SadAge
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I want more than anything to tell you this isn’t exactly how marketing people think.
But then, we all want things don’t we?
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“The phonebook companies alleged in their complaint that the phonebook ordinance, ‘denies [their] rights guaranteed by the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution.’(free speech and due process). If not for the legal concept of ‘corporate personhood’, the phonebook companies wouldn’t be able to sue Seattle to assert Constitutional rights originally written only for people.” —A totally NOT insane thing that happened.
(via boing boing)
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“Content”
Publishers maximize content marketing awareness metrics at executive roundtable
To understand the fall of new publishing, you have to understand the cognitive dissonance of running a paper in the era of the multi-national conglomerate. Put succinctly:
1. Journalism is public speech, the lifeblood of democracy and a healthy political arena.
2. Journalism is intellectual property, worthy of severe punishments for stealing.
3. Journalism is content, a fungible commodity.
It’s hard to coherently explain the value of your product to a person facing a sign-up page while also holding all three of these in your head simultaneously.
(via boing boing)
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“On Tuesday, NYTimes.com will be the canvas for the latest example of this effort: an ad for Wisk detergent [shown above] that displays what appears to be, at least on the surface, a clean shirt. But when a reader uses the cursor to move a digital black light over the shirt, they unearth hidden dirt spots beneath the surface. The Wisk ad will also be shown to some Times readers on the iPad, and will allow them to reveal the dirt stains by swiping their fingers over the ad.” -
“Right now the Facebook home page is pretty static. No auto-play videos, no animated GIFs. Could Facebook run auto-play video ads without overly distracting users from their friends’ content?” -
How Social Media Will Make You Fall in Love with Brands “Social innovators such as Whole Foods Market, Comcast and Jet Blue are imagining a future in which they not only thoughtfully respond to your tweets and posts in real-time, but their responses are also increasingly targeted and proactive. They want to know you, they want you to knowthat they know you, and they want you to know that they care.
For example, my casual tweet about poor cable service – addressed to no one in particular – might someday generate an immediate response from Comcast, because Comcast knows I’ve had previous issues with my cable box, they’re concerned and they’re keeping an eye on me. Isn’t that what friends do?”
In a different universe, companies would accomplish this by just providing good products and services in the first place.
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McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: I’m a Social Media Community Manager! As I look back on a life filled with regret and self-depreciation, the overwhelming burden of my daily tasks seem too much to bear. Thoughts of suicide bring relief; the relief that maybe one day I won’t wake up and immediately check Pinterest for new followers—the relief that there exists a world beyond Twitter; a world with people and flowers and sunlight and trees.
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A secret advertising color scheme which perfectly mimics the pain of yearning.
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Oh fuck it all any way
Advertising, as a culture, is boring.
It’s one that fancies itself both serious and studious, but still fun and irreverent, while it’s actually none of these things. Instead it’s just as vapid and intolerant of change as any other, but wrapped in petty shows of meaningless flourish which it rewards in self-aggrandizing awards shows.
But it’s easy to make fun of, so at least that.
Which is why we need sites like Agency Wank.
The thing is, if you’ve worked in advertising for any length of time, you’ve written something like the garbage on AW, or said something like it, you’ve probably even believed it for a while, and that’s fine. Every profession has its own embarrassment. But if you can’t eventually realize the situation for what it is and at least laugh about it, then you’re an asshole.
So I was bummed then when I went to the AW website to see why they hadn’t been updating and found this:
I’ve been blown away by the number of views and shares over the past week.
However not everyone has taken it so well and unfortunately I’ve had to go into hiding.
It appears I’ve been targeted by a very angry irishman.
http://theescapepod.wordpress.com/2013/01/22/agencywank-moi-surely-not/
Do not worry though, for one day I will return to clean the wank from our industry for good.
Until that day arrives, remember this…
As a man, I’m flesh & blood; I can be ignored, destroyed. But as a symbol I can be incorruptible. I can be everlasting.
I guess we get the blogs we deserve.
But any way, this bums me out for two reasons: first is that this was a blog that was genuinely funny, and it was genuinely funny because it was true.
The second reason is that the link he mentions which points to an insecure, threatening post on the agency blog for The Escape Pod (which only reenforces all the reasons we needed Agency Wank in the first place).
The whole post is terrible, but I feel like the end stands out as particularly bad:
But we understand that the person who created this tumblr might be a bit junior. And might not have the best judgement.
So we’d like to invite the creators of this bloggity tumblr thing to come to The Escape Pod for a drink and a laugh.
Afterwards, I personally will kick the living s**t out of you. It’ll be a hoot!
So yeah, it’s both bad and poorly written, but you want to know the absolute worst part of this whole thing?
It’s not that The Escape Pod seems to think putting commercials on YouTube is revolutionary.
It’s not even that using the phrase “bloggity tumblr thing” completely undermines their argument that they’re “the agency of the present”.
It’s not the line “I personally kick the living s**t out of you.” which makes me wonder why you’d go through the effort of childishly asterisking out the word “shit” when you’ve just threatened someone with physical violence on your company’s blog?
It’s not even their cheap and unfunny shot that the author of Agency Wank is “a bit junior” - which, even if he is, only means that he’s understood more about this industry in his short few years that most of do in our careers.
It’s none of these things.
The very worst part of this whole thing is that when The Escape Pod centered their dumb slogan, they included the “TM”.
That, my friends, is fucking amateur hour.
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Is your phone too big to comfortably hold? Instead of getting rid of the beast, have you considered buying a phone bundled with a second, smaller Bluetooth-enabled phone for your talking needs? If this idea sounds completely idiotic to you, nobody told HTC, who built a phone just like that for the Chinese market. (ht @DJBentley)
This reminds me of when The Game got a jesus piece for his jesus piece, except if everything in the world was terrible.
