Maret 2011

Opening Day 2011

The economy is still in the toilet. Somewhere, asteroids are heading toward Earth. Web pornography is warping the minds of our children. Grown men and women are relentlessly Tweeting each other. Yes, my friend, the end is near.

But who gives a damn?

It's Opening Day. I'm going to have a hot dog and a beer. I'm going to sit in the sunshine till the back of my neck is red and raw and my ass

Advertising's Cranky Senior Citizens

I generally read two kinds of advertising blogs -- those written by young people who are enthusiastic about the business, and those by old people who are fed up.

I am very happy that there are young people who are excited by the prospects for the ad industry. I salute their spirit and their optimism. I hope they are right.

But this post isn't about them. It's about advertising's cranky senior

We Were Only Kidding

MEMO
To:          The Ad Industry
From:     Phi Theta Gamma
Subject: Only Kidding
Date:       March 28, 2011

Okay. We're sorry. We were just kidding.

We know we may have confused some people. And some of you may have actually blown some money, but we really didn't mean any harm. We just thought of it as a stupid joke.

Honestly, we really didn't imagine anyone would take this stuff seriously

Who's Next?

This has been an interesting week here at Ad Contrarian world headquarters.

It was a week we devoted to one story - Pepsi's Refresh Project.

It was also our busiest week ever -- lead by a landslide of interest in Monday's post called Social Media's Massive Failure.

The story seemed to grow as the week went on, with more people reading it Thursday than Monday. The interest in the story,

Social Media Hysterics

We ad people tend to be tough old birds. We're kinda used to getting the crap kicked out of us and don't get all huffy when we read about our chronic stupidity.

The social media crowd is -- as they say -- a whole nother story. Based on my experience at this blog, they tend to be a bunch of bedwetters who go all vaporous every time someone calls them a doodyhead.

A lovely example occurred

The Pepsi Follies

"Pepsi BashFest 3000" continues here today at Ad Contrarian world headquarters.

For over three years we have been documenting the marketing follies at PepsiCo.

On July 29, 2009, we said...
"It seems like the brand babblers have taken over at Pepsi, and they are screwing it up royally....It will take a while (like it does in all big organizations) for someone with a brain to realize what's been

Finally, The True Value Of A Facebook Fan

In days of yore, people were consumed by questions about the existence of God, or the nature of the universe, or the fate of mankind. Today, however, we face a problem that is apparently even more vexing: What the heck is the value of a Facebook fan?

Based on the alarming amount of literature on the topic, this seems to be very nettlesome to today's highly sensitive marketing professionals.

Social Media's Massive Failure

For several years there has been consensus among a very vocal and highly placed group of marketing executives and commentators that fundamental changes have taken place in our culture and in technology which render traditional modes of marketing communication no longer relevant or effective.

The thinking behind the hypothesis goes like this:
Marketing is a "conversation."
People are no longer

Sales: 1,000,000,000. Conversations: 0

I read a wonderful piece this week by a guy named Jonathan Salem Baskin. It was called The iPad of Air Care.

The piece was about Fabreze, an "air care" product from Proctor & Gamble that's about to hit a billion dollars in sales in spite of never having had a single "conversation" (i.e., social media interaction) with a single customer.

I urge you to read the entire piece, but I'm going to

Security Is Always An Illusion

In light of the disaster going on in Japan, let's take a moment to realize how little we are and how little we matter.

The universe hardly knows we exist. In cosmic terms, to say that our planet is a speck of dust is to exaggerate its importance a billion fold.

We've all heard about the hundreds of billions of galaxies in our universe. Each of these galaxies contains hundreds of billions of

The Web And I

Like every human being who has ever drawn a breath, I feel myself to be misunderstood.

People think I hate the internet. I don't.

What I hate is bullshit. And among the world's leading bullshit artists for the past decade have been internet advertising hustlers.

Most people don't seem to appreciate the point I often make that although the web may be a hugely successful and influential force in