advertising and other stuff. no, really.



Thursday, January 18, 2007

We have a name people.

Thanks to HighJive for the tip and to Jetpacks for a way better title than mine. Meet the people behind the Lowermybills.com adstravaganza. I’ll spare you the rehash. (You may have to login to the NYT first though.) I can only say that the attitude of the brand is typical though when it comes to advertising techniques like this: “Don’t Like the Dancing Cowboys? Results Say You Do.” I have to disagree. Unless your success rate is 100%, then everybody doesn’t like them. I won’t use them, I promise. I’ve been through several re-fis already without them. In fact, let me write their next ad: “I will lose my house before I use lowermybills.com.”

Just like I will never use Orbitz or Phoenix University.

Why? Because early on, their ads intruded on my space constantly whenever I went to a site or read an article. Then, after they got the traffic they wanted, they cut back and ran regular ads that play nice with the rest of the page. Sorry. They give the impression that they’re the obnoxious jerk at the party who won’t leave you alone. The sleazy car guy who whisks you over to a desk to sign the papers. Brand building? Gets your attention? Anything can do that. I could shoot a pile of dog crap and run it in an ad to get attention too. But I wouldn’t. Attention is one thing, brand building is another.

On second thought, hey Lowermybills, I have an idea for a Super Bowl spot. By now, you must have the money since the ads are working so well. Email me.

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3 comments:

Alan Wolk said...

Hey- thanks for being the very first comment on my blog.

As for your post here-- I think your reaction is something that outfits like lowermybills.com factor into the equation. For every MTLB they turn off, there's someone clicking through and they're counting on the fact that most people aren't as sensitive to Badvertising™ as you are.
As I'd blogged though, I think this approach works in categories that are already low-rent to begin with. (Not that I'm advocating it, just commenting on where they do and don't work.)

Though I'd always been curious about those dancing cowboys. A few of us had talked about it a while ago (IRL) and decided that it must be from some web animation stock house and what a clever idea that was, to start a web animation stock house.

SchizoFishNChimps said...

The evil of that organisation is clear from one minor observation.
Jennifer Uhll has a pink bow on her cat.

HighJive said...

plus, as i've pointed out elsewhere, she appears to have shaved her cat.