.. the point in this article. He talks about Travelocity’s new campaign using a stolen lawn gnome sending back pictures of itself on vacation. He says that this mostly British idea will be lost on American viewers.

While lawn gnomes aren’t very American, the idea didn’t come from the British, but from a french film Améile which was quite popular here, particularly among the crowd Travelocity seems to want to attract. Recognizing that relatively obscure reference is part of the fun of the idea. It is also very relevant to the brand.

That being said, I am not terribly fond of the commercial.

This is an exception for Garfield. I love reading him each week and he is usually spot on.

The Bush in :30 ad was rejected by CBS for the superbowl. It should still air at least during Bush’s state of the union address on Tues.

CBS claimed that they don’t show issue ads due to their policy. Last year the insane ads equating drugs with terrorism were shown during the superbowl, but CBS didn’t have the superbowl that year. Still, I find it hard to believe that no issue ads ever air on CBS.

Calpundit asks if all the networks have similar policies and how issue ads ever get played. This comment appears to provide the answer: the campaigns and political groups buy time from the local affiliates, not the national networks. That actually makes sense; it has been said that all politics is local. The only national race is for president, and that is usually fought state by state. It is rare to have a national issue ad like the one from MoveOn.

I was thinking about Howard Dean’s wife since I read this profile of her in the times and the subsequent blogger commentary. And now she has come to her first campagin event.

There was a lot of talk about how her staying in Vermont hurt her husband’s campaign. She won’t be out there to help “humanize” Dean and make him seem more familiar to people. But people seem to know more about her than any of the other candidates wives. How much do we know about Jane Gephardt (I had to look her name up)? We only know about Teresa Heinz Kerry because of her money. Staying out of Howard’s campaign gives the media a story.

None of this is intentional. I imagine Judy would stay home taking care of her patients no matter what. But having a wife dedicated to being a doctor, who is staying mostly out of politics, yet getting covered has to help Howard’s campaign.

Studio 360 did a radio show on advertising this week. The most interesting piece was one on advertising jingles.

For anyone who has ever had a song stuck in their head, it is certainly easy to see how jingles can be effective. A jingle can act as sort of a audio logo, making you think of the product and its benefits whenever you hear it.

The radio program points out that jingles were repeated over and over again to be effective. They explain that the reason you don’t see a lot of them now is that advertising is a lot more cluttered and diversified. You used to be able to play an ad on the three networks and everybody saw it. Now people not only go to the bathroom, but often change the channel or use TiVo. An advertiser also has to buy a lot more time on a many more diverse channels. The public is frankly more fed up. Jingles can get annoying and no one likes to have a song stuck in their head.

Now when advertisers use music, they tend to use an already popular song, borrowing interest. Sometimes this is used effectively, as with Chevy’s appropriation of “Like a Rock,” but usually this falls flat. How many commericals used Aretha Franklin’s “Natural Woman”? It’s kind of like using a celebrity; It can work very well, and certainly gets more people to pay attention, but if it isn’t relevant it falls flat.

There are still examples of “audio logos,” although they tend to be much shorter. NBC can be recognized by their classic 3 notes the way Nabisco can be recognized by its color red. You just see very few full fledged jingles anymore.

The show also has a great interview with George Lois, where he talks “I want my MTV” and how the idea came from an old ad slogan. They also discuss how MTV was in a way nothing but ads for the music.

You’ve probably seen Apple’s original 1984 Macintosh ad, shown 20 years ago. The ad is now considered the greatest commercial ever made. Apple celebrated the anniversary with a new version. The woman is wearing and iPod, and the screen now says 2004 instead of 1984.

The ad has a very interesting history. (via this slashdot comment). Apple’s board at the time almost killed the ad.

Here’s another article about the ad. (via yet another slashdot comment)

And one of the print ads for the original Macintosh. There isn’t anything creative about this ad, but it is interesting to see how they had to explain what a mouse and a GUI was. No one had ever seen anything like it before. (Via another slashdot comment)

(As you might be able to guess, I got this from a slashdot article on the original Macintosh).

… in the Bush in :30 contest: Child’s Play.

The writer was unsurprisingly an advertising creative. Charlie Fisher is the creative director at Leo Barnett in Copenhagen (Thanks to adland for the link), although he is originally from Denver. As this AdAge article mentions, the agency emphasizes that he did this on his own time.

It wasn’t my favorite, but it is a very good ad. I think three of the remaining ads, Child’s Play, In My Country and Poylgraph were all excellent and the decision should have been largely based on strategy.

The decision was indeed strategically wise. The winning ad criticizes Bush for creating enormous debts, an concern for both liberals and conservatives. It doesn’t attack Bush personally or sound like a rant. Libertarian Radley Balko doesn’t “…really even see how conservatives could have a quarrel with it.”

The only disadvantage to this strategy is that fiscal policy is generally boring. This as is obviously an exception, but the discussion it generates is bound to be dry. Contrast this to the anti-war ads which talk of presidents lying and soldiers dying. This is one of the reasons I picked “Bring it On” as my favorite.

My favorite was pulled and therefore ineligible. MoveOn put up a notice saying that the ad was removed “at the request of its creator” for “copyright reasons,” without specifying further. But thanks to this article I found out that:

Two days before leaving for New York, [[ad creator]] Cuenca, concerned that some of the soldiers’ parents might object to photos of their sons or daughters being used without consent, withdrew his entry from consideration.

Not really a copyright issue. And too bad. I liked the ad. Unlike the winning ad (and Polygraph) it was low budget and didn’t look polished. Which goes to show that a good idea matters more than any production values in an ad. (Thanks to Joe Sims’ comment in The Agitator for that link.)

Now MoveOn wants to run the ad during the superbowl. They probably have enough money, even though they sent me an e-mail hitting me up for more. That should generate even more publicity, not to mention get a really good ad to even more people. I hope MoveOn can serve some followup content from their site talking about Bush’s reckless spending, which they can mention at the end of the ad. I also hope they make sure to get enough server power to deal with an inevitable superbowl rush.

That man not happen at all though since:

A spokesman for CBS said the Viacom-owned network has received the request from MoveOn to run the ad in the Super Bowl, but added that the ad has to go through standards and practices before CBS will say if it can run an advocacy ad during the game. The spokesman said he didn’t think it was likely that the spot would pass standards and practices.

But Oliver “seem[s] to remember the Drugs = Terrorism ads running during halftime.” (via Xoverboard).

This contest was a fantastic idea. I really had no time before the deadline, but I am still kicking myself for not entering.

See that e-mail link on the top right, it should look the same, but it has in fact changed. Spam bots shouldn’t able to harvest that address now. Hopefully that should cut back on spam.

My e-mail isn’t written anywhere in the source code. It is written using javascript. One could just simply have javascript write out the code like this:

<script LANGUAGE="JavaScript">
  user = "jeremy";
  site = "scharlack.com";
  document.write('<a href=\"mailto:' + user + '@' + site + '\">');
  document.write('jeremy &lt;at&gt; scharlack &lt;dot&gt; com<a>');
</script>

But that wouldn’t be paranoid enough. So I found this site which will generate my e-mail address from an encrypted cypher:

<script type="text/javascript" language="javascript">
<!--
// eMail Obfuscator Script 2.1 by Tim Williams - freeware
{
 	coded = "to3owd@5mrk3vkmu.myw"
		cipher = "aZbYcXdWeVfUgThSiRjQkPlOmNnMoLpKqJrIsHtGuFvEwDxCyBzA1234567890"
		shift=coded.length
		link=""
		for (i=0; i<coded.length; i++){
			if (cipher.indexOf(coded.charAt(i))==-1){
				ltr=coded.charAt(i)
				link+=(ltr)
			}
			else {     
				ltr = (cipher.indexOf(coded.charAt(i))-shift+cipher.length) % cipher.length
				link+=(cipher.charAt(ltr))
			}				
    }
			document.write("<a href='mailto:"+link+"'>jeremy &lt;at&gt; scharlack &lt;dot&gt; com</a>")
    }
//-->
</script>

My first impression when I saw the new Chevy ad on TV was: Holy Shit, that looks expensive.

Indeed neither GM nor their agency Campbell-Ewald appeared to spare too many expenses in the Michael Bay directed spot. It is part of a launch of their new cars and trucks and for the first time in a while they seem to be doing something interesting for their brand.

The new campaign was criticized by both Bob Garfield and Barbra Lippert (Lippert’s critique was free yesterday, but I can only seem to find paid version today). Garfield describes Chevy’s brand image up until this point:

Chevy has had no image. Alfred P. Sloan’s stylish entry-level brand has become the family values/rugged/Americana/ economy/muscle-car/lunchpail/rock music/country music/plastic-piece-of-crap division. All things, that is, to fewer and fewer people.

and rightly praises them for doing something, anything, for their brand. It’s a good idea to focus on the Americana of the brand, since that is basically what they have left.

Garfield likes a smaller, funnier ad in the campaign better than the big splashy one. That ad does show off their best new vehicle, and it does it in a very amusing way. I however feel like when you make this kind of an introduction, you need to make a big impact, with an expensive but well shot ad. I much rather have the first ad in my book, but the seeing the latter makes me more impressed with the new Chevys.

The exception to Chey’s lousy branding has been their trucks, which have successfully used the “Like a Rock” tagline to describe their brand as tough, rugged and American. The work has been uninspiring but effective.

The problem is that the GM brands, which were very relevant in the fifties, are now obsolete. Chevy used to be lower end, but striving and working class. This fit well with the trucks and the cars. Now they have such a variety of vehicles under the Chevrolet name, that they have to brand each one as well as the Chevy brand, which they understandably don’t want to give up on. Unlike Olsmobile, which is now dead, but used to be a thriving brand referring to the upscale, but not quite as good as Cadillac, line of cars for the successful but conservative banker, doctor or lawyer. Cadillac has sort of kept its high end image, but now means “old” as much as “high end,” Pontiac, and to a certain extent still is, the younger, sportier line, but their cars clearly suck so much the brand is barely relevant. I almost forgot to mention Buick, and I have forgotten what Buick was even supposed to mean as a brand.

That is of course the main problem: American cars suck. Other than the SUVs and Pickups they have been doing horribly. Few people I know consider buying from GM. The new SSR is cool and this new campaign could definitely give a jolt to the Chevy brand, but they have a ways to go to convince me that Chevy is anything more than a catch-all brand riding on past glories.

After remarking that Apple “seems determinedly intent on fucking itself over” explaining

I’ve never edited a movie in my life, never mastered a video DVD, and never even considered making a multi-track music recording. Neither have you, if I might be permitted to play the odds here. By aiming its media tools at creators instead of consumers, Apple is either confusing Jobs’ Pixar coworkers and celebrity friends for normal people, or deciding that its long-time 5% market-share is too big.

Mike Koslowski was then criticized by Patrick Nielsen Hayden and Ginger Stampley saying basically that they do in fact want to create, and so do plenty of people they know.

Mike then responds:

Apple knew this was coming. In 2001, they announced their vision of the PC as “digital hub”, and I gaped: Yes, exactly, that was it. This integration and convergence was the next great challenge facing the industry, and if Apple focused on it, they could create the future.

…

But they didn’t. They got sidetracked with their vision of content creation, which is fine for those who are going to use those apps, but leaves the rest of us waiting for the future to arrive. And, as a side effect, cuts Apple out of the picture when the future does get here. None of those devices that are being introduced at CES have Apple logos. Many of them won’t even work with a Mac. Meanwhile, Microsoft is rapidly developing and expanding its Media Center software (currently at its second version; and we know what that folklorically means for the next version), and working with oodles of consumer electronic manufacturers to release devices that work well with their software.

Well Apple has hardly been slacking with itunes, has just announced several (much needed) improvements to iphoto, and expanded its hightly successful ipod line (not that I really like the new mini ipods), all of which Mike had previously praised. These have also been far more successful than, for example, Microsoft Media Center.

It is also worth noting that all of the creation apps he criticizes are based on professional apps: iMovie comes from Final Cut Pro, iDVD comes from DVD Studio Pro, and GarageBand comes from Soundtrack. These professional apps have all been highly successful with real content cretors. Apple had to put considerably less effort into making these apps than if they had to start from scratch (the way a company like Microsoft would). It should be noted though that Apple didn’t start from scratch even on the pro apps: they brought applications from other companies and developed them further (they did the same with iTunes).

No matter how much I might use them, I am simply glad to see these apps on my computer. I have only used iMovie a few times, but I am glad it’s there and is simple enough that I don’t have to use it all the time to learn it. I have also used Final Cut Pro, at least until it crashed my computer (it was an older version, acquired totally legitimately), and I use Photoshop daily, so I may not be typical, but even I, who have never made anything musical in my life, am very interested in GarageBand. I remember using a similar program, FruityLoops, as while back on a PC, and although I never got anywhere with it, it was fun.

Apple also includes an extra CD, Developer Tools, with its OS. I have done a little programming, and I am generally geeky, but I certainly don’t ever plan on developing my own Mac apps. I installed it anyway (mostly to get the compiler), and I poked around a bit. There’s some cool stuff there. I am glad I installed it and I am glad Apple provides it.

Via Jim Henley, who has discussed this before without coming down on either side.

Take a look at this guy’s site. Cinematography and photography in free fall from an airplane. He has done many notable commercials and movies including the first Charlie’s Angels and the Pepsi Super Bowl commercial with the goose. I thought they mostly used CG, but according to this, they actually shot quite a bit of footage in the air.

If you see nothing else, take a look at his reel.

Interesting proposal for a way to get WiFi even more places from Cringely via Slashdot.

He basically proposes to give people free wireless routers and cards which can then be programmed to let others on for a fee. This would allow wireless access to spread widely without a lot of investment or negotiation.

A good idea but I see a couple problems with this:

1. Broadband providers probably won’t be thrilled with customers sharing their bandwidth
2. These would most likely increase WiFi coverage in residential areas, but customers probably want it more in commercial areas, near their offices and hotels

The first issue is fairly easy to solve. Cringely mentions Speakeasy as an ISP which does allow bandwidth sharing. He thinks others will follow, but I suggest going right to the ISPs. They could provide wireless routers for free to customers provided they help build the WiFi network. However, I believe some ISPs rely on the fact that most people don’t use their connection most of the time, which is why they are weary of others using it as well.

The second issue is a little hard to resolve. You could give free equipment to business as well or course, but the equipment is more complex and expensive. Business also probably use more of the bandwidth they pay for at least during working hours. It might work with small offices, but not with even medium sized ones, not to mention stores and hotels.

Not a bad idea though. I do hope we get a comprehensive wireless network soon, and I predict we will.

Apparently:

Movie credits, which used to last an average of three to four minutes, have joined the list of other things in Hollywood — like egos and salaries — suffering from inflation. Once, moviemakers considered anything longer than seven minutes — the credits for “Titanic” and “Waterworld” were in that range — to be pushing the bounds of propriety and audience patience.

So what? It’s not like you have to stay and watch, unless it’s a Jackie Chan flick. Besides there are often plenty of legitimate reasons for crediting all sorts of people:

In independent film shorts, for example, where many people work without being paid and a screen credit is their only form of compensation, credits can sometimes last a fourth as long as the short itself. In some movies with limited budgets, travel agencies and other companies are sometimes given credit — in essence free advertising in a prestigious format — if they agree to work for less.

Besides movie credits are useless these days anyway.

…we’d like to see. Via Adrants.

Some are funny, some make little sense, and some might eve make good real ads. Many are just plain stupid of course, but it’s an amusing site nonetheless.

That’s what I keep telling myself.

I plan to become an art director, someone who decides what an ad should look like.

From my work I knew a lot of art directors, but I wanted to learn more about what they really did. So I took a class last semester. I did pretty well and more importantly enjoyed myself. Tonight I am going to an open house to decide what other class to take.

I will use this space to show my portfolio as it is being built and to talk about current ads, classic ads and the industry in general as I learn more. Wish me luck.

I have been meaning to write about this for a while since it combines two my biggest interests: Advertising. I figured now, when I got to vote on the runoff ads for “Animated,” “Youth,” and “Comic”.

They have the final 15 up on the home page. Make that 14. They seemed to have removed my Favoirte (although they still seem to have it on the site: low bandwith too). I have posted it here as well.

I am only showing one frame of this ad, but that is all I really need to show. There is black and white footage of Bush lying about WMDs and Saddam’s ties with Al Queda overlaid with flashing images of soldiers who have died in the Iraq war. The music is the sober tune they play at a soldiers funeral (I forget what it is called).

The ad has a clear and effective message, delivered simply. You get it right away; You could be running off to the bathroom and you’d get it. The headline (which could also be the tagline) says it all and rhymes too. The music helps the ad grab you emotionally and the simple presentation keeps you from getting bored. Congratulations to Mike Cuenca and the The Civil Society Group.

The emotional pull of Bush lying getting us into a war where many Americans gave their lives is obviously effective since it was used in 4 of the final ads including my second favorite. That ad has higher production values than the first, and just as much emotional impact, but I liked the simplicity of the tag/headline “He Lied. They Died.”

Another ad I quite liked, In My Country, tackles a different topic: the Patriot act and our shrinking freedom. This would be a good ad to run if the criticizing the Iraq war lies turns out to be a bad strategy.

I got to vote on my favorite ad in the first round of voting, where I saw a bunch of other ads as well. Most of them, of course sucked. It wasn’t the production values that made them bad; it was the ideas. Studying advertising I have learned that simple effective ideas are what make a great ad. It may be nice to have a slickly produced commercial, but a good idea can be sketched out on a piece of paper and be effective.

Calpundit links to a funny sedup of the ads. This show a lot of the problems with a lot of the ads (even many of the finalists), such as the omniscient narrator, a staple of hack political ads, saying something like “Bush has blah blah blah.. and we wont stand for it”. Like this parody, many of the ads also try to cover too much. I am quite aware that Bush is awful in many different ways, but an effective ad sticks to one idea, and gets it across effectively. If you want to make two point, get two ads. The most noticeable part of the parody was the gradual slide in to simply calling Bush names. None of the real ads I saw were this bad of course, although some were close. I know Bush deserves all these names, but when you are trying to convince someone about how bad Bush is, stick to the facts. There are plenty of good facts to use against Bush.

These ads are currently being judged by a celebrity panel. There are quite a few good names there, but I am a little disappointed that they didn’t have anyone from and ad agency. A creative director or agency principal could really ad some insight that actors, authors, musicians and political consultants might miss. I hope they pick one and run one of my top pics. A great ad can really change peoples perception.

That brings me to a new topic: I have just created an Advertising category for this blog where I will have more discussions about ads. Enjoy.