How to improve upon TED's "Ad Worth Spreading"

As you may have noticed, last week the TED conference named the winners of its "Ads Worth Spreading" contest, a TED-esque spin on that hoary institution, the advertising award. It's an intriguing idea, if for no other reason than this particular contest doesn't seem to have been dreamed up by the advertising industry. It also stands out because, in a world where ad awards are given out for every sub-category imaginable, this competition focuses simply on ads (of no one, specified length) that the judges deemed worth sharing with other people. Nice. Isn't that the bottom line?  (A video describing why "Ads Worth Spreading" came about is above.)

But, if you were to assume that this meant the judges would lie outside the industry, you'd be wrong. And that's how TED can improve on this idea, assuming this becomes an annual contest -- "Ads Worth Spreading" simply cries out for judges who aren't in the industry, or at least a roster that includes a healthy dose of people who are noteworthy because they have little insight into the ins and outs of advertising and its sibling businesses like design, and communications.

Don't get me wrong -- some of this year's judges, like Goodby's Barbara Lippert, Socialistic's Colleen DeCourcy and CP+B's Jeff Benjamin -- are among my favorite people in the ad world, but I think we'd all benefit from knowing what other members of the TED-erati think of what the industry creates.

Maybe the results would be the same as what came out this time around. The panel selected truly wonderful work from agencies including Wieden + Kennedy for Chrysler, Nike and Nokia, Mother NY and Legs Media for Target, Venables Bell and Partners for Intel -- you get the drift. Of course, this meant a relative scarcity of winners from the behemoths that run the industry: The only big, New York-based agency that made the top ten was Ogilvy -- for a truly moving ad for The Topsy Foundation from its Johannesburg office. (The full list is here.)

But I always wonder how much of what we decide we like in the industry is pre-determined by what we know. Do we subconsciously like "Born of Fire," the Chrysler spot that won here -- and received critical acclaim after it aired on the Super Bowl -- because the industry (understandably) loves Wieden + Kennedy? Conversely, do we poo-poo work from industry behemoths because they are industry behemoths?

It's hard to say, which is why next year, I'd love to see TED populate its judges list for "Ads Worth Spreading" with TED-ders like Mark Bittman, or John Doerr, or Dave Eggers. God knows, there are dozens to choose from. After all, if ads are to be truly worth spreading, they have to be deemed worth spreading beyond the confines of the insular industry that created them.

Today in stupid: The Grammys

Unfortunately, finding media and advertising companies who do things that aren't in keeping with the times (pun!) is like shooting fish in a barrel. Still, you have to hand it to the Grammys for attaining a level of cluelessness rarely reached even by the dumbest old media company. Sunday night's show was the best-rated in about a decade; the performances are essentially music videos, but as AllThingsD's Peter Kafka points out, you can't get any of the performances online, unless you happen to go on YouTube during the nanosecond before an illegally-loaded clip gets pulled down.

Come to think of it, this isn't the first year where I've tried to find Grammy clips during the morning after. The best I could do today was a 7-second clip on the HuffPo of Christina Aguilera falling down after the show's Aretha Franklin tribute, and a brief look at Gwyneth Paltrow and Cee Lo Green in one of the stranger duets in a show full of them.

The Grammys refusal to post clips of the show is impossible to understand on several levels:

1. There's a huge appetite to see parts of the program the next day, either because you couldn't believe what you saw the first time or because you want to know what you missed.
2. Video clips like those on the Grammys are extremely monetizable. Do you know how easy it should be to sell some pre-roll before a Grammy musical performance? Hell, call Chrysler and get them to buy the pre-roll before Eminem's performance!
3. Once the show is over, the content is more or less worthless, unless, of course, you notice that this thing called the Internet could keep the content paying dividends for quite some time. We're used to the cannibalization arguments that often are the reason content producers are cautious about distributing their shows on the Web. But in this case it just doesn't apply.

According to Kafka, the Grammys are citing some mealy-mouthed stuff about the complications over rights as the reason why these clips aren't in broad, revenue-producing circulation. Whatever. Though I'm not saying much that Kafka didn't say already, I would like to at least take the extra step of giving the show an award: Grammys -- you're the winner of today in stupid!

Should Adverganza come back from the dead?

So, I'm trying to figure out whether to revive this little thing called Adverganza, which, once upon a time, had a bit of traction in the crowded marketplace for advertising blogs. It went comatose because of my craven need to actually make money blogging, and also, because of time -- or lack thereof. The bottom line -- that's almost a pun -- is that once I was getting paid to blog at BNET, it became pretty hard to justify blogging here. Still, I missed it.
Yes, in the macro-sense, I should have kept blogging here, continuing to build the epic that is My Personal Brand. But reality begged to differ. As a Mom of two kids who tries mainly to work only when they're in school, everything is about the micro -- the crucial act of getting everyone through the day. My work day comes to a hard stop once the kids are out of school, so there's no time to waste on frivolous, non-profit blogging! It's all about getting work done for the people who pay me, to whom I'm eternally grateful because they've allowed me some modicum of balance. I don't know of any woman who has been able to build the career I have while still driving the afternoon soccer practice and doing a little too much volunteer work at the elementary school
But now things have changed, yet again. Friday was my last post for BNET, and yet, as I said in that post, stopping blogging is unthinkable; it's a reflex, like breathing. I've been blogging since 2004, when we started AdFreak over at Adweek, and so typing some thoughts into a little box and hitting "Publish" is like second nature. It's just what I do.
Perhaps the best thing, on a personal level, about blogging on a daily basis (my weekly Social Media Insider column for Mediapost  will continue), is that it's a daily discipline of collecting and analyzing the news. Without that, if you're as accustomed to blogging as I am, you begin to feel untethered, like a balloon that has slipped out of someone's hand and has started drifting aimlessly skyward. Blogging grounds me in what I do, which I have come to need -- particularly since I work from home. As anyone who does knows, it's a daily struggle to stay on task when there is not only paying work to do, but laundry to start, a cat to let out, doctors' appointments to make, and so forth. Knowing that somehow I had to push out at least one post every day gives it all a sense of structure.
That said, if I'm to revive Adverganza, it really shouldn't be about me, but about the people who used to read this. If it were to come back, would anyone care? Or have the last two and a half years, in which this blog was pretty much on hiatus, made it not worth the effort? And what if another paying blog gig catches my eye? Will I abandon this again or be able to rethink how I spend my time, and find a way to squeeze Adverganza in? And, is there a way for me to make money at this? (Damn, back to the money again!)
I ask all these questions in public because they've been swirling through my mind for weeks now, with no real answers emerging. If you've got one, let me know.

Conan gives Groupon the parody ads it deserves

Granted, the Groupon campaign that launched on the Super Bowl is pretty low-hanging fruit, but you gotta love this series of five spoof ads (so far) produced by the gang at Conan. All manner of human and animal tragedy is exploited: the Hindenburg, SARS, the BP oil spill, Saddam's reign of terror in Iraq. Between that, the hilariously bad puns, and the sheer number of ads, these get successively funnier. It also makes you wonder if, in fact, there is such a thing as bad publicity.

I'm still an ad expert, per USA Today

Hi all. I know I haven't weighed in here in awhile ... A long while, but as this is Adverganza, thought I should at least share this link from USA Today to what the so-called experts, including me, thought of this year's Super Bowl ads. By and large, though the newspaper didn't ask the question, I thought this year's crop was really disappointing. VW Darth Vader ad? Cute, but ultimately, meh!

Case in point, my favorite spot wasn't actually a spot, but a promo for "House." Below.



I also dug Eminem's spot for Chrysler. Wrote about that over here. OK, back to work for which people pay me.

Sergio Zyman tells "The Daily Show" the ugly truth about Coke's "Mean Joe Greene" commercial

Had to share this clip of ex-Coke executive Sergio Zyman on "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" last night. The context: correspondent John Oliver tries to identify what those simpler times were that keep being looked back on nostalgically by some media talking heads. What follows is something you might not know or remember about the classic "Mean Joe Greene" spot for Coke. Whether Zyman realizes this is a joke or not is something I can't really discern.

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.