This is from a commercial for East Japan Railway. Because nothing says “safe, reliable and rapid public transportation” like synchronized ostrich skiing.

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The health consequences of consuming sugary drinks are well known. It is not surprising, therefore, that groups such as the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Institute of Medicine, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization, and other groups have said that consumption is too high and needs to come down.

What has been missing from this picture is a detailed analysis of how the industry markets these products to the most vulnerable segment of our population: children. It is important to know this in order to help establish government policies on whether children should be protected from this influence, and also test whether the industry is holding true to its promises to market less to this age group.

The beverage industry, dominated by Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, is represented by a trade association called the American Beverage Association (ABA). The beverage companies have made a number of promises that it will market less to children. Coca-Cola, for example, claims they "…will not place any of [their] brands’ marketing in television, radio, and print programming that is primarily directed to children under the age of 12…"

[..]

Our group at the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University has just released the most extensive analysis ever of the marketing of sugary drinks to children and teenagers. This new report found that children are exposed to more — not less — advertising for sugary drinks than they were several years ago, and that the companies are finding new and sophisticated ways to reach youth.

Okay, I admit, some advertising is great

[Quote]:

Most people know that Venice has long been threatened by chronic flooding, but in recent years the Queen of the Adriatic has faced a rising tide of a different sort: advertising.

From the Doge’s Palace to St. Mark’s Square to the bittersweet Bridge of Sighs — named for the grief its splendid views once inspired in crossing death row prisoners — immense billboards lit late into the night now mar the city’s most treasured places.

Allegedly built to cover the cost of restoration work in the face of government cutbacks, the ads have brought in around $600,000 per year since 2008 — a fraction of the shortfall — and show no sign of going away any time soon. Their presence prompted a consortium of the world’s leading cultural experts led by the Venice in Peril Fund to air an open letter demanding the city government put a stop to the placards that “hit you in the eye and ruin your experience of one of the most beautiful creations of humankind.” Mayor Giorgio Orsoni, for one, was not moved, saying last year “If people want to see the building they should go home and look at a picture of it in a book.”

Another photo of the now-pitiful Bridge of Sighs

Venice stages its own funeral to mourn population decline

Why are Venetians fleeing, anyway? It’s not due to flooding…

Troubled waters: Paintings show Venice in decline

“Venezia” by flapjax at midnite

[Quote]:

"Just wait."

So powerful. So easy to say. So appealing when your current products are behind the curve, and the press and analysts are beating you up about it. You can shut up the critics instantly if you just drop a few hints about the next generation product that’s now in the labs.

So dangerous.

The phrase "just wait" ought to be locked behind glass in the marketing department, like a fire extinguisher, with a sign that says, "Break glass only in emergency." And then you hide the hammer someplace where no one can find it.

Saying "just wait" is dangerous because it invites customers to stop buying your current products. You’re basically advertising against yourself. If your company is under financial or competitive stress, the risk is even greater because people are already questioning your viability.

This danger is especially potent in the tech industry (as opposed to carpeting or detergent) because tech customers worship newness, and they use the Internet aggressively to spread information. One vague hint at a conference in Japan can turn into a worldwide product announcement overnight.

[Quote]:

A woman who was targeted by Toyota in a creepy, stalker-themed online advertising stunt will be allowed to sue the company, despite the carmaker’s argument that she unknowingly agreed to the whole thing.

Amanda Duick sued Toyota in 2009 over its intrusive “Your Other You” campaign, after she began receiving frightening e-mails over a number of days from a strange man. The man, who had her home address, told her he was on the lam from the law and needed to crash at her place for a bit to hide out with his pit bull, Trigger.

According to a court document (.pdf), “Sebastian Bowler,” who appeared to be a 25-year-old Englishman and soccer fanatic with a drinking problem (based on the MySpace page he sent Duick), told the plaintiff that he was on a cross-country road trip and would be at her house in a few days. After Bowler wrote that he’d run into some trouble at a motel, Duick received an e-mail from someone purporting to be manager of the motel, who included a bill to Duick saying she was responsible for a TV Bowler had smashed.

Duick freaked out over the e-mails before she received a message directing her to a video explaining she’d been punked by Toyota. The video explained that Bowler was a fictional character, and the whole thing had been an elaborate prank — part of an ad campaign for Toyota’s Matrix car.

Unknown to Duick, someone had signed her up for the campaign at YourOtherYou.com, a web site set up for the prank. The campaign was aimed at 20-something males because the company’s advertising firm, Saatchi & Saatchi LA, determined that the demographic loves to punk their friends.

[..]

“Even when you get several stages in, it’s still looking pretty real,” Saatchi creative director Alex Flint said about the campaign in 2008. “I think even the most cynical, anti-advertising guy will appreciate the depth and length to which we’ve gone.”

“appreciate”? I don’t think that word means what you think it means, Alex.

Brand Reversions, Brand identities with split personalities.

[Quote]:

Taking inflation into account, Ad Age goes on to explain, the “incomes of most American workers have remained more or less static since the 1970s,” while “the income of the rich (and the very rich) has grown exponentially.”

The top 10 percent of American households, the trade journal adds, now account for nearly half of all consumer spending, and a disproportionate share of that spending comes from the top 10’s upper reaches.

“Simply put,” sums up Ad Age’s David Hirschman, “a small plutocracy of wealthy elites drives a larger and larger share of total consumer spending and has outsize purchasing influence — particularly in categories such as technology, financial services, travel, automotive, apparel, and personal care.”

[..]

Targeting this $100,000 to $200,000 cohort, the new Ad Age report contends, no longer makes particularly good marketing sense. These consumers don’t “feel rich” today and won’t likely “graduate into affluence later on.”

Only under-35s who make between $100,000 and $200,000, says Ad Age, will likely make that graduation. This under-35 “emerging” tier will have “a far greater chance of eventually crossing the golden threshold of $200,000 than those who achieve household income of $100,000 later in life.”

So that’s it. If you want to be a successful advertising exec in a deeply unequal America, start studying up on 20-somethings making over $100,000 a year.

[Quote]:

"The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads,"

Apart from those sitting around at investment banks coming up with mathematic models to game the financial system, of course.

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[Quote]:

Startup advertising firm Adzookie has latched on to a high-profile way to publicize itself: by turning homes into massive billboards.

In exchange, Adzookie says it will pay the house owner’s mortgage every month for as long as the home stays painted.

[Quote]:

Apple’s dominance on tablets and smartphones presents a threat to accurately measure and optimize the performance of paid-search marketing campaigns.

Search firm Marin Software published a white paper Tuesday based on findings and unanswered questions surrounding Apple’s iOS platform. The report identifies Safari, the primary browser for iOS devices, as a major challenge because it blocks third-party cookies by default, making it difficult for ad servers, tracking systems, and ad management tools to link visitors to ads that brought them to the Web site.

Boo hoo hoo.

[Quote]:

Besides death and taxes, here’s another thing you can always count on in life. Somehow, someone, somewhere will find a way to make flying and airports even more intolerable.

[..]

When someone is washing their hands or shaving or something, the bathroom mirrors work as expected. But when no one is standing in front of the sink, the mirrors switch to showing full-screen ads.

[Quote]:

[Our economy] demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfactions, our ego satisfactions, in consumption. The measure of social status, of social acceptance, of prestige, is now to be found in our consumptive patterns [...] We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced, and discarded at an ever increasing pace. We need to have people eat, drink, dress, ride, live, with ever more complicated and, therefore, constantly more expensive consumption.

~American retail analyst Victor Lebow

You think those days are over? Think again!

[Quote]:

AT&T Inc. flipped a switch and turned on its 4G wireless network Wednesday. The switch, however, was in the company’s marketing department.

By relabeling its existing 3G network, the country’s second-largest wireless carrier joined the noisy fray over so-called fourth-generation wireless technology, which promises mobile Internet speeds so fast that huge files can be downloaded in minutes and streaming video can be watched without the interruptions of earlier-generation technologies.

[..]

The claims are relatively easy to make because the International Telecommunications Union, the wireless industry standards body, hasn’t set a firm 4G definition.

And the moment they do, you can count on AT&T delivering their 5G network.

[Quote]:

There is, in the words of Jeff Atwood, "trouble in the house of Google". It’s not unrest within the company that he’s talking about, though; it’s externally among users who are beginning to find that when they try to do searches to evaluate or buy consumer items – such as dishwashers, or iPhone 4 cases – or to find a site that will give them some useful answers, that Google’s results are awash with spam.

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Fuck you, BMW.

[Quote]:

Consumers should be warned about intrusive and misleading new advertising techniques such as internet ads tailored to fit individuals, says a resolution approved by the European Parliament on December 15 2010.

The resolution also calls for better protection of vulnerable consumers and emphasises the role of advertising in challenging stereotypes, a European Parliament media statement said.

[..]

The resolution voices concern about “the routine use of behavioural advertising and the development of intrusive advertising practices”, such as third parties who read private emails or use social networks and geolocation techniques to tailor advertising to individual consumers’ interests.

If you listen to the advertisers, you’d think the economy will collapse if they can’t read your private mail:

[Quote]:

The report takes a critical view of online advertising and suggests a number of measures that would not only harm Europe’s advertising sector, but also impact the financial viability of advertising-funded free online services, used by millions of Europeans on a daily basis.

Boo fucking hoo. People were perfectly happy paying for their email account before gmail existed.

[Quote]:

Yep, you read that right. Today, YouTube is officially launching TrueView, a new ad format that lets users skip over ads they aren’t interested in — and advertisers are actually okay with it.

It’s a new format that YouTube has been testing for a while now, and it’s a bit different than what you’re probably used to. When a TrueView ad unit begins playing, you’ll notice a five second countdown timer — as soon as that’s up, you’ll see an arrow that will let you skip the remainder of the ad and get back to the content you wanted to see, or you can choose to keep on watching the ad.

So at 5 seconds everyone participates in a no-opt-out survey on whether or not the ad interests them. No wonder advertisers like it! They get to sell their products to everyone for 5 seconds at a cut rate, to known-interested parties for X seconds at a normal rate, PLUS info on which ads get the most dropouts, least dropouts, and presumably WHEN they drop out.

Pardon me for configuring AdBlock to filter this shit out.

[Quote]:

Would the nostalgics and apologists of the “good old days” still hold the same views after viewing these vintage ads?

(thanks, M.)

Pepsi secure in the knowledge that no matter how you vote, no vote will have any adverse effect on them. No possible US government will ever ask them to reduce plastic bottle usage for the sake of the world’s oceans. Their lobbyists own the government, no matter what you vote. They are so smugly assured of the utter uselessness of your vote that they sell you the idea along with their product.

[Quote]:

We did find (quite by accident) that Apple may have more reasons behind not installing Flash by default other than the stated reason of ensuring that users always have the most up-to-date version. Having Flash installed can cut battery runtime considerably—as much as 33 percent in our testing. With a handful of websites loaded in Safari, Flash-based ads kept the CPU running far more than seemed necessary, and the best time I recorded with Flash installed was just 4 hours. After deleting Flash, however, the MacBook Air ran for 6:02—with the exact same set of websites reloaded in Safari, and with static ads replacing the CPU-sucking Flash versions.

In case you need another reason, here it is: using FlashBlock and AdBlocker makes your battery last longer.

[Quote]:

Facebook Questions will empower over 500 million people around the world to solicit personalized, detailed answers to their questions from friends and knowledgeable experts. As Community Manager, you are responsible for cultivating a smart, enthusiastic and articulate community to kickstart our next major product initiative.

So, what’s the thinking within Facebook about what a community really is?

Let’s look at the responsibilities listed:

* Devise creative ways to attract high-quality contributors, e.g. through the use of contests, corporate acquisitions, targeted advertising, incentive programs or anything else you dream up.
* Work side by side with the engineering/product team to design user interfaces that attract high-quality contributions.
* Manage a team of thousands of moderators and develop tools to empower them to do their jobs more effectively

Yep – thousands of “moderators”, and their idea of a “high-quality contributors” is a company that does targeted advertising.

I get it: you want to attract a swarm of 17-year-old malcontents who will min-max your site’s reward system, and in doing so, create a staggering amount of utterly worthless content. But you want to dress it up in a way that maximizes page views and advertising impressions, because your product is not the people generating or viewing this content, but is rather the advertisers paying 30 cents for every hundred viewers who see their poorly-spelled ads for ring tones.

I guess I won’t be sending in my resume.

Captcha is a type of challenge-response test used in computing to ensure that the response is not generated by a computer. The process usually involves one computer (a server) asking a user to complete a simple test which the computer is able to generate and grade. Most often they’re images, with words in them obscured by lines and distortion to prevent OCR software from reading it.

You’d think this was something marketing couldn’t possibly ruin, right?

 

 

 
Wrong.