NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — It has been called a competitor to Wikipedia, Jason Calacanis' Mahalo, Seth Godin's Squidoo and Yahoo Answers: Knol is Google's foray into knowledge aggregation.
WASHINGTON (AdAge.com) — The Federal Trade Commission today voted 4-1 to approve Google's $3.1 billion purchase of DoubleClick without condition. The commission rejected concerns by consumer groups that the deal may hurt consumers privacy.
Our Freakiest Advertising Moment of 2007 contest comes down to this: a viral effort that made your “friends†feel like they were being targeted by a serial killer, versus an ad campaign that attempted to sell TVs by showing eyeballs with mouths. Freaky, indeed. Vote for a winner below through noon on Friday. See the full bracket here.
—Posted by Tim Nudd
Championship game:
Dexter’s viral campaign vs. Pioneer’s laughing-eye ads.
Dexter’s viral campaign made a murderous late charge in the Final Four and left the Lost Jaw guy with egg on his already-overtaxed face. Now, it faces Pioneer’s creepy eye-mouths, which shut down the dairy dreams of Skittles’ milked man. Which one will be crowned the Freakiest Advertising Moment of 2007?
UPDATE: And the winner is Dexter! See the vote totals here.
The start of a new year is always a good time to reflect on the past and think about the future. But for CMOs, this end-of-the-year taking stock quickly puts a damper on holiday celebrations. CMO tenure remains depressingly low, marketing effectiveness has been disappointing and CEOs are all too quick to notice poor results. To help brighten your outlook on the year ahead, we compiled a list of 10 things CMOs can do to dramatically help themselves, their brands and their companies.
Whether spurred by human nature or love of ritual, it's a time-honored tradition to set some goals for the New Year. So in the spirit of new beginnings I suggest the following New Year's resolutions for brands. In fact, the concepts behind the most common resolutions made by people — spend more time with friends and family, eat right, exercise more — apply to brands as well
Jakob Nielsen’s newest alertbox on the web 2.0’s dangers to site profitability: “Instead of adding Facebook-like features that let users “bite” other users and turn them into zombies, the B2B site would get more sales by offering clear prices, good product photos, detailed specs, convincing whitepapers, an easily navigable information architecture, and an email newsletter.”
If you’ve always wanted see a more radical Santa Claus, now the good people at R/GA give you the chance. Tattoo the fatty in red where you want and with what you want.
Link: R/GA Tattoo Santa.
Via: NiceToMeetYou.
Color wheel as seen by a red-insensitive protanope.
To test how your ads are seen by the color-blind, you can use Vischeck, an online tool and a set of downlodable Photoshop filters for PC and Mac.
More tools. A color-blind-friendly interface on Summize.
Earlier:
Advertising for the Color-Blind
Tool: How Color Blind People See Text
Advertising in Braille
The Robotic Shopping Assistant
Playboy in Braille
A regular color wheel (source).
AFP/Breitbart: “A Japanese company Tuesday unveiled a new device that will allow people “speak” through their ear so they can use their mobile telephones in noisy places. The device — named “e-Mimi-kun” (good ear boy) — doubles as an earphone and a microphone by detecting air vibrations inside the ear, developer NS-ELEX Co. said.”
Mannequin designers at Rootstein find their creations frequently copied by cheaper manufacturers.
VMSD.com: “If the mannequin you acquire imitates a higher-priced model in design, pose, paint, facial expression or some other details, you’re likely breaking the law. Retailers face legal liability if there’s a whiff of suspicion that they conspired to have cheaper imitations produced. And – here’s the big cautionary message – retailers are liable even if they didn’t know the mannequins they purchased were copies.”
Earlier:
Moving Mannequins with Face Recognition
Lifelike Mannequins
Mannequin Crowd Promotes Real Estate
Concept: Social Retailing
I remembered a great quote from an old colleague of mine: “The web is the only medium in which you must create content which impresses machines.” This is especially true for headlines, and, increasingly, not only blog headlines. With online versions of traditional newspapers adding Digg Me buttons and incorporating automated contextual advertising and other technological novelties, the fine art of headline writing is under more and tighter constraints then ever before. Why and for what purpose are headlines written today?
News media outlets are heralding Ribbit’s goal to “be the platform company for Voice 2.0 applications.†Countless articles in mainstream news media and posts in blog media have appeared, written by individuals with a solid command of exactly what Ribbit is all about. Om Malik, writing for GIGAOM, sums it up: “…what they have done is built their own Class 5 softswitch and back-end infrastructure and married it to front-end technologies like Flash and Flex from Adobe Systems (ADBE).†Okay, if you say so.
The company calls itself, “Silicon Valley’s first phone company.†Chief Executive Officer Ted Griggs comes across as a really nice guy on a promotional video. The video will probably challenge the attention deficit Web readers are known for. Griggs basically talks about the company and what the technology means. But the video is about as lively as a lint brush. There’s a photo of a guy in a suit on the front page of the Ribbit Web site. He’s in a Zen state of mind. Who is he supposed to be speaking to? Even a developer wouldn’t relate to this guy. Your average person, to get excited about this product, needs to know in flat English what Ribbit is going to do for us and what it will cost.
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A page on the company’s Web site does give consumers an idea of what to expect. You’ll be able to: make calls through your computer so you have a phone wherever you have an internet connection, read your voicemails so audio playback is no longer a necessity, play your messages in any order so you decide the order of importance, and access your messages on the go from any phone through a smart voicemail interface.
A New York Times headline asked, “Would you buy a telephone from a company named Ribbit?†Most of us would if we get a unique service at reasonable cost. I actually think the name can be an asset—frogs are cute and there’s a lot of creative leeway in those little amphibians. Think about what GEICO does with a gecko who talks like an Aussie and has better manners than most of us. You have to wonder what kind of accent a Ribbit-promoting frog might speak with, in between ribbits.
Meanwhile, developers are positive. According to the Ribbit Web site, more than 600 have joined the development community to date, located throughout the world in over 65 countries, including the U.S., Europe, Brazil, China, and India. Time will tell whether future marketing efforts will succeed with consumers—maybe we’ll see a Valley girl frog offering up a designer beer, ‘ribbiting’ with zest, selling us on a new phone service in the process.
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NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Outdoor gear and clothing retailer REI has handed its estimated $28 million creative and media account to BBDO, Atlanta, according to executives familiar with the matter.
An update on that Starbucks Holiday cheer – presumably happens in drive-throughs – now we learn that cops in California pull over drivers who have done nothing wrong just to hand them a Starbucks coupon. Get the hell away, really? How would you react if a police car went all blinking lights on you, pulled you over and then handed you a coupon for a decaf latte?
Where in the hell did 2007 go? The last time I checked, it was July and I was fawning over the Transformers movie. Sheesh. Anyways, this Friday will be the final Coffee Morning of 2007. If you’d like to come by and enjoy a coffee and a kick ass egg sandwich, we’ll be down at Mildred’s starting around 7:30.
Even if you’re not working on Friday, or if you’re a student in town for the holidays, please stop by and hang out. If you know anything about us, we’ll probably be talking about the usual nonsense — which lately has been about why certain coffee shops DON’T open at the time they say they will. Sigh.
If we don’t see you, have a great holiday season. We’ll see you in 2008 and we’ll start to hit up some new spots around downtown KC.
If you think voice-automated customer service systems are stupid, frustrating and useless, let me tell you something: They are even worse for those of us who happen to have an accent. No joke.
Ah, PETA, what would we do without your cyber snowglobe reminding us whom to despise this holiday season—and the animal-related reasons why they’ve earned our disgust? There’s Michael Vick, wearing a football helmet and an inmate’s jumpsuit, exercising in the prison yard. Everyone knows about Vick’s dogfighting, but here are some other celebs who’ve wronged our furry friends: the Olsen twins, Kate Moss and Anna Wintour (all for wearing fur); Dick Cheney (for hunting); and Colonel Sanders (for chicken torture). I applaud the late Colonel’s inclusion. He deserves to get pecked for all eternity by a giant devil-chicken, if only because KFC’s greasy, bland food sucks. As for the others, well, most people already disliked them, even without the animal-cruelty angle, so I guess they’re fair game. Oops, “fair game’s†a hunting reference. Fur would keep you warm in that chilly globe. Oh, right—no fur. I’d better watch out. And so should McKinney’s Snowglobe Boy, who may see Michael Vick break his record shortly.
—Posted by David Gianatasio
CHICAGO (AdAge.com) — When Constellation Brands paid $384 million for the edgy, independent Svedka vodka brand in February, many thought the deal was a potentially perilous one for the wine-and-spirits giant. Svedka had grown explosively thanks largely to provocative advertising that ignored accepted industry standards and simply ignored the industry's marketing arm when it asked for ads to be shelved. How would it adjust to being owned by a member of the Distilled Spirits Council of the U.S. and therefore subject to its marketing code?
The New York Post reports that Will Ferrell may team up with Budweiser for a spot during the upcoming Super Bowl XLII on February 3rd.
The comedian is talking to beer brewer and perennial Super Bowl advertiser Anheuser-Busch about appearing in a spot during the Feb. 6 game on Fox, sources told The Post.
Assuming the spot makes the cut, Ferrell would appear as his character from the upcoming 1970s basketball comedy, “Semi-Pro,” opening Feb. 9.
According to the article, other celebrities we should expect to see include Justin Timberlake for Pepsi and Carmen Electra for Hershey’s.
Additionally, AdAge is reporting that Nissan Motor Co. is quietly mulling a large spot buy that would allow the automaker to run lots of local ads on various Fox TV stations and affiliates during the game.
A Nissan spokeswoman said she could not “confirm anything about our plans for the Super Bowl,” but one person familiar with the matter said the automaker is planning to advertise its Murano, a so-called midsize crossover that pairs the driving experience of a regular car with some of the features of a sport utility vehicle.
Other Super Bowl advertisers expected to show include Coca Cola, Audi of America, Bridgestone Firestone North America, Cars.com, Frito-Lay/Doritos, General Motors/Chevrolet, GoDaddy, NFL, Disney, Kraft/Planters, Unilever, SalesGenie.com, Hyundai Motor America and FedEx.
While the translation bots are not famous for understanding human speech with great accuracy, one thing Google’s bots get right is swearing.
Google has just released a series of language translation bots that you can invite for a chat and that would act as simultaneous interpreter when you have a conversation with another foreign-language speaking human.
You probably don’t want to use it for important conversations: Israeli journalists recently got themselves into a diplomatic scandal when their translation software misfired and one of the questions to the Dutch Foreign Minister resulted in”The mother your visit in Israel is a sleep to the favor or to the bed.”
So. Google’s English to Russian bots translate “Let’s go drinking” as “Let’s find potable” and “Shipping up to Boston” as “Navigation to Pskov“. But swearing? Dead on.
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.
