AdScam/The Horror!

Olympic Advertising Sucks... Big Time!!!

Following on from my last post, we are about to experience a month of excruciatingly bad advertising, all wrapped around Olympic themes. This will be on everything from TV, to the Web, to the fucking paper your fatburger is wrapped in. Memorable headlines such as "Going for the gold!" will be accompanied by visuals of... Gold medals! Pictures of bankers carrying brief cases while high jumping will carry the headline... "Here at Douchenozzle National Bank, when you say jump, we say how high!" What is so fucking awful about this is that we've seen this shit a million times before... There is nothing left to say to tie into the Olympics. Yet twenty year old creative's will consider they have cracked it when producing an ad with a visual of a rowing eight and a headline that says "At Acme Prophylactics, it's all about teamwork!" Listen to me... There is nothing new... It's all been done before... And don't give me that Nike shit. Yes, it's amazingly well done, but there's nothing new there. OK... Standing by for the Weiden crazies to go apeshit! 

Going for Gold at the AdScam Olympics!

Oh no... It's almost time for the fucking Olympics... Again.

Mediaweek has an interesting article on how NBC will be covering just about every event in every sport at the upcoming Beijing Olympics on their Web site. This will provide an unprecedented 2,200 hours of live footage and 3,000 hours of replays on nbcolympics.com. OK... So I like the Olympics as much as your next sports fan... But what really fucking pisses me off about the regular TV coverage is that they only seem to show events Americans are the favorites for, and half the time is spent on really fucking bad "Human Interest" shit. I don't want to know that some fat assed softball player does charity work for underprivileged parrots. I want to see the fat assed softball player play. Well, actually, I don't, 'cos it's one of the world's dumbest fucking games. So, I checked out the site... Guess what? It's full of human interest shit. Still it might change when the games begin. But stand by for non stop soporific ads... More on that in the next post.

Bearded Men Rowing is one of my favorites!

Why Google will conquer the universe!

I don't give a flying fuck whether you're an Apple Freak, a Microsoft wanker, a Facebook jerk or a MySpace douchenozzle. Get over it, 'cos before you know it, Google will own and operate everything. Why? Just look at the news this week that Google's index of unique URLs has reached a milestone: one trillion. That's right one fucking trillion. Google's blog provides some more information, noting... "The first Google index in 1998 already had 26 million pages, and by 2000 the Google index reached the one billion mark. Over the last eight years, we've seen a lot of big numbers about how much content is really out there. To keep up with this volume of information, our systems have come a long way since the first set of web data Google processed to answer queries. Back then, we did everything in batches: one workstation could compute the PageRank graph on 26 million pages in a couple of hours, and that set of pages would be used as Google's index for a fixed period of time. Today, Google downloads the web continuously, collecting updated page information and re-processing the entire web-link graph several times per day." Don't fight it, you can't. As Queen Victoria said... "When rape is inevitable, relax and enjoy it!" Fucking right, Queenie!

Damn right you do!

Blog-Ho's of the world unite!!!

Lots of buzz out there about how if you want to make money blogging, you'd be better off going into prostitution, or advertising... Which is the same thing really. News earlier in the month that Gawker is cutting writers' pay rate by 30% was followed last week that the belt-tightening is also hitting some of AOL's blogging properties, and some authors who are paid by the post were asked to put their efforts on hold until the end of the month. Know More Media is about to pull the plug on their stable of a couple of hundred blogs... And Arianna Huffington has always maintained that writers should deem it a fucking honor to write for The Huffington Post... So, she pays fuck all. Good job I do AdScam 'cos I love you all, since there ain't no money in it... So buy a fucking copy of MadScam you tight bastards.

Blog Workers waiting for the company bus!

Scarlet Heifer... What the fuck?

AdAge has a piece about the re-emergence of Steve Biegel and his new agency, Scarlet Heifer. As you may remember, Steve had a law suit going for a while with Dentsu, 'cos they made him frequent brothels and bath houses. Sounds like a hell of a perk to me, particularly if they were picking up the tab. Anyway, shades of Julie Roehm, they eventually came to a "settlement." Which if it was anything like Julie's, it means he got fuck all, except a pile of legal bills. He babbles on some Talmudic shit about the reason for the name. Which makes as much sense as calling it Strawberry Frog or fucking /Meta (still waiting for the Web site on that particular creation.) The Web site is the usual melange of empty promises and adspeak jargon, which really lays it on with a trowel when it comes to "The way we do things" section. Among the mangled English are such gems as, "Clients get honed creative specialists, which allows for deeper ideation." "We engage in a multilogue." and "We communicate through digitivity."  Holy shit... Is there something about our business that makes us talk absolute fucking bullshit, rather than English? David Ogilvy once said... "Advertising is a business of words, but advertising agencies are infested with men and women who cannot write. They are helpless as deaf mutes on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera." He also said... "If you're trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language, the language they use every day, the language in which they think."

He must be spinning in his grave!

All is not well in the WPP world!

"indaknow" points out in a comment on my last post, that just about everything the Poisoned Dwarf owns is rapidly turning to shit, fulfilling my BDA prophesy. Turmoil at O&M, Y&R and Grey are silent as the fucking grave. And even the good news from JWT with the acquisition of the Microsoft business has to be tempered with the certainty that Ford is going to slash its ad budget mercilessly in an attempt to dig itself out of the hole it has dug for itself over many years of shitty management. So, I guess it's up to "Enfactico" to pull the chestnuts out of the fire. The only problem with that is that the "height challenged one" is going to make damn sure no one upsets Michael Dell... Apart from making him wait a few years for his first ad while the "Enfatico" crew concentrates on their own campaign. All I can say is... Good luck, Ken... You're going to need it! 

Time to drop the fucking hammer!

Cat fight at the O&M Coral!!!

Check out the comments on my recent O&M posts. Lots of good stuff from several of my old mates who used to work there, and a few who still do... Hey, we're all AdHo's, right? The general consensus is that Shelley was a class act (I agree) but based on the last few years new business record, the Poisoned Dwarf finally pulled the plug. Anyhow, she'll continue to pull down the big bucks as Chairman... Kinda like another classy lady, Charlotte did at JWT. I used to trip over her fucking dog all the time! I can't comment on the new guy, taking over from Shelley as I don't know him (when did that ever fucking stop me?) But, I wish him luck, 'cos I'll always have a soft spot for O&M, as David was gracious enough to grant me an interview when I stepped off the Queen Mary as a 23 year old douchenozzle! Chris Wall gets plusses and minuses from several people. I like Chris and he's a great fucking writer, but I have to admit, he takes on too much. He should rely more on others. No one mentioned my dear mate, Steve Hayden, who has carried the burden of their biggest accounts for years... And even more important in these times, managed to keep them from straying. David would be proud of him. On a final note, 'cos I don't want loyal AdScammer's to think I'm turning into an old softie... Everyone agrees that Jan Leth is a wanker!  

Now that's a cat fight... And O&M did it!

Political polls = Bullshit!

There's an interesting article in the Financial Times about how the so called "Summer" polls showing McCain almost neck and neck with Obama mean fuck all based on previous elections. Far more reliable is the “electoral barometer” of Alan Abramowitz, of Emory University, that weighs together the approval rating of the incumbent president, the economy’s economic growth rate and whether the president’s party has controlled the White House for two terms (the “time for a change” factor). This has correctly forecast the winner of the popular vote in 14 out of 15 postwar presidential elections. If you work this metric through, the result is that McCain is fucked. Big time! But what I don't get is the fact (I believe) that most polls are conducted by phone. And, they only call people via regular land line. No cell phones are called. Which when you consider that more and more young people (the most likely Obama supporters) only use cell phones, they are missing the fucking point here. But what do I know... All American politics are fucked. Come to think of it... Politics everywhere are fucked. And don't get me started on the pathetic state of political advertising.

I love you man!!!

 

Creative-Circle-Jerk!!!

This just in from my good mate of many years... Who shall be known as "E" for the rest of this post, 'cos she does want to continue to be one of the more successful freelancers in New York... Has been fucked over royally by a scam outfit (which I have posted about before) by the name of "Creative Circle." Not only do these wankers, who employ someone enjoying the nom de guerre "Boob Salad." 'Cos apparently she likes to flash her tits and demand a personal face-to-face interview with her lucky applicants to make sure they don't have a fucking turnip growing out of the top of their head, or something. I mean this is really fucking outrageous. But what's even worse than that, is that these wankers take a fifty percent cut out of the day rates of the people they happen to place somewhere!!! Why do I have the feeling that this is fucking illegal? Or, is it that head hunters have now jumped to the head of the queue as the world's oldest profession, finally overtaking prostitution!

Forget the turnip... What about the carrot dick?

 

Yet another "Mad-Men" lame tie-in!

So, some PR wanker sent me a release (why do they do that when the odds are I'm going to take the piss out of them?) about a Philly-based ad agency by the strange name of Red Tettemer. At least they haven't called themselves Red Tettemer 2.0. These guys obviously thought they should jump on the "Mad Men" homage bandwagon. After all, why should JWT have an exclusive on fucktard tie-ins?  So they all got dressed in 60's gear and stood around the elevator (Why the fucking elevator?) drinking iced tea and smoking herbal cigarettes. You can see the results at their Web site. www.redtettemer.com. What I want to know is why the seated secretary is typing on a fucking portable? Couldn't they afford the rental on an IBM Selectric. Which as I've pointed out before, thanks to Barbara Lippert, didn't appear on the market until 1961. Mad Men is supposed to take place in 1960. That's what happens when you don't pay Tom and I a shit load of money to be consultants. Douchenozzles!

This is ECD, Michael Barker. He may look like a wanker, but he's a Brit. So, he's probably OK!