Oh. My. God.

Ok, props to Idea Grove for this gem. Scott. You just made my year. This is just the kind of quality content you can expect when I guess host next week. (Via tsuredzuregusa.)

Tags: Captain Kirk, funny video, William Shatner, Star Trek

Busiest Pizza Box. Ever.

Whatever happened to “You’ve Tried The Rest, Now Try The Best!”as the only copy on a pizza box? I saw this large pizza box from Pizza Hut^® and I’ll be damned if I can find any white space left on it. They’re running a family promotion-deal and the top is covered with questions to ask each other. Forget pizza, let’s ask questions:

Q: What were your favorite games when you were a kid?

A: One of my favorites was called ‘Who Flinches First?,’ and it involved a train.

Tags: games, Pizza Hut, pizza

Flight 93 movie – Too Soon?

Here’s the trailer. We all know what happened. With this and Oliver Stone’s version coming out in August, is it still too soon?

Tags: 9-11, Flight 93

Ford: Life in DUI?

I’m talking drinking and driving. Generally, it’s been pretty much accepted that you don’t mix drinking and driving imagery. Some might argue that there’s no usage shown here. I’m sure that’s what the brand told itself when they ran it by legal too. Nice try. That glass isn’t exactly topped off though. In case you haven’t seen it, the copy in the ad on the left says “Life” while the copy on the right say “Life In D.” Should be more like Life in DUI. And, the tan line on the ring finger means watch out world, after this last round, I’m taking the Fusion out for a spin. Sweet.

Actually, the reason the guy’s wife left him is because he lost his job at Ford. The napkin under his hand? That’s actually his buyout offer which turns out to be much less than he expected. Explains why he’s in the bar drinking. Alone. But damn if the photography doesn’t look awesome.

Tags: advertising, DUI, Ford

Designers Writing Gooder.

Well-written essay on the value of writing and why designers need to, over at ideas on ideas.

Weekly What the...?

• Liza Minnelli is sick of sex – No really. She is.
• Let go of my Mego – In keeping with the ‘rhymes with Lego’ theme established last week. (Hey, I don’t make this stuff up.)
• iBuzz – I’ve officially seen it all now. (via gizmag.)
Tags: bizarre, iBuzz, Liza Minnelli, odd,weird

Here’s Something You Never See.

Another outdoor from a spirit brand in a lower-income neighborhood. What a shock. Strange, the few times I took the family to Cape Cod on vacation, I never saw any outdoor signs in Hyannis with Ted Kennedy hawking Gordon’s Gin.

Why is that?

I have no problem with using John Leguizamo in any ad. I love his work. You have only to see his HBO specials or movies to know that the dude has skillz. And, advertising to your customer base using someone of the same background or ethnicity is hardly new.

But, how obvious, how easy was it to place this where they did: In this case, a lower-income Hispanic neighborhood. The obvious lack of placement of these outdoor signs anywhere but in urban settings speaks volumes of the brand’s intent: Let’s get them drunk, after all, they’re our best customer, right?

If I had a better shot, you’d see the rest of the street and some pretty beat-down buildings. Not to mention what appeared to be a temporary carwash leaning so far to the left I swear it was going to fall on my car. What an excellent media buy by the agency. Just excellent!

Also worth noting is the 12-point disclaimer on the lower left. The one about drinking responsibly that you would never see driving by at even 20 mph. Hey Hennessey - how about placing responsibly?

Charles Barkley once said he wasn’t a role-model, and that he wasn’t here to raise my kids. Ok, fair enough. But don’t celebrities still have a responsibility to know where their image will be used, and the stereotype it reinforces when it’s this blatant?

I was going to post this some time back, but copyranter put up an article on race in advertising the same day and I didn’t want this treading on that. It’s still a topic that needs discussing–not ignoring. Hadji Williams, a Chicago creative, also writes about this in his book which I’m tearing through now, Knock the Hustle.

I’ve worked in a few of these so-called specialty/multi-cultural/ethnic agencies a few years back. But few brands, if any, will acknowledge what’s really at play here. The “specialty” agency will do this kind of work because, while a brand wants to get all the market share it can, it really doesn’t want to be associated with, you know, a “certain type of people.” Brands will say “That’s what our partner agency is for.”

You mean the partner you don’t even think enough of to have in the same building with you?

Tags: advertising, brands

Wah, Nobody Reads My Blog, Wahhhh.

How many of us have thought that when we first started out? Well, Dr. Dennis Leary is here to help with increasing your blog traffic, whining blog freaks. Go from zero to hero in like, eight months with a few tricks. I’m huge in Budapest now thanks to them. Several people have given good advice, such as B.L. Ochman’s column. I first learned from Ben Popken, editor of Consumerist.com. If you’re using Blogger, go here too.

This advice is mostly for the newbie trying to increase views once you have your blog set up and have a unique ‘voice’ for what your blog is all about. I can’t help you there, that part’s up to you. So, if you have a well-known name with a built-in audience already, or you pulled a stunt to help launch a blog, you probably don’t need my advice on traffic. Otherwise, the average blogger will find it takes a fair amount of time to build site traffic.

1) Blog Self-promotion. Start treating the whole process of promoting your blog like any other thing you do to promote yourself, (especially if you’re a freelancer.) Blogs need love too. Remember kids, 32.1 million blogs and counting. Poor grammar here but, you won’t get noticed doing nothing amongst numbers like that. For any of these tips, it really comes down to out of sight, out of mind. What are you doing to make sure people see your blog?

2) Start posting at other blogs too. Not just comments for comment’s sake either. Post only on those blogs that match what your blog is all about. Make sure you put your blog’s URL in the username section.

3) Then, link to others. In addition to sites I really like, my blogroll to the right includes names of blogs who have either linked to me, or who are popular. Reference any article you find with a trackback link if you can. People on other blogs will see your blog links to what they’re reading, and just may visit you. A lot of sites like technorati will also display who links to who. (And follow up with blogs who link to yours, like a new one I discovered today linking back to me, Adverb, run by Mack Simpson: Adman of Action. Thanks Mack, the check is in the mail, just don’t cash it right away.)

4) Get a sitemeter account. Or any FREE site-monitoring tool to show you who is viewing your blog from where. Once you see where people are viewing from, you can show up at their blog and leave a post, which might spur them to stop lurking at yours and post.

5) Register with blog directories. Look at my “HELPING SPREAD BLOG LOVE” list. All those are FREE directories I registered my blog name at. Go to each one and fill out a directory listing for your blog. Add relevant tags for each that accurately describe your blog.

6) Ping your blog. (Keep it clean.) Right after this is posted, I will go to my bookmarked page, and it will automatically ping all the servers I selected when I registered with Blogflux.com. This refreshes your blog listing and lets their servers know new content has been added to your blog.

7) Use Tags. When someone goes to technorati to type in “Barbie,” or some other term, and you have “Barbie” as a tag, your blog shows up in their search results. Make your tags relevant to the topic at hand though.

8) RSS feeds. Make sure there are both RSS and email subscription links for your blog displayed at or near the top of your page. I use feedblitz.com for email subscriptions. Don’t make readers work too hard to get in touch with you or link. Keep all other contact info like a regular email address above the fold, (for the rooks - that term means keep stuff on the top half of a web page, like a newspaper, hence 'fold.')

With so many blogs out there, you have to make it easy for people to access yours. This stuff will help.

Tags: blogging, promoting blogs, site traffic, tags

Search by Color at Retrievr.

From the more cool art director stuff department...

So the other day I’m thinking why hasn’t anyone invented a search engine based on the use of visual images? Too late. Retrievr uses colors. Select a color or even a tint of one from the palette on the left, and images with those hues start appearing. Bizzare? Useful? Not sure. But it’s cool. Via Copyranter, which lead me to They Call Me Concha, which led me to Nobody Reads This. And by now you’re probably going, why all the links chief? Well, I tell ya’ sport, sometimes, chasing links can lead to some cool stuff. Why not spend a few minutes and see where things lead from time to time? Not to mention, you have to give props to the people or site where you find stuff.

Tags: advertising, art director, image search, Retrievr

My Treehouse Never Looked Like This.

Now, I know I’m pretty good with a router and circular saw, but I doubt I’ll be making anything that looks like this in the near future. Via aNYthing comes these Free Spirit Spheres from British Columbia.

Tags: woodworking

Cool Sidewalk Art.

Don’t worry, I bring the AD stuff when I feel like it yo. Via Compfused.com is this series of very cool trompe l'oeil illustrations on the street. And if any creative out there even has to ask about that term, I have one of these ready for you. Thanks jOjO.

Tags: drawings, illustrations, trompe l'oeil

Brand Lag

Brand lag: That period of time where brands try and catch up to what its consumers are currently doing. (Ok, I’m a Wiki protologism whore, sue me.) There’s a few relevant discussions going on at Micro Persuasion and Church of the Customer about social sites like YouTube, Myspace and Flickr acting as a brand’s focus group for what’s being said about them. Sometimes, brands and brand managers just take forever to catch up and listen to what their consumers want.

These days though, that can negatively affect a brand more than it ever has because bad word-of-mouse can make or break you sooner, rather than later, while good wom can put you on the map. Worth noting is a manifesto at Cluetrain I discovered a while back and linked to, but still is very relevant to the issue of consumers rising up.


Tags: brands, consumer, marketing

Voice Blah-Blah-Blogging

First, if you read this blog regularly, you know I’ve given shit to Google for their political sellout in both this country as well in China. Their position is indefensible as far as I am concerned, no matter how many Google bloogers who work on Blogger talk about the Power of Google. (Jim Jones talked about the power of Kool-Aid if I’m not mistaken too. For the newbies, swap out Jim for David Koresh at Waco.) I’d be a hypocrite for at least not acknowledging the sugar-daddy connection, since after all, this blog is run by Blogger under Google.

Ok, disclaimer out of the way. A friend tipped me off to a few sites that offer free voice blogging services. One of them is Blogger’s version called Audioblogger.com. It offers you the chance to call in and post a 5-minute recorded message converted to an audio file that you save on your blog. More time is available, but for a quick podcast, it’s pretty damn cool. Is this the end of the 30 minute podcast? Doubtful, but worth a try.

Tags: audio blogging, podcast, voiceblog

The Day We All Got Replaced.

Mark it down: March 27th, 2006. That’s so when you look back 50 years from now as you’re on the run from large machines with guns, you’ll wonder exactly when was the precise date that Terminator and Hal got their start. Via Drudge comes word that scientists have fused brain cells with a computer chip. This is isn’t simply six million dollar man stuff. This will be the basis for cognitive thought in computers.

Ok, so we land a guy on the moon, then we invent this computer brain, but still can’t invent something that makes a decent creative brief?

Tags: computers, HAL, terminator

She Blinded Me With... Blogs.

Since I mentioned Hammer’s blog, I have to mention Thomas Dolby’s. (The Dolby of She Blinded Me With Science fame for the new-school out there.) I’ll bring the old school when I think you kids are nodding off. He’s back on tour and hitting NYC among other places in May, although I’m seeing one of the shows in PA.

My work here is done.

Tags: Thomas Dolby

New IBM spot. Shades of Life of Brian.

Just caught the new spot from IBM and the fluttering butterfly-thing-type objects flying around. Here’s what gets me. Not the funky effects - it’s the masses repeating a single mantra of individuality like robots. Life of Brian flashback: Brian implores his followers to get a life by asking “Repeat after me – I am an individual!” And of course they all repeat “I am an individual!”

IBM just doesn’t get it.

Tags: IBM, Life of Brian

NEW FEATURE: What the...?

Because I’m all about added value here, I want to reward the 23 readers out there. A lot of blogs have weekly summaries covering the best of that week. Not me. I plan on covering the oddest. It could be stuff that is off-topic, bizarre or cool that might not normally warrant regular inclusion, but otherwise deserving of a brief mention. And so, without further delay:

• The Brick Testament The Lego Parables of Jesus.

• BorgBlog (Not a sci-fi thing, but Jim Borgman, an editorial cartoonist whose work you’ll instantly recognize. Cool look at how a cartoonist refines an idea.)

Tags: bizarre, Jim Borgman, odd, weird

Congrats! You’re Our 100 Millionth Blog!

According to technorati, they were monitoring 29 million blogs not less than three weeks ago. Today it’s up around 31.2 million. At that rate, they will exceed 100 million blogs in about 16 months. That’s almost 1 million blogs a week. (One for every voice in my head.) But seriously, I have three blogs, so I’m sure blogamists like me skew the numbers. (Blogamist and blogamy both being new protologisms I coined today at Wiki referrring to people who have more than one blog at a time.) Either way, that blog growth rate is insane if it holds up. And the way things in the computer world tend to grow exponentially, I think we could see that mark sooner rather than later. Watch, it’ll be reached by some guy named Bob, in like, Wyoming with a flyfishing blog.

Ah, so many Bob blogs, so little time...

Tags: blogs, trends

Dieter thanks you. I thank you.

Ok monkey bitches. Thanks to your votes, a lot of them, my homies The Zambonis, (America’s only real Rock ’n Roll Hockey band), won for Best Monkey Song over at Blender. What does that mean exactly? Well, no cash for me or anyone reading this. Just knowing you helped put a boot in The Beastie Boys’ ass though, should be reward enough.

Tags: bands, Dieter, hockey, sprockets, zamboni, The Zambonis

Co-branding Run Amok?

Co-branding hell. I know it’s generally a good idea: get brands to cross promote each other. A tried and true tactic of even your’s truly. .MAKE THE LOGO BIGGER ...But this 6-page menage-a-brand spread currently running seems really forced. Details, Puma and NBC’s The Office, all together. A virtual logo orgy in print.

The disclaimers listed throughout are as tacky as the subject matter usually is: golf fashion. This could have been a really cool idea had Puma not talked down to its audience and broken the fourth wall. Is the message that they don’t know if they want this to be satire, ...MAKE THE LOGO BIGGER... or something so real you’ll confuse it with the magazine? Are we that stupid that we can’t tell the difference? The line that kills me though is “No celebrity endorsment implied.” Like Walken said to Hopper in True Romance: “Come again?”

Both Puma and Details are doing just that by using the popularity of the actual show to endorse their products! Maybe it’s fitting in a way that this whole layout is executed in a less-than-deft manner, considering most golf clothes suck and the fact that the US version of The Office went over the brilliant edge established by the UK version.

All I can think is that Diet Pepsi was too busy in the recording studio to take part.

*Click image to enlarge sample page, because you’re so stupid, you wouldn’t have figured this out on your own.

**Diet Pepsi, Puma, Details Magazines and NBC’s The Office in no way have endorsed this post. I can’t even confirm if they’ve read it. No animals were hurt in the making of this post. Furthermore, no animals were paid to be in this post, including a monkey. Reader makes no implied warranty comparison as seen by a doctor for erections lasting longer than a :30 second spot.

Tags: Details magazine, Puma sneakers, The Office