Please don’t mind the mess while I teach myself some CSS and get this blog up to my an acceptable level of pretty. Any feedback throughout the process is totally welcome!
A couple of non-advertising things to distract you from the ugly duckling phase of this blog.
Ad:Tech was a fantastic experience. The discussions and panels were informative, interesting and relevant. I’ll share what I learned in the next couple of posts but also had to share three completely unimportant things I gleaned from my trip.
1) There are just not enough young women involved in digital advertising, ad tech, what ever you want to call it. I was one of the few younger ladies who was not running an exhibitor booth. I was also the only person in flip flops and jeans, come on people you’re not at the office you don’t HAVE TO wear those kahki pants, brown shoes and polo shirt. We’re digital – we’re supposed to be cooler than that!
2) Everyone says they’re a Digital Expert if they’ve been involved in the web since the 90s. This does not make you an expert, I’ve done a lot of things since the 90s; time alone does not make one an expert (or else I would put crayon coloring expert on my business cards).
3) Ad Networks are overly fertile and have spawned like Snuffalufagus and Lucy, the pet mice I had when I was little. If I knew how I would create sort of naming generator for new ad networks (Spoiler Alert: it will contain at least one fo the following words: ad, media or a misspelled word). Chances are the AdMediaNetwurk is described as the leading/best/largest performance-based advertising solution (it is not).
On the new bsuiness squad I think a lot about my dream accounts to land. Some are on the list because I absolutely love the products, some are on there because I geniuely think they’d be fun, some purely for the challenge, some because I think there are so many creative and innovative ways to advertise.
In honor of Good Friday when one must do good things (I’m just guessing here, its been a while since I’ve been to church), I have some PSAs that ask you to make up for your bad ways and give blood. Via AdFreak are these superbly done PSA’s for the Blood Center for Central Texas by Door Number 3.
Small government contracts can be tough, espacially when the message is something we’re told to do on a regular basis. Everyone knows that giving blood is a good thing and it saves lives, but how many people actually take the initative to go do it?
Brilliant creative concept and executed quite well. I’m going to give blood next week. I promise.
AdFreak’s critique was that people who are douchebags will always be douchebags (I don’t disagree). I think the spot is for people who really don’t want to be douchebags, but have had those moments where they act a little asshole-ish. C’mon you might not be madly pressing the door close button on the elevator but sometimes you don’t press the door open button. Hey, we all have our moments.
I’m a self taught digital girl. Besides one tech class in college, digital was not something ever discussed in all of my communication, advertising or journalism classes. And now I’m solo in the digital department, with no one to collaborate with or learn from.
Which is why I am always on the search for additional classes, conferences or books that can educate me and comfort me in knowing that I’m up to date and in line with best practices and the newest tools. I’ve looked into traditional schools, MBA programs, extension classes, certificate programs, but they’re all not quite what would work for me.
So when I noticed new display ads for the University of San Francisco’s certifcate in online marketing on MediaBuyerPlanner.com I click on through (see display does work!) to see what’s available. The ads look decent and send me to a legit landing page.
So I’m stoked, finally a viable option for continuing my digital education. I fill out the little form to request more information, although I’m totally annoyed that they require a phone number. Umm its an online marketing class taught completely online, try email.
Then I’m sent to a Thank You page with early registration dates of December 2008 for a February 2009 program (its April ’09!). The online marketing school is running expired creative or failed to update their landing page for the new semester? Either way its a total FAIL.
And then, the 2 emails I recieved within 10 mintues of each other frmo USF went straight to my spam folder. How do you expect me to take you seriously?
Dear USF,
When you’re advertising a online marketing degree program, I recommend hiring people who actually know what they’re doing to set up and execute your digital marketing campaign. I highly doubt you’re school will be able to advance my knowledge if you can’t even get the basics of online adveritisng down.
Charles Schwab commercials have been using the rotoscoping technique in their ads since about 2005. These ads have always annoyed me. I can’t stand the use of animation purely for the sake of using animation.
Advertising Rules #72 – In commercials targeted towards adults (especially middle aged adults), animation should only be used if real live people could not execute the story line more effectively.
Esurance commercis are a great example of when animation helps the message and the spot. There is no way those storylines could be executed with the same tone, message and slickness if real people were used. Charles Schwab, on the other hand, really doesn’t need to animate people’s faces as they sit on a bench in front of a camera and bitch to you. Real live people could pull that off just fine.
But then there’s Charles Schwab who is trying to sell itself as an upstanding and reliable finance company. Do the cartoonish characters really support the focus of the campaign? The use of less smug and REAL people would be so much more effective.
Talk to Chuck is such a great line and its completely laid to waste after a viewer sees the douchy characters rotoscoped to ultimate creepiness.
Charles Swchab recently put its $100M media into play, with incumbent Omnicom’s PHD, Universal McCann and Aegis’s Carat all being invited to pitch. How about you put creative into play too? Your media buy is going to remain ineffective so long as your creative is this terrible.
I couldn’t find a recent spot as an example, but this one from 2008 looks exactly the same as the one from this month.
Based on the youtube comments, I guess I’m not alone in my distaste for rotoscoping…
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