The commission is trying to ease the congestion that leads to dropped calls and slow loading of online material. It also acted to help curb the cost of cable television service.
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Newly appointed Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich has his share of detractors, but few are more high-profile than massive dating site OkCupid.
The site, which gets 10 million unique visitors a month, is currently greeting all Firefox users with a note explaining why OkCupid's owners feel Eich is "an opponent of equal rights for gay couples."
At issue is a $1,000 donation Eich made to support California's Proposition 8 in 2008. The constitutional amendment successfully banned gay marriage before being ruled unconstitutional in 2010.
OkCupid's roadblock for Firefox users doesn't stop them from visiting the site entirely. Clicking "Continue to OkCupid" at the bottom of the lengthy note about Eich will allow access, but "we urge you to consider different software for accessing OkCupid."
Mozilla tried to head off such gestures of protest with a March 29 blog post titled "Mozilla Supports LGBT Equality."
The blog post noted, in part:
Mozilla’s mission is to make the Web more open so that humanity is stronger, more inclusive and more just. This is why Mozilla supports equality for all, including marriage equality for LGBT couples. No matter who you are or who you love, everyone deserves the same rights and to be treated equally.
Interestingly, the post also notes, "One voice will not limit opportunity for anyone." It doesn't clarify that point, but Mozilla seems to be saying that its CEO's personal and political opinions don't have any impact on the organization or its customers—a position that can generously be described as naive.
The Verge reports that Mozilla, which lost half its board with Eich's appointment, is defending itself as "staunchly in support" of equality for gays and lesbians:
Our CEO is not an "anti-gay" activist—in fact he's apologized. And our Board Chair, who is the CEO's boss, is vocally in support of LGBT rights. Mozilla as an organization is staunchly in support of marriage equality and LGBT rights. OKCupid never reached out to us before this, and their boycott page is at the very least factually incorrect.
(UPDATE: The Verge has since removed this unnamed quote and replaced it with the official statement at the bottom of this post.)
Here's the full text of OkCupid's message to Firefox users:
Hello there, Mozilla Firefox user. Pardon this interruption of your OkCupid experience.
Mozilla’s new CEO, Brendan Eich, is an opponent of equal rights for gay couples. We would therefore prefer that our users not use Mozilla software to access OkCupid.
Politics is normally not the business of a website, and we all know there’s a lot more wrong with the world than misguided CEOs. So you might wonder why we’re asserting ourselves today. This is why: we’ve devoted the last ten years to bringing people—all people—together. If individuals like Mr. Eich had their way, then roughly 8% of the relationships we’ve worked so hard to bring about would be illegal. Equality for gay relationships is personally important to many of us here at OkCupid. But it’s professionally important to the entire company. OkCupid is for creating love. Those who seek to deny love and instead enforce misery, shame, and frustration are our enemies, and we wish them nothing but failure.
If you want to keep using Firefox, the link at the bottom will take you through to the site.
However, we urge you to consider different software for accessing OkCupid.
UPDATE: Mozilla has sent the following statement to AdFreak and other media outlets:
Mozilla supports equality for all, including marriage equality for LGBT couples. No matter who you are or who you love, everyone deserves the same rights and to be treated equally. OKcupid never reached out to us to let us know of their intentions, nor to confirm facts.
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Le photographe hollandais Janus Van Den Eijnden a réalisé une série de portraits intitulée « New York Subway Drivers » autour des conducteurs du métro new-yorkais. Un bel hommage aux travailleurs qui ont des mines rigolotes, parfois déprimées et qu’on croise tous les matins et tous les soirs.
Consumers have been shunning soft drinks in favor of tea, energy drinks and bottled waters for years, but defected from the category at an even faster rate in 2013, according to new figures from Beverage Digest. That’s despite the efforts of Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Dr Pepper Snapple Group to market lower-calorie sodas, like Pepsi Next and Dr Pepper Ten, as well as a variety of packaging options such as smaller cans.
In the last year, Coca-Cola has also responded to the obesity debate with a series of ads meant to encourage consumers to be active.
Carbonated soft drink volume declined 3% in 2013, compared to a 1.2% decline in 2012 and a 1% decline in 2011, according to Beverage Digest. The category has seen declines for the last nine years, despite the industry’s massive advertising and marketing outlays. Two years ago, PepsiCo committed to spend an additional $500 million to $600 million on its core brands, of which Pepsi is one. More recently, Coca-Cola committed to spending an additional $1 billion on media and brand-building efforts by 2016.
Three men who worked for Al Jazeera’s English-language news channel appeared to sway a judge, but their case was suspended and they were sent back to jail.
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Advertising Agency: Milk, Hamburg, Germany
Creative Directors: Bahador Pakravesh, Behnaz Pakravesh
Copywriter: Susanne Pakravesh
Music: Nightkraft
Published: March 2014
Since the beginning of time there’s been men willing to travel for the sake of discovery. In a globalized world things have not changed at all. Students and scientist need more than ever to connect and to break barriers. That is how Dianet was born. Dianet is the acronym for Danube’s initiative and Alps Adriatic Network. An initiative being held in AREA Science Park between between April 2013 and April 2015.
Advertising Agency: APZmedia, Trieste, Italy
Creative Director: Pablo Apiolazza
Art Director: Pablo Apiolazza
Copywriters: Serena Pulcini, Ginevra Tonini, Mattia Cristofori, Michele Da Col, Pablo Apiolazza
Additional credits: Special thanks to Federica Raffin
Published: March 2014
IPC Media is preparing to close its weekly men’s magazine Nuts, and its accompanying website, 10 years after its launch shook up the UK newsstands.
Pour leur projet Street Eraser, les artistes Tayfun Sarier et Guus ter Beek (travaillant tous les deux dans l’agence Wieden+Kennedy) ont créé des autocollants géants qui imitent l’outil d’effacement de Photoshop et servent à effacer les rues, les publicités, les graffitis et les affiches des rues de Londres.
We’ve received a statement from the Arnold camp to address some tips we’ve received today, mainly that the agency has cut some staff. According to sources familiar with the matter, we’re told, like usual, the number is lower than expected. We’re hearing in the range of approximately 20 staffers and according to the statement from the agency, perhaps we can shed some light.
“We can confirm a reduction in staff. This is never an easy situation, as it impacts people who have made a valuable contribution to our company. As we have re-engineered we have used the opportunity to ensure our talent mix reflects the strategic growth areas for our company – namely, content enabled by new media platforms and technology – products and services that are most important to our clients.”
Staff layoffs happened, FYI, in the New York and Boston offices.
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
With their organic reach plummeting, many brands worry that Facebook is becoming indifferent to their wants and needs. Well, that fear seems justified, based on a catty comment from Facebook's PR chief.
Food site Eat24 cooked up a lot of buzz with its "breakup letter" to Facebook, in which it said it was closing down its page (which has 70,000 likes)—saying Facebook is becoming a pay-for-play service instead of a true social network. Such criticisms are nothing new. What is new is that a Facebook executive responded with a big middle finger.
In a snarky response on Eat24's page, Brandon McCormick, Facebook's director of global communications/monetization, said the site's "food porn" content simply isn't that interesting to Facebook users who would rather hear about breaking news and see photos shared by their friends.
"There is some serious stuff happening in the world and one of my best friends just had a baby and another one just took the best photo of his homemade cupcakes," McCormick wrote. "What we have come to realize is people care about those things more than sushi porn (but if we are in the mood for it, we know where to find it Eat24!)."
Here's the full text of his comment, via Digiday:
Clearly McCormick was imitating Eat24's snarky tone, and his response is commendably candid. But for many brand marketers, it will also come off as confirmation that Facebook sees organic brand content as something its users want phased out.
UPDATE: As promised, Eat24 appears to have deleted its page from Facebook as of April 1.
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Amsterdam-based creative agency SuperHeroes has added five new hires to its team. French creative duo Dimitri Hekimian and Quentin Deronzier join as copywriter and art director, having previoulsy worked at Euro RSCG 360, Fred & Farid and Grey Paris on campaigns for brands such as Lego, Lacoste, Audi, Athena and Martini. Evelien Schenkkan joins as digital producer, with eight years of experience working for the likes of Isobar and Glassworks. Norwegian-born designer Krister Lima will also join in May along with a new, as-yet-unnamed art director. SuperHeroes was recently named digital agency for Converse, across the EMEA region, and won a global account role for LG.
Boulder-based agency School, a part of independent agency network Project: WorldWide, has appointed Gordy Hirsch as creative director. Hirsch previously led creative at Amelie Company in Denver and created campaigns for clients such as the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT), including its recent “Drive High, Get a DUI” campaign.
When you heard the news of Facebook's acquisition of virtual reality startup Oculus Rift, you were kind of excited. Or you weren't, especially if you were one of the original Kickstarter backers of the project or if you have no idea what I'm talking about.
But anyway, here's an amusing simulation of what might become of this partnership.
Imagine the scenario. You've just put on your pair of 'Rifts and logged into ol' Bookface to play your favorite first-person shooter against one of your buddies. Sounds fun, right? Well, see for yourself.
Be sure to avoid getting teabagged by your nemesis, though.
Hat tip: Laughing Squid.
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Every weekday, we bring you the Ad Age/iSpot Hot Spots, new and trending TV commercials tracked by iSpot.tv, a company that catalogs, tags and measures activity around TV ads in real time. The New Releases ran on TV for the first time over the weekend. The Most Engaging ads are showing sustained social heat, ranked by SpotShare scores reflecting the percent of digital activity associated with each one over the past week. See the methodology here.
Among the new spots, AT&T serves up another installment of its “Building You A Better Network” campaign (see Ad Age’s previous coverage: “AT&T Taps Endearingly Nerdy Engineers For Latest TV Campaign”) and McDonald’s is driving home its new breakfast promo (see “McDonald’s Starts First Free-Coffee Promo Just as Taco Bell Blitzes Breakfast”). Oh, and Top-Flite is making ball jokes.
As always, you can find out more about the making of the best commercials on TV at Ad Age’s sister publication Creativity.
Fã de verdade precisa ter trabalho pra ouvir as músicas novas de seus artistas preferidos. E pelo jeito eles gostam disso. Na semana passada, o Wu-Tang Clan anunciou que vai produzir uma única cópia do álbum “The Wu – Once Upon A Time in Shaolin”, o qual deverá ser tratado como obra de arte.
Já John Frusciante escolheu uma forma, digamos, mais espacial de literalmente lançar seu disco “Enclosure”. Na última sexta-feira, dia 29 de março, o álbum foi colocado em órbita junto com o satélite Sat-JF14. Ambos foram lançados através do foguete Neptune, no deserto de Mojave.
Para ouvir, basta fazer download de um aplicativo (tem para iOS e Android). “Enclosure” continuará sendo transmitido continuamente pelo satélite durante mais 7 dias, depois disso, só comprando o álbum.
O vídeo acima mostra a produção da ação e lançamento do foguete. A criação é brasileira, da agência Loducca.
Le photographe français M. Bap a fait une série de photographies en format RAW, d’un Dubaï en noir et blanc avec son architecture, sa ville, ses habitants mais aussi son désert, ses marchés et ses taxis. De très beaux contrastes dans une ville pleine de lumières à découvrir dans la suite de l’article.
As Dear John letters go, “A Breakup Letter to Facebook from Eat24” is unusually charming and funny — but it’s still a huge bummer for the social network.
Last Thursday in a company blog post about its Facebook presence, web-based food-ordering service Eat24, which works with 25,000-plus restaurants in more than 1,000 U.S. cities, declared that effective tonight — March 31 at 11:59 p.m. PT — “we’re deleting the whole thing.” Over the weekend, the post went viral among marketing types; as of this writing it has 468 overwhelmingly supportive comments and more than 2,000 likes.
Among the reasons Eat24 cites for its decision:
Are you ready for some baseball?
ESPN has Major League Baseball's Opening Day covered today with a new "This Is SportsCenter" spot starring the reigning National League MVP, Andrew McCutchen of the Pittsburgh Pirates.
The commercial, running online and on ESPN properties, shows a breakfast meeting for the SportsCenter anchors going awry when McCutchen and a band of Pirate mascots (Pittsburgh's Pirate Parrot, East Carolina's Pee Dee, Seton Hall's Pirate and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers' Captain Fear) break in and loot the breakfast spread.
The ad, by Wieden + Kennedy in New York, breaks this afternoon during ESPN's broadcast of the Pittsburgh Pirates against the Chicago Cubs.
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Once together, nothing can break them apart.
Advertising Agency: TBWA\FREDERICK, Santiago, Chile
Creative Directors: Eduardo Novión, Kike Zúñiga
Art Directors: Carlos Velasco, Seba Urrutia
Copywriters: Watón Frederick, Carlos Rosales
Published: March 2014
Once together, nothing can break them apart.
Advertising Agency: TBWA\FREDERICK, Santiago, Chile
Creative Directors: Eduardo Novión, Kike Zúñiga
Art Directors: Carlos Velasco, Seba Urrutia
Copywriters: Watón Frederick, Carlos Rosales
Published: March 2014
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
