterfeed, the client that updates your Twitter account with your RSS feed titles, but in general it feels distasteful to most users. Here again, it’s about the exchange of information. There’s nothing wrong with occasionally linking to your blog posts that you feel best about [full disclosure: I'm going to link this one], but clogging your friends’ Twitter pages by trumpeting your achievement every time you vomit two sentences onto your blog screams nothing if not, “Look at me, I’m a narcissist.”
• In general, don’t be a tool. Blatant plagiarism, Internet drama-mongering, incessant valueless retweeting, and bringing nothing at all to the exchange doesn’t help anyone. Especially not you. So don’t do it.

Do you guys tweet? What do you find most/least annoying about other Twitter users?

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…

Perhaps the best example of using new media to promote a brand and increase sales is featuring the King of Pop in a video game. This not only benefited SEGA with great sales of video games, but also with Michael Jackson’s brand as a person who would define the culture of a generation.

Take a look at a clip of the video game here. Just ignore the obvious humor that he’s saving children and enjoy the awesomeness of the game.

FAIL: Pepsi

The soft drink industry has a pretty standard formula of mentioning a celebrity to try to relate to its audience and Pepsi was no different when it tried to use Jackson to sell its product. There’s nothing special about this endorsement, except for the exorbitant amount of money they paid Michael.

To watch the ad, click here.

Today we continue with some more practical networking tips.

Karma is your friend.

Whether you believe in it in your daily life or not, karma is definitely relevant in social networking. Give and you shall receive. You become much more successful by creating a giving reputation than a self-serving one.

Also, when someone’s good to you, let them know! The thank you notes that you write to your colleagues are just as important as the ones your mom made you send out after your birthday parties.

Relax, smile and be positive.

No lie, social networking events can be a little intimidating. You’re putting yourself out there! But just showing up is putting you ahead of everyone who didn’t go.

Even if you’re hurting or had a rough day at work, smile and don’t say anything too negative about yourself or your job. Everyone gripes, but keep it to a minimum so no one thinks you’re a drag.

Whenever conversations get tough, remember, there’s always the weather!