Obama Gets LinkedIn

I logged into LinkedIn this morning to find a new feature, the "Featured Question" with a new question from none other than Barack Obama. Something banal about how a president could help small businesses (someone of his staff must have decided LinkedIn appeals to small businesspeople and entrepreneurs)

Clicking further, I found that you can join his "group" and display the nifty button above on your own LinkedIn page.

My reaction was slight annoyance. Stop commercializing LinkedIn and all that. I don't want to know who my LinkedIn friends are voting for. I just want to know where they worked.

Remember Barry, if you're running for president, you are a brand. And Your Brand Is Not My Friend™.

Poll Results: Do Awards Shows Matter?

About a month ago, I ran a poll in conjunction with several other ad blogs on the importance of award shows. It's completely unscientific and all that, but it's interesting to see the results: people who voted are definitely of the opinion that award shows are less and less relevant these days. In fact, only 23% thought they were still very important.

That's interesting for all of the obvious reasons (e.g. creating ads for awards shows might not be the career-booster it once was) and because it's just another way the Digital Revolution is affecting our industry.


POLL RESULTS:

Q: Does the proliferation of opportunities to see good ads on the interweb lessen the value of award shows for creatives?

• Yes, awards don't really matter any more 23%
• Yes, except maybe for Cannes 8%
• Somewhat 22%
• Too many different media options is what makes award shows irrelevant 14%

• No, they're still very important 23%

• Other 9% (see some sample write-in responses below)
  

• Except Cannes and the One Show
• If we're all aware of what's out there, it makes us mighty critical of how judge
• There are too many scam ads in award shows right now. It's killing their value.
• Seeing good ads online doesn't compare with getting the nod from industry stars

Life Goes On

It's way too big to scan, but in today's New York Times, the usual suspects on the second and third pages all ran copy in the small space ads they take out daily to commemorate the victims of 9/11. Gucci, Saks, Bloomingdale's, Chanel, Tiffany - all ran memorial ads. And there, sticking out like a sore thumb, was high-end watch store Tourneau with an ad about well, a high-end watch.

Part of me was pissed that they didn't take the time to recognize the tragedy and part of me was glad that they didn't jump on the let's-all-mourn-9/11 bandwagon. Not sure what the statute of limitations is on those sorts of things. Only that, like a lot of tragedies you witness first hand, it seems at once to have happened just yesterday and a hundred years ago.

Stores I Don't Get

Okay, so it's filler, but I've been meaning to pontificate on this for a while.

GNC: (General Nutrition Center, for my non-US readers, a chain of stores selling nothing but vitamin supplements and powders used by weight lifters.) - Okay, it's not that I don't get why people buy what GNC sells. I myself buy the occasional protein bar there and, in my younger days, I used to buy whey protein and other stuff that I deluded myself into thinking would give me bigger muscles. What I don't get is how there are so many of them? They're not small stores either. I mean are there that many people buying overpriced vitamins, flavored protein powders, muscle enhancers and bee pollen? (Obviously, since the chain's been around since just about forever and does very little in the way of advertising or promotion, but still... I mean there are 3 or 4 in walking distance of my office.) Who is keeping them in business?



Jamba Juice: A chain of stores selling fruit smoothies and the occasional coffee drink. Again, I have bought smoothies there, but are there really enough people buying smoothies to keep a large store like that in business? They're everywhere (even on The Sopranos!) and I have a tough time imagining how they sell enough $5 smoothies to cover the rent, let alone salaries and franchising fees. But again, they're expanding, not contracting, and they do precious little advertising.

Any thoughts from the audience and additions to the list will be greatly encouraged.

More CGC Done By Ps, not Cs

Professionals, that is.

It seems that “amateur” singing sensation Marié Digby, whose YouTube performances have logged her millions of hits and airplay on MTV and numerous radio stations, is a big fat fraud.

Today’s Wall Street Journal, in a very nice piece of investigative journalism by Ethan Smith and Peter Lattman, uncovers the fact that Digby has been under contract with Hollywood Records since 2005, and that the record label was instrumental in selecting and recording her YouTube appearances.

It was, to give credit where it’s due, a clever approach. Digby, an exotic looking acoustic singer of Irish and Japanese heritage, is shot in her bedroom, strumming on her guitar, as if she were just some girl next door whose boyfriend put video of her up on the internet. Her MySpace music site had a great big “none” next to “Record Label” until the Journal outed her. (Though, as Messrs. Smith and Lattman point out, it’s now only reads “Major.”)

I’ve pointed out on here time and again that there’s not really a whole lot of “user” or “consumer” generated content out there. Most entrants in “make your own commercial” contests are wannabe directors/actors/creatives in search of an agent or a job.

Digby and Hollywood Records are only guilty of taking it to the next level, of using our constant craving for the “next next thing*” to launch her career. Digby is ideally suited to this sort of scam, since her shtick is all about a stripped down, no-frills approach that sounds like, well, like a girl in her bedroom playing for her friends.
They just bottled it and put it on YouTube.

*Props to Michael Lewis for that phrase.

More Gigabytes, Please

I was all excited about the new Apple touch iPod for about 5 minutes.

That's how long it took me to realize it only had 16 gigabytes of storage space.

Which meant that my music collection wouldn't fit on there. Nor would more than one or two episodes of any TV show.

The Don't Touch iPod comes with either 80 or 160 gigabytes. Which is about what you'd be needing.

Not sure what, if any, the technical rationales are for giving the TouchPod at Nano-esque memory levels.

But I can't help but thinking that there will be a lot of disappointed users who jumped out and bought the TouchPod (and the iPhone, for that matter) only to discover that the storage space is severely limited. Especially for something that's supposed to play video.

Toads' Summer Faves

I really like this campaign for Clearasil via Euro (the agency formerly known as Messner) for a number of reasons.

First and foremost, it does what so many large, well-known American brands should do: try and own the category. We know all know why Cheerios taste good, why Listerine fights bad breath, why Crest cleans your teeth. Pretty much since birth. And we know that Clearasil is an acne medication. So don't bore me with the name of whatever medicine is in there as if I'd never heard of Clearasil before. Sell me on the benefit of clear skin. I mean it's a pretty closed category, right. Clearasil or Oxy. This campaign sells the benefit in a very charming way.

It's also funny in a somewhat sophisticated way, well-cast, not overacted, no cheesy button at the end and gets out of its own way. Not breakthrough in a "what the heck is this/Subservient Chicken" kind of way, but breakthrough nonetheless because it's telling a story and serving as a reminder to an audience that knows Clearasil. The tagline's nice too "May Cause Confidence" - confidence being the one thing most teens could use more of.

It's also made me forget the brilliant Saturday Night Live spoof commercial from 1990 with John Lovitz and Victoria Principal speaking in faux-German that ran as a "commercial" on Mike Meyers' "Sprokets" show. I think the tagline on that one was "Klearasil Macht Das Pimplen Kaput."

Power of Propaganda

Article in today's New York Times shows us the benefits of branding.

Consumers, who had eaten a 911 calorie calorie meal at "unhealthy" McDonalds estimated that their meal contained 764 calories. But consumers who had eaten a 911 calorie meal at "healthy" Subway, estimated they'd only consumed 559 calories.

Beyond that, a different study showed that consumers who'd eaten a Subway BMT sandwich, which weighs in at 200 calories more than a Big Mac, assumed their meal was healthy and were more likely to order the full-sugar soft drink, supersize it, and then order cookies for dessert than those dining on the unhealthy-but-lower-calorie Big Mac.