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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“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?” -
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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A lot of people think that advertising is the worst thing ad agencies make. But it’s not. The worst thing agencies make is this need in the pit of your stomach to justify the choices you’ve made with your life.
It starts out small and you deaden it by telling yourself that you’re only doing this because you have to, and that if you had your way, you’d do it differently. But as the years move along, and you learn your craft at an expert level, you find that the same tools you use to make other people feel better about themselves can be turned to you. You find that you can swap one word for another and another, and now, instead of being a creative director for a mid-level agency, you’re an artist, and instead of people not liking you, they just don’t get you, and instead of having spent your life becoming great at something you don’t care about, you write things like this to try and quiet the sounds of doors closing behind you as you march towards the anonymous death you thought was for everyone but you.
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Flush&Go is the only tube you can flush down the toilet which immediately breaks down as soon as it comes into contact with water. Ready for a “roll” playing game? Throw the toilet rolls in the right place as quickly as you can. Ordinary rolls in the rubbish bin. Flush&Go in the toilet.
A GAME ABOUT SH*T ROLL TUBES?! F*CK OFF. I MEAN…SERIOUSLY…F*CK!
There are so many terrible things on this site I had a hard time choosing just one to reblog.
What I like best though is that someone else made this site so I don’t have to. The problem is that every time I see something like this and think “oh, I should post this piece of shit” I start thinking about the internal meeting that birthed it and I remember being in those meetings and weird and terrible mixture of false bravado, ignorance, contempt for the world, sickening desperation, and quiet acceptance of personal failure that comes along with creating one of these apps. I remember this, and then I crawl under my desk and stay there for the rest of the day.
So thanks Crap Brapps - thank you for saying what I was physically unable to.
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“We create monopolies for brands by employing supercharged creativity with memorable and adaptive executions” http://tinyurl.com/byckhmw” — : -
The company that produces the semiautomatic rifle used in the Newtown, CT, shootings is currently running an online campaign based around virtual cards that “prove” the bearer’s manliness. One specifically talks about how unmanly it is to be afraid of elementary-school kids.
I wonder if the agency that made this hates themselves enough right now.
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6 Ill-Advised Marketing Campaigns That Backfired Hilariously 
It’s a picture of a butt! How can you not click it? CLICK ON THE BUTT!
(My article is about racist, sexist, and otherwise insensitive ads. I’m very happy with it.)
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I had to triple check to make sure this wasn’t an Onion article.
Sadly, it’s not.
(via How to Calculate the Value of a Like - Dan Zarrella - Harvard Business Review)
