Missus Alert

Slightly spoiled by a foul looking blue drink at the end (or is that the tipple du jour in the UK?) but other than that genius simplicity. Via Famous Rob

Coffee Jerks In Advertising

Some of the men are borderline psychotic. Probably a generation of aggressive husbands felt  commercial messages like this endorsed violence in marriages. More disturbing than amusing.

Sorry To Interrupt

Unmissable 7 minutes on the clash of civilisation with corporations in advertising taking place on the internet through mobile phones. Don't miss it.


Via Eaon

Call Chico

From the chip shop advertising awards. The one above is genius use of blue tack.

The LYNX ad just dissolved a brand in two seconds for me. Brilliant sedition though I have to hand it to the New Zealanders for having a dig at our reptilian bloodline monarch.

Would You Let Brands Write The News? The Corporations Are In Cahoots With The Media

Modern America’s media is a cartel system that is owned and dominated by a handful of huge corporations saddled with heavy debts, said author Mark Crispin Miller, who shared his views on American media and propaganda.“What they tend to do is cut costs wherever possible and at the same time go for the kind of material that they think will sell the most and the quickest,” said the author, “You basically get a new system that resembles the worst aspects of the Internet and that is simply because it is profit-driven, advertising-based and controlled – that is probably the most important – by a handful of enormous commercial entities that are very close to our government and that is not good for democracy.”

Americans stay uninformed not because they do not want to be informed, claimed Miller, who also confessed that good entertainment is absolutely essential. Still, he admitted that “There is a very close relationship between the low-quality of a lot of entertainment, that is derived and sensationalistic, and the low quality of our journalism.”

People cannot control the information they were not told simply because “people don’t know what they don’t know”, explained Mark Crispin Miller, “We are a consumer culture. So people are raised here basically to do one thing and that is a shock if they cannot afford it,” author said, “If people are used to a kind of paper-thin, lightweight, completely distorted news coverage – that is all they see everywhere they look, no matter how many cable channels they have.”

According to Miller, the most scandalous story hidden from the American society over the last decade was the subversion of the US voting system. “We have an absolutely preposterous voting system that is based on computerized voting machines that are very easily hacked and highly insecure,” Miller shared his accusations. This system concealed the overwhelming, landslide win of Barack Obama “by about 7 million more votes than we think” at the last presidential elections in the US, because the press and the Democrats “are blind to the evidence of all those vote that he would have gotten if the system was honest.”

Speaking about propaganda in the American media Miller said that “When you have a media system that has been captured by private interests, the media system becomes nothing but a conduit for propaganda.” “Advertising and propaganda on one hand are antithetical to real journalism on the other,” Mark Crispin Miller came to a conclusion that “In a true democracy people must have access to unbiased information in order to make reasonable decisions. That kind of thing is an anathema to the advertisers.” There is a close relationship between the media and the political elite, which in turn is in a very close relationship with the corporate elite, and that makes it possible to hunt certain politicians in the media and skip over the others.

As for the events of 9/11, Miller evaluates that what “the 9/11 truth movement really wants is a new investigation and a new commission – and that is all that I call for. Because the fact is that the official report is preposterous in countless ways.” “The Challenger disaster, when a spacecraft blew up – the commission to establish that disaster was funded at US$15 million. The budget for the 9/11 commission was US$3 million – that is insane,” Miller exclaimed.

Advertising Nostalgia

Bullshit Bingo via Jectaspecta

[แด่กองเซ็นเซ่อ] - Censorsh*t

This is a little stroke of genius in the ongoing war of ideas that says gun imagery is lauded while peace and flowers are trivialised. That selling sex in advertising is OK but prostitutes are frowned upon. That excessive materialism is aspirational but ubiquitous poverty is pushed to the margins. That advertising is culturally representative yet failing schools are unimportant.

Advertising And Free Don't Mix (Cold Fusion Pours Cold Water On Brands))

Update: I think the latest article in Foreign Policy on Cold Fusion is a sign that my post below has merit on the basis of conflict economics and/or anecdotal evidence of fantastically advanced civilisations. However there's room to set a precedent and that is elaborated on in my cosmic capitalism post.
Anybody who has an understanding of how capitalism works should appreciate that by necessity of greed and existing infrastructure investment the plutocrats at the top have no interest or incentive in removing our reliance on fossil fuels. Not only has free energy (zero point energy)  technology been suppressed or purchased and shelved  but there's the added beauty that we as a species are still prepared to go to war for fossil energy with the main stream media cheering us on to slaughter in odd countries like Libya that we never gave a fuck about before.

I've done enough investigation of the UFO question to have an interesting angle and to know that we're at a crucial point in conciousness awareness to say the very least. I've noticed as a planner of the old-school "future-oriented" variety that there isn't a shred of branding evidence from any of the reversed tech that has been picked up, or from the thousands of contact reports on the subject. There is however use of symbolosim, serial numbers and sacred geometry if anybody wants to go a few rounds with me on the trandimensional and/or superluminal discussion points, but I do politely ask that you visit the Marko Rodin posts and Nassim Haramein videos before reaching a conclusion out of courtesy to me.
I'm still not convinced that free energy impact on branding isn't a moot point based on some of my other ongoing learnings, but traditional branding is looking like toast. In any case busting your balls on a consumption model about to be skewered by front-end energy-abundance doesn't make much sense to me, so at least don't take it too seriously for the time being. Not if you're planning your future anyway. 
Here's Steven Greer M.D who started the whole disclosure project thing and who seems to grasp full well, that it's not the rubber stamp of reality that is most important to our species but the introduction of the most disruptive technology since the internet. And we all know what free and abundance did to the old advertising revenue model. Just add to capitalism and mix.

Is Advertising Immoral or Unethical?

The short answer you know anyway but that wont change anything. A blog post is unlikely to prompt a vendor of materialism into questioning their value set.

Let me start with an apology. At one point a couple of years ago I was flying between Shanghai and Hong Kong as the Global Account Planning Director on a piece of Coca-cola business. I was in the air so much that one week I ate more airline food than terrestrial meals. The hard work paid off. The creative was all over the show at the first meeting, and as everyone else was too busy I managed to rewire the creative script/animation and of course presented with unusual pride and conviction and sold the ad to the client. She's now head of Coca Cola marketing and is Rob's client. Lucky for him she's no-nonsense solid Gold and a bit of thinker too. We both held similar radical Maoist ideas that I don't hold today but was shocked to hear my client echo. 

I did not come up with the idea. I only rewired it to make sense. That ad went on to increase the RTD beverage sales of that drink 73% year on year. No small volume in the fastest growing and largest market in the world. That's a fuck load of sugared water. That's a lot of apologies to Chinese kids.

Was I responsible for that? I doubt it. The idea was cute, my timing was great, resources were thin and I had total licence to make it how I thought it should be made. It was Chinese New Year (but then it was Year on Year sales) and things came together.

But I can't claim to be innocent in the entire enterprise. If I'm honest with myself it was my presentation skills that nailed a quick sign off. The lovely account manager who handed me the reigns was actually cute enough to say I was "fantastic" when we presented. I wasn't, but then it would look OKish from someone who had a ton more experience around the world at a global level, and so I was happy to do it. She was happy not to get bogged down in endless back and forth which is a serious problem with Asian clients and junior Asian account handlers. She also tipped me off that my mediocre Japanese boss was losing face around me and that I wasn't to trust him. That advice alone put 10 000 bucks in my pocket when he eventually fired me. I spent it on a watch that was subsequently stolen in that taxi back in Hong Kong. So that's Karma for you. Easy come easy go.

So I'm just as guilty as you but I have given great consideration to how brands can be part of our future. 

The answer to whether it's immoral or unethical? 

Mostly immoral and largely unethical always (as with anything) contextual. Generally speaking for a planet that is groaning at the seams ecologically it's no different than selling arms to Libya before bombing them.

It's not like I'm suggesting I'm any better than you. I'm not. But I don't mind talking about it. So how exactly do you feel?

Selling Consumption

It's been a while since I took a look at The Ad Generator. Over the weekend I took a look at an airline commercial story board and was struck how utterly crap it was and how 99% of advertising is so crap that even top agencies like BBH (New York) or W&K (Shanghai) don't  feel confident enough to publish all their work (I have asked).

Very simply you can figure out how good advertising is by clicking on a link and noticing the next ad you see. I bet 99 times out of a hundred the ad generator is superior. Don't believe me? Try it.

All The Superbowl Ads

Edited like this they look a lot more 'idgy' than the write ups I encountered. However the production values are top dollar and I suspect that given all the new year sales indices are down, that this might be fin de siecle advertising.  But I've been wrong before.

Groupon

Even before I heard about this execution this morning, I saw a tweet in my stream from the agency Crispin Porter Bogusky congratulating the work that went into it and thought immediately that it sounded like the self congratulatory pep talk of adland that probably wouldn't reflect the quality of the ad. I was disappointingly right.

It was then followed with a flurry of tweets on Groupon's poor taste. I used to like CPB when Alex Bogusky was there as I think he understood the nature of controversial attention securing comms, though it seems since he left standards have plummeted and in many ways this whole ad is a short allegory for the wealth of the United States which is built on the exploitation and suffering of others round the world.

Things People Don't Say About Advertising

Isn't it ironic that advertising hasn't picked up on the growing satire of reckless growth advertising in social media? More over here.

Put The Kettle On

Lovely. Via Rob

RGB

Two completely different directions but this and the last post are both executions I really like, though that doesn't mean I think they are effective. Liking something is a little too subjective from a planning perspective as I may be projecting my bias against cars and thus for environmentally responsible motoring, though that too is up for debate given the manufacturing footprint both of these may or may not require. Like I said, I just like the work. I'm feeling too lazy to figure out if they would actually work.

This execution via AJ

a priori language?

A priori language via Gemma

Intel

Cocks (Look Mum This Colour's Perfect)

There's always Charlie Brookers 10 Biggest cocks (and she-cocks) in advertising if you wish to pursue the theme.

Oh go on. Do some more.

London Adland

Via iboy

Nature Gift Thailand

I just caught the end of this Nature Gift short ad for gifting sets and was bowled over by the rawness. OK it's a bit contrived getting there, and they've jumped through hoops to get the brand in but the empathy created still struck me as one of those little things in Thai TV advertising that is creeping in as much as possible. 

Unexpected small rule breaking flourishes. 

I wish I had a copy of the soap powder ad that sends up the entire genre by basically messing around with template creativity and saying yeah it's a crappy ad so we're not going to bore you shitless, without a wink and something a bit wacky.