Toad's (Very Late) Friday Faves, Part 5

This very funny video, courtesy of Ogilvy & IBM, is a great example of what people are talking about when they (over)use the word integration.

It's the first of three videos that are being sent to IT guys around the US in an email that urges them to join an online scavenger hunt in order to save Ned and Gil, IBM's hapless Abbott & Costello team, from the maze of (non-IBM) machines they're trapped in.

Joining the scavenger hunt requires them to solve a series of cleverly/torturously worded riddles to get to the next level. In the first few days, the site got 4,000 hits and 2 people solved the first riddle.

As for the video (I'm told the others will be posted as they're released in the email waves) it works because, unlike so much work in the category, it doesn't take itself so damned seriously. It's a joke, the audience is in on it, and the actors are clearly having fun.

PS: I know the people who were involved with this (they're paying me big bucks to post this) and what's also pretty cool is that this was a pro-active assignment that they struggled, over the course of about 9 months, to bring to life. Even cooler was that it involved creatives from all disciplines: general, direct and interactive, as well as accountniks who pushed the clients to do it and helped them find the money to fund it. Sort of what we all thought advertising would be like.

PPS: Just joking about the payments.

Enjoy.

Truth: 1 Fiction: 0

Remember those Terry Tate, Office Linebacker ads that came out of the unlikely bowels of Arnell, the fashion ad agency whose notoriously unlikeable founder, Peter Arnell, also pissed off Adland with his über-fashiony Samsung campaign about 10-15 years ago. (The ones with beautifully lit shots of über-buff models holding gleaming white microwaves tucked under their arms and the like. (See example below) I seem to remember one of the One Show Crew (Gary Goldsmith?) writing a scathing article in some ad trade or other about how putting appliances in fashion ads wasn't an idea and that said, it wasn't even a very good execution. So there. Nonetheless, the ads got noticed and Samsung is not longer the bottom feeder it was back then. Which admittedly may have everything to do with improvements to their product line and nothing to do with the ads.)

But I digress.

Anyway, it seems the even more unlikely creator of "Terry Tate" is a guy with the Thurston Howell III-esque name of Rawson Marshall Thurber. Mr . Thurber (Marshall-Thurber?) is a graduate of USC film school who'd made a series of short films featuring the aforementioned Terry Tate that came to Mr. Arnell's attention and were thus made into Reebok Super Bowl ads. (WASSSUPPPPP!!! anyone?)

So today's Times has a big honking article on the front of the Metro Section (as opposed to metrosexual) about how some struggling actor and former actual dodge ball champion (who knew?) was suing Mr. Rawson Marshall Thurber. Because it seems that Mr. RMT went on from Terry Tate to write and direct the Ben Stiller oeuvre "Dodge Ball." Which the struggling actor claims was stolen from his dodge ball movie script. (You can't make this shit up.)

You all need to read the article-- the reporter, William Glaberson, has a lot of fun with it.
Also worth reading: The Wikipedia article on those Terry Tate spots, wherein all sorts of really vulgar sexual puns buried within the plot are exposed.

Toad McLuhan

Not sure what the significance of this is, but it's dawned on me that we use the 3 main advertising media vehicle of 2007 in very different ways.

PRINT is a solitary medium, in that we generally read to ourselves for our own pleasure. It's a passive medium as well, in that we don't interact with what we're reading except maybe in our imaginations and via letters to the editor.


TELEVISION is a group medium. Now we may watch TV on our own, but it's something that's easily watched and shared with other people. The fact that TV is scheduled also makes it something of a group experience in that say millions of other people are also watching Lost at 10 PM on Wednesdays. Now that part of the shared experience may be lost (no pun intended) as DVRs and time-shifting become more popular, but for things like news and sporting events, the theatrical nature of television (TV of course, being born of theater, not print) makes it more of a group event. Though still a decidedly passive one.

THE INTERNET is, at present, a solitary event. One may chat with and/or interact with other people online, but it's not as if the entire family gathers around the hearth to browse through Brandon's MySpace page together, thus making it a solitary activity. It is, at best, a way to connect with people who aren't there with you, but at the cost of excluding those who are. And while some internet usage is very interactive, there's much that isn't: it's possible to spend hours just reading web pages without ever interacting with anyone.

Now where this all goes is going to be interesting. My personal opinion, to be expanded upon in future posts, is that there will be a merger of TV, print and web experiences, but also a very separate interactive web experience.

So, for example, your Comcast or Cablevision TV service will live online, on a giant "on demand" site where you can access whatever you want, whenever you want. One where networks promote their current offerings the way Hollywood studios promote movies. But once you decide to watch Lost, which you'll be able to do for free if you watch the commercials and for $1.99 if you don't, you'll be able to chat with other viewers or comment on an CBS-sponsored Lost message board. (And of course there will be other, non-official, Lost message boards.)

But what's important here is that the last two options- the chat room and the message board- will be optional. Because if you're watching Lost with your wife and kids, it would be quite anti-social for you to start chatting with strangers in an online chat room, when you should be chatting with your loved ones, who are sitting in the same room.

This is something the Web Evangelicals often forget: that not everyone is a lonely 24 year old, who engages all media on a solo basis. So while the opportunity to interact with virtual humans will remain a popular option with that group, those of us with families and/or large groups of friends will be more likely to interact with the live people sitting in the family room with us. Creating an active response to a passive medium.

Hope that wasn't too Teddy K for you all. I'll have to re-read it in the AM to see if it still makes sense ;)

Co-opting CGC

Didn't take long. This new :30 TV spot for PSP mimics the whole YouTube homemade video thing, right down to the home video camera on "Nightvision" thing. Mostly notable for the technique and how quickly ad creatives took to mimicking YouTube. While not a brilliant commercial, this one works because it parodies a genre its target is intimately familiar with, rather than trying to pass itself off as an example of it

Toad's Friday Fave (3 days late) - #4

Do I love this commercial?
Not really. It's a B, B+
So why the "Friday Fave" status?

Because you know it was a bitch of a brief. "None of that fucking clever scheiss Bogusky. Ve vant price ads und you vill give us price ads. Schnell!!!"

And this is an "A" for a retail price ad the client made you do. Nice film, interesting premise, product and price are the punchlines, not an afterthought and they're what you walk away with.

My only complaint is that it's hard to understand "V-Dub" when the guy shouts it out- I had to wait for the super to figure out who it was for. Ditto the rest of the campaign- not sure why they just didn't say "V-W" given how annoyingly frat-guy-trying-to-be-street "V-Dub" is to begin with.

And yeah, it's too bad the suicide prevention guys got all bent out of shape about this spot. Guess they were feeling powerful after their success with getting that GM spot off the air. And so "V-Dub" just caved

Decency

So I get in the car to drive one of the Tadpoles to school this morning, around 8:15 AM, and when I start the car it's still tuned to the local Jack station. (Jack are those iPod-esque stations that play a random mix of music from the past four decades and don't have DJs)

And what comes on but a pretty racy and suggestive commercial for KY Jelly with something called "warming gel" ("warming" something, anyway.) And though I quickly hit the button before any questions could be asked, all I could think of was WTF? I mean it's 8 in the morning. Who you they think is listening to the radio? And even if they got some horny young guy alone in his car, there ain't much he's going to be able to do about it on his way to work, right?

I'm no prude and no social conservative, but there's a time and a place for everything. And this was neither the time nor the place. Enough's been written about the inappropriate placement of Viagra commercials, but you can throw KY onto the pile. I suspect we're going to see legislation about this sometime soon, limiting the hours certain commercial content can run. It's a good issue for someone looking to make a name for themselves, because there aren't that many people who are going to object to it. The only danger is who gets to define what's objectionable and what standards do they use to define it. A "slippery slope" if ever there was one.

Consumer Generated Content: Friend or Foe?

After a lengthy series of back and forth comments about Consumer Generated Content, Joe Jaffe, the host of JaffeJuice, asked me to write a guest blog about it. So this is being Simulblogged™ on both The Toad Stool and on Jaffe Juice.

From the rise of YouTube to the rash of "consumer generated" commercials on the Super Bowl, much has been made of what's being loosely called "Consumer Generated Content" (hereafter, CGC). But it's my opinion that those of us in the ad business have little to fear from CGC since precious little of it is actually being generated by actual C's.

Consumers, that is.

One of the not-as-widely-publicized-as-I-thought-it-should-have-been secrets of the Super Bowl this year was the fact that many of the entrants in say, the Doritos "make your own Super Bowl commercial" contest were, in fact, aspiring directors of TV commercials who essentially submitted the same sorts of spec spots they've been putting on their reels for years. Ditto the guy who made the NFL spot (with Pytka) - he was a reformed ad copywriter who was getting an MBA in marketing. Not a random NFL fan.

Joe Jaffe himself gushed madly about the cosmic significance of Coke honoring a sideshow act called Eepy-Bird, who have a well-choreographed routine of Mentos-infested Coke bottles spewing soda. But again, that's not CGC and Eepy-Bird aren't consumers either. They're performers. Performance artists, if we're being charitable.

So lets' lay out a few rules for what constitutes CGC:

1. The creators must be amateurs. By amateurs, I mean no aspiring actors, filmmakers, songwriters, singers, comedians and the like who've done this before and are using YouTube as a way to get noticed by agents and other people who will actually pay them to sing, write, film or spray soda from Mentos-infested Coke bottles. Ad agencies have been getting crap like this from these people for generations. The fact that they can now post them on the internet only means the rest of the world can see how awful 95% of it is. CGC can only be created by people whose main goal is to let the world know how great (or awful) Product X is or to show everyone a really cool/funny/dangerous thing they've figured out how to do with Product X. Not people whose main goal is to boost their fledgling careers.

2. The content must be created for the express purpose of sharing it with as many people as possible. So no, your home movies that you share with your family don't count. It only counts if your goal was to put it on something like YouTube and get as many hits as possible.

3. It must be created as a paean to, or dis of, a specific brand or product. Spewing Coke is about blowing things up. It's not about soda or Coke or even beverages. It's about making carbonated liquid spew. The tie-in to Coke is inconsequential and the acts do not demonstrate any positive or negative value about Coke-- just that it's fun to watch Coke spray when you add a Mentos to the bottle.

If you meet all 3 criteria, then yes, you have Consumer Generated Content.

But I wouldn't hold my breath. I don't see too many consumers with the time or the energy to make a real film about a brand. Particularly one they won't get paid for. Few brands inspire this sort of loyalty. Maybe iPod, maybe Harley, maybe an ode to a well-loved car. But I can't think of too many beyond that.

The ones who do actually create CGC tend to create something that is at best, notable for its earnestness and amateurishness. (You know, the stuff that the Teddy K's of the world call "authenticity.") And that's a style that gets old pretty quickly.

Bottom line is, our jobs are pretty safe right now. Well, at least when it comes to competition from consumers.

Love Bites

Or LoveMarks or whatever Teddy-K-in-In-Good-Company moniker Saatchi's using to promote their new campaign for J.C. Penny.

Much has been made over the tag line "Every Day Matters."

But tag lines are bullshit. They take on a life based on (a) the advertising itself and (b) the product itself.

"Just Do It" is a fairly innocuous line on its own. But put the brilliant Nike creative in front of it and it shines. The fact that Nike makes a good product helps too.

Now as for Penney, everyone holds up Target as an example. But Target's ads work because the merchandise in the stores in every bit as hip and trendy as the advertising promises, with designers like Isaac Mizrachi and Todd Oldham doing their own budget lines for Target.

Now let J.C. Penney get, say, Philippe Starcke to design a line of furniture for them, and suddenly "Every Day Matters" takes on a different spin. But if they continue to sell more fiberboard faux-Colonial crap, then the line falls on its face.