Ad Agency JWT epic fails for Microsoft Bing
October 31, 2009
I am unsure of what Microsoft paid for this ad, but Advertising Agency JWT spelled out in a clear one minute and 16 seconds of why Bing is perhaps the worst search engine ever.
This is a prime example of advertising gone wrong. “Bing goes the internet” yea kids are cute.. but exactly what does that mean for search? Why is Bing better than Google? A bunch of kids that are dancing are not exactly what a guy in a suit at works needs to know when doing a search for a supplier.
This is a complete waste of money.. Microsoft.. how about allocating funds to fixing the engine rather than advertising.
EDIT:
Though this was sent to us by a JWT e-mail address, they are now distancing themselves from it pointing to this url implying that it was seeded by them but not created. Enjoy digging around to find out the real truth… (If JWT was behind it, if they only seeded it, or whatever is the case)
Microsoft Encarta Closes
October 31, 2009
IN the end of a Microsoft Legacy, Microsoft Encarta has been has shut down officially today. A message on the main page of the Microsoft owned site has the following:
On October 31, 2009, this Web site, and all other MSN® Encarta® Web sites worldwide will be discontinued, with the exception of Encarta Japan, which will be discontinued on December 31, 2009. Additionally, Microsoft will cease to sell Microsoft Student and Encarta Premium software products worldwide by June 2009.
Often citied is the fact that open source Wikipedia has in essence destroyed the market that Microsoft used to thrive in. Over the past decade, Wikipedia’s growth rate has been nothing short of astronomical. Based on a solid SEO plan, Wikipedia has perhaps been the first firm to be officially branded by SEO.
To the bane of traditional advertising agency argument that SEO can’t brand. Low and behold, Wikipedia’s brand from SEO has throughly destroyed the Microsoft product. This is perhaps the first time on a large scale that SEO has successfully branded a product.
Upwards of 70% of it’s traffic has been derived from SEO and SEO alone. Hence the text based site has grown to the point where it has become a household name.
So the next time someone at an ad agency says “SEO can’t brand” throw up the fact that SEO branded Wikipedia shut down Microsoft’s Encarta.
Enjoy the new reality.
Ad Agency Denizen sues WPP group plc – Patent Infringement
October 29, 2009
Ad Agency Denizen is claiming to have patented product placement (patent 6,859,936) is suing WPP group plc, for violating the patent. It’s actually interesting on multiple fronts.
First let me go on record as stating that product placement existed for over a century for TV / Video / Movies.. literally I have just pointed out evidence below of it taking place in 1896.
This above video was filmed in 1896… notice the Wheelbarrow mid way though the video where the name of the company is shown in a pretty obvious fashion?
Understand that was filmed in 1896, you’re watching a video that is 113 years old. To be clear, everyone in that video is dead now. Their kids have likely died from old age as well.
Here we are generations after this was filmed.. and yet these people feel that they can patent the wheel and sue for it.
Breaking: Twitter told me not to tweet about Twitter Lists
October 29, 2009
New! Lists. A great way to organize the people you follow and discover new and interesting accounts. (BETA)
Lists are timelines you build yourself, consisting of friends, family, co-workers, sports teams, you name it. You’re part of a small group receiving this feature, so don’t tweet about it yet!
Sure twitter, I won’t tweet about the new Twitter Lists. I’ll just post it here. Enjoy the new feedback about the Twitter lists. So I created one, http://twitter.com/thefounder/adagency
So what do I do now? Evidently it’s treated as a separate sub-account? Exactly what did I just create?
If I can make subsets of my existing account, I can see how that can be used. Companies could have all sorts of subsets, such as the Dell examples below (no they don’t work, just showing an example).
twitter.com/dell/sales
twitter.com/dell/support
twitter.com/dell/enfatico — oh wait…
nifty.
This is the official PDF of the health care bill
October 29, 2009
House_HCR_bill — PDF FORMAT and if you don’t want to read the PDF, here it is in all it’s text based glory…. well scratch that.. the concept of pasting nearly 1,500 pages into text appears not to be working. This bill has been called “obamacare” by it’s detractors.
The sheer size of this bill is daunting, making it impossible to read the whole thing in one hit… meaning the chances are that if many of us are reading it, many of us will catch parts that others have missed.
I would strongly urge you guys to replace your normal reading with this for the next day / week etc.. because honestly this will affect all of us.. one way or another.
The attached house bill is the version the house is going for, it must be signed and agreed by the senate.. then the same for whitehouse.
In otherwords, this has to pass in front of 536 people before it is cleared… good luck with this bill making it.
The Recession is over today
October 29, 2009
The recession is over, so why does everyone feel like it’s still getting worse? I figured I would explain to you what’s really wrong with calling this recession over.
They measure it from Quarter to Quarter, meaning every 90 days they look to see if the economy has improved from the previous 90 days. The problem with this is that it’s too short of a time period. It takes me more than 90 days to get paid from some of my Advertising Agency clients in this economy.
Unemployment isn’t actually a factor in measuring the end of a recession, but for simplicity sake we are going to use it in this example. So let’s say the unemployment rate is 5% .. then over the course of 2 years it goes to 11% …. if one month they say that the unemployment rate went to 10.9%, the recession is over…
Yea we’re near 11% unemployment… yes we are over double the unemployment rate as we were just 900 days ago.. but the recession is over.
90 days is not enough to measure if the economy is out of the great recession or not. The story from Reuters is misleading and it’s based on false data. Call us when the figures are close to where we were at the the start of the recession, not when we are showing a .000001% improvement from the bottom.
This recession isn’t over until we are back where we were back in 2006, 2007 .. with 5% unemployment, housing foreclosures at minimal and banking bailouts are not the norm.
If we need a stimulus plan, it means the recession isn’t over. Enjoy the false data.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. economy grew in the third quarter for the first time in a year, beating market expectations, as consumer spending and new home-building rebounded, signaling the end of the worst recession in 70 years.
VIDEO : Modern Warfare 2 murdering hundreds in Airport
October 27, 2009
The shit has hit the fan regarding Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 . Evidently this has been pulled down from Youtube multiple times by Activision , however LiveLeak is hosting it. You play a CIA agent posing as a terrorist, literally mowing down hundreds of civilians in an airport. This is graphic, I repeat really graphic and I do no suggest children watching this.
The video has caused a complete PR disaster for Activision, people are calling for the game to be removed from shelves. Which most likely will increase sales. However in the opinion of this writer, this game has gone way too far. I am not saying it should be removed from the shelves, but I do feel that Activision has gone too far with this. Scenes like this should never be included in a video game.
This is the video:
Shocking to say the least, and nothing less than murder. Yea it’s a video game, but common people this is madness.
Homeland Security to “block facebook” due to swine flu
October 27, 2009
According to Homeland Security, if the swine flu forces too many people to telecommute to work, they will shut down popular websites such as Facebook, Youtube and even Digg due to bandwidth issues, or better said allow Comcast to “shut down” access to these sites.
BLOCKING WEBSITES
Private Internet providers might need government authorization to block popular websites, it said, or to reduce residential transmission speeds to make way for commerce. Reuters
There you have it people, the Swine Flu ( H1N1 ) is set to turn facebook dark, youtube blank and digg will be dugg.
This is a freaking outrage, exactly what are we supposed to do then, perhaps they should shut down ready.gov while they are at it. Oh wait they already did… as Ready.Gov does not work, their DNS is lacking an A record.. you have to type in www.ready.gov to get there… clearly these people don’t know how to operate a website, much less write legislation regarding it.
In case of another national emergency, I’m sure all the millions of Americans hitting Ready.Gov will find that error message to be so helpful… because the millions of updates on Facebook won’t help at all.. nor will the near live uploads of video shot from cell phone cameras to Youtube.
Who is the fool that setup that DNS on ready.gov? I’m offering to fix the problem for them.
Ad Agency in a recession – the good, bad and ugly
October 27, 2009
With layoffs being in the headlines this is going to be the classic textbook definition of a jobless recovery (if we really are in a recovery). Leaving us Advertising Agency types with a serious problem. The first being the fact that many consider our services optional, as payroll takes precedence, hence leaving our industry with perhaps one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation.
The second problem is if you are lucky enough to have a job, how do you advertise in light of 17% unemployment rate, consumer confidence hitting the toilet and bankruptcies the normal way of life.
Seriously like what is there to advertise to? I wouldn’t want to be a high end Rolex dealer in this economy, nor would I want to own a Porsche Dealership. “Honey the mortgage is late, but check out my new car I picked up!”
Granted some companies are relatively stable in this economy, no-frills Wal-mart, local grocery store, utilities but the problem overall is that we still have excess capacity for the new reality of decreased demand.
That includes your job.
Recently there was a study that put 200 job applicants for each position available in an ad agency. Honestly if you don’t do a good job, think about it.. there are 200 people (literally) willing to fill your spot within minutes.
This is the environment you are marketing and advertising in. Your client doesn’t want to pay much to get little. In other words your advertising isn’t about creative, it’s about ROI, period.
But there is a good side to this, a very good side. Many of the fortune 500 firms now exist because during the great depression they survived, so the chances are if you can make it though this great recession, your firm will be miles ahead of others when it’s finally over years from now.
The bad news to this is that no matter how good you’re doing, the chances are someone is running more efficiently, so there’s going to be competition. The face that the entire world has moved online rather than print or TV is causing much more disruption than what would normally occur. A talented guy with an 8 dollar a year domain registration and a 5 dollar a month hosting account could eventually start stealing your clients.. Don’t laugh.. I did. Armed with a pregnant wife and 700 dollars to my name I effectively have many on my client list that were formally with a holding company. This is revenue that you should have had, not me, as your firm had the relationship but not the technically skillset. Remember you’re reading this blog post, and the chances are some of your clients are as well.
The problem is that overtime more and more guys like me will show up, hence causing more and more disruption in the market place. You have to remember, if someone can do that with little resources, a similar guy with more resources could do much more damage.
Enjoy the mess.
Pink Slips flying at ad agency Ogilvy
October 26, 2009
Evidently Happy Monday at advertising agency Ogilvy, pink slips are flying. George Parker has the full leak.
Layoffs will contintue across the industry as this recession hasn’t seen it’s full potential in terms of unemployment. These people will be forced entering the workforce facing horrific unemployment and very low chances of finding a job quickly as some estimates have noted there are now nearly 200 applicants for each position in the advertising agency space.
This is the worst time to find yourself on the unemployment line. But hey no worries.. we’re sure that Sir Martin will still get his bonus for a job well done.
Days like today are what makes us wonder exactly what is going on, like completely rethink what we thought was the norm. Because clearly the norm isn’t working.
Recognized by Advertising Age Magazine as top Power 150 news outlet for Advertising and Marketing.
Recognized and listed in Google News. Don't stress, we're Satire
Ad Agency Advertising
