Friday Haiku: The Agency Kitchen

It's the place at the office where we congregate on breaks, where we step away from our cubicles and relax, and where we bask in aromas that make us jealous they are not ours for the taking. No, not the men's room.

I'm talking about the office kitchen. It's the home of four-month old cream cheese, the birthday cake no one at home ate, and the pot someone left an eye-dropper full of coffee in so they wouldn't have to make another.

This week, for your Friday Haiku enjoyment:

The Agency Kitchen

I've killed for popcorn.

Your creamer ate my sandwich.

That fire wasn't me.

--Captain Awesome, Project Specialist

Last Week in the Friday 5-7-5: Marketing Plans

Next Week: The Men's Room

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From the People Who Brought You A Gorilla Playing the Drums for Chocolate

This is the newest spot for Cadbury from A Glass and a Half Full Productions, the same people who brought you "Balls" and "Gorilla." Now I personally never loved Gorilla. I thought it was unique, but like many people, I watched wondering What the heck is this for? I arrived at the end thinking, A gorrilla playing the drums. I wasted 90 seconds of my life to watch a gorilla hammer out the most overplayed Phil Collins song ever. I don't want to listen to it on the radio, let alone watch some simian with a better sense of rhythm than me bang it out on the skins.

Some attributed a 2007 Cadbury sales increase of 9% over the same period in 2006 to the Gorilla campaign, which also consisted of billboards, ads and events among other executions. However, back in 2006, Cadbury was reeling from bad press due to a recall brought about by salmonella fears. Was Gorilla the reason for their success, or were they just bouncing back from a prior year that had been dragged down by consumer backlash?

Personally, this sort of advertising doesn't work for me. Was this spot more entertaining than Gorilla? Absolutely. It was fun and they actually chose a good song, Queen's Don't Stop Me Now. However, I go back to the same problem I had with Gorilla. In no way does this make me want to buy a Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate bar. Now maybe this is because I wasn't subjected to the entire ad campaign, and hand-dipped in a desire for the sweet nectar that is Cadbury. Or maybe I'm too much of a linear thinker. A+B=Buy Chocolate.

Now I know I always want to do something more creative, cool, slick or funny, to push the client and do something no one's ever seen before. Then coworkers and clients reply, How does this sell Brand X? And when I don't have an answer, the idea ends up on the pile with one of my many post-apocalyptic or "too creepy" ideas.

As advertisers, yes, we need to push our clients. More interesting advertising gets the viewer's attention and makes us excited about our work. However, do you ever get the feeling that some agencies just know how to smooth-talk clients so they'll pay them to do something "different"?

However, if you loved Gorilla or Trucks, I have this creepy, post-apocalyptic ad for a spot you're gonna think is hysterical.

And special thanks to Scampblog, our friends from across the pond, who beat us to the punch on this one.

--Captain Awesome

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Friday Haiku: Marketing Plans

You may have the best product in the world, but if you don't have some sort of concept on how to get the product to your market and how to make sure the world sees how brilliant it is, it'll remain on the shelf with such other failed inventions like Nuclear Fusion. (Whatever Princeton, keep flouting your Tokamak*, but until I see one in the back of every Delorean in the country, it's just another one of your other pie in the sky ideas the public never bought into. Will anyone get both of those references? I don't care. I do it for the love, not for the fans.) Anyway, for your reading pleasure

The Friday Haiku: Marketing Plans

We've got a plan to solve everything.

Listen to us and your product will sing.

The people will buy.

You won't even have to try.

Wait, this was a limerick. Good thing I'm not in marketing.

Previously in the Friday 5-7-5: Bumper Stickers

--Captain Awesome, Project Specialist

*The Ad Agency Confessional does not consider Wikipedia to be reputable reference source, however, we still do consider it to be pretty awesome.

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Save Money and the Environment with Blackle

What is Blackle? It’s a Heap Media-owned search engine like Google, but with a black screen instead of a white screen. Why? According to Mark Ontkush of the ecoIron blog, “an all white web page uses about 74 watts to display, while an all black page uses only 59 watts.” Now Google gets about 200 million queries a day. Ontkush figures that if the average query is displayed for 10 seconds, that’s 550,000 hours per day on desktops around the world. And remember, that’s not hits, that’s only queries, so the time spent looking at a Google screen could be much higher. That’s 15 watts less per query, which he states would equal a global savings of 8.3 Megawatt-hours per day. Ontkush’s math and figures have been debated by multiple sources, but if his numbers are accurate, that could mean anywhere from 750 mwh to 1,500 mwh per year. And that would mean we’re saving money and using less fossil fuels.

Why are people debating?









Ontkush’s figures are based largely on cathode ray tube (CRT) monitors (and yes, that’s cathode ray tubes like in old-fashioned TVs), which comprise only about 25% of monitors used around the world. And CRTs, which are slowly being phased out, are used more widely in China and Latin America than in the United States. This study from Techlogg.com showed that Onkjush’s numbers for CRT monitors is pretty accurate; however, the power savings drops substantially with more popular liquid crystal display (LCD) monitors. In fact, monitors 22 inches or smaller actually use a few more watts with Blackle, while monitors 24 inches or larger generally (although not always) save anywhere from 1 to 4 watts with Blackle.

(It’s important to note that for this study, four CRT monitors, 23 LCD monitors were tested. Zero plasma display monitors were tested; according to ecoIron, their power consumption is similar to that of CRTs. No Organic Light Emitting Diode [OLED] monitors were tested, but it’s commonly held that OLEDs are more energy efficient than the other three models mentioned.)

What can be learned from this? If you’re using an old-fashioned monitor, blackle or google’s own darkoogle, can save you precious watts. And in the long term could save you money and save that little piece of real estate we like to call planet Earth. If you’re using an LCD monitor 22 inches or smaller, stick with regular google and you won’t cost yourself valuable watts.

Now some of you may be thinking, “Captain, why did you tell me all of this if you don’t want me to change a darn thing?”

1) For some, the change would benefit you. 2) You can find even more, simple power saving tips—regardless of what sites you surf on the company dime, like turning off your PC at night and disabling your screensaver—in this article, also from Techlogg. 3) This may not be the way you’ll save your company millions of dollars and finally earn that free copywriter’s trip to historic Williamsburg, Va., but thinking differently might be what saves a few dollars, your budget, and the planet. Think outside the box people, or as I like to say, “Think outside the hexagon.”*

*copyright 2008, Captain Awesome, Inc. LLC

-Captain Awesome, Project Specialist

ed.'s note: The Renegade Agency Confessional blog is committed to decreasing our nation's dependence on foreign fossil fuels. We're proud to announce our site is powered by clean, renewable baby seals.

We're doing our part for the environment. Are you?

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Garfield Minus Garfield

Yet another Renegade chips in as our favorite ponytailed, leather-chair swiveling, Judd Nelson impersonating (c. Breakfast Club) Editor Craig Anderson threw this site our way.

Now, today’s bloggerific post isn’t as much about advertising as it is thinking outside the box. The comic is from the site, Garfield Minus Garfield, in which an artist removed Garfield, the cat, from Garfield, the comic. Through a little Photoshopping, a comic about a man and his lazy, lasagna-loving cat is turned into a “journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness in a quiet American suburb.”

The road to innovation is paved with the Who-Came-Up-With-This? mindset. In 1913, Notre Dame football coach, Knute Rockne, desperate to beat a bigger, heavily-favored Army team, resorted to an underused offensive strategy—the forward pass—and won 35-13; the game of football would be forever changed. Napster was the creation of a college dropout, living in a basement; it revolutionized the computer and music industry. Remember, without that college dropout, there is no iPod. And the Flowbee was invented by someone too lazy to go to the barber.

Maybe that was a bad example. But enjoy Garfield Minus Garfield.

--Captain Awesome, Project Specialist

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Top 6 “No’s”, Captain Awesome Is Told Nearly Every Week

1. No, the client does not want a commercial that has an alien mothership blowing up the Arizona coastline.

2. No, the client does not want an alien mothership.

3. No, the client does not want to blow up the Arizona coastline.

4. No, we’re not going to send you to the Arizona coastline. Arizona doesn’t even have a coastline.
Captain Awesome looks confused.

5. No, we haven’t found someone to replace you yet. Every time we mention salary, the interviewee just starts laughing.

6. No, you can’t write a blog about this. Now, go back to your office…cubicle…(groans)…Fortress of Awesomitude.

Captain Awesome scurries away, with his arms spread wide, making airplane propeller sounds.


--Captain Awesome, Project Specialist

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Friday Ad Haiku: False Advertising

When I woke up this morning, last night's "winter storm warning" was merely a light snowy fur. Of course, when I got to my car, I realized that fur covered a shell of ice. So hear's to building things up to be more than they are, things not being at all what they seem and "all the hype" not living up to expectations.

For Your Friday Haiku Pleasure:
False Advertising


Make-up. Wonderbra.
Pretty girl facade hides an
Albino scarecrow.










Previously in the Friday 5-7-5:
Account Executives




Captain Awesome, Project Specialist

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Friday Haiku: Office Décor

Why is it some people’s offices look like a board room, some look like a dorm room and some look like a sultan’s harem? Our VP of Production has antique cameras and framed posters from classic movies and jazz musicians. Our Director of New Business Development always has five lamps on, yet it still feels like dusk. My office has two people, a twelve-year-old couch, and a picture of my niece...taped to the wall. So this week’s haiku is dedicated to the office décor you love and love to hate.

Leather couch: awesome.
Hang in there kitty: cliché.
Three-foot droid: I’m scared.







Last week's Haiku: Super Bowl Spots




Captain Awesome, Project Specialist

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I Might Be a Sucker

Rolling my cart out of Safeway the other day, I was asked by a girl, maybe 10 or 11 years old and sitting behind a small table, “Would you like to buy some chocolate to raise money for a good cause? They’re only a dollar. The money goes to my school.” I thought, she seems excited, and I do like chocolate. Only a dollar! SOLD!

In retrospect, did I need it? I’m 40 pounds overweight, and this wasn’t some special enzyme-filled, calorie-reducing health chocolate. It wasn’t a great deal, either. I could’ve bought a Snickers in the checkout line for $0.79. Nor was it gourmet chocolate. It pretty much tasted like a Hershey bar, the same brand of miniatures I already had in my shopping cart. And as for the good cause? I don’t have any kids, so helping a school is only a benefit for me in that it keeps kids out of the way of my car during the day.

And when I asked her if it was a good school, she didn’t shout, “It’s the best school on the planet!” She shrugged her shoulders and, counting out five chocolate bars said, “Sure.” Thinking back, I'm wondering if I didn't hear her say, “Sure…sucker. And thanks for wearing your church sweatpants out on a Sunday, slob.”

DON’T JUDGE ME, LITTLE GIRL WITH YOUR CRAPPY SCHOOL!

So why did I buy this needless candy? This little girl presented an enthusiastic sales pitch for a product I already liked, followed by a reasonable price point. On top of that, it was for a good cause! I enjoy inexpensive chocolate, and I help save our nation's youth! Hooray!

So, is a strong pitch and a good deal all it takes sometimes? Is that why we still see infomercials for Tony Little's Rock and Roll Stepper?

Or why Billy Mays (Oxiclean, Orange Glo, Ding King, etc.) is such a popular pitchman?

I didn’t think I needed a Samurai Shark, but he just seemed so excited about it. Only three easy payments of $19.95! Why don’t they just give it away!

The answer is, YES.

As an ad agency, we love brilliant creative like this ad for Centraal Baheer insurance.

But not every campaign needs to be Advertising Genius. It may just need to be Advertising Smart. If you’re trying to get a brilliant concept to a hard-to-reach audience, it’s probably worth spending the extra money. But if your audience just needs a good price point to buy something they already use, like food or cleaning supplies or electronics equipment, then maybe you just need someone like this classic pitchman.

Although, as my father, Admiral Awesome, once noted, you do run the risk of annoying your potential customers. He’s vowed never to buy anything Billy Mays pitches. I said, “But Dad, he seems really excited.” He said, “Cap’n, we were really excited when you started remembering to zip up your fly, but we weren’t gonna sell it to anyone.” You win this round, old man.

So, know your message, know your audience, and decide, do I need something brilliant, or do I just need to spring Crazy Eddie out of prison?

-Captain Awesome, Project Specialist

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Tasteful Chicken?

There’s no genius advertising in this campaign, just a guy in a chicken suit on the side of the road holding a sign and waving an American flag. But according to the Woodland Park local government, he's in bad taste--and in violation of state sign laws. They want him gone.

As a copywriter, what grabbed my attention was a quote in the Colorado Springs Gazette from Wild Wings ‘n Things owner Lisa Branden, “He is my main source of advertising….He is my primary method for letting people know I am here.”

Someone sell these people a freakin’ sign!

Further research uncovered an article in this week’s Mountain Jackpot, in which Chicken Man attended a local town meeting along with 100 other Woodland Park, Colorado merchants, some wearing t-shirts with the slogan “Don’t Choke Our Chicken” to show their support.

This somewhat silly story starts with the issue of tacky advertising and launches into issues of freedom of speech for advertisers and whether legislators have the right to regulate bad taste.

This past spring, these billboards in Chicago and Glenview, Illinois, respectively, were taken down due to public outcry.
With regards to the FGA Law billboard, according toWBBM Newsradio 780, the issue of poor taste was not directly addressed by local government as the firm did not have the proper permit for a commercial sign in that location anyway. In other words, the slimy message was not what got the ad pulled; it was the bureaucracy--which one could argue has a special brand of sliminess all its own.

For the moment, it looks like Chicken Man will maintain his snowy post, but this is apparently a growing issue from the Second City to bedroom communities tucked into the Rockies.

Maybe Wild Wings ’n Things founder Mike Morris said it best, “I think it’s a freedom of speech issue. I think we should be able to walk down the street in any costume we want.” Maybe not.

What did Chicken Man have to say about all of this?

According to the Colorado Springs Gazette, Branden stated, “He does not talk. He’s a chicken."

Captain Awesome, Project Specialist

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Customer Service Strikes Back

At Renegade, sure we do advertising. We also have a studio, produce films and documentaries, and even handle customer service training, a facet of business that may not be as sexy as Superbowl ads and viral videos, but is just as essential to success .

Picture this: You’re standing in line at your local deli counter, coffee shop or fast food chain. The clerk asks if he can help the person in front of you. As they step forward to place their order, they reach toward their purse/pocket to grab their cell phone, “Oh, hey…Standing in line. What’s up…No way.” The burger jockey waits with a painful, painted on smile for the customer to place their order, “May I help y—” But the clerk is cut off by a single finger of silence held up by the oblivious cell phone talker, as if to sneer incredulously, “Can’t you see I’m on the phone…idiot?”

Or how about this: The jackass in front of you picks up their cell phone, steps forward to place their order while continuing their conversation, and the clerk with a genuine smile and air of satisfaction says, “I’ll be right with you as soon as you’re ready,” pointing to the sign that clearly reads, "If you're on your phone, we don't want to interrupt, so we'll just help everyone behind you first." The clerk smiles as you stride forward. Score one for the little guy in the paper hat.

It’s a trend that’s been slowly catching on. From PA to the PCH, all sorts of businesses–coffee shops, gynecologists and everything in between—are standing up for their employees and their customers with one simple request: PUT. THE CELL PHONE. DOWN. According to an article in the Seattle Post Intelligencer, Robbie Stevenson of phonesoff.net has made silencing this daily annoyance into a lucrative business. In 2003, Robbie sold 1,000 $4.95-$6.95 “No cell phone signs.” Today she sells 1,000 a month to companies from the Girl Scouts to Harvard University. The guy in the paper hat cheers and goes back to studying for the bar.

I may talk on the cell phone while strolling around Safeway, but I hang up or tell the person to hold on the moment I get up to that counter. Despite the urgency I feel to continue a conversation about whether or not Nicole Ritchie is “too thin” or if Suri Cruise really is an alien, I can sacrifice for the two minutes it takes to ring up my Mac n’ Cheese and cherry cola. I don’t know, I’ve just always thought people who don’t hang up the phone are rude. And as a former fry flinger (from back in the day when beepers were all the rage), it tickles my heart to hear that somebody is stepping up for the little guy. (Now, if we could only get the swerving land whale SUV drivers to do the same, I might go so far as to say courtesy is making a comeback in our country—but that’s a different rant.)

The point is. Somebody’s getting the message. When you take your customers seriously, they take you seriously, and they appreciate it. The aforementioned article noted that some people complained, but it was about 1 complaint for every 600 “thank you’s.” According to a 2006 survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, the Associated Press and AOL, 82 percent of all Americans and 86 percent of cell phone users were irritated by loud, annoying cell conversations in public. THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN!

So in honor of the people speaking, when you think about customer service, think this: “What do our customers really want?” “What would make our customers happy?” And not just the loud, fickle, bully customers whose opinions you’d already know even if they weren’t constantly telling you how to better run your business, but the dedicated customers, too. The ones who’ve stuck with your business through the toughest growing pains, the ones who’ve stayed because they like what you’ve got. Building business is about finding new customers, but it’s also about keeping the loyal customers you’ve got.

Next week we may see Wal-Mart may putting in drive-thrus in the power tool department, but this week, notch one up for customer service.

Captain Awesome, Project Specialist

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