The demise of Cliff Freeman and Partners -- and a certain kind of TV ad

The demise of Cliff Freeman and Partners last week marks the end of an era in many ways. First, it in all likelihood is the end of a certain comedic style — unless Freeman manages to move elsewhere — and it is also another death knell for agencies which rely too much on TV commercials as the default medium for advertising. By some accounts, among the problems the shop faced was that its emphasis on traditional forms of media over digital ones wasn’t in favor with most clients. (The faltering economy certainly didn’t help either.)

Whatever the case, it’s hard to imagine that even commercials the caliber of Freeman’s could capture the pop culture zeitgeist the way that “Where’s the Beef?” did in 1984, or the gerbil being shot out of a cannon did for Cyberian Outpost during the dot-com boom. (Clara Peller, the then-octogenarian who appeared in that famous “Wendy’s” spot, is pictured above.) TV commercials don’t capture the popular imagination the way they once did; it’s another casualty of the era of micro-targeted media..

For the fun of it, below is an overlooked commercial Freeman did for Wendy’s while at Dancer Fitzgerald Sample. Take a look and have a laugh at “Russian Fashion Show”:

My BNET Media posts for the week of November 2, 2009

This week at BNET Media, I wax on about Conan O'Brien climbing in the trunk of a Ford Taurus, Jay Leno getting real, and "Southland" scaring NBC -- even though Halloween is over. Here in reverse chronological order, is some of the finest content on this side of the Adverganza:

• Jay Leno Admits He Would've "Preferred" to Stay on "The Tonight Show"
• Will Ferrell's "Funny or Die" Will Make Money on YouTube; No Illicit Uploaders Need Apply 
• TNT's "Southland" Could Become NBC's Post-Halloween Nightmare 
• Can "TV Everywhere" Become "Publishing Everywhere"? Jeff Bewkes Thinks So 
• "Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien" Clip Shows How Brand Integration Gets Done

Feel free to follow our feed on Twitter, @bnetmedia.

The Weezer Snuggie: It rocks ... and it's real

OK, just discovered this over at AdFreak. You can get the Wheezer Snuggie and their new CD for a lo, lo $29.95. I dare you not to watch.

Teaching social media workshop at Art Directors Club, Nov. 9

Just a quick heads up that I'm going to be teaching a social media workshop at the Art Directors Club of New York on Monday starting at 5, with the help of Greg Christman of Sam & Lori, otherwise known as @reelspit (I don't know why.) Our goal is to help people in advertising build their personal brands via blogging, Twitter and other tools. It's very hands-on -- attendees should really try to bring their own laptop so they can get their fingers dirty -- and will teach all anyone needs to know to be able to walk out of the room a few hours later with their own blog set up and a burgeoning Twitter presence. After that, your nefarious plan to rule the ad blogosphere is out of my hands.

The Social Media Insider looks at the social net-energized portals

In today's Social Media Insider, I ponder what it means when everyone of the Big Three portals — the latest being MSN — allows users to put their social nets on their home pages. In case you doubted it, the era of the portal is now officially done.

The Social Media Insider gets lost in the social media universe

Spent a long time today looking for a Social Media Insider column idea and discovered that the real problem was the information overload engine, which had overwhelmed by brain. Read more over at Mediapost. As a bonus, this column also makes reference to dead people on Facebook.

Publicis to stop creating print ads

At least that's my takeaway from Publicis Groupe CEO Maurice Levy's statement during the third-quarter earnings call that the agency holding company plans to become an "all-digital agency." And by the way, they'll be no analog radio or static billboards made at Publicis anymore, so there!

Seriously though, even as a believer in digital, I find proclamations of becoming all digital to be positively cringe-worthy because they have a "hook, line and sinker" quality to them that indicates those doing the proclaiming have had more than their fair share of of Kool-Aid. While it's true that all kinds of media are becoming more digital than less -- including such former stalwarts as TV, there's still a little something to be said for magazines, newspapers and other forms of analog media, isn't there? Isn't there?

Marital infidelity, now appearing on Sprint's Now Network

For reasons that escape me -- something to do with fatigue, I'm sure -- I ended up watching just a little "Desperate Housewives" last night, and thus, came across this brand integration scheme: the Another Desperate Housewife" series sponsored by Sprint's Now Network. Its connections to the actual show, no pun intended, are many: the mischievous music, perfect houses and great-looking people among them.

But, of course, there's also the philandering, and that's where this little homage gets, to me, very off base. Sprint phones figure prominently — as the means with which to prove that your spouse is cheating. So, next time you feel the urge to check up on them, I highly suggest that you use Sprint's Now Network to see if that  text message that just arrived is really from your husband's office. I understand the urge to seamlessly integrate programs with products these days, but do you really want to position your phone as a great way to spy on your spouse? I don't think so.

My BNET Media posts for the week of October 19, 2009

Let's hear it for blatant self-promotion! This week on BNET Media, I wrestled with Big Ads, NPR's Twitter followers, Balloon Boy and Fox News. Here, in reverse chronological order, are some damn fine posts:

• YouTube's New "Find Your Friends" Feature a Little Too Friendly 
• Is There a Fight Brewing Over Hulu's Business Model? 
• Rolex Ad on Newsweek Site Begs the Question: How Big Is Too Big? 
• Real-Time Search Isn't Yet What It's Cracked Up to Be 
• Will Fox News Cause Collateral Damage to News Corp.? 
• DVR Viewership in Primetime Is Very Consistent 16-17 Percent
• Film at 11! Nielsen Decides to Monitor TV and Internet Usage in the Same Homes! 
• NPR Has 1.3 Million Twitter Followers. How Many Does Your Media Property Have?
• Gawker Pays for Balloon Boy Story, 'National Enquirer' Loses Out 

You can follow our posts @bnetmedia if you want. Have a good weekend.

If you look really hard, maybe you'll see Derek Jeter

Something tells me there's a new series debuting on USA tonight.

So, what is the truth about Tony?

I've spent way too much time today trying to figure out what the point is of this video, "The Truth About Tony" which is currently on the Burger King site and presumably the work of one Crispin Porter + Bogusky. I get that the Tony in question, Tony Stewart, is a NASCAR guy who has an ongoing relationship with The King -- from an endorsement point of view. What I don't get is why, in this video, Tony undergoes a polygraph test, judging how truthfully he answers questions from viewers, closing with the inevitable BK questions -- about whether he loves the Whopper sandwich. (He does, and he didn't lie about it.)

OK, but at the beginning of this post, I said I couldn't figure out what the point of this was. Here are my questions:

1. Why would people sit through 15 minutes of this? It's at least that long.
   
2. Why can't you pause the version on BK.com, or or embed it?
3. Why does the page with the video on it not even indicate how long it is?
4. Why hasn't BK posted this to YouTube? (LiveStream, which provided the streaming for this, posted a blissfully abridged version.)
5. Did Old Spice and Office Depot, whose logos are prominently featured on Stewart's shirt, sign off on this BK stunt?

Anyone who can answer these questions, lemme know.

The Social Media Insider wonders if real-time search is all it's cracked up to be

If you did anything, anywhere on a social network today, you probably saw that Microsoft's Bing is starting to offer real-time search of tweets and Facebook status updates. The Social Media Insider asks if we should be quite so excited about this..

Ads that annoy: Volume 1, Windex

Just saw this Windex ad as a pre-roll to a preview of  "The Biggest Loser" at NBC.com. Not that the guy in this ad would qualify for the show, but do you really think, in the real world, he would snare this woman? (OK, maybe if he worked at Goldman Sachs.) This commercial had to have been concocted by men.

Verizon decides it's time to make fun of the iPhone on two fronts

With Apple still selling iPhones like there's no tomorrow -- it sold 7.4 million of them in the last quarter -- it's not exactly tme to kick the company in the teeth while it's down on its luck. So what's up with the two campaigns out right now from Verizon that make fun of the iPhone specifically, and iCulture in general?

The first is the campaign below for Verizon's new Motorola 'Droid phone; in the nanosecond that the campaign's been out, it's at least managed to gain some notoriety, even though all of those references to "iDon't" makes it sound, well, like a dumbphone unless you're paying attention. The references to iDon't are actually about the iPhone. More than 700,000 YouTube views later, here's the spot, which has led some to speculate that the endless poking of fun at the iPhone may kill any possibility of Verizon becoming an iPhone carrier too. (Damn!)




The second attacks the iPhone in a more obtuse way. In this one, a voiceover intones over and over that, "There's a map for that" instead of the iPhone-esque, "There's an app for that." The maps in question are really ones showing that Verizon's 3G coverage across the U.S. is much stronger than AT&T's — AT&T, of course, being the sole carrier for the aforementioned iPhone, which kind of lives for 3G.

My BNET Media posts for the week of October 12, 2009

Let's hear it for blatant self-promotion! This week on BNET Media, I wrestled with Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Balloon Boy, and clouds. In reverse chronological order, here's what I posted:

• Where's the Online Monetization Strategy for Balloon Boy? 
• Magazines, Newspapers, E-Readers And Device Fatigue 
• Hulu Is Starting to Show Itself the Money 
• Bloomberg's Acquisition of BusinessWeek Is Mostly Good News 
• The Atlantic's Great Idea About How to Use HP's MagCloud [Updated] 
• Nielsen Data Shows DVRs Are Great, and Awful, for Broadcast TV
• How Patient Will NBC Be About "The Jay Leno Show"? 
• Monday Morning Quarterbacking on the Closing of Gourmet 

Have a good weekend!

Is social media turning us into Whiner Nation?

In yesterday's edition of the Social Media Insider, which I write for Mediapost, I ponder whether social media is turning us into Whiner Nation. Pissed off at a big company? Make sure to whine about it! Preferably in public!

Some people have called this column "Spot on"; others "insulting" and "patronizing." You be the judge.

American Express learns it's not good to get Joseph Jaffe mad

Those of us in the marketing business already knew that it's not a good idea to make Joseph Jaffe mad. He's one of those people who has all of the tools at his disposal to spread bad news about a brand (and good news), virally. If you want to see what I mean, check out the video above, which he, of course, posted to YouTube, posted to his Jaffe Juice blog, and has tweeted to his more than 13,000 followers. I'd be surprised if American Express hadn't noticed this by now.

Estee Lauder will beautify your lowly social networking profile pic

Someone told me recently that the wonderful world of retouching has come to high school graduation pictures, and I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Being retouched to a fare-thee-well is now in reach of everyone! Even your 16-year-old who doesn't need it!

So, in this era of Photoshopping for the masses, it shouldn't be surprising — but is nonetheless a great idea — that Estee Lauder is about to bring a similar thing to the lowly social networking profile picture, while promoting itself to boot. According to Ad Age, the cosmetics company is now offering free makeovers and photo shoots for Web site profile pictures in a select group of department stores, such as Bloomingdale's New York, that carry its brand. The only "cost" for those who do it is having an Estee Lauder logo in the background on the picture, which to me seems like a minimal bother given how expensive it is to hire a makeup artist and photographer all by yourself. The brand is promoting it on its Facebook page, though the pictures themselves can appear wherever women in Estee Lauder's 35 to 55 year old target roam online.

So, will there be retouching? A little. Estee Lauder spokesperson Tara Weisenberg described it as "minor." Damn.

Pssst ... Want to learn how to blog? I'll tell you how

As I slowly resurrect this little thing called Adverganza, thought I'd post about a course I'm teaching out in Westchester (New York, gang, not Pennsylvania), tomorrow night covering the basics of how to use social media tools such as blogs and Twitter. Is this stuff hard? Nah. But occasionally people think it is, so this course aims to walk people through enough of the ropes to feel comfortable dipping their toe into social media for themselves. Maybe, by the end, everyone will have even sent their first tweet. Here are the details:

When: Oct. 8, 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.
Where: The Bakery at Four Corners, 4668 Boston Post Road, Pelham Manor, NY
Price: $20 (wine will be served, but drunk blogging is strictly prohibited)

To register, go to this link and scroll down to the course titled, "Blogging Boot Camp and Twitter Too ... " or contact Lynda LaMonte Garmong at lynda@thebetterclass.com.

Thanks all. Now back to coverage of advertising.

ANDYs Randy for Crowdsourcing Jury

So, I'm reading tonight about the decision by ANDY Award co-chairs Ty Montague and Michael Lebowitz (JWT and Big Spaceship, respectively) to crowdsource the jury, actually a kind of obvious step when you think of where things are headed -- to one big crowdsourcing of everything, from advertising ideas to what to have for lunch. So what the hell, go to electthejury.com and cast your votes.

Among other things, what the duo is hoping for is: "a more accurate, fair snapshot of what has been done in the past year," according to Montague. I'm not sure about that. I stuffed my ballot box with AKQA's Rei Inamoto, because he has such a cool name; John Jay to fill the Wieden + Kennedy requirement; Simon Waterfall, because he just left his agency and doesn't have much to do; Ogilvy's Lars Bastholm because he's Lars Bastholm; and Jimmy Wales because if he ever sat for an advertising awards show I'd plotz.

The story about all this in Adweek of course led some advertising types to speculate about creative directors at big agencies getting their minions to vote early and often, thus skewing the jury, and ultimately, of course, the awards. Ah the cynicism.C'mon, I checked the site out and you can only vote once ... per day.

It occurred to me that what Montague and Lebowitz really ought to do is eliminate the jury entirely and just crowdsource the entire show. You know, cut out the middleman.