Off Topicness: Edumacationalism

The Wire, Season 4. See it and understand.

Had a chance to stop by AdVerve with the incomparable Bill Green and Angela Natividad. The discussion had a whisp of advertising threaded throughout, but BG & Ang were swell enough to let me jack the conversation and wax existential on public education and all things Bawldimore, Marelynn.

Have a spare hour and change? Give it a listen. The inherent uncensoredness of AdVerve guarantees it'll be a naughty pleasure for all you unruly adholes out there.

Go here to hear.

Enjoy. And feel free to disagree.

Links of note: What got me into this mess; fixing public education in 1-2-3-4-5 easy steps.

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Cameo!

If my adding a little andouille to The BeanCast gumbo weren't enough, I had a chance to stop by AdVerve, a new podcast hosted by Make The Logo Bigger's Bill Green and peripatetic ad diva Angela Natividad.

I channeled my inner-Busey for a five minute segment/stream-of-conscious essay on the devolution of consumer preference. Yeah. That's what that was.

So give AdVerve a download, give it a listen, and definitely give it a review. Disclaimer, this is not the Oldsmobile of advertising podcasts. There's cussin' and swearin', pardners, so if you work at a place where they've never heard the eff word or the bee word or the ess word or whatever word, wear headphones.

Or blast it real loud and give 'em a vocabulary lesson. After all, this is how people naturally talk about the industry.

AdVerve on iTunes HERE.
AdVerve direct download HERE.

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Tiny bubbles and marketing baubles

Had the pleasure of paneling on The BeanCast last night with a great group of dudes including marketing powerhouse Joseph Jaffe, AD/blogger pimp-daddy extraordinaire Bill Green, socialmesiter Aaron Strout, and host with the most Bob Knorpp.

Topics ran the gamut, from personalized search to Super Bowl ads.

It was a hell of a time, so if you don't already subscribe to The Bean Cast, get your arse over to iTunes or pick it up directly here.


One of the topics that got me riled up during the show was the hubbub over the spot Method pulled after complaints. Take a look if you haven't seen it already:

Method: Shiny Suds from Kreatif360 on Vimeo.

On the show, I defended the creative and lamented the fact that, once again, a brand has bowed down to a vocal minority's pissing and moaning - a handful of bloggers lambasted the spot for being misogynistic while the more zealous (read: bat-scat insane) ones went as far as to insist that it supports rape. (AdRants' Steve Hall got a taste of how scary Crazy can get.)

Listen, the spot did exactly what it was created to do: cut through clutter while eliciting an emotional response to the idea of scummy chemical residues lurking long after they're first sprayed. Without brand context, I thought it was brilliant. If you aren't making something that scares the hell out of someone, than you aren't doing your job.

The bigger concern here should be, does this kind of advertising mesh with Method's brand? They're innovative, but not necessarily edgy. And certainly not seditious. Jaffe made a good point in the podcast - the spot may have been on brief, but was it on brand? If anything, perhaps the spot shouldn't have been made at all - not for Method anyway. But to take it down after the fact paints the brand as timid. There's no room for timid.

Wear a cup.

Other moments in Cry Baby History: Bunched knickers over Snickers.

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Friday Ad Haiku: Blog Pimpin'

(click photo to initiate bigness)

One of our bestest ad blog buddies, Where's My Jetpack?, is making it rain (as much as any blogger not named Seth Godin can make it rain anyway) with his "Futureman Describes Twitter" comic (above).

It was only a matter of time before his stuff got noticed enough to get stolen, copyright infringed, and passed around. Like a well-muscled Amish woman sweating over a butter churn, 'Packs consistently stirs up some of the best creative and advertising-centric content on the Webs of our Wide World.

Along with Bill Green's Make the Logo Bigger, Angela and Steve's AdRants, and Simon Veksner's Scamp, WMJP? is on constant rotation in our RSS feed. If you like smart things, make them a part of your daily reading, too.

The moral:

Link to better blogs
than yours to coax more traffic.
Now that's karma, holmes.


Previously in the Friday 5-7-5: The Intern Sweatshop

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