(click to enlarge, if you really want to)

Ask dropped Jeeves a long time ago. Over the past few weeks I’ve seen this really bizarre campaign (with odd billboards) and the thrust of it seems to be restating the fact that Jeeves is gone. Oh, and somehow talking about the algorithm ties to that. Algorithm? If you don’t have a background in computer science or as a programmer, is that a word you are comfortable with? At least the NYT put quotes around the word for their piece about Google’s secret sauce.

Today the press is carrying the same story but it all seems weird. The timing is out of sync and just seems way too late and the ads themselves are so absolutely unclear. Are we supposed to be curious and therefore more engaged with the brand? If I were marketing a search engine, I might want to associate the brand with clear communication and easy-to-understand information, rather than dense and obscure and smug.

But that’s just me, I guess.

I saw this Nokia ad in Wired: A man and an attractive woman are seemingly out on a date together. A connection can happen anywhere, Nokia reminds us. How nice for these two people, enjoying each other’s company. Oops, what’s that? The man is holding a portable electronic device just below the table edge, where’s looking at a baseball game. The connection the man is experiencing isn’t with another person, but with media.

Nokia is encouraging us to use their technology to emulate this cad? To surreptitiously play with their digital appendages while half-faking an interaction with another person? If this technology has merit, why doesn’t he put it on the table so they can look at it together?

We often hear that technology has no inherent good or bad attributes, and it’s the way it ends up being used that determines that. But what about design, based on use scenarios? Or advertising, putting those stories out there in order to drive interest and adoption? It’s one thing when advertising plays “naughty” and we’re in on the joke, but that’s not the tone I get from this; I just see a guy being a jerk and Nokia encouraging the rest of us to follow suit.

About a year ago, an editor at New Design Magazine pursued me aggressively to write an article for them, based on what they’d seen on this blog and elsewhere on the web. We batted around some ideas and I agreed to do it. They weren’t going to pay me, which sucks, but is somewhat par-for-the-course in our content-bloated world.

It got awkward when they did agree to pay an author I referred them to (a colleague of mine), and further awkward when my piece (created under a serious publication deadline) didn’t appear. Indeed, trying to find out what was happening with my piece was difficult; they just stopped returning my messages once they had their free article. As far as I know, they never ran it, but they never communicated any final decision back to me, either.

Perhaps this serves me right for not insisting on payment, and for not having any sort of formal agreement. But if they are going to use karmic currency, they better get their account back in balance. I’m obviously never going to write for them again.

So it was astonishing to see a solicitation in my email today, inviting me to purchase print advertising in their magazine. Now I should give them money? “The cost for each full page would be ¬£950, but new design will go fifty:50 with you on this rate. You pay just ¬£475.”

Shyeah, right.

online

print

The New York Times Magazine has an interesting summary with typo in the blurb for this week’s Consumed column.
His aids were followed…
should be
His ads were followed…
but of course, this type of thing passes spellcheck, since the error is still a valid word. Just not what the author wanted to say.

Missing Letters, Holland, MI

I’m intrigued by stuff in the urban ecosystem that is deployed but untended. Consider this sign at the edge of a shopping plaza on a busy busy street. How long has it been like that? Has anyone who is accountable for the sign noticed? Is someone paying for advertising that they aren’t getting?

Compare with computer displays in airports showing a Windows error, or the piece of gum left on a realtor’s “about this property” display after the owners have moved out. Entropy, man.

(and probably some analogies with semi-smart automated systems that don’t get context 100% of the time)

Michael sent along the above screengrab, showing an all-too-familiar sight. A news story with a hee-lariously inappropriate ad placed automatically alongside. Computers are as dumb as we make them. Software looks for matches and places ads “in context” – i.e., if there’s a conversation about Olive Garden, let’s advertise to those people. There’s not enough smarts in place, currently, to find out, say, if this is bad news about Olive Garden. This ad is 180-degrees from the content. Olive Garden sickens people, well, have this coupon ON US, and come on in for some delicious food!

We’ve been laughing at these for years and years and we can stop there, or we can marvel at the fact that this is tolerable to organizations who advertise. Is this a direct-mail mentality? We’ll serve up 3 Million Impressions of the banner ad, and if 10% of them are an inappropriate, so be it, because the click-through rate is so low, it hardly matters? I don’t know what the numbers are on so-called junk mail (as you can imagine, they don’t like call us to call it that), but let’s assume they are very very low. When most of what you send out is seen as garbage, is it okay if some percentage of it actually is garbage? Could this be doing more harm for these brands than good?

The fact that this has become the norm is just a little bit sad. Those of us who design things of any type – to be experienced, seen, heard, read…we want them to be experienced in some relevant context, but we’ve accepted this as a normal error for computers blindly filling in blanks and matching X to B. I’d suggest our culture loses a little when this happens; that we have been bludgeoned just enough to tolerate quack-speak through the medium of the Internet.

We’ll see if firms like Aggregate Knowledge (with some presumably new perspectives on where the most relevant – and profitable – connections can be made) can evolve the status quo.

A friend sent me this horrifying online ad. What is happening to that poor woman? Burger-inappropriate pain? Or pleasure? Or is she gazing overhead at an incoming phalanx of special-sauce laden pelicans?

Of course, this is a company known for letting ridiculous advertising stuff get through

, so this is maybe par for the course?

You can see another in the series here and a funny rant about the complexity of their product naming system is at Naming a Chicken Sandwich in Thirteen Syllables or Fewer.

This is a pretty hilarious scam. I know many of you have seen this, but I had to share. What is up with the FORTUNE brand? Such whores!

Dear Steve,
In current business conditions, most companies see a need for greater efficiency and effectiveness according to a study by Accenture Management Consulting, “The Innovator’s Advantage – using innovation and technology to improve business performance”.

As a producer for the Business and Technology Report on the “FORTUNE In-Flight Radio” Channel, I am personally extending an invitation for Portigal to be featured on our special in-flight radio broadcast of the “Leaders In Business Innovation” airing worldwide April 2007.

On this show, we will be interviewing corporate leaders of innovative businesses today and discussing topics surrounding: What tools, techniques and resources have helped in creating an innovative company? How has innovation delivered long-term value and competitive advantage to your organization? What systems are important for supporting innovation?

For helping us wrap-up the show and meet our invitational list deadline, we are offering our last two segments at a substantial discount- Instead of the normal rate card of $ 6,995, your discounted cost is only $2,995. This includes everything from scripting to production, placement of 3-minute interview on 2,880 flights to 700,000 thousand passengers, listing in Northwest World Traveler In-flight magazine, and rebroadcast rights for promotional uses.

We’d like to interview you for our show. The charge will be $2,995. Um, you want me to pay you? I guess that’d be an ad

, then, wouldn’t it?

Boomers Aren’t Happy With What’s on TV

A study conducted by Harris Interactive suggests that the television industry’s obsession with youth is backfiring.

Nearly two-thirds of Americans say they believe that most TV programming and advertising is targeted toward people under 40, the survey said. More than 80 percent of adults over 40 say they have a hard time finding TV shows that reflect their lives.

A significant number of baby boomers _ 37 percent _ say they aren’t happy with what’s on television, according to the study.

Note that there’s a difference between TV not reflecting my life (i.e., Sopranos), and not being happy with what’s on (i.e., how O.J. would do it).

“The amount of people dissatisfied with television overall was a pretty big eye-opening thing for us,” said Larry Jones, president of the TV Land cable network, which commissioned the study.

Because TV Land of course aims at this forgotten demographic with rescued-from-the-garbage-pail programming. Who’s up for a Benson marathon?

To a certain extent, the generation that decades ago warned against trusting people over 30 can blame itself for the predicament. The TV industry’s slavish devotion to ratings within the 18-to-49-year-old demographic started when most baby boomers fit into that group.

The theory among advertisers is that it’s important to reach young people as their preferences are forming _ get them hooked on a certain toothpaste or soda early and they’ll be hooked for life. Advertisers will pay a premium for young viewers: $335 for every thousand people in the 18-to-24 age range that a network delivers, for example. Viewers aged 55-to-64 are worth only $119 for every thousand, according to Nielsen Media Research.
…
To a surprising extent, advertising is also alienating. The Harris Interactive study found that half of baby boomers say they tune out commercials that are clearly aimed at young people. An additional one-third said they’d go out of their way NOT to buy such a product.
…
Some advertisers have responded to the aging population. Financial services firms, for example, see many potential customers advancing toward retirement. Two decades ago drug companies didn’t advertise on TV; now you could fill a medicine cabinet with all the products hawked on the evening news.

Not to mention those commercials for Hoverround home mobility devices where an old lady sings “you made me love youUUUUUU” while she plays with her hair coquettishly.

TV Land’s Jones is already using the survey in his business. The results have convinced him that, more than ever, his network of mostly classic TV shows should be boomer-centric, he said. He also comes armed with the survey when he meets with the Madison Avenue types who buy advertising time.

At least the article is clear on this part.

One statistic he’s sure to cite: The survey found 51 percent of the postwar generation describe themselves as “open to new ideas.” Meanwhile, only 12 percent of young adults think the older folks feel that way.

Why does that matter? Jones said the average media buyer or planner is under 30. Many are undoubtedly hired for their know-how in appealing to a specific generation, and it isn’t the baby boomers.

Axe is a perfume oops body spray targeted at young men. The whole thrust (if you will) of their positioning is that it will make young men amazingly irrestisble to women (see Love Potion No. 9

). Their ads, of course, feature many outlandish scenarios involving young guys having amazing encounters with hot young chicks. Last night I saw one where a guy is playing strip poker against three tasty things, and loses a round. So they take off their clothes. Okay, about what we expect.

And then the next ad was for Kraft Dinner.

A dorky guy is in a hot tub with a similar set of lithe vixens. One more gets in the water and exclaims in surprise as she sits down. She recoils and he lifts up to reveal a pot cooking up a meal of Kraft Dinner. Cue music, logo, announcer. And in the last second of the ad we see what we assume to be his bathing trunks – with Kraft Dinner logo on one leg – flop down onto a table. Implication – he’s now naked and scoring with said hot chicks after serving them up freshly prepared KD.

It’s one thing to sell fragrance that way, but macaroni and cheese? The juxtaposition from one ad to the next was jarring, to say the least.