Hasta La Creative!

A lot of people are asking themselves this, and many experienced ad people are blaming DEI, or the need to be “safe” and not offend, but that doesn't explain abrasive brand voices like Tampax on Twitter or the skyrocketing career of Radioshack's new CMO, Ábel Czupor, who is on Forbes' 30 under 30 list. I'll temporarily ignore that Forbes is all pay-to-play at the moment. We confuse new with innovation and chase trends.

If you find a squirter marry her.

— RadioShack (@RadioShack) June 29, 2022

I saw today that Dave Trott tweeted about the ingenious Maxell campaign from decades ago, and I suddenly understood why modern advertising is so,… well, shit. (1 & 2 at adland)

Really like this ad, impactful, catchy, repeatable, especially for anyone who's into music. https://t.co/Vckw4FCraD

— dave trott (@davetrott) December 9, 2022

That concept was so good. I saw the ad literally once during a lecture at school in London, and I have sung along wrong to that song – which happened to be one of my favorites – ever since. It stuck. So hard.

So what was the strategy and planning and click statistics that lead to this genius insight? The research that had been done was probably handed to the creatives together with the one-page brief (remember those?) simply that Maxell tapes last for longer plays and records better than BASF and other competitors. I'm sure that research was dry as hell.

Back then people had the space to tell a story. This ad is like a skit.
You watch it and wonder where it's going with all of these signs quoting the lyrics wrong. You pay attention because you are curious as to where it is going. The rug pull is the actual tagline and unique selling proposition. It's a home run.

Bob Dylan dropped signs first in his music video, and INXS paid homage to it in their video for “Mediate” in 1987. That creative angle was inspired by musicians. Hearing the lyrics wrong was inspired by music itself – there have been countless websites, youtube videos, and tumblrs, and now tweet accounts that solely talk
about misheard lyrics. “Excuse me while I kiss this guy”, “We built this city on sausage rolls”, and “We don’t need no sex vacation.” Hang on, I would like one of those.

So the concept borrowed a bit here, and a little from there, but it didn't copy, and it didn't rely on someone else's fame. It cooked up the output from the input observed, which is what artists have done since the dawn of time. We watch today as influencers are hailed as full-fledged advertising agency creative departments, editors, and media agencies, because they have a lot of followers on TikTok, and we far too often see that advertisers would rather have their message funneled through a celeb than create something original. Even when the TikTok celeb is incredibly offensive to the target market. The Super Bowl ads have been the height of “starfucking” ads for decades now, and are terrible because of their reliance on that, and online advertising seems stuck in the phase of either paying influencers or throwing bizarre clickbaity ads at you.

There is never a story. There are no ideas. There is no voice. All in the hopes that “this will cut through” the doomscrolling that consumers online are stuck in. Copywriters are now writing in someone else's “voice”, instead of the brand voice. E-celebs are media platforms.

But, it's clearly not just consumers who are stuck in this doomscrolling mindset, acting like the most poorly scripted NPC in any given video game. The people who used to be celebrated in advertising, the difficult, the different, the ones who “would not play a game of football because the grass wasn't the right color green” (Paul Arden), the obsessed (Paul Rand). The people who relentlessly experimented and threatened suicide in order to sell a Matzo poster (George Lois), the professional melancholics (Roy Andersson*), and those who passionately sold their clients wares from the boot of a car (Dan Weiden) are all gone now. Who will replace them? The navelgazing guy who tweets for RGA? Seriously?

If we keep this up, we will all be replaced by ChatGPT, Wall-E and Watson – which creatives all over Twitter are eagerly helping along as they tweet their “best” interactions with said Chatgpt to the world, ignoring that they are assisting in the programming of it.

Social media ads are increasingly generated by scripts. Their media targets as well. We are no longer necessary for a brand to launch. Our only hope is their failure because the program is only as smart as the programmer. Either way, they will always lack what we have. Gut instinct. Human insights. And actual creativity.

———-

* don't worry, despite how that is phrased, Roy is alive and well, born in 1943 he is 79 years old and reportedly is still seen walking around the neighborhood of Östermalm, Stockholm where his studio was.

To see ad people going against the DEI check out my adland® which allows anyone, and has allowed anyone that is a registered member, to step on the soap box and use that public microphone that I built since 1996. Before youtube, Medium, and substack. ?

Sometimes running Adland® gives fun perks. Friday before the Superbowl I was sent a local ad just as I was about to clock off and try to weekend a little before getting up and working all Sunday. I checked the ad out and was genuinely happy for the team who managed to write a script and shoot a spot in just a few days with everyone on the team taking on several job roles. Local ads are nowhere near the budget of the nationals, so I don't hold them to the same standards, but they can be super weird and quirky like Dan-O's Seasoning or just fun underdog ads showing off your product's best features like the ToughBuilt – All Pros Welcome / Super Bowl Prep ad.

So I posted the ad asap and emailed back that I was genuinely impressed with the plucky team to pull that ad off, and that I thought the product was cool – mentioning in the post that my toolbox is literally a wooden box built by my great-grandfather. It's not exactly easy to drag around when renovating homes and building stuff, which I do for fun.

I honestly hope the entire team do a re-enactment of this ad, using Toughbuilt bags and gear to drag all the Super Bowl fixings to the top boss' house. And perhaps they just expanded the market for these gear-holders, soon we'll spy these bags at tailgate parties everywhere. I actually want one now, that 16″ Massive Mouth bag looks hella useful. My toolbox is an actual giant wooden box built by my great grandfather.

It doesn't hurt that the Toughbuilt 16″ bag looks like a giant Duracell battery. Instantly I received an email back asking what my address was and if I was serious about wanting a toolbag. I said yes, and then this darling arrived at my house!

This gift is so appreciated too! I opened up my big box of tools that I have lying around here and managed to fit them all into this thing, everything was swallowed by by the massive mouth, including my sander!

This is honestly really cool, now I can drag every tool I have around in one neat little bag! Easy access to all of my screwdrivers! Even the hammer fit in there no problemo! I promise I won't become a hardware influencer here, but as I actually use toolbags, I can honestly recommend this. The spot for the clip-on pouch is brilliant too, you can add a hammer holster, a bag for nails etc, a knife, or whatever it is you need to keep easy access to. It's bloody brilliant!

Good design shouldn't just be aesthetically pleasing, good design has to also be useful to the users of the object designed. This is a great example of good design.

I have a friend who is currently touring Europe as he works remotely on projects, and attends various coding boot camps and summits along the way, who is the perfect target market for this idea. Globetrotting professionals are not a new thing, but with the help of the internet there are many more of us now, and this hotel is designed for us.

Zoku is a new kind of business hotel brand. A hotel where you have shared workspaces, and meeting rooms, and is suitable for extended stays. It's like a WeWork, where you also sleep.

Newly opened Zoku Paris is located in the Stream Building, opposite the Court of Justice in the 17th arrondissement. The top three floors has 109 lofts and walking into the Zoku is like entering a small neighborhood in itself. The hotel even has a Community Manager, who provides Check-in Chats, Community Dinners, and other social rituals for guests who stay 14 or more nights. They also host workshops, seminars, live podcast streams, and the Aperó Live Music Sessions every Thursday night.

The hotel boasts co-working areas which have work booths, long shared tables, breakout areas, and yes even a game room for taking a foosball break in.

In order to make the extended stay as pleasurable and “at home” as possible, the hotel has a laundry room, a pantry where one can borrow items one needs, there is a food pantry, and even an art swap area.

The hotel also has many social spaces, such as the rooftop area, to bring together guests and the local community. The concept is to create mixed-use buildings that encourage international living, remote working, and networking between guests and locals. Just pack your laptop and arrive.

The hotel rooms vary from small studio spaces, to more apartment-like larger layouts. These are images of the studio and the XL loft rooms. Unlike a regular hotel room, where the bed dominates, the layout here is more like an apartment with a couch, a dinner table and a kitchenette.

Many years ago, I would have been head over heels with this concept as I somehow managed to move around the world with a desktop computer (egads!) and ended up renting friends-of-friends-of-friends apartments while they were on vacation or similar, long before Airbnb, Soho House and now Zoku was invented. This is a nomadic expat living with a cheat code! Everything you need is here, you can borrow an ironing board from the pantry, and your hotel room can easily be your office on the days you want to meet collaborators in a more private space, or use as a podcast room when you're doing that.

To add to that, an event space is available where you can host your own conference, coding boot camp, or seminar, and easily turn the area into a dinner party at the end of the day.

There are also board rooms, called “not a board room”, for important meetings and presentations, as well as a bustling café area for when you need a coffee break or an evening cocktail.

Paris isn't always the most welcoming city, in fact, last year it was ranked one of the worst cities in the world for expats, but this hotel may help nudge that reputation in another direction.

I can't help that I keep hearing the phrase “you will own nothing, and you will be happy” in my head.

But fair enough, if I am going to bounce around the world networking, I would want to do it in style. In my life stage, the concept of The Graduate Hotels may be more my speed. They are stylish hotels in University towns catering to parents who are visiting or bringing their kids to college. Each Graduate hotel is designed with a nod to the local culture in mind, creating a space where you'll quickly learn about local heroes, local art, and quirks of the city that it is in. Like Zoku, they also offer an in-house bar, café, space for working, meetings, and events as well as items to borrow such as bikes. For longer stays, there are suites with kitchenettes and even homes you can stay in.

I stayed at the Graduate in Cincinnati , where the elevator had a faint scent of pencil shavings and Bootsy Collins graced the wallpaper. It was a skip and a jump away from all of the downtown hotspots and university, and full of eclectic patterns, colors and materials.

As more cities clamp down on AirbnB and Vrbo, and more people work globally directly from their laptop, expect to see more creative hotel concepts like this.

So, yesterday I was in a big FAAFO mode, as I fucked around and found out that I broke stuff (ie; everything) when it was decided that we as a family should drive to the rolling green beautiful countryside where the gorgeous ranches and million dollar horse farms are.

So naturally I kept fooling around on my phone via JuiceSSH which has a text size for ants, and I made things worse.

First, I tried logging in to my ghost instance and realized that I had forgotten which password I use here. No biggie, I'll just click the “I forgot” button, and get a new one, right?
Nooo, that's when I get a link that is generated on a subdomain, like “email.dabitch.net”. And there is no SSL layer on this subdomain. So no modern browser, on your Android, iOS, MacOS, or even your computer will let you bypass that.

I, in a car, driving through gorgeous rolling green hills with fabulous horses and 22-acre estates, still focusing on what I broke, trying to figure out how I broke it.

Can you use Certbot to generate an SSL file via Nginx for a subdomain point to Mailgun? No, of course not in 2023. But if I could I would!

I thought I could edit a nginx.conf file to use a proxy pass, a little bit like this, and carefully typed it all out, tongue out, because lord that JuiceSSHfont is teeny-tiny and my eyes are not as good these days, but no, that doesn't work.

location / {
 resolver 1.1.1.1 8.8.8.8 valid=60s;
 set $mailgun "http://mailgun.org";
 proxy_pass $mailgun;
 port_in_redirect off;
 proxy_connect_timeout 20;
 proxy_send_timeout 20;
 proxy_read_timeout 20;
 proxy_set_header Host $host;
 proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
 proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
}

….in 2020 I believe that you could do exactly this, I had a different setup then, which was, as it turns out, part of my problem with my website here (the one you are reading right now. )

As I was hunting down minor bugs that had developed from minor errors over several upgrades, I got really frustrated and deleted and reinstalled the whole thing – as I do – then uploaded my backup to make stuff work again. And that's how we found ourselves in a car, trying to log in, and, discovering that particular previously unseen mailgun error.

Once, again, we were driving through the rolling hill countryside which is probably why I just couldn't grasp what was happening, as every so often offspring would cheerfully announce “goats!” or “look! cow MOO!!“

She's quite good at that whole living-in-the-moment thing. Me, not so much.

What does work, after much FAAFO is turning on a flipping switch in Cloudflare that I had, for unknown reasons, turned off. Proxy the subdomain, and make a page rule with flexible SSL. Use a wildcard-asterisk at the end of your subdomain for best results.

Another note, please be careful who you use as a bulk emailer. I can't recall who The Daily Wire wanted to use as a bulk email service, but after they had signed the contract and paid the big chunk of money, the service told them to leave because “not their values”. If they do that to huge media companies that pay the big bills, they will not hesitate to do it to you. Got it?

Never get addicted to cheap or free services that can turn you off at any moment.

Only and always use the services that still follow the open internet ethos. I used to tell everyone I knew to start an account at Hurricane Electric back in the day, long before they became the literal backbone of the internet, but I would steer away from anything touching them today.

—–
Also. Remind me that I have to explain why the Scandinavian (not Nordic!) ` backtick is such a pain in the ass on keyboards one day.

Yes, the `. Let's just start with the fact that it's a silent key – aka dead key – and I use it all the time. Try doing that on your phone via JuiceSSH and the teeny tiny ant-font that I can barely see. That's a quick ticket to a high-blood-pressure headache right there.

Got up, sipped coffee, casually scrolled Twitter while figuring out what to wear, when the video of a Boeing in flames caught my eye.

“Aha!” I thought, “I shall wear my Boeing shirt!” A very long time ago, when I lived in Amsterdam I befriended an American artist who was living there. His dad worked for Boeing. “That is soooo cool!” I said to him, in earnest, “it's my favorite logo, I would love to have that on a shirt!”
“Really?” he said, quite surprised that someone was so geeked out about a logo, “I'll tell dad to get you one.” And that was how I was gifted a gen-u-iiine Boeing shirt, the real dealio, the classic logo, and I wore it beaming with pride. For some daft reason I still believe I have this shirt. Alas, I do not.

So I made a new one. With an updated logo. You can wear it too.

I tried to get “Gumroad” working today, because I was a momentary idiot and thought it was alright to use a third party. It's really never okay. I should really buy a house and some land to grow my own food, because as simple as it is to just leave stuff to other people and companies, they will pretty much always fail you when you need them. Like Gumroad did to me, today. The “temporary code” they sent never arrived, so I could not login. Instead I threw my hands in the air and installed a fresh version of Prestashop to connect to my printful where I print my shirts.

So you can buy that shirt right here, right now in my little shop.dabitch.net if you'd like. 🙂 I bought some for myself. (edit – I moved servers and killed that shop

Now as it turns out there are a lot of things that are no longer compatible with one another. Prestashop and Printful are some of those things, so here are a few notes in case someone finds this. Get Prestashop 1-7-7-3 at a minimum, it'll give you no issues when you install it and use it with php-7.3. You'll find that the Prestashop module has had some updates 6 months ago (which broke my setup), but not much else in the activity and discussion side at Github, where many people are lost and looking for answers. In my search for a fix even ran into a note I accidentally left for myself in August 2021 battling this exact issue.

From that I sussed out what the problem was. So I began from scratch with the above mentioned variants, and I edited the “printful.php” page in the printful module before I uploaded the .zip to read like this starting at line 83:

       $this->ps_versions_compliancy = [
            'min' => '1.6.1',
            'max' => '1.7.7',
        ];

Yep, I'm essentially just lying to the module about it being compatible with Prestashop 1.7.7 – and it works.

Oh, and a funny thing about Gumroad, turns out I've blocked their entire domain because they send out spammy messages all day long which are impossible to unsubscribe from, so I accidentally locked myself out – not realizing they would eventually move to “we email you a security code” even if I log in with my Twitter or my Stripe. Good riddance.

As a signature event celebrating Canada’s 150th anniversary, this year’s National Canadian Film Day 150 will see more than 1,500 screenings in schools, theatres and public squares across the country and in consulates and embassies around the world. To help promote and drive participation in the festival on April 19, Reel Canada, the non­profit that […]

The post Film At 150 appeared first on AdPulp.

Faz sol em Nova Iorque. É dia 25 de outubro de 1966.

Num certo estúdio na 30^th street, um tal de Miles Davis registra seu último take de Gingerbread Boy, após dois dias de gravação de seu novo disco – Miles Smiles.

A formação desse álbum é seu segundo quinteto: uma histórica e abençoada junção de pequenos grandes gênios revolucionários do que costumamos chamar de jazz.

Mas eles ainda não sabem disso, e cada novo take é como se fosse a grande chance, a grande oportunidade de mostrar ao mundo que eles realmente merecem estar ali.

Microfones sortudos captam nota por nota da revolução, da liberdade artística e criativa que os conduz, destemidos e sonhadores, perseguindo um novo som a cada segundo.

Miles, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter e Tony Williams estão no auge do entrosamento, e esbanjam um domínio musical que – se não fosse tão natural, tão fluido e tão deslumbrante – chegaria a soar ofensivo. Transformam o andamento em desafio, e brincam com ele, judiam dele, e fazem de suas mudanças sua marca registrada para consagrar seu som nos moldes da história. Uma certa Footprints vai mostrar como isso é possível sem soar arrogante ou enfadonho.

E mesmo sem conseguir acompanhar, as pessoas vão bater seus  pezinhos no chão involuntariamente, de tão empolgante que está o som. Depois vão recostar a cabeça no conforto de Circle, e ouvir um dos mais emocionantes diálogos entre trumpete e sax tenor já gravados.

As novidades vão seguindo, uma a uma, como um bálsamo para quem gosta de jazz. O clamor virá no começo ano que vem, na forma de aplausos de público e crítica, sendo “inspirador” o menos inflamado adjetivo que o disco vai receber depois de seu lançamento.

Miles sabe que seu novo disco é aguardado. Miles sabe que está vivendo uma das épocas mais prolíficas de sua carreira. Miles sabe que acaba de desbravar mais um território em sua sonoridade.  O que ele ainda não sabe é que Sgt Pepper’s e Jimi Hendrix estão chegando (só para citar dois), e vão influencia-lo em novas e eletrizantes direções. Mas isso é assunto pro ano que vem.

Enquanto isso, Miles sorri. E nos dá 6 grandes motivos para fazer o mesmo.

Post originalmente publicado no Brainstorm #9
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Google and Twitter, rumored to be meeting late last week, were huddling to discuss: a) new applications, b) mergers, c) acquisition, d) monetizing strategies, or, e) “We didn’t huddle, we didn’t even talk!”
The answer, much to our curiosity’s disappointment, was “none of the above,” and we were left, yearning, with no juicy story. Until that is, we looked a little deeper: There it was, a story, neatly nestled inside the rumor…our dusky jewel, ripe for choosing.

Whether Google buys Twitter, doesn’t buy Twitter, or marries them is not news…it’s a forgone conclusion. Some company, (probably Google), is going to purchase Twitter. But, it could also turn out to be MSN, Yahoo!, AOL, NewsCorp, or even Verizon.  The real content, the actual tale to be told is this: Whenever Google acts, we, the denizens of the Internet, pay attention. We sit up, sign in, and search for news. Once found, like kids with secrets, we repeat it. Discuss it. Argue about it.  Text it. Blog it. E-mail it. Tweet it. Opine it. Feed it. Post it. Which leads us to face it: Google is more respected than Bill Gates, Jack Welch, Bono, and Perez Hilton, combined. Google is the Internet’s darling, the sweet Lindsay Lohan before she was arrested. Twice. Google is young and beautiful, the little girl from Disney that won our hearts. Google is the online business’ shining star. In December 2007, FastCompany had this to say about Google:  

“… Its performance is the envy of executives and engineers around the world … For techno-evangelists, Google is a marvel of Web brilliance … For Wall Street, it may be the IPO that changes everything (again) … But Google is also a case study in savvy management — a company filled with cutting-edge ideas, rigorous accountability, and relentless attention to detail … Here’s a search for the growth secrets of one of the world’s most exciting young companies — a company from which every company can learn.”

Which is not to say that Google is perfect, or has not made mistakes; they just don’t make many. As a highly respected company, with the starlet flair, Google is in the spotlight, the subject of speculation, rumor, innuendo, and gossip. So, as in the case  of the Twitter reporting last week, online and traditional media sources, thirsty for being credited with announcing Google’s next venture, often print rumors before the facts are known. Although it’s shoddy journalism, many of the online sources probably don’t care about being wrong, as long as they’re first. Headlines and copy can be changed in seconds. The take-away is simple: Not only does Google play an important part in our lives, but we spend a lot of time and energy making Google important to society.

Google’s other major foray into Social Media, YouTube, is expected to lose $470 million dollars in 2009. But, it’s not all bad news: Revenues are expected to increase by 20% YOY (Google will only lose 80% of what they could have). Not asking for government handouts as of yet, YouTube’s major challenge is no different from that of  Twitter and other Social Media sites: Monetization. In the short-term, Google has signed a deal with Disney-ABC Television Group and ESPN to provide “professional” content, driving advertiser demand “through standardization of ad formats and improved ad effectiveness.”  Or, to restate it clearly, YouTube will provide better videos to reel in bigger advertisers. It remains to be seen if having Disney on YouTube will provide the revenue needed for YouTube, but the main question is how the users will react to the site “incorporation.”