Kids not buying what Ronald McDonald is selling

Like most mothers I like to think of my kids as having wisdom beyond their years. Still, I was surprised to discover that my 9-year-old son completely understands the irony of Ronald McDonald telling kids to live a healthy lifestyle. I'll admit that this came in the context of a quick stop to Burger King yesterday on our way back from a weekend in Massachusetts, but, he paused for a moment before ordering his plain cheeseburger (he eschews french fries ever since his first grade teacher told him they were bad for him), and said, "Mom, I saw this commercial the other day where Ronald McDonald was telling kids to eat healthy. That's pretty stupid since McDonald's is the least healthy restaurant in the whole country." Touche, little one. Now if I could just find a fast-food health-food store for those trips back and forth to Massachusetts.

Adverganza's Monday morning picks

Wherein I scan the Monday morning advertising headlines so you don't have to.

From Advertising Age:

—In shocker of the year, insurers don't want to advertise on Cavemen.
—Advertising types discover Facebook, to increase distribution of the brand called themselves. Here's a video about it, and, while we're at it, did you know I'm on Facebook and want to be friends with all of you?
—Jonah Bloom with yet another suggestion of how Advertising Week could actually prove meaningful.
—Oh, good. Scott Berg of Hewlett-Packard doesn't like mobile advertising.
—Bob Garfield uses Colgate Simply White.

From The New York Times:

—In yet another shocker, NBC Universal discovers buying iVillage wasn't all that smart.

From Adweek (subscription may or may not be required); no print issue this week:

—A close-up look at Naked's plan for full-frontal U.S. expansion.
—Tim Arnold explains why he loves the blues.
—Could it be true? Is Interpublic actually turning around?

From The Wall Street Journal (subscription required, for now):

—How to make video advertising better. Example from Break.com pictured at left.
—Victoria's new secret: athletic wear.

From Mediapost:

—Pringles, now available in stick form?
—Does using the eBay ad auction system mean you're putting your cable net up for sale?

From The Delaney Report. Tom's hearing that:

—Visa media might go up for review.
—Sony isn't necessarily happy with its work from BBDO.
—There's some Fisher-Price business on the loose in the wake of the closing of Maiden Lane.
—The honeymoon might be over between Cadillac and Modernista!.

Get your ad legends here!

So, to refer once again to Mad Men, there was (thankfully?) no 30-second look into the past by Jerry Della Femina, inserted into the show, as had been announced early in the week. However, if you go to the Mad Men Web site, there's an archive of all of the ad legend interviews (to date, I hope, as the list is a bit odd and full of omissions of people many of us would probably love to hear from.) I'm having trouble embedding the video, which is beautifully, and intriguingly, shot, but the full list of people who appear (which can be viewed as a steady stream or as individual soundbites) is: Joy Golden, George Lois, Bob Jeffrey, Charlie Hughes, Lois Geraci Ernst, Evan Stark, Jerry D.F. (pictured above), John Bernbach, Tony Pagano, Martin Puris and Eric Michelson. Yeah, I'm can't remember who everyone on this list is either, and I thought I knew about these things.

Last night's episode of 'Mad Men'

Last night's episode of Mad Men was where the series really hit its stride, with just the right mix of insider advertising politics and themes of the time—JFK running for president, the fear and fascination that Don Draper's wife has concerning the messy lifestyle of the divorcee down the street, and, of course, the assistant account executive who doesn't know his place, and yet is saved from being canned from Sterling Cooper because of his pedigree. (Also loved the reference to Bob Newhart's "The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart,"—an album which my father, a former account guy, used to listen to repeatedly back in the day.) The only sour note was the B-roll that followed the episode where the actors talk about their characters. It's one thing for executive producer Matt Weiner to talk about the series; it's another to see the actors breaking down the fourth wall. Much better to keep the actors in the bubble that is a period piece like Mad Men.

Not sure I wanna post about Didja

I've been on the fence all week about whether to post anything about didja.com (the URL isn't live yet), the site from NBC Universal's USA Networks that's meant to be an archive of good ads. It's one of those announcements that I'm sure the network wants people like me to blog about, because it's so obviously a ploy to suck up to advertisers and agencies, who so dearly want the ads they produce to be viewed as content. Plus, why write about when it's a concept that's already out there from any number of players from TBS' veryfunnyads.com to viralx.com. But I have to admit, Young Go Getter summed up my ambivalence better than I could. He or she says: "Didja is being made to help NBC milk a medium best they can."

Jonah Bloom rips through 'Maxim'

The following is a waste of all of our time, but, hey, it's a rainy Friday morning in August, the stock market is melting down and there's nothing any of us can do about it—in short, it's just the kind of psychic environment that innovative time-wasting was made for. So here's the link to Ad Age's Jonah Bloom and Ken Wheaton trying to rip a print ad that appears in the current issue of Maxim. Created for Stone Cold Steve Austin's upcoming "The Condemned", it was supposedly absolutely impossible to destroy. That is, until Jonah Bloom got a hold of it.

Drunk people remember more than you think

Ad Age has a story this morning pointing out that people who spend a lot of time in bars have an astoundingly high level of ad recall. I really have nothing more to say on this. Go read the story.

Does ten Gary Cohens equal a Lee Mazzilli?

Why is it that every baseball game has to come with a promotional giveaway, even when the giveaway sucks? I pose this question after attending last night's Mets vs. Braves game at Shea Stadium (Mets win on a solo shot by Moises Alou ... yeah!). The giveaway—and I can't believe trees had to die for this—was a pack of cards, not of baseball players, but of the commentators for SNY, the official cable net of the Mets. Thus, we were treated not only to cards touting play-by-play guy Gary Cohen (at right), but to former Mets first baseman Keith Hernandez—a color commentator for SNY—in a suit and tie holding a microphone. (Similar treatments were given to ex-pitcher Ron Darling, and Met/Yankee Lee Mazzilli.) Oy. Late in the game, as the Mets rallied, the inevitable happened. People began to rip up the cards and use them as confetti, which caused the P.A. announcer to ask the fans to stop it since a few cards had dribbled onto the field. Well, given the "value" of the giveaway, which was all about promoting SNY and not at all about what fans want, such behavior is understandable. Picture via Mets.com.

Google a planning tool? But of course

This story in Adweek seems a bit skeptical about Google's assertion that it is a planning tool, but that's what Google exec Perry Price said yesterday at the 4A's Planning Conference in San Diego. Price points out that, for instance, "box office grosses could be accurately predicted 82 percent of the time as far as six weeks before a movie opening" by tracking search activity. A few years back, I went to a big search conference where I had a lengthy conversation with an executive from a major CPG company about what advertisers can learn from search—he pointed out how much potential there was in simply discovering what words people use to search for products. Clients may still love holding focus groups and so forth, but it seems like it would be a little crazy not to think of search as a planning tool.

Zimmerman opens automated ad exchange

More evidence that eventually automated ad buys will be prevalent (OK, there's a bit of personal belief in there, but, hey, this is a blog): Omnicom's Zimmerman Advertising is opening an automated ad exchange called the Z-Media Exchange, per Mediapost. Its aim, similar to SpotRunner's, is to make it easy for local retail advertisers to buy time on radio and TV The most salient point in the story comes via a Zimmerman media executive who offers up the following scenario: "Wickes Furniture finds out on a Friday afternoon that the competition is having a big sale that weekend. My agency calls the local station to try and buy spots for Saturday and Sunday, and we're told to call back on Monday, because no one can turn our buy around fast enough to get it on air. This will never be an issue for our clients again."

Polls are open for MSNBC's best and worst ads

OK, so MSNBC is currently asking for votes for the best and worst ads thus far of 2007. You can vote for best here, and worst here. I find the lists a little odd in that they don't always mention who the advertiser is—anyone have an idea who is behind "Rabbit's feet get reattached" or "explaining what a 'muffin top' is"? For those in the biz, the list of nominees is probably most interesting as a reflection of what people not in the biz find good or bad or good and bad. The commercial for whatever cell phone company it is that features the line, "IDK, my BFF Jill," made both the best and worst lists. Meanwhile, TBWA/Chiat/Day's off-kilter Starburst commercial promoting "Berries and Creme" is tabbed as one of the worst, even though people in and around the industry seemed to like it and it has about 6.5 million views on YouTube, which is pretty phenomenal. Go figure, and go vote.

IAG's top ten spots for July, with links!

Just like last month, I'm providing links to the top ten commercials of the month, per IAG Research as a public service, since others run the list but don't link to the spots. Sheesh.

1. Burger King, "Simpsonize Me." (Above, from Crispin, Porter & Bogusky.)
2. JC Penney, "Heart." This commercial from Saatchi & Saatchi is totally, completely worth checking out. The best take on prepubescent love I've seen in years. Really.
3. Toyota, "Backup." Also from Saatchi ... would seem even better if it weren't for the JC Penney spot.
4. Chili's "Spiced Up." Why this would be such a popular commercial, I've no idea. I also have no idea who the agency is, which is probably a good thing.
5. Target, "Dorm Room."
6. Cheez-It, "How does Cheez-It Do It?" Amazingly, yet another commercial that uses round objects rolling down the streets of San Francisco.
7. MasterCard, "MLB Dreams." (Couldn't find.)
8. Target,"Say Hello to Goodbuys."
9. DirectTV, "Signourney Weaver."
10. Target, "Hello, Goodbuy." (This is another in the series, featuring food such as Hershey's Chocolate.)

I'm eight for ten in terms of finding the commercials. If you find the missing ones, please send them along.

Catch Olympic fever! .... or not

I'm almost as burned out on the Olympics as General Motors is, and, hey, the Games in Beijing are still a year off. But somewhat seriously folks, you gotta applaud GM for getting beyond the prestige of being a big-time Olympic sponsor and realizing that it's no longer worth it. True, GM is in cost-cutting mode, seemingly forever, but going forward, it's going to be difficult for any advertiser to justify paying what GM did for its rights as a sponsor of both the NBC broadcast of the Games and an additional sponsorship with the U.S. Olympic Committee. By Ad Age's analysis, the multi-year deal was valued at $900 million. Media fragmentation is such that it's hard to view the Games, no pun intended, as the must-see TV it once was. In fact, one could argue that the ROI for an advertiser would be much better sponsoring individual events according to what viewers they attract rather than getting involved with these blanket deals. On that note, if you go to amazingawaits.org, the Web site for the 2008 games sponsored by U.S. Olympic Committee, you can see a new video montage, which I believed was created by mcgarrybowen, with the theme, "Amazing Awaits." If you want to get going on your 2008 Olympic hype early, it's the place to be. If not, I'll tell you it's nicely shot, paced, and produced but otherwise is so much inspirational wallpaper. Sorry to be so grouchy. Guess I need another cup of java.

Goodbye TimesSelect, goodbye subscription model

OK ... it may be all over but for the shouting for TimesSelect, the experiment at nytimes.com which operated under the premise that people would actually pay for some Times content, like the op-ed columns. Doesn't look like anyone at the Times has come clean on this yet, but it's all over the press, and pretty much is the death knell for a paid content model on the Web, as far as I can see—particularly since most people presume that Rupert Murdoch will let the rabble into wsj.com soon enough by also dropping that site's subscription model. I don't think this is a good thing. For one, content solely supported by advertising devalues content, and secondly, through broadcast TV has managed it for years, not having a subscription revenue stream makes Web content constantly vulnerable to downturns in the online ad market. And we all know how bad those downturns can be.

Is it real or is it machinima?

Posting this mostly for the fun of it. Someone calling him/herself Machinimasia at YouTube has begun posting side-by-side comparisons of ads as they were originally shot next to machinima versions. Personally, I prefer live action, but whatever floats your boat. A machinima-ed Visa ad is above. There's a Johnny Walker one available here.

Leo Burnett in 150 words or less

Wow, it must be August if I'm spending quality time tooling around the Leo Burnett Web site. The reason is that I was fact-checking a bit of Leo trivia for my ongoing series on agencies' Wikipedia entries, and it just so happens that anyone who visits leoburnett.com can, virtually anyway, scribble all over the site with a big black pencil, just like old Leo. I'm definitely a curmudgeon when it comes to agencies and their Web sites, and although this one's navigation did give me a bit of vertigo, I had fun. Now onto that Leo Burnett Wikipedia entry ... is it really possible to distill the agency's entire history down to a mere 142 words (omitting the client list)? Sure, if you do a lousy job of it, which this entry does. (Leo himself gets his own entry, but at about 360 words it doesn't do the guy much justice, particularly since an entire sentence is devoted to pointing out that his daughter was a world-renowned bird watcher.) Anyway, the client list could use some editing as well. We know that the new business gods haven't always shown on the agency over the last few years, but the last marketer listed on the roster of "notable clients" is Walt Disney, which the agency won in 1994, and may no longer have for all I know. None of this would matter much if Wikipedia entries were buried in Google searches, but the entry on Leo himself comes up third, and the description of the agency comes up fourth.

Now they're advertising kid social networks

Is it just me or is the growth of children's social networks a sign of the apocalypse? I'm asking because I was reading over at Adweek that Interactive Corp. (or IAC ... take your pick) is putting $5 million behind a TV campaign for its kiddie club Zwinky, and if the new commercial is as inane as this earlier one above, I hope to never, ever see it. With Disney buying Club Penguin I guess there's no time like the present to promote other kiddie social networks, but God help us all.

Chrysler takes baby step into blogosphere

Generally, corporations aren't all that good at blogging, since they seem to lack commitment, so we'll have to keep an eye on the latest in the corporate blogosphere—one from Chrysler that went live this week as part of "The New Chrysler," an initiative which apparently calls for overpaid ex-Home Depot CEOs, among other things. A post by now vice chairman (and former CEO) Tom LaSorda, starts out like many a corporate memo, " It’s a new day here at Chrysler, as we celebrate our beginning as a private company, held by our majority owners at Cerberus Capital Management." Can't you just see the folks in corporate communications sweating over that opening line? There's also a new commercial out featuring the babies above, which I wanted to stream for you, but, instead, when I went to the Web site, all I got was this lousy press release about it.

Clear Channel channels the Constitution

I'm not exactly a fan of billboards ... still you gotta admire the moxie of Clear Channel in its efforts to combat restrictions on billboards currently being reviewed in Tacoma. The billboard behemoth (alliteration watch) argues that the restrictions violate free speech laws, among other things, and thus, although Clear Channel has been coy about its involvement, all 200 or so billboards it owns in the market have suddenly been take over by this "Constitutions Matter" message. The billboards are quite the popular upload to Flickr these days.

People care about digital advertising

Quick note to say it looks like yesterday's big New York Times' feature about Digitas' plan to use cheap labor to create thousands of ads has struck a chord. It's currently the most emailed story on Times' list of business stories, beating out even stories about lead in trinkets and home foreclosures.

Heinz campaign is a CGM success

Since this is the last day that people can submit videos to Heinz's consumer-generated advertising contest, I think the contest can safely be called a winner. If I'm reading my YouTube metrics correctly, there have been over 2300 entries—more impressively, many of those entries have tens of thousands of views. Even if none of the ones that I saw seemed particularly scintillating—though I posted one mildly funny one above—it comes through loud and clear that people not only love their ketchup, but have a fascination with the iconic Heinz bottle as well. The next step in the campaign is the inevitable voting by Americans everywhere, followed by the airing of the top five on TV. Some products were made for CGM, and Heinz is one of them.

Marcio Moreira praises Allah

Sitting out here in the 'burbs leaves one woefully out of it when it comes to the medical issues of renowned ad execs. Thus, I was surprised to learn that McCann's Marcio Moreira had a heart attack a few weeks back in the airport in Dubai, and actually was clinically dead for about three minutes. He lived to tell the tale at Adweek.com, and yes, the above is not just a headline—he really does praise Allah.

Please make BBH's Wikipedia entry interesting

I'm feeling strangely emboldened now concerning my (eccentric) project to critique agencies' Wikipedia entries, now that Ogilvy & Mather's seems to have mysteriously changed, following an Adverganza post last week which noted that the entry was too promotional for Wikipedia's taste. Verge, the Ogilvy digital summit which last week was "the preeminent agency-led forum" is now simply "a a major agency-led forum." But now to Bartle Bogle Hegarty. Here it is, one of the more interesting agencies of the last decade or so, and this is how its Wikipedia post starts: "Bartle Bogle Hegarty (BBH) is a British advertising agency, responsible for some of the more notable advertising campaigns of the last twenty years." That sentence somehow makes it seem as though, despite the notable campaigns, the agency is staffed by a group of stuffy British accountants. If that insomnia-proof opener weren't boring enough, it manages to sum up the entire agency history in slightly over 200 words. I believe in brevity, but in the Wikipedia context, links to some of the award-winning work mentioned, and maybe an adjective or two, might help.

Rob Walker doesn't acknowledge Tribal DDB

One of the best ways to figure out where ad agencies rank in the grand scheme of things is to see if they are credited for work that is talked about in venues beyond the usual suspects. Which brings me to yesterday's Consumed column in The New York Times Sunday Magazine by Rob Walker. It focuses on the "Shave Everywhere" campaign for the Philips Norelco Bodygroom. The centerpiece of the campaign is the site shaveeverywhere.com, partly because— since it lives on the Internet—it has allowed Philips Norelco to explore, um, issues that couldn't even be discussed on late night TV, a fact that Walker spends lots of copy on. But no mention of Tribal DDB, which created the campaign. Anywhere. If this habit of omitting the ad agency in the equation weren't so pervasive it would be shocking. Instead, it leaves me once again scratching my head at why these omissions happen all the time. Is it clients who don't want to acknowledge that they need outside help to come up with great ideas? Is it mainstream media who find that discussing the role of the agency is somehow tangential? Or is it that the industry—at least since the days of Mad Men has been pretty miserable at defending itself?
After all these years, I've really no clue.

'Mad Men' to feature ad legends

For all of the press in the ad trades about the first episode of Mad Men, the fact that the advertising-focused series inserted trivia and other advertising-related hooks into its commercial pods received nary a mention. I'm not at all sure how quotes from David Ogilvy go over with the average Mad Men viewer, but for people in the biz, it creates a nifty insider feel—it's as though the show's target was the ad industry itself. The rest of the viewers be damned! While that may be a bit of hyperbole (fitting, somehow though, ain't it?), the series will get even more insider come this Thursday, when, according to USA Today, the commercial pods begin to feature 30-second talks with ad legends. Naturally, but maybe not all that logically, the first person to be featured is Jerry Della Femina. (True, Jerry certainly had his time in the limelight, but it's continually frustrating to see a guy who long ago stopped being central to the industry still held up as its spokesperson.) Other ad legends in the series include Martin ("resign clients before they can fire you") Puris, and George ("I want my MTV") Lois. OK, I'll throw this out to those of you who are reading this: who would you like to see featured in one of these 30-second pods? (Resurrecting people like Bill Bernbach, a la Orville Redenbacher, is strictly prohibited.)

Adverganza's Monday morning picks: part deux

Due to a technical difficulty had to break this into two sections:

From Mediapost:

—Laurie Petersen pleads with Disney not to destroy Club Penguin.
—Mediacom appoints a global director of creative. Hell, why doesn't the company just hire some art directors and a copywriter or two and get it over with?

From The New York Times:

—Digitas chief David Kenney becomes digital advertising's poster child, and Maurice Levy thinks that his purchase of Digitas was what set off the current round of industry consolidation. Gotta love ad guys and their egos. Oh, and I was right about Digitas' buying a Chinese outfit to take advantage of cheap labor. It's a good thing that there's no way to inject poison into a banner ad.

Adverganza's Monday morning pics

Where we scan the Monday morning ad news headlines so you don't have to.

From Advertising Age:

—Matthew Creamer says stand-alone news brands are doomed. Couldn't agree more.
—Al Neuharth says Murdoch's acquisition is "a very good thing."
—Pat Fallon doesn't sound very happy.
—Ad Age starts ranking advertising and marketing blogs. It must not be worth anything, because Adverganza's not on it.
—Should Kraft spend or sell?
—Levi's shoots a gay and straight version of a commercial.

From Adweek (no picture of the cover because the link is broken on the site):

—Even more Pat Fallon.
—An interview with Robert Senior, the new CEO of SSF (that stands for Saatchi Saatchi Fallon for those of you who weren't paying attention last week.)
—A whole lotta stuff on planning. (This links to only one part of the package. For other parts, click here and scroll down until your joints start to hurt.)
—Joan Voight on making brands healthy.
—Barbara Lippert says (in a manner of speaking) that the first Wal-Mart work from The Martin Agency is as boring as Wal-Mart's court papers are interesting. I've embedded one of the spots below, though it seems to load very slowly.




More to come ...

For Fallon coverage, go elsewhere

I'm a bit babysitter-challenged over the next few weeks, so haven't delved into stuff like Fallon's seeming demotion to Saatchi underling. However, others are doing a good job of it, so I don't have to. With that in mind, check out the exhaustive coverage of " ... why Fallon is in the Shitter" over at AgencySpy.

Aug. 3, 2007: eBay's first ad exchange deal

Dave Goetzl at Mediapost writes today about Oxygen network becoming the first cable net to use eBay's advertising exhange, which it used to buy scatter for Intel. This, even though the Cabletelevision Advertising Bureau isn't supporting the system. There are several things that make this momentous in its way, even if the amount of money changing hands is only in the six figures. First, is, of course, that this is a first. Um, duh. Second, it is doing for Oxygen what Google's ad exchange programs have done for other media properties—bringing it an advertiser it wouldn't have gotten otherwise. Third, it seems to underscore my theory that technology companies (along with companies that are based out west, and thus more digitally attuned) are much more open-minded about the whole ad exchange/auction concept than others. Not only is Intel the first advertiser to embrace this system, but two of the other three advertisers that Oxygen is working with for its next buy are Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard. (The other is Home Depot.) I came up with my theory about ad exchange open-mindedness back when I did a story about Google's work towards magazine print ad auctions—while the Conde Nasts and Hearsts of the world didn't return my calls, the publisher of San Francisco-based shelter book Dwell, who had participated in a Google print auction test, was effusive about the model's possibilities, and like Oxygen, she got advertisers into her book that she never would have had the man (woman?) power to attract on her own. BTW, good for Universal McCann in making this transaction happen.

Ogilvy's Wikipedia entry: a cautionary tale

So yesterday, induced, perhaps, by the month of August, I began to what might be a series of posts on agency's Wikipedia entries. I'm skipping ahead to Ogilvy & Mather's here because it's a great example of how not to post to Wikipedia. The good news is it looks as though the agency is actually paying attention to what is said about it on the site; the bad news is it's being used as a self-promotion channel, which is not what Wikipedia intends. The entry has been flagged at the top with this notice: "This article or section is written like an advertisement. Please help rewrite this article from a neutral point of view per Wikipedia policy." Since the entry contains "insights" such as "In 2004 Verge, the OgilvyOne Digital Summit was launched. Within a few short years, Verge has grown to become the preeminent agency-led forum for clients and other industry experts to debate and discuss the realities and possibilities of digital marketing ... " I can see Wikipedia's point.

Ads coming to Microsoft program near you

I'm devoting time to the following topic because I think it's one of those things that most ad execs (not online ad execs) aren't tuned into: advertising is coming to Microsoft software. The company has said it's going to start testing advertising in Microsoft Works, a stripped-down version of Microsoft Office that usually retails for about $40. The plan is to offer it free on PCs and target ads around the programs. If that sounds icky, it really seems like it will be quite similar to the text ads that appear in the margins on Gmail, and that's the whole point. You may not have noticed that Google has a lot of Microsoft Office type software out there. (One place you see it repeatedly, if you have Gmail, is when it's offered up as an option for downloading attachments.) I've no idea how much traction it has, because most of the documents I receive are already in some type of Microsoft Office and it seems best to stick with the software that created it. But, of course, the software is free as is everything else consumer-facing with Google. It does seem creepy to contemplate ads in your Microsoft Word documents, but I'm amazed—and maybe a little depressed—at now inured we become to advertising, particularly in exchange for something free. Gmail's text ads used to freak me out, but now I barely notice them. For Google, I suppose that's good news and bad.

Ray-Ban's "Bobbing" somewhat respectable

Thought it worth checking back on how Ray-Ban's "Bobbing for Glasses," was doing now that it's been up for about two weeks. (It's a follow-up, of course, to "Catch" the video where the guy appears to catch glasses with his face, which currently has 2.7 million views on YouTube alone.) But the big difference with this video, in terms of distribution, is that the agency, Cutwater, and client decided—to me inexplicably—to not seed it as aggressively as they did with the first one. (Hey, it's the client's money, but this is supposed to be advertising, not social experimentation.) Still, the video is doing respectably. As of this morning it has 142,000 views on YouTube. True, nowhere near its predecessor, which has been up for a few months, but not measly either. While the folks at Cutwater and Ray-Ban analyze what the drivers were of this particular video, one thing we may never know is how much of what will probably be a traffic drop compared to the other is attributable to what might be called Sequel Syndrome, in which the second of anything is never nearly as noteworthy as the first.

Adscam asks if 'Ad Age' will trump 'Adweek'

In the unbridled style to which we've become accustomed, George Parker of AdScam said yesterday that he thought that Ad Age will finish off Adweek. You can read the whole post, which contains only four swear words, here. The high- or low-light, depending on one's perspective, is when he tells Ad Age editor Jonah Bloom that the one thing he needs to do to declare victory is to hire away long-time Adweek-er Barbara Lippert. Obviously those who know me know I've a little perspective on this. I worked at Adweek for much of my career, and even was the interactive editor at Ad Age for a glorious ten months, until the publication more or less declared interactive comatose, along with my career there, in October 2001. (No hard feelings, honest.) But the whole thing isn't as simplistic as Parker makes it out to be. First, Ad Age vs. Adweek isn't an either/or proposition, and frankly, the health of both publications depends on both continuing to exist. Much of what has made both books vibrant over the years is the fact that there has been another publication out there to compete against. (True, there are now other competitors out there, like Mediapost, that are doing a fine job, but there's something about the long rivalry of Ad Age vs. Adweek that brings out both publications' best competitive instincts.) Still, Parker raises a valid question. What might make someone perceive Ad Age as better, at this point when media and creative and branding are sometimes one in the same, is that Ad Age has a more comprehensive perspective. There is shared content amongst Adweek and its siblings Mediaweek and Brandweek, but ultimately Ad Age is a one-stop content shop; Adweek is not. And then there's the matter of commitment, not by the reporters and editors that work at both publications, but by the corporate higher-ups. It's obvious to anyone who studies this stuff closely that Ad Age has received more investment over the last few years than Adweek has, which isn't surprising given that it is owned by a private, family-run company—Crain Communications—which considers Ad Age, along with Automotive News and another book or two, to be one of its signature properties. A commenter to Parker's post asks, "Could VNU/Nielsen be the problem?" and the answer, I think, is a qualified yes. Before VNU was bought out by a bunch of private equity guys, the focus was on cost-cutting, both because of the continued slump in circulation and ad pages that many magazines are experiencing, and because the company was public and on the block. Strategically speaking, I believe this was exactly the same time at which VNU, for the sake of the publications, should have been investing more in its magazines, particularly in the digital arena. Instead, from what I could tell, budgets kept shrinking, and vacated jobs weren't filled, leaving less people to do the same, or more, work. Under the recently re-branded Nielsen, things may—or may not—improve, but the sense from within the company is that all the private equity people are really interested in, is, understandably, Nielsen itself, a cash-cow and near monopoly. (After all, the powers-that-be renamed the company Nielsen, which is evidence enough.) Impossible to say what will happen of course, but both Adweek and Ad Age will be better off with each other than without each other.

Is your agency on Wikipedia? BBDO is.

Thought it might be interesting to see which agencies rate an entry on Wikipedia, and if your agency doesn't have one, better get cracking. I'm not saying that Wikipedia entries are the be-all- and-end-all, but since agencies tend to be fairly miserable at self-promotion, particularly in the digital realm, might be something you'd at least want to check in on in case a new business prospect gets misled by all of the shite printed out there about agencies. So here's the first in an ongoing series of what Wikipedia is saying about you. First up in alphabetical order—BBDO, because Arnold didn't seem to have one. Someone (or someones?) has been spending a lot of time on the shop's entry, which befits an agency that goes back to the 1920s (or 1891, depending on how you count it). There are even bios of the agency's founders. However, there is a 13-year gap in the last two entries about the agency's history. It only mentions 1994, when the shop was named Agency of the Year by Adweek and Ad Age, and then skips to 2007, when, gee whiz, the agency won another bunch of awards. No mentions in the intervening years of Cindy Crawford, David Lubars, or Andrew Robertson. Not a bad page, but it needs some work.

'Ad Age' says Dell's in review

Finally a review worth paying attention to. Ad Age is reporting that Dell has put its $760 million account up for grabs, in what thus far is a holding company shootout amongst the usual suspects: Omnicom, Interpublic, Publicis, Havas and WPP. Of course, recently, the company left BBDO Atlanta because of a perceived conflict with the agency's win of the BestBuy account, though, frankly, holding company-land is chock-a-block with conflicts and it didn't sound like the new marketing chief at Dell liked the BBDO work much anyway. The current campaign (above) is from Mother. The company also has relationships with MRM and Carat.

Hellman's: In search of real traffic

For the first time last night saw the new TV campaign for Hellman's Mayonnaise, which positions the Best Foods brand as real food under the "It's time for real" tagline. (You can see the spot here.) I was sort of intrigued because there seems to be a real food trend-let going on. There was a story in The New York Times Sunday Magazine a few months ago (which unfortunately, I couldn't find for this post), which posited that if people just started eating food that started its life as food—as opposed to food-like products such as Doritos and Gogurt—we could solve the obesity epidemic. Even if one doubts the health benefits of mayonnaise, at least it's a good sign that it goes bad pretty quickly if it's not put in the refrigerator. Anyway, I followed the campaign online, and even if the premise is in keeping with the times, the effort just goes to show that that doesn't a viral marketing program make. The company appears to have posted eight videos, mostly featuring guy cook Dave Lieberman, under insearchofrealfood on YouTube, starting two weeks ago—so far, all eight have a total of slightly more than 700 views. But the online hub of the campaign looks like this site at Yahoo Food, where Lieberman is taking what visitors there are on a virtual tour of cuisines of America. There are also opportunities to swap recipes, share "real food" videos (whatever that means), and participate in the inevitable "Real Food" blog, with posts written by Lieberman. But, just as with the YouTube site, the traffic is pitiful. The group on the site has roughly 850 members, and Lieberman has posted only seven times. Though one post garnered a healthy discussion on what real food is, the one that caught my eye was the post that had over 130 comments. Something, I figured, must be going on there. And it is: the majority of the comments are devoted to discussing how annoying a pop-up ad in support of the campaign is. It apparently was served to Yahoo email users and disrupted their email experience, with one frustrated user commenting, with reference to the upcoming Independence Day: "Yea, Dave. While you open your mouth about the upcoming celebration of our freedom, it seems that I'm denied the freedom of deleting your annoying commercial." Give Hellman's credit for leaving the comments up, but other than that, given that the demo for Hellman's is pretty much the whole country, there's something's wrong with this campaign. Looks like Ogilvy and Mather is the agency.

What the 'WSJ''s publisher has to say

Here's a link to a letter sent out at about 11 p.m. tonight from the publisher of The Wall Street Journal about the completion of the News Corp. deal. It's almost anti-climatic after these last few months, but now that it's done, it's hard not to wonder if this is in some sense a blueprint for the newspaper business at least in the (troubled) near-term. Despite the industry's current difficulties, newspapers--certain ones anyway--are incredibly prestigious properties to own, and there are certainly enough billionaires in the world to buy up the ones that matter. Whether those properties make money, when hidden inside vast conglomerates, is irrelevant, and thus the newspaper can continue on, in just the fashion that Rupert Murdoch has hung onto The New York Post all these years. It may not be a perfect solution, particularly if those new owners become meddlesome. But given the alternatives ...

Is Digitas China deal about outsourcing?

Almost lost in the headlines about Digitas and its sugar-daddy, Publicis, buying a major Chinese interactive company, CCG, is that it will also expand Digitas' three-month-old digital production arm, Prodigious, into China as well. Or is it really the other way around? My guess is that while one can yammer on all day about the potential of the digital market in China, one of the best near-term reasons to enter the market is to get access to a low-cost workforce that can build out digital advertising applications for clients all over the world at a fraction of the cost of employing North American or western European labor. For the most part, people in traditional advertising aren't attuned to the potential of outsourcing production overseas (well, there's not nearly as much to outsource), but digital shops including Organic and Critical Mass have been outsourcing—at least to Canada—for some time. Look for this to solidify Digitas' relationship with a lot of clients, particularly General Motors, which isn't exactly in a position to throw its money around.

Nokia sponsors "When laptops attack"

Just came across this completely ridiculous campaign for the Nokia NSeries and Nokia N5, featuring jealous laptops that attack people who own other devices that do many of the things laptops do. The above video, featuring a girl attacked in her dorm room, seems to be the most popular in the couple of weeks the campaign has been around, but there are also eight other videos so far. Meanwhile, the site jealouscomputers.com builds out the campaign with other "evidence" that laptops are on the attack. Though we've seen this kind of mock campaign before, it's hard not to belly laugh at the site of a laptop on the rampage.

YouTube makes viral more viral

Looks like YouTube launched a new interface this morning for all of the videos from the site that are embedded all over the Web—which, one can assume, only shows up after a user has played a video once. (See above, which is only a screenshot.) Like so many good ideas, it's really fairly simple—obvious even. The new interface makes it easier to get the code (that's the embed icon in the upper right), and the URL for a video and seed it yourself. The other obviously cool feature is the menu of related videos at the bottom of the screen. I stole this screen grab from a post I did last week on Dove's new hair campaign, and, as you can see, the related videos include the Dove "Evolution" video (along with a photoshopping of Britney Spears, but I'll spare all of us.) This is destined to have a big effect on YouTube traffic—it's as though the site just dispersed YouTube sitelets all over the Internet. How viral, dude.

'Mad Men' finds hype in a strange place

I've actually been liking "Mad Men" so far, but does anyone else snicker when, during one of the commercial breaks, the show's announcer intones that it is, "One of the best reviewed shows of the summer?" You mean against such tough competition as "America's Got Talent"? What an unintentionally hilarious advertising claim. Anyway, above is a preview of this week's episode. Credibility watch: don't you think the agency's retailing client would fire its ass on the spot given that none of the people on the account have been to the store?

Folger's newfangled celebrity endorsement deals

Nothing all that unique about this celeb-focused campaign from Folger's, for its Gourmet Selection coffees, but it still provides pretty much the blueprint for how celebrities are used in campaigns now that advertisers aren't limited to 30 seconds anymore. In this effort, featuring Grey's Anatomy's Chandra Wilson and woman-about-TV Lisa Ling, the Web site contains five clips of bonus footage each about the spokeswoman's lives. (One of the clips even tries to nail Lisa Ling on how much coffee she really consumes in a day. Sounds like a lot.) There's also a consumer-generated media effort, here. But isn't that so 2006?

VW's 'Bourne' tie-in not so supreme

I've seen reviews lately that compare The Bourne Ultimatum favorably to The French Connection, so it's kind of astonishing that this clip, which shows a car chase involving a VW Touraeg in the upcoming Matt Damon, um, vehicle, has gotten only less than 1700 views. It's not a great clip ... at 15 seconds way too short ... but, on the other hand, the brand bought the home page position on YouTube today. Shoulda done better.

Art directors at Publicis make $85K a year

Maybe some of you read The New York Times real estate section this weekend looking for a property to buy, but I was attracted to the cover story on those plucky New Yorkers, who, despite the immense handicap of not working on Wall Street, still managed to buy a place of their own, even if it's in some part of NYC that no aspiring power executive would have considered calling home back in the day. Which brings me to Amy Wegenaar, whose biggest problems in the apartment hunt were that she could only pay $250,000 and that she was worried about finding a place "large enough to fit her lunchbox collection, her Spiderman collection and her collection of Jack Skellington dolls in coffins from 'The Nightmare Before Christmas.'" Needless to say, she's an ad agency art director, who told the paper that her job at Publicis pays her roughly $85,000 per year. I always wonder about people who are so anxious to share their salary info with the entire NYT readership. What do you think the chit-chat was around the Publicis water cooler today? Anyway, Ms. Wegenaar can be found with her collections in a one-bedroom in Ditmas Park.

Michael Stipe should keep his day job

I mean I had a copy of "Murmur" (a vinyl copy, no less!) long before it was, um, fashionable, but Michael Stipe as a fashion model for Marc Jacobs does nothing for me, not even in some post-modern ironic way.

BusinessWeek names the top 100 global brands

BusinessWeek has a major package inserted within its "Pet Economy" issue this week covering the top 100 brands, which includes a lot of online-only content. These days that could mean that there weren't enough ad pages to be able to cover the topic adequately in the print issue, but I haven't seen it yet, so I shouldn't necessarily jump to conclusions. Here's a link to all of the content. Worth checking out are David Kiley's piece on five comeback brands, the five big winners and losers, the 100 global brands scorecard, and a Q&A with Google's vp/marketing.

Dancing martian gets night job

Kind of weird, but it looks like the dancing martian has a second gig. (OK, actually both advertisers are part of the Experian Interactive Family, which means that, if he isn't already, the martian will soon be showing up in ads for pricegrabber.com and freecreditreport.com. Or maybe he's a she.)

Steve Ballmer, Kevin Johnson on Microsoft's ad commitment

You'll be disappointed by his low-key entrance, but nonetheless it's worth a few minutes to check out what Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer had to say about its commitment to the advertising business last week at the software giant's Financial Analysts Day. There are links to the Webcast (which can only be streamed in Windows Media Player, natch) and Ballmer's Powerpoint presentation here. He starts in on the advertising discussion at about 20:45 on the Webcast, and then, goes deeper in at 24:00. The Financial Analysts Day site also contains a lengthier discussion of Microsoft's online advertising strategy from Kevin Johnson, president of platforms and services, who uses groovy graphics like the above to explain himself. You can access his speech and Powerpoint here.

Adverganza's Monday morning picks

A look at what the ad news is this morning. I'd say the bar for news today has been set pretty low.

From Ad Age:

—Account planners have to learn to play with others.
—Advertisers and MySpace are stuck with each other.
—A story about the diet drug Alli, which actually has released a commercial about its unfortunate pooping side effect. (See, I told you the bar was set pretty low.)
—StrawberryFrog might be bought ... by frogs!
—Jonah Bloom needs a vacation.

From Adweek (no print issue this week, so no trees were killed in reporting this news):

—A Q&A with Carat Americas CEO David Verklin, on last week's merger of Carat's digital and non-digital units, a story which Ad Age, seems to have ignored.
—Broadband it like Beckham: a look at how digital media is changing sports marketing.
—A close look at the RFP for the Sony PlayStation review reveals a brand at a "crossroads."

From The New York Times:

—Environmental groups try to pressure Home Depot into not advertising its "Eco Options" line on global-warming friendly Fox News.
—Ed Anger, who doesn't live anyway, will now only live online.

From Mediapost:

—A look at the pros and cons of asking an insurance guy to market Coke.
—McDonald's holds a concert tour—in its parking lots.
—A Q&A with Carat CEO Sarah Fay about last week's restructuring.

What we hear from The Delaney Report:

—Is USAA going into review?
—Is McGarryBowen looking to sell?