Tag Archives: Advertising

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Pot Calls Kettle Black – Microsoft to Google : you’re a monopoly

Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer says Google is a monopoly on Internet search. Microsoft is complaining after spending 50 cents on development and 3/4 of a billion promoting Bing / Live / MSN .

We’re actually not kidding on that 3/4 of a billion. Each iteration of the same search engine (Bing/ Live / MSN) was priced for advertising alone at about 1/4 of a billion spent on advertising for each failure. This failure was repeated 3 times so far. Already there is talk that Bing is a “failure” and another branding and domain name change is being discussed.. making it the 4th disaster in a row for the search engine… Trust me I know, I was there for the first failure. That will put the charge at 1 billion wasted on Advertising Alone…. because the root of the problem isn’t their advertising, the root of the problem is that Bing / MSN / Live (whatever you wanna call it) still is technically inferior .

Microsoft’s failure at search is mostly because they still don’t understand that the desktop isn’t online. They are glued to the proprietary model that utterly fails online.

Plus the fact that Bing still is the worst “large” search engine out there in terms of technical ranking of sites… many experts state (including myself) that Microsoft is 1/2 a decade behind Google in terms of technology.

So there you go, keep blowing money.. keep calling regulators… but at the end.. no one wants that Ford Pinto you call Bing… fix the search engine… don’t complain to the police. Seriously Microsoft you guys sound like foundem The company that’s ranking are horrible and call the police / antitrust department.

Just substitute the words “ranking” for “market share”

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Churches, Colleges and Medical offices move into Vacant Malls

As some big-name businesses, such as Chick-fil-A and Waldenbooks, move out of local malls, nontraditional tenants – from a college to a church group to a dialysis clinic – are moving in. According to the Republican Herald

This actually changes all sorts of on site advertising agency issues. People going into the Mall to visit the Dialysis Clinic will still need to eat, but do they really want to start shopping at random stores? Does it make sense for car dealers to park their goods in the middle of the mall now? Considering more people would see it via a youtube video than in a mall today?

All those movie posters that are randomly put up in the center islands? Is that even a viable way to advertise anymore? Store owners generally try to place their stuff near related stores. The Arcade used to be always next to the movie theater for example.

The issue at hand is if this recession changed the very nature of the malls. Before they were lumped into the Walmart labelled downtown killers, but things are starting to change.

These malls are hurting, and hurting badly.

When these malls start accepting “Total Renal Care” (yes that’s one that is moving into the local mall) , U.S. Department of Labor, Mine Safety and Health Administration, and Frackville Foursquare Gospel Church where The GAP, Chick-Fil A and a host of other stores and food outlets used to be it completely raises questions on if the Mall model is still viable in this day of “order everything online”

High Rents, low traffic and a nasty recession is completely changing the entire nature of the Mall.

The Mall down the street from this location has a new Anchor “store” it’s called Alvernia College.

I want to stress I am NOT just pointing out the issues in this local area, these problems are throughout the entire nation. Every city, every town is facing these conditions.

This picture below actually represents about 90% of the US based malls in our current great recession. I’m sure JC Penny has a line out the door for people to buy their made in China stuff.

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The Google Superbowl ad you didn’t see

Why Google ran the wrong ad. This is the ad that Google needed to run, but alas they ran the wrong one.

EDIT: Google pulled down it’s own ad… funny thing is about 10 minutes after someone there viewed this post… Why pull it down? Seriously Google why pull down your own ad from your owned Youtube?

This Video has been removed by the user.

Honestly the problem is that Google REALLY ran the wrong ad. The format was awesome (Google has been running these ads for 2 months now) .. but it was the wrong ad. They needed to run their Batman ad and not the one they ran for the superbowl

then begs the real question, why did Google run a superbowl ad in the first place? The chances are highly unlikely it will increase their already near monoploy status with search. Then why an ad during the superbowl about a love affair rather than a battle (IE: Batman) ?

The problem is the batman one is better suited for the target market, it’s more comical and more “slapstick” for the environment (a bunch of people sitting around the bigscreen TV).

Guys at that time don’t want to be hearing about dates. They are in a battle mentality at the time watching the game, Batman is all about the big fight.. whereas dating, some girl in France (where have the neo-cons are still smarting over the 2003 Freedom Fries) isn’t helping.

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Apple Cofounder Steve Wozniak buys Google Phone

Steve Wozniak’s Favorite Gadget? The Google Phone according to Gizmodo.

Now that’s advertising (for Google), for all you that don’t know who Steve Wozniak is, he is the cofounder of apple, and honestly the technical brains behind the company during it’s inception. Unlike Jobs, Wozniak wasn’t into the business side of the company, he just wanted to build cool hardware.

Steve Wozniak came up with the computer that eventually made him famous. However, he was mostly working to impress other members of the Palo Alto-based Homebrew Computer Club, a local group of electronics hobbyists. It’s wasn’t really starting a company as per say and making a profit, it was more along the lines of “I wonder if I could get this to work”.

Basically Wozniak is a hero to all technical minded individuals.

In 1980, Apple went public and made Jobs and Wozniak multimillionaires. However, Jobs had refused to allow some employees of Apple to receive stock options, so Wozniak decided to share some of his founder stock with the rest of the team by either giving them away for free or at a heavily discounted price. This was dubbed “The Woz Plan”.

As we said before, Wozniak and Jobs are completely differing people. Wozniak is a true geek at heart… saw all this money coming in and was baffled why Jobs wouldn’t share it with the employees… so he gave his own money to them.

The man is amazing… and currently chatting it up on his Google Phone.

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Johnson & Johnson – our advertising isn’t false – it’s photoshop!

Johnson & Johnson is facing some problems in Britain. Evidently the “Before and After” shots are considered misleading… and for good reason. Anyone know what ad agency made this?

A TV campaign for a face cream that promised to make skin look blemish-free has been banned by the advertising watchdog because the “after” shots were achieved using makeup according to the guardian

I have completely mixed feelings about this. Mostly because here are some before photoshop and makeup and after shots of supermodels.

So is the Johnson and Johnson ad ethical? well… only so much as the magazines on every single corner… as well as all the entertainment blogs….

enjoy.

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High Speed Hotel Internet — the term should be banned

The term should be banned from any advertising for any hotel. I paid extra for this “hi-speed hotel internet” … and attached is the results for my connection from speedtest.net

This epic speed is akin to using 2 tin cans and a wire between them… I am not sure why Hotels feel the need to charge additional for this… when clearly it’s a tiny DSL line running into the main hotel, with all 500 people here using it.

Youtube and Hulu are worthless, this post took nearly 3 minutes to load.

I want the term “hi-speed internet” to mean high speed. Not this… this is garbage. For the record, my cell phone is showing download speeds of double what the hotel is… and most likely I would be using that if it weren’t for the fact that Hulu banned all mobile devices.

This is the definition of false advertising. May the fleas of a thousand camels infest the armpits of the ad agency created marketing material that informed me of the great high speed internet at this location.

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Democrats Reject GOP on Stimulus advertising

“I just find it absurd that we’re putting up all these signs all over the country with taxpayer money telling taxpayers we’re spending their money,” he told FOX News. “Most taxpayers can figure that out. We don’t have to put up a sign and tell them we’re spending their money. — The cost of the signs vary from state to state. For example, a “Good Morning America” report calculated the cost at $500 in Maryland and New Hampshire to $3,000 in New Jersey. Gregg estimated the total cost at anywhere from $6 million to $20 million.

$6 million to $20 million, out of a nearly $800 billion dollar program, which works out to be 0.0000075% of the complete budget for the program.

The Republicans primary focus on this is not to see people working under a Stimulus sign saying “these people are working because of the democrat led spending bill”

It’s bad politics, and it’s wrong..

rsz_stimulus_sign

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Minyanville : Advertising Agencies will “never come back”

“The good old days before the Internet atomized the advertising market, slashed billings, and, in the view of some, gutted creativity. In the Golden Age, advertising was simple: Ballerinas danced in kitchens to sell appliances, cars were built in America, and cigarettes were pitched by babies” is how the article starts off at Minyanville, a leading news source for financial news.

In essence what they are saying is that Advertising isn’t what it used to be. Not even close. Traditional is out, digital, SEO , SMO , blogging is in and the billables for that type of advertising are a fraction of what these holding companies are accustomed to and what their payrolls are geared for.

“The Internet allows ads to be targeted to specific audiences and response can be measured by site views and click-through rates. Micro ads typically come with micro budgets, ending the scale and sweep of ads from the Golden Age.”

Hence our argument from nearly half a decade ago.

This doesn’t matter for now as we can still make these expensive print media ads and still design sites in unspiderable ways for now. We figure we have at least 5 years left to rake in the cash.

Looks like we are right on schedule.
vierdonkey

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Company threatens to put Advertising on the Moon

This company literally wants to put “your logo here” on the visible side of the moon. … and this is the image they are using. I could just picture an advertising agency think this is a great idea…. because of course all of us want to see Exxon or Lowes on the side of the moon. Because one day when they go bankrupt the same way as Lehman Brothers or Enron our great great grandkids will wonder WTF is that crap up there. Directly from the company’s website:

“Twelve billion eyeballs looking at your logo in the sky for several days every month for the next several thousand years.”

I can’t wait for the next several thousand years to keep staring at the Exxon Logo and having my great, great , great, great… grandkid explain to his kids that some Ad Agency thought this was a great idea for their client. Considering the chances are the company would of been bankrupt for hundreds of years by then.

mp_ad_300x250

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Apple tried to shut down Microsoft advertising campaign

It should come as no surprise that Apple isn’t a big fan of Microsoft’s “Laptop Hunters” ads, but some may be surprised to learn the Mac maker’s lawyers reportedly called a senior Microsoft executive and demanded the ads be removed according to C|Net.

Legal maneuverer over an advertising campaign that has been running vice versa (Apple on Microsoft) for 30 years?

I myself am no fan of Microsoft, not in the slightest… I personally think their products are bloated, virus prone and too costly for what they provide… and don’t get me on Apple… because their stuff is more costly and amateur geared (but slightly more secure).. that being stated Apple went way too far.

“And you know why I know they’re working? Because two weeks ago we got a call from the Apple legal department saying, hey — this is a true story — saying, “Hey, you need to stop running those ads, we lowered our prices.” They took like $100 off or something. It was the greatest single phone call in the history that I’ve ever taken in business. (Applause.)”

Interesting… very interesting.. waiting for Apple fanboys to voice their thoughts…. Advertising Agency Crispin, Porter + Bogusky might have done something right for once…. though taking the price angle I still feel is a mistake… because Linux is even cheaper……

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