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Well, I'm speechless.  Better let Sell, Sell, Sell handle this

Shenanigans Round Up

Bullshit on the Beach: Cannes 2013

Thankfully Cannes is over.  I had to block Ogily's twitter feed because it was overloaded with self-congratulatory and delusional drivel—David Ogilvy would have BBQed their still-attached testicles over an open fire in the lobby if he were in charge.  Of note throughout that thing was when George Lois and Lee Clow showed up.  They didn't rave about the freak show, they didn't praise the accomplishments of today's ad men.  Nope.  Here's just one of the things Lois said:

"The name of the game isn't technology. The name of the game is creativity," he said. "Guys come to me and say, 'It must have been great back then, when clients would accept good work.' And I say, 'What the fuck are you talking about?' Do great work, and have the courage to sell it. Force it to be sold."

What could go wrong?

Facebook reveals that a programming bug accidentally exposed private information of 6 million+ Facebookers.  The information, email addresses and telephone numbers, was never given to Facebook but was captured secretly and without users' consent, to create "Shadow Profiles."  The full story is here

In lesser news, Facebook's chief security officer, the guy who was responsible for protecting privacy for Facebookers joined the NSA in 2010.  There, don't you feel better now?  

Double, double, toil and trouble

Seems that some advertisers want their online ads to actually be seen.  With the news that over 50% are not seen—because they don't even show up—they want online publishers to guarantee visibility. But the guys who are supposed to be the experts in getting ads online say they can't and won't guarantee that.  And one of the big players expressed shock when they started losing business because of it. One can only hope the crooks behind this bullshit share a cell with Mr. Tossed Salad man.

BREAKING NEWS!

According to adweek, Unilever's mobile display ads for its Wish-Bone Italian salad dressing drew an 87 percent purchase intent lift for a spring campaign that recently wrapped, according to the company, which cited a total of 757 consumers surveyed by comScore.  Wow, so let me get this straight.  Of 757 people, 87% said they might buy it?  Regardless of how many tens of millions of bottles of the stuff they have to sell just to break even, how many of us said little white lies at those critical times to get what we wanted? 

Chump Change

Last week I posted on FB and Linkedin a link to a WSJ article that said:

An astounding 54 percent of online display ads shown in “thousands” of campaigns measured by comScore Inc. between May of 2012 and February of this year weren’t seen by anyone, according to a study completed last month. Don’t confuse “weren’t seen” with “ignored.” These ads simply weren’t seen, the result of technical glitches, user habits and fraud.

While I am not one who believes CMOs are blessed with critical thinking skills when it comes to the latest marketing fad, I wonder who will be the first one to wake up and realize that quite likely half of his online ad spend is useless. This, combined with the fact that some of his online ads might be posted on ghost sites and are only seen by bots, is criminal.  And this isn't nickle and dime stuff.  All the online pundits and gurus crow that online display ad spend is something around $14 billion, doing the math here shows that, if true, over $7 billion is wasted.

So far, Ad Week has identified six traffic dealers suspected of doing just this. I believe they will find more. 

The way that agencies and clients are reacting to all this reminds me of the practice we used when I worked in restaurants.  If somebody came in, ordered a big meal then said he couldn't pay for it, you don't call the cops or make him work the dish pit.  Instead, you give him a few bucks and tell him to go do the same thing to his competitor down the street. 

Channeling Oscar Wilde

Seems that brands on Facebook are treating consumers like idiots (Whaaaa?). Yes, it seems that brands have decided that the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.  An Australian media site, reports that KFC wanted to start a debate about whether or not people preferred granny's cooking or KFC's.  

Looking at the comments, most preferred Nanna's roast over KFC.  The rationale for all this:

Because it all comes down to chasing algorithms.  Facebook EdgeRank decides how many people to show posts to based in part on how viral previous messages have been, and also on whether people have interacted with previous messages from the brand. If you like or comment a post, Facebook is going to show you more messages from this brand in the future.

But think about what this means in practice. The people most likely to see KFC messages next time are those who went out of their way to talk about the idiocy of the brand.

And to keep delivering this reach, brands have to do this again and again.

At best, the questions are merely patronising. At worst, damaging for the brand. And of course, KFC isn’t the only one behaving like it thinks its consumers are idiots.

For more examples of brand FAILS you need to visit Condescending Brand Page and sign up for the Twitter feed so you'll never miss another example of when marketers treat you like a total moron or fratboy.

Open Letter to Ford

Dear Ford,
I see from Ad Week that you're running a whole bunch of mobile social media stuff at this year's Bonnaroo festival in Tennessee.  To raise awareness you've printed up a whack of signage that encourages festival goers to punch in **Ford on their mobile phones for a message about your 2014 Fiesta model. Ad Week says:

If consumers make the call, they'll hear a recorded message that's tailored to the location, as the automotive brand has geofenced Bonnaroo's 700-acre grounds via mobile marketing firm Zoove's StarStar system. A text message with a link to the campaign's mobile landing page will immediately follow the call. People dialing **Ford outside the festival's central Tennessee locale will hear a different message along with a text directing them to a unique localized version of the landing page...

The mobile piece is party to a social-media initiative that began in April, asking consumers to enter the chance to become Fiesta Movement agents with the carrot of getting to take a road trip to the festival near Manchester, Tenn. The winners—who essentially consist of young brand advocates—were announced last month. Now, the agents will take in the festival while signing up concertgoers who want to enter into a chance of winning a Fiesta and/or receive more information about the car.

Well, I guess that's OK.  I do feel kind of out of it because I never heard of the Fiesta Movement let alone knew they had brand advocates (they call them "agents") prowling around—I wonder if they are as annoying as the brand advocates for Jehovah's Witnesses?   Plus, I've never been to Bonaroo and from what I've read I'm not the target group for it anymore—it seems that most people going are between 20 and 28 and I haven't been in that range for some time.  But I have a question:  If in 2011 one vehicle was purchased for every:
14.6 drivers aged 55-64
14.9 for ages 65-74
15.0 for ages 45-54
15.9 for ages 35-44
34.9 for ages 25-34 and,
221.8 for ages 18-24,

why are you chasing a demographic that is the least likely to buy a new car? I know it hurts to be hip but I can't help thinking Ford would have a better idea. Maybe like pushing how great Fiesta's are pre-owned? "It's all about recycling, Man."  

*Disclaimer:  I own a 2013 Ford.  It is my 5th one in 20 years, though I briefly flirted with Mercedes, which turned out to be impractical—and the slightest problems are insanely expensive to fix.

The Ghost of Advertising Past

I lifted this off the Leo Burnett site.  (h/t Dave Scanlon) These are Leo's last words to his agency in 1967 on the day he retired.  It shows great integrity and, sadly, just how much the industry has decayed over the years.  If only the pioneers like Burnett, Bernbach, Ogilvy could reappear as Jacob Marley and put the fear of God into the douchebags running the big agency holding companies.  If only...

Somewhere along the line, after I’m finally off the premises, you – or your successors – may want to take my name off the premises, too. You may want to call yourselves "Twain, Rogers, Sawyer and Finn, Inc." … Or "Ajax Advertising" or Something.
That will certainly be okay with me – if it’s good for you.
But let me tell you when I might demand that you take my name off the door:
That will be the day when you spend more time trying to make money and less time making advertising – our kind of advertising.
When you forget that the sheer fun of ad-making and the lift you get out of it – the creative climate of the place – should be as important as money to the very special breed of writers and artists and business professionals who compose this company of ours – and make it tick.
When you lose that restless feeling that nothing you do is ever quite good enough.
When you lose your itch to do the job well for its own sake – regardless of the client, or the money, or the effort it takes.
When you lose your passion for thoroughness…your hatred of loose ends.
When you stop reaching for the manner, the overtones, the marriage of words and pictures that produces the fresh, the memorable, and the believable effect.
When you stop rededicating yourselves every day to the idea that better advertising is what the Leo Burnett Company is all about.
When you are no longer what Thoreau called "a corporation with a conscience" – which means to me, a corporation of conscientious men and women.
When you begin to compromise your integrity – which has always been the heart’s blood – the very guts of this agency.
When you stoop to convenient expediency and rationalize yourselves into acts of opportunism – for the sake of a fast buck.
When you show the slightest sign of crudeness, inappropriateness or smart-aleckness – and you lose that subtle sense of the fitness of things.
When your main interest becomes a matter of size just to be big – rather than good, hard, wonderful work.
When your outlook narrows down to the number of windows – from zero to five – in the walls of your office.
When you lose your humility and become big-shot weisenheimers…a little too big for your boots.
When the apples come down to being just apples for eating (or for polishing) – no longer a part of our tone – our personality.
When you disapprove of something, and start tearing the hell out of the man who did it rather than the work itself.
When you stop building on strong and vital ideas, and start a routine production line.
When you start believing that, in the interest of efficiency, a creative spirit and the urge to create can be delegated and administered, and forget that they can only be nurtured, stimulated, and inspired.
When you start giving lip service to this being a "creative agency" and stop really being one.
Finally, when you lose your respect for the lonely man – the man at his typewriter or his drawing board or behind his camera or just scribbling notes with one of our big black pencils – or working all night on a media plan. When you forget that the lonely man – and thank God for him – has made the agency we now have – possible. When you forget he’s the man who, because he is reaching harder, sometimes actually gets hold of – for a moment – one of those hot, unreachable stars.
THAT, boys and girls, is when I shall insist you take my name off the door.
And by golly, it will be taken off the door.
Even if I have to materialize long enough some night to rub it out myself – on every one of your floors.
And before I DE-materialize again, I will paint out that star-reaching symbol, too. And burn all the stationery. And tear up a few ads in passing. And throw every goddamned apple down the elevator shafts. You just won’t know the place, the next morning. You’ll have to find another name.

Big Data

I don't discuss politics here but the recent revelations about how the NSA in the US is grabbing data on everyone in the universe is chilling.  First we learned the NSA grabbed the metadata from all Verizon customers.  Then it came out that AT&T and T-Mobile customers were also targeted.  Some apologist said it's only metadata, it's not like they were listening to your calls or anything, so no biggie, right?  Well, here's just one of the things you can do with metadata—push play and follow a German Green politician over six months.  With only four metadata points you can determine the age, race, political persuasion, vices or illicit activities of anyone.

According to the NSA whistle blower who spilled the beans on all this:

“Aggregated metadata can be more revealing than content. It’s very important to realize that when an entity collects information about you that includes locations, bank transactions, credit card transactions, travel plans, EZPass on and off tollways; all of that that can be time-lined. To track you day to day to the point where people can get insight into your intentions and what you’re going to do next. It is difficult to get that from content unless you exploit every piece, and even then a lot of content is worthless.”

The next day, we learned that NSA also grabbed all the audio, video chats, photographs, email, documents from Google, Facebook, Youtube, Skype, Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple, AOL, PalTalk (you really didn't think those free email accounts were risk-free did you?).  That's from every man, woman, and child in the US (and likely Canada and the UK) who uses the Internet.  Every. Single. One.  And they compiled all this using a program called PRISM.  Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook et. al. are falling over themselves to say they never gave "direct" access to their servers, but that sounds like legal ass-covering to me, and that they have never heard of PRISM.  Well, they have now.  

The excuse for all this, they say, is it's needed to prevent terrorist attacks (I'm not sure how spying on innocents accomplishes that goal, but that's another story).  My point is that despite the ever-increasing amount of data manipulated, modeled, and processed by computer geniuses, mathematicians, secret agents and WOPR-like computers, it hasn't prevented any attack, like the Boston Bombing.  One anonymous government source said that PRISM foiled a 2009 NYC subway bombing plot, but it is becoming clear that old fashioned police work by Scotland Yard cracked the case.  It has done nothing. 

Now some hack will then chime in to say “If you have done nothing wrong you really have nothing to worry about”—wait for it, this kind of comment is coming soon.  Besides deserving a pie in the face, that is total bullshit: you may be innocent of a crime, but that doesn't mean you won't get picked up for it. If revenue collectors can destroy an innocent person's life—ruined finances, career, and reputation—just imagine what would happen if the Feds kick in your door and falsely accuse you of plotting some heinous act because of what some algorithms spewed out. And you have no recourse. 

What's worse, the more data it compiles and analyzes, the greater the chance of false positives. You do NOT want to be a false positive. 

What's this got to do with advertising?  Plenty. What's coming is likely a strict curtailment of personal data collection by government that will surely affect what companies like Google and Facebook collect and sell.  It will also likely affect how much and for how long companies hold customer data.  If I was a big data aggregator or marketer, I'd prepare for some big changes to my business model.