Hasta La Creative!

Red Tettemer O’Connell + Partners placed some faux personal ads in the New York, Philadelphia and Chicago sections of Craigslist’s popular “Missed Connections” department on behalf of crystal jeweler Swarovski.

One ad reads: “Love that you’re the kind of girl that scrolls through the Missed Connections and knows your smile gets attention. You’re definitely our kind of girl. We think confidence like that deserves something sparkly. Something maybe like a Swarovski Stardust Bracelet? Maybe we have one for you. Send us a message and maybe we can make this sparkle yours.”

Check out six of the listings here:

• Cute Dress Girl at Franklin Mortgage – m4w
• Black tshirt ordering latte at La Colombe – m4w (Center City)
• East Village Milk Bar Blonde with Bday Truffles – m4w (East Village)
• Blonde bartender LES, great smile – m4w (Lower East Side)
• Last friday in Old City, white sweater – m4w (Old City)
• Bright red lips w/wrist tattoo at big star – m4w

This approach is restrained compared to TiVo’s lusty romp through Missed Connections last year. And it’s probably more sincere than much of the section’s typical fare, as a few respondents will actually receive Swarovski bracelets as part of the promotion.

“We hope we’ll pleasantly surprise some curiously intrigued women on Missed Connections,” says agency chief creative officer Steve Red, “and that they’ll sparkle a little bit more the next time they catch someone’s eye.”

This much is crystal clear: In a world where everything’s an ad, sometimes even ads come disguised as other ads.

Craigslist is not a place where you tend to find beautiful, creative, compelling advertising. It’s almost all amateur ads, after all, and created within a fairly limiting framework.

Still, we’ve seen what can happen when people do put a little effort into it. Whether you’re pitching yourself as the perfect roommate or selling your crappy old Camry, a little ingenuity goes a long way in helping you stand out in Craiglist’s mind-numbing sea of sameness.

The recently opened Classify Advertising is dedicated to doing just that. It will take your terrible Craigslist ad and make it a brilliant Craigslist ad—for free!

Classify, which bills itself as “the only agency that started with 80 million clients already,” was started by three agency interns. Here’s how they describe the business: “Classify moves products out the door. We turn your used junk into a pile of sweaty, hot lucre. It’s not our business what you do with all that bread. We transform Craigslist posts from boring, ineffective ads into dynamic cash cows. Cows that you can milk—for money.”

They’ve got a few before-and-after examples posted on the site. (We’ve posted some of them below.) We also caught up with the founders to ask how the service works—and what their plans are for ramping it up.

Where did you get the inspiration for this?
As ad school students, we were always told to make campaigns that sell real products. We just took it literally.

You must feel aesthetics is a big part of the selling process.
Not exactly. Strategy plays a big part in our startup. We take a client’s request and transform it into a real brief that points out the qualities and flaws of a certain product. Making things visually attractive is equally important to strategy and attractive copy.

Millions of things are bought and sold on Craiglist every day. If it ain’t broke, why fix it?
We agree that there’s a big amount of transactions, and technically it’s already successful, but there are a lot of people who can’t get their product sold, and they come to us every day since we started Classify asking for help. We’re not trying to improve Craigslist. We’re improving the way people communicate to sell their own products.

Isn’t there a purity about how low-fi Craigslist ads are? Aren’t you just putting lipstick on a pig?
Craigslist ads are low-fi until people have to sell something there. A car, for example—they will wash and wax the car just to take tons of pictures of it to put it on the ad. They’ll write a long description telling how resistant the car is and the mileage. Then that link will be everywhere on their social media, email, etc.

Tell us how the process works. Can consumers approach you with their ad, and you make it sing?
On our website there’s a section where people can request an ad. We look at those requests and we transform it into a creative brief that will be given to a creative team. In some cases the post already exists, so we just create something based on that post.

What’s the turnaround time, and what’s your fee?
It takes one to three days to make a picture, a headline and body copy, and we do it for free.

So, how do you make money? Or is it not a moneymaking venture?
Craigslist doesn’t make any money with [most of] its transactions, either. It wouldn’t be fair to charge people.

Are you making any money in other ways through this business?
We’re not making any money for ourselves. Some brands and business people approached us to present a business model that can work for us, but we’re still just talking.

Can the seller critique your designs and request changes?
We don’t usually do revisions unless there’s an actual mistake in the ad.

Do you have paying clients yet?
The examples on the website are ads we proactively sent to people on Craigslist, but now we’re getting around 30-plus ad requests a day.

Are there are guidelines or limitations regarding items you can or can’t sell?
Each case is different, but we base it on ethics. We’ve got request from a guy selling a Civil War collectible gun. It would be pretty cool to sell it, but then we found out the gun still works and we decided not to make an ad for that person.

There’s a Careers section on your site, which suggests you expect to grow quickly. How will you do that?
The Careers section is a place where volunteers can sign up to make ads to help people. We already have around 25 volunteers who signed up, but we selected only six for now who are getting briefs and helping us to deliver those ads to the clients.

What’s your dream Craigslist product you’d like to sell?
A school bus. It’s something huge that costs a lot of money, and it’s a weird vehicle to own. We’d love to make a huge integrated campaign with videos, posts and even a microsite for something like that.

Via PSFK. Top photo via Flickr.

The canvas of Craigslist continues to inspire many a budding copywriter to create odes to objects most of us would dismiss as curb trash. Witness this latest advertisement—for an old loveseat offered free of charge in Cumming, Ga. The headline? "This isn't a love seat, it's upholstered Americana." And it just gets better from there. They posed the much-loved seat next to an American flag, its gentle folds caressing the back cushions like a familiar suitor, the red, white and blue plaid couch reclining in its ageless wisdom, calling like a siren to its new owner. They even recount their myriad experiences with the loveseat in the local vernacular. Enjoy the full text below.

The finest quality in American Furniture building has combined with the tightly knit magical American Family unit and formed something beyond all human comprehension. For over 25 years, a quarter of a century, this two seater has rested weary travelers, introduced budding relationships, assisted multi-generational understanding. It has played host to conversations about marriage, birth, dinner reservations, politics, religion, college graduation requirements, weather, real estate, budget negotiations, funeral arrangements (not necessarily related to the aforementioned budget), car repair, Christmas, SEC football, landscaping, camping, plumbing, gambling, and other subjects too intimate to mention. Now, I know you've seen enough sci-fi to understand that after being exposed to that kind of timeless, bone marrow building, honest-to-God-humanity, inanimate objects pick up an aura of ageless wisdom that can rub off on the next proud owner. Due to a change in our circumstances (possibly even due to the couch itself summoning a new owner), we are forced to part with this . . ., well, . . . member of the family. But how? How do you just let something out of your life that has so many memories, so many feelings, so many odd seating positions? It's not easy. After many sleepless nights, and long conversations, we have decided to part ways with our beloved love seat in the same way we had to say good-bye to Paw-paw. We are going to leave it on the curb until someone comes and picks it up. That's right. You could be the next proud owner! (Of the love seat, not Paw-paw-he's already found one). You too, can experience the joy of sipping coffee beside your significant other while not having to worry about spilling. You may be the one the couch is seeking. It may be ready to guide to your next relationship, business venture, or fishing trip. Do you feel led toward it in some unexplainable way? Yes, we understand. The same thing happened to us, and look where we are now; so rich we can afford to part ways with this gluteus maximus wonder hugging conversation catalyst. Come and get it, and get your life back on track – Now!

In the tradition of amusingly written Craigslist ads, here's one from a brokenhearted San Francisco man who is selling the bed on which he and his girlfriend (UPDATE: or perhaps his boyfriend?) slept—until he or she cheated on him. At $150, the Simmons Beautyrest mattress is "priced to move," the man says. Here are some gems from the listing:

• $150 and it's yours. No catch. Get this fucking mattress out of my life.
• It's three years old, and feels like you're sleeping on a fucking cloud—even when you're unknowingly sleeping next to a lying cheater.
• For 6-8 hours every night you'll forget that you're sleeping next to a sociopath.
• Don't agree to $150 and get to my house and offer $100. Because that would make you a lying cheater.
• Not a deal-breaker, but it would help immensely if you looked like my ex as I would love to see an entitled, Ivy-League educated asshole struggle with this thing.
• Priority will go to those who can come get this literal bed of lies today, as I've got the entire Fiona Apple and Alanis Morissette discographies to get through.

Full text of the ad below. Via Happy Place.

Come get this Plush-ass queen Simmons Beautyrest out of my life – $150

The pain of my broken heart now means less back pain for you! This is basic law of transference type shit. I'm pretty sure the physics work out, but then again—I paid my college roommate who was a scholarship student to do all my take home exams so I can't be entirely sure.

So here's the deal: $150 and it's yours. No catch. Get this fucking mattress out of my life.

It's a plush queen-sized Simmons Beautyrest. It's three years old, and feels like you're sleeping on a fucking cloud—even when you're unknowingly sleeping next to a lying cheater. In a bad relationship and have to lie next to the constant reminder that you didn't go to grad school so that you could move and get engaged? Then this is the bed for you, it will get you to fucking REM and for 6-8 hours every night you'll forget that you're sleeping next to a sociopath. There are no stains, and this thing hasn't seen action in a while.

I thought about giving it away for free, but then I figured, what the hell—sell the bed, and go buy a Fleshjack and a handle of whiskey. And that's how I settled on $150. This thing is priced to move. It's worth much more than the price, and I figure that even someone who is looking at Craigslist on a Tuesday morning could easily afford it. So don't email me with your lowball offers. And don't agree to $150 and get to my house and offer $100. Because that would make you a lying cheater, and I would rather set the mattress on fire and throw it out of the window rather than sell it to you. Seriously, I will lose it.

Priority will go to those who can come get this literal bed of lies today, as I've got the entire Fiona Apple and Alanis Morissette discographies to get through.

And no, I won't help you get it out to your car. There are only eleven steps up to my apartment. You figure it out. I was going to sell the mattress for $200 but I figured it was worth the $50 to watch someone else have to struggle over this oppressive burden. Not a deal-breaker, but it would help immensely if you looked like my ex as I would love to see an entitled, Ivy-League educated asshole struggle with this thing. But totally not necessary.

If you haven't seen it, see it. It's the jaw-dropping homemade ad—one of the craziest and funniest you'll ever see—that Nate Walsh posted to Craigslist in an attempt to sell his 1999 Toyota Camry. Words cannot describe the ad's awesomeness, but they can describe the process of its creation. In the Q&A below, Walsh—who it turns out is indeed an advertising copywriter—tells us all about his masterpiece, why he went with a collage, whether he's sold the car, and why he is now essentially fearing for his life.

How long did it take you to make this? Did you have help?
This was all a solo labor of love. It took an hour or so to write, and probably around 20 to put together, painstakingly cutting and pasting things by hand. Sometimes it takes way more work to make things look charmingly amateurish.

If I were to take the time I spent on this ad and apply my freelance rate, I'm pretty sure I'd make around $300 on the deal, so, you know, another well-planned financial decision.

You're funnier than 90 percent of copywriters. Do you work in advertising?
I do work in advertising, as a writer. I'll be using the weird virality of this piece the next time a client tries to disagree with my recommendations. "Did you SEE how many repins I got with my shit?"

Actually, the main reason I have to tear myself away from such a sweet ride is that I'm about to leave St. Louis, where I've been working for the past five years, and move out to San Francisco. Right now I'm mostly going to be doing freelance for startups and working on some of my own dumb projects, but … hmm … what is a classy way to say "SO TELL YA FRIENDS" to any agencies that might be looking for a writer? Help me out here, Emily Post.

As far as that other part, well, obviously most funny people use humor to mask deep-seated neuroses and self-esteem problems, so of course I read that question as, "How could you let 10 percent of ad writers be funnier than you?" Then I cried a bit.

What's your favorite part of the ad?
Well, despite the fact that I'm a writer, I'm actually kind of a fan of the look of the thing. I know just enough Photoshop to be dangerous, but when I started laying out content digitally, it just didn't have the right vibe for the tone I was going for. So I asked myself, "What would a drunken, profane second grader do?" And the answer came to me in a flash: COLLAGES.

I think they make every joke a little funnier than it actually is, because you have to imagine some lunatic with a glue stick cackling to himself at 2 in the morning as he pieces his weird little ransom note together.

Have you sold the car yet?
Not yet, but I do have a fair amount of offers. The problem is, despite all the amazing feedback and compliments I've received (Someone sent me a topless photo?), most of the actual offers have come from humorless people with names like "Randy." I'm trying to find the Tanry a loving owner who will appreciate its oddities like I did, but I'm also comically poor, so we'll see how long my scruples hold out.

Are you bummed it's been flagged for removal on Craigslist?
I was at the time, but it's taken on such a weird life of its own at this point—I've seen it on Pinterest, Jezebel, Jalopnik and Reddit, among other places—that I'm not really fussed at this point. I'm just glad people are enjoying it. The Internet can be a pretty snarky place (to put it lightly), but everyone has been amazingly positive and complimentary, which is a miracle in itself.

I am slightly worried, though, that the person who flagged the ad may have been one of the exes from the chart included in the ad, in which case she has to be blowing a gasket about the amount of attention it's managed to get since. So, you know, no darkened alleys for me for a while.

Craigslist is dropping the “erotic services” portion of it’s site due to pressure from impending lawsuits and a murder linked to the site.

Unfortunately, the fix is nothing more than lip service. The category will simply be renamed and Craigslist will charge an additional fee for its use. Additionally, Craigslist employees will monitor posts before they appear online, something for which Craigslist has been criticized since adult advertising on the site started. Police in numerous states have used Craigslist as a tool to set up prostitution ”stings” and the fact that sex is available on Craigslist is well-known. Is Craigslist worried?

Probably not. According to Craigslist attorney, Eric Brandfonbrener, appearing in federal court for a hearing on [an Illinois] lawsuit, told U.S. District Judge John Grady that the site would change to satisfy the lawsuit:

“My expectation is that it will be moot,” Brandfonbrener told the judge. [Illinois] attorney Daniel Gallagher said he remained skeptical. “They’ve made promises to attorneys general in the past,” Gallagher said, noting that
Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal had brokered an agreement with the site in November to crack down on prostitution ads after being contacted about several complaints about photographs depicting nudity. “I’m not going to take their word for it, we want to see action.”

The best thing to come out of this is that if you are searching for sex, AshleyMadison.com is now available! Ashley Madison is an adult service that encourages adults to have affairs, and their tagline says it all: Life is Short. Have an Affair.™ Unlike Craigslist, however, Ashley Madison guarantees that if you are not knocking boots, or at least hooking up by your 90-day anniversary, they’ll refund you $249.00 (the cost to join?). In April, Ashley Madison began advertising in Chicago, and although many US stations have refused to air their ads, some Chicago stations are running the spots. Ashley Madison’s newest innovation is that members can Have An Affair Anywhere, a mobile phone service that allows members to hook up while traveling.

But, a Guarantee! And to think of all money I wasted on drinks…

Jeff Louis: Strategic Media Planner, Project Manager, and New Business Coordinator. His passion is writing, contributing to BMA as well as freelancing. He’d love to hear from you: linkedin.com/in/jefflouis or twitter.com/jlo0312.