11 Random Adlab Posts

Just that: 11 totally random posts from the past six years brought to you by the wonderful "Show a Random Post" button on the blog's right sidebar. Click here to subscribe to the RSS feed if you are new here.

Santa Bot Talks Sex, Swears (2007)

Study: Low Awareness of Brands in Second Life (2007)

Human Locator's Interactive Targeted Billboards (2005)

Data Transmission Through Visible Light (2005)

"Future of Advertising" Photoshop Contest (2005)

Military Recruitment Ads From Around the World (2008)

Imagining Apple TV (2010)

NYTimes on Military Analysts As Propaganda Proxies (2008; the author subsequently won a Pulitzer for his investigative reporting on the subject))

Diapers and Beer: The Real Story (2008)

Two Ad Agencies Announce Second Life Branches (2006)

Subliminal Spam (2006)

The Human "Million Dollar Home Page"

Remember the Million Dollar Home Page? Billy "The Billboard" Gibby (recently featured in Bizarre) has 32 tattoos of brands and websites on his body, and has a spot for one more, which he is selling on eBay with a starting bid of $300.

Or you can buy a package deal and get the tattoo AND the rights to change Billy's legal name to your liking (starting at $6K).  Right now, Billy's legal name is Hostgator Mel Dotcom, which he changed from Billy after Hostgator.com hosting company had bought the package last year and issued a press release.

So far, no bids with four hours left till the auction's end. Potential media buyers must be concerned about ad clutter.

Tattoo an Ecko Logo and Get 20% Off For Life

Speaking of branded tattoos: Ecko offers 20% off for life to anyone who tattoos its brand logo (the rhino or the shears) and presents the appropriately inked body part at the store.  There's fine print: "Tattoo must be permanent and provided by a professional third-party tattoo artist operating in accordance with applicable laws. Multiple tattoos does not entitle the consumer to more than one 20% discount. Not valid on bulk buys." -- found on one of deal aggregator sites

Also, Techdirt asks: is it infringement to get your favorite sports team logo tattooed on your body? (They aren't sure.)

Get Free Gas; Ugly Cars Need Not Apply

If you are "cool and responsible", work "in a busy retail location" and drive a "high quality stylish vehicle" (or "any nice truck if you work at a large home improvement store") that you routinely park at beaches, sporting events, malls and fair groups, then Take 1 If You Dare has a deal for you. You festoon your "stylish vehicle" with promo magnets, and the company pays for your gas. Which in the age of $4-$5 gas, might not be a bad deal.

And if you need help with your mortgage, there's a deal for you, too.

Amazon Kindle With An Ad for Buick

Buzzfeed's Jon Steinberg received his ad-supported Kindle today and snapped a picture of a Buick ad on it.

The First Digital Copywriter

It's Joe McCambley, who is listed as copywriter on that very first 1994 banner for AT&T on HotWired.

According to his bio (pdf), "Joe conceived and developed the first advertising experience that ever appeared on the Internet in October of 1994. It was a banner that led to an online tour of the world’s best art museums, sponsored by AT&T and developed for the inaugural issue of HotWired Magazine."

Which also answers an old question -- what happened when people did click "right HERE".

"The Future of Advertising" Speech by P&G's Ed Artzt, 1994

On May 12, 1994, the CEO of Procter & Gamble Edwin Artzt delivered a speech at the annual 4As conference on the future of advertising. It has since become a classic,  often referenced but rarely read in full.  The speech, written months before the first banner ad received its first impression, was prescient in many regards and inspiring throughout:

"We run the risk of simply adapting to these changing technologies, but if we don't influence them -- and if we don't harness them -- loyalty to our brands could suffer in the long term."

"The most important change, by far, is that people will become more program-driven and less channel-driven." 

"[Remote controls will] soon be replaced by program navigational services that will fundamentally change the dynamics of TV viewing."  

"In virtually all of the media tests that have been launched around the country, consumers respond very positively to time-shifting." 

"History says that the advertising industry adapts brilliantly to new technology. But we can't sit there. We have to act."

"So we've got to get involved in programming to make certain that advertisers have access to the mass audience and to the best properties." 

The speech was made a year and a half before Nicholas Negroponte's seminal Being Digital.  The full text of the speech, via AdAge archives and an abandoned MediaCzar blog,  follows.

You Can't Run An Agency Without Digital

"I realized that you could not run a successful agency without digital and Hispanic advertising."

Bob Hoffman, The Ad "Advertising on The Web is Mostly a Bad Joke" Contrarian, in SF Biz Journal in 2009

Super Mario Propaganda

A set of four limited-edition posters for $80, here.  Also, my all-time favorite: Keep calm and save the princess.

20 Useful Tools

A collection of assorted tools that make my work easier:

1. Instructions for adding bookmarklets to Safari on iPad

2. Vi.sualize.us - bookmark pictures you find online via a browser plug-in; no sign-ups required

3. Formulists.com - create automatic Twitter lists based on certain criteria, such as "people who unfollowed me"

4. Manage Flitter - follow and unfollow people based on their activity levels

5. Setster.com - a web widget that lets you take appointments on your site

6. Blockposters.com - make any picture into a multi-page pdf of a wall-sized poster. Also, The Rasterbator

7. Checkdog.com - checks spelling on a website

8. Vischeck.com - check how colorblind people see your images

9. Google Refine - a tool for working with messy data sets

10. Social Mention - do a quick check of a brand's mentions in social media

11. Webbed-o-Meter - do a quick check on a URL's appearances in social media

12. Photosynth - create photo panoramas with your iOS device

13. Sendoid - share large files directly between two computers

14. Dropbox plug-ins -- a growing library of add-ons for everyone's favorite shared folder

15. PicMe - an app for rooted Androids that shows your phone's screen on any web browser for screengrabbing purposes

16. Add-ons for Chrome and for Firefox that add a button to YouTube's interface and make downloading the video files super easy

17. Ginipic - searches across different photo sharing sites and presents its findings in a nice photo wall

18. A complete Angry Birds walkthrough - videos

19. Sample Size calculator - is a sample of 100 people big enough?

20. pptPlex - an experimental PowerPoint plug-in from Microsoft that breaks up the linearity of the tool by putting the slides on a zoomable canvas (watch demo)