Hasta La Creative!

If you’ve ever read the comments in any moderately popular YouTube clip, you’ll be forgiven for losing a bit of faith in human intelligence.

So its quite interesting to read the issues discussed here.

In particular, they talk about the process of disemvoweling. Which is basically a way to censor stupid/rude/nonsensical comments in online communities. The offending comments aren’t removed, but the vowels in the sentence string are.

More on disemvoweling here.

This doesn’t seem to be a brand new technique, but one that seems like a happy medium between draconian heavyhandedness and a laissez faire free-for-all in online spaces.

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(TrendHunter.com) I’d like to preface my introduction to this cluster with the disclaimer that I fully appreciate every one of the art stools, seats and chairs featured below. There are even several I’d love to own. That…

(TrendHunter.com) The Victoria and Albert Museum took Swishing–the practice of exhanging chic fashions with friends–to a higher level. Stylists were invited to help the fashion swappers get their best look.

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There are times when a brand misses its cue. Sometimes it’s worse than that. Sometimes the brand offends. That’s what happened when Motrin (whose site is down at this time) ran an ad that offended, of all people, moms.

You don’t want to get moms mad. Look what happened to drunk drivers.

Here’s but one of many responses to the ad emerging from the ether:

Andy Beal says Motrin should follow his steps for apologizing: be sincere, be transparent, and be consistent.

Motrin needs to quickly apologize–before this reaches the mainstream media–and then do some damage control–perhaps find the most vocal detractors and bring them on board to quickly story-board an alternative video.

What can the rest of us learn from this? Never assume you know your target audience. Never assume that just because you’ve created something “viral” that the sentiment will always be positive. And, always build your social media campaign with some input from those who represent ALL target audience.

It appears that the brand is using MotrinMoms on Twitter to do outreach and handle this pr crisis. Twitter user, Katja Presnal, a Social Media Marketing consultant in the middle of this fray, received an email just minutes ago from Vice President of Marketing for McNeil Consumer Healthcare saying, “they didn’t mean to offend moms.”

So, what Motrin is losing in the botched ad, they may be making up for in Twitterverse.

p.s. Then there’s this unrelated oddity.

This is one of those thing’s that causes one to scream, “Oh for fuck’s sake!” Or better yet, “Jesus, fucking Christ!”

The newspaper industry is taking advantage of ‘Twilight’ anticipation to sell more papers. Many newspapers across the country today are including a free promo poster for the movie.

The gratis posters…

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The bosses are taking gigantic pay cuts, staff is being transferred…

I like dogs. I like ads that are topical. And I like Barack Obama. I guess that’s why I like this ad.

TBWA/Chiat/Day is the agency responsible. They’ve done a bunch of nice work for Pedigree.

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Inverted Christmas trees and tropical plants not only…