Software developer Teletype has filed a suit against the Audit Bureau of Circulation alleging the organization turned a blind eye to Laptop magazine's inflation of its circulation. The suit, filed last week according to Newsday, names Laptop publisher Bedford Communications, Bedford executives Edward Brown and John Jay Annis, defunct distributor Inflight Newspapers and former Inflight executive Remy Lehner. In the suit, Bedford is accused of paying Inflight "to accept delivery of tens of thousands of copies of Laptop magazine each month in return for paperwork showing that Inflight had 'accepted' the copies for distribution" but were never delivered.
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We can't possibly be the only ones sick of seeing this upon visiting the many sites who for some odd reason insist upon using slow ad servers. In all honestly, we're not out to trash Falk but we've seen this particular slowness for years. Not months. Years. One would think after all that time, someone might say, "Hey, something's not right," and actually do something about the problem. Just as bad is AdFreak's use of CheckM8's Applet thingy that makes it impossible to do anything for about 15 seconds after visiting the site. We're sure our ad server sucks too but that's besides the point. After all these years of ad serving, why do we still have these issues?
Once again, Bucky Turco finds laziness in advertising. It appears outdoor companies are unable to or unwilling to provide even the lest bit of common sense when it comes to competitive ad placement. First, Viacom placed two vodka ads next to each other. Next, two beer brands appear next to each other on buses. And now, Van Wagner has two airlines right next to each other. Hello? Media buyers? Sales reps? Do you care what happens after you send/receive the IO?
We wonder why we had to wait so long for a spoof of the Honda Choir ad to make it's debut and now we know. This spoof from 118 118, the same people that spoofed the Honda Cog spot, is so horrifically bad, they had to re-shoot it over and over and over to make it even worse so it good then be released as "so bad it's good." What a waste of time. View it, if you have to, over at Adland.
We were going to leave this one alone because mistakes do occur. We even left alone a previous mistake involving the placement of an image which looked like it belonged to editorial rather than the unmarked ad it turned out to be. But, two mistakes in a short period of time just can't be left alone. While we love the folks over at MediaPost but today, they made a very huge mistake.
Late this afternoon, we received this email from MediaPost inviting us to their Email Insider Summit May 21-24 in Scottsdale, Arizona as a VIP. All expenses, including airfare, accommodations and conference registration, would be covered. We thought, "Damn, Adrants has finally arrived!" We were all excited to spend four days at the Boulder Resort and Golden Door Spa basking in the Southwest sunlight while hanging with industry big wigs. That is, until a second email arrived.
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A tipster who wishes to remain anonymous traveled to the AAAA's Conference last week and tells us about an interesting observation. We'll let them tell it in their own words. "I was flying to the 4A's conference and something struck me as funny. There were 3 4A's staff (senior level) heading out to the conference all in first class. There were about 6 agency execs (one being a c-level) all in coach. Per the presentation at the meeting over 70% of the 4A's revenues comes from dues paid by the agencies. Unbelievable that they [the AAAA's execs] chose to spend it less responsibly than the agencies that give it to them in the first place. Lower spending = Lower dues." Right on. Ah, but how ad wags love their perks.
This video promoting a text messaging service is extremely stupid not to mention it making viewers wait way, way, waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too long for the punchline which, itself, is also very stupid. Yea, yea, we know it's a riff on that Beautiful Agony site but it's a bad one. Whatever. It's from the UK. They like this stuff.
The Lowe leaked email saga continues with yet another leaked email George Parker has acquired and published over at AdScam. With his usual seen-it-all wit, Parker craps on the ridiculousness of the Lowe Suggestion Box. From important items like Splenda being added to the kitchens uber-health conscious agency folk to increasing the dinner allowance for those who work late to giving employees their birthdays off to offering chair massages to beer nights to bagel breakfasts to coffee tastings to added vending machines, it just makes one want to scream, " Quit your spoiled, whiny bitching and do your fucking job!" It's a job, not a five star hotel.
Last night, we received this from the folks over at M80: "I think you may be of some help to me. I'm reaching out to you on behalf of Comcast and M80 regarding the Slowskys TV commercials. Since you are a fan of The Slowskys, I thought that you might enjoy and/or be interested in posting a video of the Slowskys. In addition to the original Slowskys commercial, we have a special outtakes video exclusively for those who are willing to help us out. You can check it out here.
I feel special. Whatever. Well, the rest of you don't have to be "willing to help us out" because you can just link to the site from here. But, be warned. Either it's a sick joke playing off the so-called slowness of DSL or it's a really lame promotional effort because the site is slower than an army or turtles stuck in a pool of molasses.
OK so it's not really a great spot, in fact, it's really cheesy but it does strive to let all Americans now Canada welcomes, with open arms, all gay and lesbian who want to get married without the hassle of state and federal anti-gay marriage laws. The spot was created by Gérard Spatafora for gay and lesbian tour operator Outbyview.com. Oddly the spot is 42 seconds long which, actually, is a very good thing because 12 seconds of this spot could be cut and nothing would be lost.
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