Former CFO of Ad Agency Grey NY cannot find ANY job
December 30, 2009
Evidently the former CFO of Ad Agency Grey NY Jeff Boose (linkedin) cannot find any job, including flipping hamburgers. It’s reached the point where his family question every dollar they spend, sometimes eating pancakes for dinner and borrowing from their parents to pay the bills. The USA today is reporting
This states many things, first and foremost however is the fact that this recession is the worst any of us have seen since the great depression… and in some industries such as advertising and physical locations such as Detroit it’s exceeding the levels of the great depression.
God help those that work at an Advertising Agency in Detroit because there is very little hope of them finding another job in the region.
But Jeff Boose isn’t in Detroit he’s in New York. Advertising Agencies have lost somewhere between 14-35% of their workforce in the past 600 days.
This is the economic environment we live in now. Where a man that earned $400,000 a year now is eating pancakes for dinner to save money.
What a mess. Someone give this man a job.
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Youtube and McDonalds says this is copyright infringement
December 29, 2009
Evidently Youtube wants me to take this down, because of course a 4 year old dancing to a McDonald’s happy meal song (that was included with a happy meal) is too much for the copyright holder to handle.
I got him his happy Meal at Mcdonalds, the copyright notice is coming from “Razor and tie”, and the notice is being delivered to me via Google owned Youtube.
Below you will see screenshots of the notices, then below is the video. You’ll notice that this is complete BS.
Don’t worry Google / Youtube and McDonalds, we’ll take the video down.. .but not before the world sees how much of a jerk you people are.
And this is the video… (note volume is somewhat loud)..
Sorry McDonalds and Youtube, we’ll make sure not to film our kids playing with your happy meals again.
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Ad Agencies have lost 14% of their workforce
December 28, 2009
Ad-agency jobs in October 2009 were down 14% from the recession’s December 2007 start — a loss of 26,300 jobs, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Agency employment from January 2009 to October 2009 alone fell from 175,300 to 161,500, or nearly 8%. Adage is reporting
This is what makes it funny, those numbers are off. Way off. When digital firms file they generally don’t file as an advertising agency. Literally for example my firm is classified as a computer consulting firm… though well.. for the most part we are doing digital advertising.
Meaning that it’s possible the numbers are much closer to 25% … as digital firms have been hurt.. but not the extent traditional firms have.
Enjoy the funny count.
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Youtube and 1080p video - advertising without Google??
December 28, 2009
The more I think about it the more I feel that now that advertising agencies can push out viral videos in 1080p the more useful it becomes as a valid advertising venue and it appears that some content owners are working directly with ad agencies to use Youtube’s service… but not cut Google into the deal? Hows that for a WTF? Yes of course we are aware that Google owns youtube…
In the above example, I used a HD ULTRA Flip camera that shoots in HD, I uploaded the raw MP4 format video to youtube, and bingo … now they world can see my son playing with Playdough in full HD.
The point I am trying to make is that the quality of the camera and the stream now makes it a very valid way to watch videos online, and pre-rolls for content.
The actual question now is that some advertisers are discussing ways to embed pre-rolled advertising to cover the cost of the production of copyrighted works… without Google taking a part in terms of some agreement. When we contacted one of these agencies, we got this as a message.
“Google’s entire revenue model is using other people’s services to create revenue without cutting them in, so what’s a video here and there using their service without cutting them into the deal?”
I doubt this will go far.. and yes the agency in question owned by a publicly traded holding company.
What makes this funny is that this was attempted before, with Google but has met very limited success. What’s happening now is content owners are willing to put full episodes and movies online.. as long as google is not profiting from it.
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High Speed Hotel Internet — the term should be banned
December 25, 2009
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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Mother of all Christmas Cards
December 23, 2009
I figured I would wish everyone happy holidays and merry Christmas via a quickcam direct upload to Youtube.
Seriously everyone, have a safe and happy holiday season… open your presents… make sure the kids are waiting for Santa… jingle all the way!!
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Advertising in Social Media for the Christmas Season
December 23, 2009
It’s rough out there. We have multiple reasons this is a difficult time to advertise in general, mostly because the volume is so loud. When a client hires an advertising agency and this season comes around, it’s a fight for B2C clients because they are trying to sell their products for the season. The amount of advertising, specials, TV ads, incredible bids for keywords on PPC, etc etc add up to the point where it just becomes a media channel fest in terms of noise.
It also becomes a nightmare for B2B businesses. This is where it is a difficult month and a half. See the biggest threat is vacation. Literally. So ad agencies have turned to social media… ping them on Twitter, update your facebook page… you can reach them on the internet when they are on vacation.
It becomes more and more problematic to reach the individuals when a large part of them are at home with their families on a rightly deserved vacation.
When is enough … enough? Even the volume of spam coming in has tripled.
So we get some of these type questions on or about this time of year.
“Why are our traffic numbers from the last 2 weeks in November lower than our last 2 weeks in December ?”
You’d think that this is self explanatory, perhaps giving the client a photograph or a home movie of a 4 year old staring at the fireplace waiting for Santa Claus to come crashing in. But it doesn’t sink in to many clients.
I never wanted to look at Christmas that way, I just wanted to see my 4 year old looking at the fireplace… but here we go… it’s the holiday season.
The point of this is simple… 48 hours before Christmas, and my twitter feed is full of specials, my facebook is littered with garbage… and nothing will get read or acted on until on or about the 27th… and then it will mostly be using the delete button.
Merry Christmas. Even Santa Claus is trying to get people to register on his website via Twitter.
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WordPress 2.9 is amazing - comes with a mini-gimp
December 21, 2009
EDIT: ok I found one bug — don’t try upgrading your WordPress plugins.. chances are you will see that wp-content doesn’t exist (even though it clearly does). …
There have been some serious changes implemented on WordPress 2.9. It’s well worth the upgrade. We (like many media outlets) use WordPress as our primary blogging software. It’s been used on ad agency client sites for years due to it’s famous 5 minute install and easy to customise approach.
The opensource software has served us reliably for years. Out of the box, WordPress is Google News ready with more plugins than you can download in a lifetime.
That being stated, the new version, WordPress version 2.9 has some really cool features. Such as a mini-gimp :)
This has been a much needed upgrade, now you don’t have to spend as much time in the Gimp (or photoshop for you guys like that like forking out a few grand) ..
Seriously thank you WordPress, We really appreciate your hard work.
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Iran invades Iraq — nothing good will come from this
December 18, 2009
Iranian armed forces took control of a southern Iraqi oil well on a disputed section of the border on Friday, US and Iraqi officials have confirmed. We know this has nothing to do with an ad agency or advertising in general, but something this big needs to be reported.
The armed takeover of the disputed oil well and surrounding areas have raised all sorts of red flags on what just happened.
The US is downplaying the event stating that “this happens regularly” … because of course one country coming in with guns to take natural resources is a normal event apparently, it happens all the time when Canadian troops invade New York because it’s a normal event?!???
Story is developing, but anytime you mention the word “Iraq” “Iran” “cross border attack” in the same sentence means nothing good will come from that..
We got word that the Iranians brought in tanks and dug in, we are unsure if this is valid or not.
Again.. story is developing…
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Firefox : Bing has no real market share
December 17, 2009
In perhaps the biggest slap to the face, the popular Webbrowser Firefox is now on record stating the reason you need a plugin to have Bing as your default search is because no one uses Microsoft’s Bing.
Our stats agree with Firefox. We see Bing at under single digit market share. The next step below is ASK.com and Dogpile … yet advertising agency WPP Group plc backs that search engine as where it’s wasting it’s clients dollars. We knew these large ad agencies don’t understand SEO to any valid extent already. It’s a fight to just to get them to adopt Meta tags.
A complete waste of ad agency client dollars. Why not throw up ads on Million Dollar Homepage while you are at it?
The only point to this where there is a silver lining (and we stress, it’s silver coated.. not pure) is that Yahoo is going to adopt Bing Results).
This is an ongoing problem, these agencies developed relationships with these companies years ago, well before search became such a powerful force. We predict these relationships will eventually change hands to more technologically savvied ad agencies eventually (it’s been happening at a more rapid pace recently).. but honestly it’s reached the point where if an ad agency is throwing up client sites with no metas, throwing their PPC dollars at Bing … then that is the exact point where the client needs to say “WTF is going on?”
Enjoy the new reality.
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