Joe at American Copywriter put up an excellent post today on focus groups and why they ought to be outlawed. Mention the words "focus group", and every creative can feel the bile rising in the throat. We know what's coming. We'll be sitting behind a two-way mirror for a couple of hours, eating bad snacks, and watching a group of people casually trample the work that we've poured our very souls into. Once those …
WARNING: WILL RUIN YOUR BROWSING EXPERIENCE
Washington Post: Advertising.com Inc., a unit of Time Warner Inc.'s America Online, agreed to settle federal charges that the company offered free security software without adequately disclosing that it also came with adware. Under a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission, Advertising.com will be required to "clearly and prominently" disclose that consumers who install the program, SpyBlast, will receive pop-up …
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Beware The Dreaded Hipstream
Hipster - One who possesses tastes, social attitudes, and opinions deemed cool by the cool. (Note: it is no longer recommended that one use the term "cool"; a Hipster would instead say "deck.") The Hipster walks among the masses in daily life but is not a part of them and shuns or reduces to kitsch anything held dear by the mainstream. Orlando Sentinel: For many twenty-, thirty- and fortysomethings, the appeal of …
Piers Poo Poos
Englishman, Piers Fawkes, visited London recently and came away unimpressed by the staidness evident in British ad circles. There are a few folk in the UK who are very switched on, I grant you, but a lot of agency people I met in my short visit were rather bemused by PSFK and IF. Although blogs are championed by the Guardian newspaper - an important media read - the British marketing community seems to be dismissive …
Nice Package
CNN has caught on to the latest in a long line of culture jamming tactics. This one is called shopdropping, a term that refers the act of covertly placing merchandise on display in a store, or reverse shoplifting. For example, shopdroppers place canned goods that have been repackaged with more artistic labels (complete with barcodes) on a grocer's shelf for purchase. While the name is new, the concept has been in …
Deception Perception
Chris at Shotgun Concepts gives us this to chew on. "What is the difference between unethical and ethical advertising? Unethical advertising uses falsehoods to deceive the public; ethical advertising uses truth to deceive the public." - Vilhjalmur Stefansson, "Discovery", 1964 Steffansson was an Arctic explorer, author and anthropologist. …
Tui Has Zero Taste
According to Spinner, New Zealand brewer Tui, pulled an offensive billboard campaign after protest from concerned citizens. …
David Casts Stone At Goliath
Promo Magazine: Oklahoma grocer Super H filed a lawsuit against Wal-Mart Stores for using a scanner to collect barcode data from products on Super H's shelves. The suit, filed in Osage County District Court on June 13, alleges that Wal-Mart sent workers into Super H to check prices as Wal-Mart readies to open a supercenter nearby in August. Super H isn't worried about the price information; its real concern is other …