ErinIs.com

Is it just me, or does Sarah Jessica Parker look like a crazy robot with yellow eyes?

Oh Facebook how you’ve grown so much, but your ads are still awful.

Really CVS a starburst in a banner ad? Really? Are you trying to make me blind? Please tell me you didn’t pay someone to design this. And I (fingers and toes crossed) hope for your sake this starburst was not something you demanded that your agency/designer/poor soul include in the ad.

The right hand sky scraper is the offending banner and no I didn’t cut off the bottom “Now through May” thats how the ad appeared on mail.yahoo.com. The left hand large box is expandable that popped out from “Rollover to Save”.

Long long ago, the internet was an ad barren land. No dancing people telling you how you could save on your auto insurance, no before and after belly pictures and no ads letting me know Obama wants me to go back to school…and then the first banner ad appeared!

According to TheLongListofTheLongestStuffatTheLongestDomainNameAtLast.com

“AT&T was the first to dish over some money to HotWired to display the beast they created, a 468 x 60 banner that came to life on October 25 1994″

I wonder what it’s click through rate was….

via @cstoller

I’ve resisted the urge to write about NutriSoda but the door-hanger I received this morning pushed me over the edge. I first noticed the advertising a month or two ago, on one lonely billboard on my way to the gym.

Seems basic and harmless enough, but there is no f’ing flying pig! I get that its just a saying, but the saying is that when Pigs Fly, X will happen. I don’t see a flying pig. You weren’t creative enough to have one perched on your billboard or tethered to the fly in the air. So if I don’t see the pig flying, then your soda is not really nutritious.

I could forgive them for the bad copy in the one lonely billboard. But the copy on the door-hanger makes me cringe. Check out the front and back here.

Front copy reads

Forgot your keys again, did you?

Back copy reads

No more losing your keys or forgetting to wear pants to the big meeting. Nutrisoda Focus has 11 vitamins and nutrients like L-Tyrosine to help you concentrate on the task at hand. Boost your brain with black cherry and apple goodness.

Ummm…forgetting your keys is one thing but who the hell forgets to wear pants to a meeting? Nutrisoda is for people so incompetent they don’t know how to get dressed? But wait its supposed to help me on the task at hand? So I’ll have to drink it while getting dressed so I can have the mental capacity to do it properly?

Oh and this appeared on my door sometime between 10pm and 6am….creepy.

Then there is the website, GetHubbly.com, where they compare themselves to the Keytar, an El Camino and a Mullet because apparently their target demographic is middle aged trailer trash?

Bus shelter ads have also started appearing, but I refuse to look at them.

I am not a violent person. However, I would like to physically harm who ever created the pop up people that talk on websites.

Dear Merchant Circle,

Please disable your the popup lady who tries to sell me on your package deals.

Thanks.

To experience the annoyingness for yourself – click here.

In this time of economic crisis, are you really going to spend your money on bigger hair? 

I don’t ever want to “bump a pony” thank you very much. 

Is the woman dancing at 1:48 even wearing the thing?

I’ve lost all hope for the future of humanity.

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…

The “I lost my job but am now making a ton of money from Google” ads are blanketing Facebook.  I just thought they were annoying spam ad, then I noticed that the frankenstein hands inserted into the pictures. These ads are f’ing creepy!

When in the creative process does one say “What we’re really missing are some yellow Frankenstein hands!” 

Facebook recently sent me a survey as a previous advertiser asking me why I no longer publish ads on the site, well take a look. Why would I place any of my clients within the same ad space as these ads? 

So raise your hand if in the last few weeks you’ve noticed these ads EVERYWHERE online. 

While these ads annoy me to no end, I would kill to work on this account. This is one of the few accounts that has increased their spend recently and they are just blanketing the web. 

Not sure if their on a behavioral buy (although I don’t look up diet information), could be demographic (because all 25 year old women are obsessed with their weight) or maybe they’re just buying remanent ad space by zip or DMA.

The website (yes I clicked, I was curious) is positioned as a San Diego woman’s blog. Anyone else click through on these and have a website targeting their DMA?

You had to know it was coming…the Superbowl ad recap. BTW You can check them all out on Hulu.  

Overall, Hyundai was the clear winner of the super bowl. They presented a clear and cohesive message through memorable (if a little boring) ads. Hyundai is going after market share in the recession through a very well thought out and beautifully executed campaign. While their ads might not be the ones everyone discussed today, they’re keeping the brand alive and in a positive light through messages that will outlast the Superbowl spotlight. 

Other stand outs include: 

1) Doritos Crystal Ball – The only spot that made me really laugh out loud. While it was a little strange and incredibly funny, the spot didn’t deviate from the brand image or try to hard. Yes, people are hating on Doritos for doing a user submitted contest for their creative (which is soooo 2007), but I say excellent work!

2) CareerBuilder.com – I hated this and almost muted it until they kola was punched. Then I was giggling fool. Punching a kola that’s wearing glasses and drinking coffee = WIN. I liked the Monster.com spot, but this spot was waaay better. It was repetitive and annoying but so are some jobs, right? So they were pretty much spot on in what they were try to sell. Side Note: In the spot break that ran the Monster.com spot, a voice over did a name mention for CareerBuilder.com while going back into the game. I don’t know how CareerBuilder did it and as a media planner I would be asking for a partial refund if I was Monster.com. If a station is not going to bother with category exclusivity within a spot break for a $3M spot, then they are clearly just whoring out ad time.

3) Hulu.com was the unexpected awesomeness. Hulu is a great service and a cool brand, but I’m pretty sure its relatively unknown amongst the non tech people. The ad was memorable, funny and pretty honest. Side Note: My favorite tweets regarding the hulu spot were ones like this from Allen. I’m sorry guy but I think you missed the point of your favorite ad, Hulu is a place you can go to see videos online. Its like youtube but with a higher quality…so maybe you could try going to hulu to view the ads? 

4) Audi (yes I know I just said Hyundai was the overall winner) but Audi had a fantastic spot that was visually stunning  and a brilliant depiction of their brand. Classy, powerful and sexy. I want an Audi A4. 

Despite the hype, the Cash4Gold spot wasn’t all that great. Ed McMahon looked so old and feeble. Plus its sad because we all know he’s really in need of money. McHammer was funny, but funny is not going to get me to do business with the scam that is Cash4Gold. Meh.