Adweek, the advertising trade magazine that focuses about 80% of its attention on traditional advertising (print and tv) has just redesigned both its print issue and its website. When it comes to redesigns, I use something I call the 11-day rule. Usually people hate the redesign. When the Wall Street Journal was changed there was a chorus of voices swearing they'd never read Murdoch's cheery neo-fascist paper again. Mostly their redesign didn't suck. But people lost familiarity with something they spend more time with than their children and so the were discomfited. But after about 11-days or so, you adjust and accept the redesign. I feel the same way about Adweek's new look. The same phenomenon holds true, I've found, for office moves, devastating hurricanes and other major catastrophes. For 11 days, they're topic A. Then people move on. Would that the Bush/Cheney junta didn't realize this.
Now the second of my couple things: adweek.com has done something very smart. Under each headline they have two clickable buttons. Quick Read and Full Article. Makes sense to me, to give readers the choice to get 50 words of info, or 200. Their choice.
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
As იოსებ სტალინი aka Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili said...
"It's not who votes, it's who counts."
I voted this morning, "I exercised my responsibilities as a citizen in a democracy" by walking to a crumbling 1930s public school building to cast my ballot on a crumbling 1930s voting machine.
The machine which dated from the first Roosevelt administration (Teddy, not Franklin) is perhaps the last mechanical device in Amerika outside of a prop in a period piece directed by Bogdanovich. Why is it that more modern machines were used by Mexican peasants when they voted for Zapata in the 1910s?
This in a nation that spends $1 trillion on offensive pre-emptive "defense" but has no boots or body armor for its teenage and early-twenties soldiers. And no unassailable way to vote.
Monday, February 4, 2008
That's a "1" with twelve zeroes after it.
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The new federal budget proposed by the Bush junta has $515.4 billion for defense, the highest inflation-adjusted total since WWII. It also includes an additional $89.4 billion for "the global war on terror," (a perpetual war for perpetual peace) as well as $70 billion supplemental emergency funding for the war that was supposed to pay for itself, as well as $3.7 billion for "border security," $44.8 billion for "veterans affairs" (wooo hooo) and $37.6 billion for "homeland security." Then there's an additional $60+ billion other "homeland security" expenditure. That's $823 billion of "discretionary" expenditure on defense. When you include debt service to our deficit, defense expenditures total well over $1 trillion--or $166 for every man, woman, child and towel-headed terrorist in the world, or just over $3,300 for every resident of the good ol' US of A.
These are not the spending patterns of a freedom-loving country. They are the spending patterns of imperialistic invaders bent on raping, looting and pillaging.
Suppose they gave an ad and nobody came.
You can find all kinds of empirical data to back this up; I'll leave that to you. But what I've observed, at least anecdotally, is that while the way people consume advertising has changed, the way advertising is created, planned, bought and placed has not. Yet another version of that tired adage "Generals prepare to fight the last war." The same holds true for CDs, Executive Group Directors and CMOs.
If, as nearly everyone says, consumers are looking for experiences not just messages, an experience, except in the most Apple-ian of circumstances, is nearly impossible to deliver via a :30. You will never convince consumers to try Verizon's FIOs via a :30. You need something deeper.
Many ad people have bought into some of the above but not the totality. So they spend millions creating web "experiences" and some of them are quite good, but they spend $0 promoting those websites. In most cases, except of the last 45 frames of a :30, or a 6 pt. url in a print ad, there's no mention of their web experience at all.
What if we looked at the world differently. What if we said the :30 was the movie trailer and the website itself is the movie? That's the way I'm beginning to see the world. But as usual I am vox clamatix in deserto.
If, as nearly everyone says, consumers are looking for experiences not just messages, an experience, except in the most Apple-ian of circumstances, is nearly impossible to deliver via a :30. You will never convince consumers to try Verizon's FIOs via a :30. You need something deeper.
Many ad people have bought into some of the above but not the totality. So they spend millions creating web "experiences" and some of them are quite good, but they spend $0 promoting those websites. In most cases, except of the last 45 frames of a :30, or a 6 pt. url in a print ad, there's no mention of their web experience at all.
What if we looked at the world differently. What if we said the :30 was the movie trailer and the website itself is the movie? That's the way I'm beginning to see the world. But as usual I am vox clamatix in deserto.
Sunday, February 3, 2008
How do you deal with the enormity of it all?
Enormity...A question posed by a Fox Reporter to a Patriots player. Perhaps Fox is reporting fairly.
enormity
(ĭ-nôr'mĭ-tē) pronunciation
n., pl. -ties.
1. The quality of passing all moral bounds; excessive wickedness or outrageousness.
2. A monstrous offense or evil; an outrage.
3. Usage Problem. Great size; immensity: “Beyond that, [Russia's] sheer enormity offered a defense against invaders that no European nation enjoyed” (W. Bruce Lincoln).
[French énormité, from Old French, from Latin ēnormitās, from ēnormis, unusual, enormous. See enormous.]
USAGE NOTE Enormity is frequently used to refer simply to the property of being great in size or extent, but many would prefer that enormousness (or a synonym such as immensity) be used for this general sense and that enormity be limited to situations that demand a negative moral judgment, as in Not until the war ended and journalists were able to enter Cambodia did the world really become aware of the enormity of Pol Pot's oppression. Fifty-nine percent of the Usage Panel rejects the use of enormity as a synonym for immensity in the sentence At that point the engineers sat down to design an entirely new viaduct, apparently undaunted by the enormity of their task. This distinction between enormity and enormousness has not always existed historically, but nowadays many observe it. Writers who ignore the distinction, as in the enormity of the President's election victory or the enormity of her inheritance, may find that their words have cast unintended aspersions or evoked unexpected laughter.
enormity
(ĭ-nôr'mĭ-tē) pronunciation
n., pl. -ties.
1. The quality of passing all moral bounds; excessive wickedness or outrageousness.
2. A monstrous offense or evil; an outrage.
3. Usage Problem. Great size; immensity: “Beyond that, [Russia's] sheer enormity offered a defense against invaders that no European nation enjoyed” (W. Bruce Lincoln).
[French énormité, from Old French, from Latin ēnormitās, from ēnormis, unusual, enormous. See enormous.]
USAGE NOTE Enormity is frequently used to refer simply to the property of being great in size or extent, but many would prefer that enormousness (or a synonym such as immensity) be used for this general sense and that enormity be limited to situations that demand a negative moral judgment, as in Not until the war ended and journalists were able to enter Cambodia did the world really become aware of the enormity of Pol Pot's oppression. Fifty-nine percent of the Usage Panel rejects the use of enormity as a synonym for immensity in the sentence At that point the engineers sat down to design an entirely new viaduct, apparently undaunted by the enormity of their task. This distinction between enormity and enormousness has not always existed historically, but nowadays many observe it. Writers who ignore the distinction, as in the enormity of the President's election victory or the enormity of her inheritance, may find that their words have cast unintended aspersions or evoked unexpected laughter.
The Militarism Bowl.
Soldiers soldiers soldiers, in battle fatigues and dress uniforms. Airforce fighters in formation. Guns on display. Martial music. Preparing us, inuring is to more war. A Speerian spectacle. Keep score boys and girls.
Saturday, February 2, 2008
Advertisements for myself.
Some weeks ago I got a new job--a very new job. Nothing like I had ever had in advertising before. My first assignment was for American Express. They wanted to make their card synonymous with fashion, using Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week to do so.
Were I at an advertising agency, I would have created a commercial communicating this. At an interactive agency, I would have created a website. At a direct agency, I would have created some letters and maybe a guide to fashion.
But as I said, I had just started at a different kind of agency, one that was truly media-agnostic. I blurted out, what if we created an American Express Network that broadcast the entirety fashion week? Six weeks later after the usual internal and external sturm und drang, The American Express Fashion Network launched. The network brings viewers exclusive access to all of fashion week, including live views of over 70 runway shows. All branded with the American Express logo. We're webcasting 96 hours in all, all branded.
This isn't a 30-second spot shot for approximately $1500/frame (that's a spot for just under $1.5 million.) My guess is it does more for American Express than a :30 ever could. Check it out on the lame-o website "Dummitas" designed: www.americanexpress.com/style
Were I at an advertising agency, I would have created a commercial communicating this. At an interactive agency, I would have created a website. At a direct agency, I would have created some letters and maybe a guide to fashion.
But as I said, I had just started at a different kind of agency, one that was truly media-agnostic. I blurted out, what if we created an American Express Network that broadcast the entirety fashion week? Six weeks later after the usual internal and external sturm und drang, The American Express Fashion Network launched. The network brings viewers exclusive access to all of fashion week, including live views of over 70 runway shows. All branded with the American Express logo. We're webcasting 96 hours in all, all branded.
This isn't a 30-second spot shot for approximately $1500/frame (that's a spot for just under $1.5 million.) My guess is it does more for American Express than a :30 ever could. Check it out on the lame-o website "Dummitas" designed: www.americanexpress.com/style
Friday, February 1, 2008
As suicide bombers bomb through pacified Baghdad where all is sweetness and light thanks to the surge and the gallant leadership of General Betrayus,
SUVs are our Lebensraum.
Shopping is our Lebensraum.
Exposed midriffs are our Lebensraum.
This is what we are fighting for,
Not our green and emerald isle,
We are fighting for the marzipan glow of entitlement.
The right to consume
Pollute
And fart on the ecosystem with the loud rrrrip of good ol’ American flatulence.
The right to be over-fed
Over-beered
Over-sexed and
Over everyone.
Because even Conneticutters have Texas accents and ride their oil-powered stallions over all the dark and swarthy mustachioed people who haven’t Yaled and Exetered and country clubbed their way from third to home without getting their uniforms dirty.
The world is our Lebensraum.
We’ll suck what we can.
Eat what we can.
Medicate what we can
And nuke what we can’t.
Because the world is our Lebensraum.
Shopping is our Lebensraum.
Exposed midriffs are our Lebensraum.
This is what we are fighting for,
Not our green and emerald isle,
We are fighting for the marzipan glow of entitlement.
The right to consume
Pollute
And fart on the ecosystem with the loud rrrrip of good ol’ American flatulence.
The right to be over-fed
Over-beered
Over-sexed and
Over everyone.
Because even Conneticutters have Texas accents and ride their oil-powered stallions over all the dark and swarthy mustachioed people who haven’t Yaled and Exetered and country clubbed their way from third to home without getting their uniforms dirty.
The world is our Lebensraum.
We’ll suck what we can.
Eat what we can.
Medicate what we can
And nuke what we can’t.
Because the world is our Lebensraum.
A protest test.
Fox, the Fascist network owned by Rubert Murdoch.
Fox, the war propagtors.
Fox, the death deniers.
Fox, the global-warming scoffers.
Fox, the smearers, the libellers, the Lohan is more important than Sudan.
Fox, the "We opine, you recline" network.
Fox, I could go on and on.
Fox has sold $260 million of advertising on Stupor Bowl XLII.
Boycott the game.
Listen on radio.
If you can't stand not to watch it, skip a half, or a quarter.
Put the heat on Fox by not supporting their advertisers.
Don't support fascist-smearalism.
It's not much of a protest.
It's not Thoreau's Civil Disobedience.
It's not going to jail.
It's not costing you money. (eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek.)
But if we all did it, and all told our friends,
maybe a statement could eventually be made.
"What did you do during the war?" your children will ask.
"I shopped," you'll reply.
And now, a word from Primo Levi,Auschwitz Survivor.
A Warning
You who live safe
In your warm houses,
You who find, returning in the evening,
Hot food and friendly faces:
Consider if this is a man
Who works in the mud
Who does not know peace
Who fights for a scrap of bread
Who dies because of a yes or a no.
Consider if this is a woman,
Without hair and without name
With no more strength to remember,
Her eyes empty and her womb cold
Like a frog in winter.
Meditate that this came about:
I commend these words to you.
Carve them in your hearts
At home, in the street,
Going to bed, rising;
Repeat them to your children,
Or may your house fall apart,
May illness impede you,
May your children turn their faces from you.
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