AT&T is dreading the day its iron-clad, exclusive contract with Apple expires allowing Verizon to carry the phone thereby causing million upon millions of iPhone owners (yes, they'll likely need a new phone) to switch from ATT&T to Verizon all on the same day.
This spoof spot by Pat Lee gleefully craps on AT&T for it's terrible service, dropped calls and general crappiness. Sadly, it's unlikely ATT&T will be able to get its shit together before Verizon steps in causing, perhaps, one of the biggest cell service defection rates of all time.
If only Verizon would just buy AT&T then we could all stop worrying about this crap and go back to using our phones instead of bitching about them.
So we're watching this commercial and thinking, 'Hey, this is pretty cool. It's got to be for some really great, kick, ass new product." After all, who'd go to the trouble of filming and producing a Chinese Olympic closing ceremony-style extravaganza if all they were selling were rooftop solar panels.
Uh. Oops.
- A little overexcited Zappos fun courtesy of Meg Ryan.
- If you care, Spike would like us to know who the top ten ugliest rappers are.
- smashLAB's Eric Karjaluoto tells us about Blair, a newsletter with "strong insights for design studios on how to avoid begging for work."
- Six Flags' Mr. Six is back and we love him. Oddly, some don't.
- Check out Buffalo Wild Wing's new Night Hunger Monsterizer.
- Bono is a co-founder of Elevation Partners which put $435 million into Palm. He also shills as pitchman for RIM's Blackberry. Hmm. Conflict of interest?
- CustomAdArt lets advertisers post jobs on the site detailing the image they want and how much they will pay for that image. Photographers then compete to create the best image. Have at it, people.
Bob Knorp's Beancast always pulls together and interesting group of people. On this week's episode were Angela Natividad (yes THAT Angela), George Parker from Adscam and Greg Verdino from Crayon. No sooner had the three got on the phone with Bob before Angela and George managed to devolve the pre-podcast call into a discussion of rapist ducks, the SEO value of Paris Hilton and obscene activities performed on plastic ducks.
The rest of the show is just as great. All kinds of great commentary on Amazon buying Zappos, Target as taste maker, Walmart bludgeoning suppliers for more ad dollars and Twitter ability to generate $48 million worth of media coverage for itself without lifting a finger.
And in classic form, George talks about getting drunk no less than three times in the first 15 minutes.
And poor Bob. The editing must have been pretty difficult editing out all the times George cursed. Oops, you missed one, Bob.
Awkward. You've experienced the moments. When a friend or an almost friend or a business associate made a sports-related quip and, well, got it entirely wrong. In this DDB Vancouver-created commercial for KidSport BC, a community based sports-funding program that provides grants for children to participate in a sport, the importance of sports in a child's life are highlighted. Sadly, the poor "kid" in this spot definitely missed out on some of the basics.
The campaign includes two commercials and eight radio spots which will begin airing July 27.
Last week, PubMatic released a study which found industry ad pricing levels have increased 35 percent since the beginning of 2009. Pricing for ad inventory sold through indirect channels such as ad networks and ad exchanges has increased every month, gaining 47 percent since the end of January.
The study reports that while 2008 experienced record lows in online ad pricing, 2009 has shown consecutive ad price growth for every month this year ranging from 3 percent to 15 percent per month. You mean Santa will be bringing presents this year? Please, say it's true.
Last week in his monologue, late night host Craig Ferguson went on and on and on and, yea, on about youth and advertising and how marketers all got together in the 50's and 60's to "deify" youth, put it up on a pedestal and focus all their advertising on that particular age group.
He goes on to explain how youth became the most important thing, how everyone wants to be young and how stupid that is because, well, the young are inexperience and, therefore, stupid. And how that deification of youth made being young fashionable which, of course, resulted in a bunch of idiots running around doing anything and every thing to be young no matter how old they were.
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Our girl is back. Well, actually she's been back for a while but just this second, her latest commercial for Candie's was released and we really, really like it. Why? It's classic Britney. All pomp and strut.
Of course the full length video is a bit racier but we're talking television here, people. There's only so much bare midriff the television viewing audience can take before someone calls the cause group police.
While everyone's all a Twitter over EA's Act of Lust booth babe stunt, consider this: If the Booth babes were Booth Dudes and the rules were the same, would anyone care?
Of course, encouraging people to "commit acts of lust" and then photograph it in order to get a chance to win "dinner and a sinful night with two hot girls, a limo service, paparazzi and a chest full of booty" isn't going to win any prizes at a church fund raising competition but let's break this one down a bit.
The "booty" referred to in the promotion is not the ass of the "two hot girls." It's a swag bag full of geeky goodness any fanboy would lust over as much as he might lust over a booth babe. The encouraged "act of lust" is most certainly not meant to get people to do anything rude, crude or disrespectful to a woman hired to play the role of booth babe. Anyone who might actually do that is just a loser and in need of castration.
While this promotion can certainly be seen as crossing the ever-moving, hard-to-define line of decency, it's not encouraging rape, prostitution or other unseemly (and illegal) behavior. It's simply using a time-tested - if not tired and lame - marketing strategy to get people to do what a marketer wants.
The "two hot girls" are obviously paid for their participation in this promotion and while we're sure they'd rather spend a night with some hot dude - not to mention their own boyfriends - they knowingly took this job and the money and knew what they'd be getting into.
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Oh this one's near and dear to our hearts. Dumb Dads in Advertising. We love them because, for the most part, they make for amusingly funny ads. We hate them because, for the most part, all they do is mirror the "refrigerator mom" ads of the fifties and sixties. It's like a giant game of tit for tat.
Our fave has always been the Verizon Dumb Dad. The classic, clueless idiot trying to help his daughter like he's never heard of the internet before. MSNBC via AdFreak (which pulled a few of the best ads) has a round up.
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