'WSJ' Tosses Cookies

What does The Wall Street Journal have against cookies? While interactive ad industry types try to circle the wagons around their beloved tracking cookies, the Journal has gone on an all-out, anti-cookie offensive. First Walt Mossberg, the Journal’s influential and curmudgeonly tech guy, fired off a diatribe against cookies two weeks ago, calling many a “Big Brother intrusion.” This elicited many indignant responses (here's another one), including one unlikely suggestion that the Journal has a grand conspiracy to halt the march of online advertising because it is eating into its own ad base. Today, the online version of the Journal devotes 1,479 words to Web users pissed off to find analytics firm Omniture’s cookies on their computers, with the admittedly sketchy file name 2o7.com. The story quotes concerned customers that worry Omniture might compromise their financial data since they track site behavior for clients like Ameritrade, even though cookies don’t collect that kind of data and only track Web browsers, not individual users. Anyone involved in advertising should be concerned about the backlash, whether deserved or not, against cookies, which are needed to show relevant ads and figure out what marketing works. But publishers and advertisers have never explained this to Web users, content with the idea that “people don’t care.” But there’s no doubt many consumers do care and are increasingly deleting cookies that track their behavior, which is bad news if the future of advertising is targeting customers with relevant messages.

—Posted by Brian Morrissey

Credit: Getty Images

Published on July 29, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (11)

It's all about the Georges

We’re kind of amazed we’ve never run into wheresgeorge.com before yesterday, because a quick swing by Wikipedia shows it’s been around since 1998. Still, get out your dollar bills, visit the site and indulge in a great Friday time-waster. What you do is input the serial number and year of individual dollar bills and, if other people have entered the bill’s information into the site earlier, you can see where it’s been before it got to you. We “heard” of the site because when we unfurled a crumpled bill in our pocket the other day we noticed one of its previous owners had scrawled a note on it imploring us to go to the site. (The guy—apparently goes by the name of Fishbone—is one of those people who views a dollar bill as an all-purpose communications device; also, written on the bill were “Remember 9-11-01” and “STERN RULES!!”) Anyway, turns out this dollar bill is not a great traveler. It started in the Parkchester section of the Bronx, and in 33 days made it only 4.9 miles to its current residence, but going to the site was an interesting diversion, nonetheless. As esoteric as this site is, we were surprised to see it actually has legitimate advertisers, including Excite and Vonage. (Oh, right, Vonage’ll advertise anywhere).

—Posted by Catharine P. Taylor

Published on July 29, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (5)

Passionate about Pabst? Shoot an ad.

This from our comments box: a site called CoBrandIt asking if we could call to AdFreak readers’ attention that it is asking people to submit what it is calling “documentary advertising” in the following categories: beer, gear and cars. It will pay you $50 for participating. “We're interested in homemade advertising and the real-life experience of consumers and brands,” the site says; it then wants to interest advertisers in the results. (We’ll see about that.) Sure, this idea smacks of the Converse Gallery, where people submit short films that are odes to their Chuck Taylors, but what the hey. If you’ve got a passion for a product, spend your Saturday afternoon shooting a film about it. (The picture here, by the way, is from a short film about Schlitz that's currently on the site.)

—Posted by Catharine P. Taylor

Published on July 29, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (4)

A refreshing blast of obscenity

Our vote for tagline of the year so far goes to the new documentary The Aristocrats: “No nudity. No violence. Unspeakable obscenity.” How could you pass that up? Penn Jillette, the talkative half of comedy/magic team Penn & Teller (and father of new baby girl Moxie CrimeFighter Jillette), came up with the line. He co-directed the movie with standup comic Paul Provenza. The film features various comedians telling their own versions of a filthy joke that’s been a kind of calling card for comedians backstage since the days of vaudeville. In this age of anti-obscenity, this movie sounds quite invigorating. Of course, as Jillette told Kurt Andersen on Studio 360 this week, “There’s no intention whatsoever of putting it on during the Super Bowl.”

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Published on July 29, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Gap stepping in time to the music

Gap’s new interactive Web site might be a bit lame, but frankly, its upcoming ad campaign sounds cool. Called “Favorites,” it will star musicians like Alanis Morissette, Joss Stone, John Legend, Michelle Williams (Destiny’s Child), Jason Mraz, Keith Urban, Liz Phair and Brandon Boyd (Incubus) performing original remakes of their favorite songs. (Boyd, for example, will do “Alison,” by Elvis Costello.) There’s something about well-known musicians doing other people’s songs that’s compelling in a basic way. (Could they have gotten Will Ferrell to reprise his Neil Diamond character?) Also, from Aug. 8-31, each customer who tries on any pair of Gap jeans will receive one free iTunes download. As if that dressing-room area weren’t chaotic enough.

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Published on July 29, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0)

All's fair in new Schwarzenegger ad

What with all his high-level hobnobbing, it was heartening to see that California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger can still find time to hang out with the cute, short and chubby set. In Sacramento-based independent Mering & Associates' new spot for the 2005 California State Fair—where "beach culture meets agriculture"—Arnold enjoys a relaxing day by the ocean, along with constituents including a sun-bathing pig, a volleyball-playing goat, a surfboard-toting cow and—well, in this case, short, chubby and famous—Twins co-star Danny DeVito. Word has yet to be heard from the gov's fitness-magazine friends, but we're relatively certain he'll make sure all cameras are off before hitting the fair's Magnificent Midway for an order of deep-fried Snickers-topped funnel cakes.

—Posted by Randi Schmelzer

Published on July 28, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0)

AdFreak goes advergaming

All in the name of entertaining you, AdFreak has recently been perusing the latest online advergames, the kind that brands offer consumers who wander into their sites. (We'll get to the one featuring the image shown here in a minute.) We've already mentioned Milwaukee's Best Light's games, but what are some other ones? And how good are they, really? A quick, unofficial, highly erratic search yielded some answers. The main way marketers seem to create online games is to take normal online games and plaster their logos all over them. Nabisco.com, for example, offers a ton of games. We didn't play them all, but Ping Pong and (the unfortunately named) CornHole—two of the newer games—both proved to be able time-wasters. Moving along to the Hershey's site, we discovered two games, "Hershey's Kisses Way to Go!," a puzzle maze, and "Step by Step Word Ladder," understandably juvenile. In the realm of juvenile—but for an entirely different reason—we decided to try mojomastergame.com, the online game for Axe Unlimited, allowing users to try to seduce women online, which promised to be trashily offensive (as pictured above). But unfortunately, we couldn't load it on our Mac, no matter which way we tried. What a waste! But the best game we found was a surprisingly hard Movie Star Matchup on budweiser.com, a trivia game that links the correct answer of the last question to the next question. (Hint to get to the game: once you've entered an age that will get you into the site, click on "Entertainment," not "Game Time.") AdFreak, a self-described movie buff, was stumped several times. We would continue this research, but our boss is beginning to give us dirty looks. If you have any tips, let us know!

—Posted by Mae Anderson

Published on July 28, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Google wins war of the worlds

We’ve been hearing that the beta versions of Google Earth and MSN’s Virtual Earth, which feature aerial photos of just about every place on our beloved planet, are all the rage amongst land surveyors (and for all we know, stalkers). But what to write about them? Thanks to Gawker, we found our angle, when that blog helpfully pointed out that in the MSN product, the World Trade Center still lives. (See photo above, where, directly to the right of the blue box containing the numeral one, you can see the square footprint of the tower that included the huge antenna in the center of its roof. The other tower is diagonally down and to the right.) Clearly, it was time for a side-by-side product demonstration; we downloaded Google Earth and found that at Google, the World Trade Center is no more, replaced by the unmistakable image of what’s come to be known as Ground Zero. Score one for Google. While we’re at it, we’d also like to point people to Google Moon, which launched last week to commemorate the anniversary of the first manned space launch. Mostly, we’re doing this because when you go to the site and zoom in all the way, you’ll see a funny, Googly joke. Enjoy.

—Posted by Catharine P. Taylor

Published on July 28, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (4)

Huh? Blow dart gun mistaken for walking stick?

I appreciate the government’s concern for my welfare, to a point. I sometimes need help identifying poisonous things, dangerous products and scams by unscrupulous marketers. But is there no limit to it all? Witness the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission’s recall of an African blow dart gun sold by discount retailer Value City for about $5 each. It seems that some people who bought the gun think it is a walking stick and might hurt themselves when they find out it is really a gun. I’m serious. That’s what the CPSC said in a statement about the recall.  To be more specific, the statement reads, “Consumers may have mistakenly purchased the dart guns thinking it was a decorative walking stick, posing the risk of injury if someone used the gun for its intended purpose.”  I’ve been struggling with that concept for days. How could they hurt themselves if they don’t put the darts in the gun and blow through it? Blow dart guns don’t discharge accidentally. And, how could anybody not notice the pouch containing five darts mounted in the middle of the gun? Wouldn’t you at least be curious about the anomaly?  I think we have gone a step too far here. I’m not sure we should protect someone who can’t tell a walking stick from a gun. At some point, we have to let natural selection take its course.

—Posted by Jim Lovel

Published on July 28, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (1)

Dove pitches in 'Mets Magazine'

We’ve seen the Dove “Campaign for Real Beauty” in lots of places, including the escalators leading down into the bowels of the Grand Central subway station, but here’s a media placement that really leaped out at us: a full-page buy in the current issue of Mets Magazine (better known to most folks at the ballpark as the scorecard). With the possible exception of an ad for General Mills cereals, it was the only ad targeted toward women in the entire publication, sharing space with marketers like York air conditioning and the Ramada Plaza Hotel LaGuardia (“Your place to stay … across from Shea!”) Anyway, here’s our theory as to why someone saw fit to place the ad there. Though we count ourselves among the group of longtime female baseball fans, women who are dragged to the game by their significant others make the ultimate captive audience, imprisoned for nine innings with nothing to do but take in the between innings entertainment and flip through Mets Magazine.( In other “Campaign for Real Beauty” news, one of our fellow ad blogs has a post about how some people don’t want reality, at least when it comes to looking at some women’s thighs.)

—Posted by Catharine P. Taylor

Published on July 28, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (1)

Clear Channel dumps Gay.com ad

A group working to overturn same-sex marriage in Massachusetts has apparently pressured Clear Channel to take down a gay-themed billboard in Boston a day early. The ad, for Gay.com, had been up in Cambridge, Mass., since early April, but Clear Channel reacted to a handful of complaints made this week after a group called Article 8 Alliance posted the image on its Web site, along with Clear Channel’s phone number. “You have two men embracing, wrapped in the American flag, advertising a porno Web site,” Article 8 Alliance’s director says. “How can you get more offensive than that?” A Gay.com rep points out that the site isn’t pornographic but offers dating services, along with editorial and commercial content.

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Published on July 28, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (1)

Target takes a dive

Target is doing a publicity stunt today in Manhattan's Rockefeller Center that really is a stunt, per The New York Post. It has set up a vertical runway composed of Target logos on which—or maybe it’s better to say along which—17 acrobats clad in Target fall fashions are descending, making it look like "they are dancing down the face of the building." (The first show was at noon; the second one is at 7 p.m.) While the acrobats are wearing rappelling gear while they catwalk, we're not sure if this means that all those ropes and clips are something we should be considering as fashionable additions to our fall wardrobe. But when you consider this development along with the fact that HBO is also currently running a billboard campaign that includes rappelling down a building, we're beginning to wonder.

—Posted by Catharine P. Taylor

Credit: Stephen Lovekin/Wireimage.com/PR Newswire Photo Service/Newscom

Published on July 27, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (5)

Time to reboot Microsoft Vista?

You’d think Microsoft would have enough lawyers hanging around to avoid problems like this, but maybe not enough of them are devoted to trademark issues. The company has said its next version of Windows will be called Vista—but the Vista name is used by roughly a gazillion other products. So far, response from other Vista marketers has been mixed. One complains that the phone is ringing off the hook with queries about a product it’s not selling; another theorizes that a quadrupling of its Web site’s traffic isn’t necessarily a bad thing. For its part, Microsoft says it has done its trademark homework and hasn’t received any complaints about the name.

—Posted by Catharine P. Taylor

Published on July 27, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0)

A tasteless line, even for hard-core

The marketing effort for the latest CD from Montreal hard-core band A Perfect Murder carries this line: “Pantera is gone. Metallica is old.” Say what you will about Metallica being ancient in their 40s. But the Pantera comment is harsh, given that former guitarist “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott was shot to death on stage in December while performing in Columbus, Ohio, with his band Damageplan. Even though Pantera broke up before Abbott was killed, his death is still pretty raw. Couldn’t these guys have come up with a better line? 

—Posted by Celeste Ward

Published on July 27, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (3)

Back to the basics of beer marketing

If you’re in the mood for some unapologetic male stereotypes, hop on over to Milwaukee’s Best Light’s new microsite, developed by Mother in New York. There you’ll find a handful of animated games, including one called “Lust for Bust,” in which you sit in a room with “your buddy” and “your buddy’s hot sister” and, using the mouse, try to steal glances at the woman’s chest “without getting caught.” Also available: downloads of “posters of hot chicks, cool cars, power tools and hot chicks.” If it’s subtlety you’re after, you may want to look somewhere else.

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Published on July 27, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (2)

Your bum starring in new Gap site

Now that we all have been assured and reassured that Joss Stone—but perhaps not her bum—is continuing to be employed by the Gap, here’s a post on the retailer’s latest site, at the non-branded URL watchmechange.com. We played around with it, and came away thinking, while it’s fine to play around with, it can’t decide whether it’s a product- focused site or a game of digital dress-up that you can send to friends. The site does let you change the shape, face and hairdo of the model, and you can swap different clothes in and out, but there’s no way to actually buy any clothes—so what, exactly, is the point? (Yeah, Crispin, Porter + Bogusky created this site. So if you haven’t had an outlet lately for your simmering dislike of the agency, here’s your chance to complain.)

—Posted by Catharine P. Taylor

Published on July 27, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (9)

How hip are you to Internet slang?

Techno-sophisticates that they are, AdFreak’s readers know all about podcasting, adware and the like. It turns out, though, that many other Internet users are hazy about some of the terminology that has grown up around the Web. A survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project asked Internet users to say how conversant they are with a number of terms. (You can check out a PDF of the survey results here.) Spam proved to be the best known, with 88 percent saying they “have a good idea” what it means. Ten percent were “not really sure,” while a blissfully ignorant 3 percent had “never heard of it.” On the opposite end of the scale, just 9 percent said they have a good idea of what RSS feeds are (not to be confused with this RSS), while 65 percent weren’t really sure and 26 percent had never heard of them. Even in households with a broadband connection, just 10 percent are well clued in about RSS feeds. Podcasting is another phenomenon for which the never-heard-of-it vote (23 percent) exceeded the have-a-good-idea tally (13 percent). Despite all the attention to phishing, a non-landslide 29 percent said they have a good idea of what it means, while 15 percent had never heard of it. Just over half the respondents (52 percent) said they have a good idea what adware is, with 9 percent having never heard the term. Men were more likely than women to say they have a good idea of what all the words denote, which may or may not mean that they actually know any more.

—Posted by Mark Dolliver

Illustration: Jim Dandy/Images.com/Newscom

Published on July 27, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Changing times for ‘TV Guide’

We were pleased to read this morning that TV Guide is going to a large-size format, even if the change strikes us as at least five years late—any weekly publication so thick that it could serve as an end table seems destined for the recycling bin from the get-go. It’s also smart to concede that no one picks up magazines anymore just to find out when their favorite show is on; thus, the new TV Guide, which launches in October, won’t feature all the listing minutiae that used to be its bread and butter. But without the listings, will it really have a unique raison d’etre? The company’s CEO describes the new TV Guide as “a weekly, full-size, feature-rich TV entertainment and guidance magazine.” Which sounds so much like so many other magazines that the answer may end up being no.

—Posted by Catharine P. Taylor

Published on July 26, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (3)

Don’t judge this book by its cover

OK, here’s our vote for worst book title so far this year: The Historian. Every time we saw that it was climbing the bestseller lists, our eyes glazed over from lack of curiosity. Some random Web surfing led us to this revelation. A show of hands, please—how many of you knew this book was about Dracula? How many wonder why, with such a sexy topic, the publishers chose this title? Why, after nearly a decade of painstaking research and writing, did the author allow this? We think the book could at least have been called Vlad in the Countryside, or The Secret Life of Count Dracula, or even something blunt like Bloodlust. But The Historian?  Please. School’s still out for summer, baby.

—Posted by Kathleen Sampey

Published on July 26, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Diet Coke’s seductive Roller Girl

For months, bloggers have been atwitter trying to determine the identity of the radiant Roller Girl who is “seeing stars” in the recent Diet Coke ad, which was shot, according to one contributor’s personal knowledge, at Zuma Beach in Malibu. In the unexpurgated theatrical version of the commercial, her distraction-inducing antics include a split-second soda spray spurt from between her legs (take that, Freud—and Paris Hilton). Amid the frantic, testosterone-driven research, one frustrated guy writes that he wishes there were “an IMDB for commercials.” Sounds like a great idea! Well, it turns out the vivacious, freshly scrubbed, couldn’t-be-less-insolent-looking Roller Girl is none other than the inaptly named Nicole Vicius, who is indeed on IMDB for being in Gus Van Sant’s Last Days and for a recurring role on All My Children. And by the way, her last name is not as Van Santian street-trash punky as it sounds, says Nicole’s theatrical agent at Endeavor in New York. It’s a shortened family name.

—Posted by Gregory Solman

Published on July 26, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (3)

Wake up and smell the food odors

Before you read this, you might want to put on a little Lynyrd Skynyrd or some other related song. OK, now: Arm & Hammer has devised two new food pyramids that might prove just as useful as the new one with guy climbing the stairs. The people in the company’s Good Taste Labs have devised visual reminders about which foods tend to collect odors and which foods emit them. The top emitters: garlic, onions, cheese and fish. The top receivers: butter, milk, yogurt and water. “One of the reasons American households discard an average of 280 pounds of food a year is that some of these foods have been affected by pungent odors,” Ray Brown, some guy who works in the labs, says in the release. Let’s see if we can guess Arm & Hammer’s solution to the problem: 1. Seal “foul taste transmitters” in containers; 2. Beware of aging foods; and 3. (you saw this coming) Use Arm & Hammer baking soda in your fridge. I feel much better now.

—Posted by Aaron Baar

Published on July 26, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Saving face, with the help of science

I love it when life imitates art. Back in 1997, John Travolta and Nicolas Cage starred in a movie called Face/Off. Here’s the plotline: A revolutionary medical technique allows an undercover agent to take the physical appearance of a major criminal and infiltrate his organization. Of course, the heavy (Travolta), being no fool, applies the same technique to his own bad self to take on the identity of the undercover good guy (Cage). The film then disintegrates into a bloody, tortured affair of one mistaken identity after another, with car chases and gun battles until finally, surprise surprise, the good guy wins. Fast forward to the present, and guess what? The medical community has developed a procedure to give people new faces. A story in today’s New York Times highlights the advancements of so-called face transplants. Dr. Maria Siemionow, a pioneer in the field, is looking for a human guinea pig to perform the first such operation on. The procedure is a little ghoulish. The new face comes from a freshly deceased donor whose countenance has to be “harvested” within eight hours of the operation. As you can imagine, all sorts of things can go wrong. What doctors don’t know is how a recipient’s immune system might respond to the new face. Siemionow calls Face/Off, the movie, “science fiction” that distracts from the issue of giving horribly scarred people new leases on life. But the actual procedure sounds like a combination of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, a PBS documentary and those identity-theft commercials for Citibank. Siemionow got the go-ahead to proceed with an operation from the Cleveland Clinic (where she practices) last fall. Right around Halloween.

—Posted by Steve McClellan

Published on July 26, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Brittany Murphy, horse whisperer

Brittany Murphy is adapatable. First she had to act opposite Eminem; now she has to emote while lying on a horse. The 27-year-old star of Blossom, Clueless, King of the Hill, 8 Mile, etc., is the star of Jordache’s upcoming ad campaign. Murphy had never ridden a horse before, but after the photo shoot in upstate New York, she now wants to take riding lessons. “We chose Brittany as our model because she epitomizes everything that the updated Jordache brand is about,” Liz Berlinger, president of Jordache Enterprises, said in a statement Monday. “She is a classic beauty with an individual sense of style. That really comes across when you meet her.”

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Photo: PR Newswire

Published on July 26, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Just what are those 11 herbs and spices?

It was 65 years ago this month that Col. Harland Sanders blended the 11 herbs and spices for his KFC chicken. As usual, the company is using the occasion to play up the super extra double top secret nature of the recipe. Apparently, the handwritten recipe is locked away at KFC headquarters, and the few people who know it are sworn to secrecy. KFC president Gregg Dedrick even claims he doesn’t know it. (“Presidents come and go, but the secret recipe remains,” he says.) Companies like KFC clearly benefit from perpetuating this kind of mystique. However, this interesting article on the subject raises some doubts about KFC’s claims. According to the article, a writer named William Poundstone “claims to have obtained a sample of the coating from a KFC employee, and then ... had it analyzed by a laboratory. What he found was shocking—only four ingredients: salt, ground black pepper, flour and MSG.”

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Published on July 25, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (33)
Filed under KFC

Can we ban the C-SPAN spoofs?

When the ad industry focuses on self-regulation, it’s usually dealing with weighty issues like how to responsibly advertise prescription drugs or Fruit Roll-Ups. So how about this proposal: Isn’t it time for a self-imposed ban on ads that feature fake congressional hearings in the name of “humor”? The latest offender is the Subway spot (shot to look like it’s airing on C-SPAN, as all the spots in this sorry genre are) in which Jared is being questioned by a bunch of congressmen about how he lost all that weight. Once the committee is satisfied, everyone eats turkey subs. Puh-leeze! There was the infamous GoDaddy spot from the Super Bowl. There was the Geico spot where the guy holding the hearings gets “some good news.” There’s this Jared spot. Haven’t we had enough, Mr. Chairman?

—Posted by Catharine P. Taylor

Published on July 25, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (8)