kottke.org posts about advertising
In the music video for (You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party!) and in promotional material surrounding the release of the band's debut album Licensed to Ill, the Beastie Boys' Mike D wore a chain with a VW emblem around his neck.
In the US and around the world, fans of the band started stealing VW emblems from the fronts of cars on the street and in dealer lots. In the UK, facing down some potential bad publicity, Volkswagen cleverly turned this into a marketing opportunity with this magazine ad:
Using the iconic layout of the groundbreaking "Think Small" and "Lemon" ads and calling their logo a "designer label", VW offered fans of Beasties a free emblem just for writing into the company and requesting one. Brilliant ad. (via @imperica)
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A research company called Morning Consult had 1900 people watch the new Nike commercial featuring Colin Kaepernick and record their reactions in realtime. The video above shows the commercial and the graphed reactions of four age groups: Gen Z (18-21, white line), Millennials (22-37, teal line), Gen X (38-53, yellow line), and Boomers (54-72, red line). The report also has graphs showing results by race and political affiliation (the dashed line is when Kaepernick first appears on screen).
Gen Z & Millennials rated the ad higher than the older viewers throughout and had a less negative reaction to the polarizing parts. Now, the report only mentions the effect of Kaepernick appearing on the screen, but to my eyes, there are four distinct moments when the opinions of some viewers (white, older, Republican) turn negative:
1. Right before Kaepernick is shown for the first time, ratings start to decline when the ad refers to LeBron James as "the best basketball player on the planet" and "bigger than basketball" for recently opening his I Promise School.
2. Kaepernick's first appearance in front of an American flag with his large Afro triggers a steep decline in favorability among older viewers, particularly Boomers and Republicans.
3. Serena Williams being billed as "the greatest athlete ever" results in the steepest decline during the entire ad...and this was before the controversy at the US Open. Across all groups, only black Americans had no problem with that characterization whatsoever (Gen Z & Millennials showed only slight declines).
4. Immediately after that, Kaepernick is shown again and there's a continued follow-on decline from Serena.
So that's interesting! What's going on here? [insert an entire apologist NY Times Op-Ed piece here about how famous athletes are polarizing no matter what, particularly when accompanied by best-ever proclamations, etc. etc.] But of course, it's probably racism with a side of sexism — three outspoken black athletes, one of them a woman, are uppity. That's the simplest explanation.
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The Iceland men's soccer team is nearly impossible not to root for in this World Cup. They are the smallest nation by population ever to qualify for a World Cup. Their coach is a dentist and still maintains his hometown dental practice. The Skol chant done by the team's fans is a great addition to the collection of international soccer chants & songs. All great underdog stuff.
Adding to that, their goalkeeper Hannes Thor Halldórsson is a former film director who, until four years ago, pursued soccer as a second job. In anticipation for the World Cup, Halldórsson stepped back into his old job to direct a commercial for Coca-Cola featuring the Icelandic men's national team and the Skol chant.
Pretty good for a keeper. Is this the best commercial ever made by someone who has also kept clean sheets against both Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo?
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Scarfolk is a dystopian satire site about an English town that's stuck in a 1970s time loop.
Scarfolk is a town in North West England that did not progress beyond 1979. Instead, the entire decade of the 1970s loops ad infinitum. Here in Scarfolk, pagan rituals blend seamlessly with science; hauntology is a compulsory subject at school, and everyone must be in bed by 8pm because they are perpetually running a slight fever. "Visit Scarfolk today. Our number one priority is keeping rabies at bay." For more information please reread.
The slogans and advertisements the site produces are fantastic. It's Nice That has a good overview of the some of the best pieces.
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Artur Grabowski spent much of 2017 comparing three mapping apps (Google Maps, Apple Maps, Waze) to see which one was the most accurate and resulted in the fastest route times. After 120 trips, the data showed that Google Maps got him to his destinations most quickly, Apple Maps made the most accurate predictions, and Waze promised the fastest times but often under-delivered.
So that's some News You Can Use™ (assuming the results are statistically significant), but then Grabowski goes on to discuss why each app might over- or under-promise on route times based on the presence of advertising:
For Apple, Maps is a basic solution for its average user who wants a maps solution out of the box. Apple Maps does not directly drive ad or subscription revenue for Apple so there is less reason for Apple to incentivize iOS users to use Apple Maps over other solutions. However, Apple does care about user experience, and sandbagging trip time estimates so that users arrive at their destination on time results in a great user experience. Hence, I believe that Apple is intentionally conservative with estimated arrival times.
At the other extreme, Waze (Alphabet) makes money through ads when you use their app. What better way to get people to use your navigation app than by over-promising short trip times when no one takes the time to record data and realize that you under-deliver? If an unsuspecting user opens Apple Maps and sees a 34-minute route and compares that to 30-minutes in Waze, the deed is done. Now Waze has a life-long customer who doesn't realize they've been hoodwinked and Waze can throw at them stupidly annoying ads.
If that's happening with your mapping app, just think of how your search results, Facebook newsfeed, and Instagram feed are manipulated to be more amenable to advertising. Oh, and don't forget about almost everything you watch and read. Even Black Panther and Get Out had paid product placements. I wonder how many more car chases there are in action movies due to deep pockets at Acura or Mercedes or BMW. (via df)
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I've slept on it and my mind & soul are still reeling from the SpaceX launch of Falcon Heavy yesterday. I can't tell you why exactly, but when the two side boosters landed safely back on Earth at nearly the same instant, as in a beautifully choreographed ballet, I nearly burst into tears. Just watching the replay gets me all verklempt:
Of course, the boosters were supposed to land at the same time. They broke away from the main stage at the same time and were controlled by identical computer systems in their descent; it's a simple matter of high school physics to solve for the time it takes two uniform objects to travel from point A to point B. But as Richard Feynman said about the beauty of a flower, knowing the science makes moments like this more wondrous.
And then right after that, the video showed what appears to be a human driving a car in Earth orbit to the strains of David Bowie's Life on Mars. What an incredible, ridiculous, ludicrous thing:
There is ample prior art, but I suspect Elon Musk launching a Tesla Roadster into orbit will go down in history as the first notable advertisement in space, a marketing stunt for the ages. However, it seems problematic that billionaires can place billboards in orbit and then shoot them willy nilly into the asteroid belt without much in the way of oversight. As the Roadster recedes from Earth and our memory, will it become just another piece of trash carelessly tossed by humanity into a pristine wilderness, the first of many to come? Or as it ages, will it become an historic artifact, a orbiting testament to the achievement and naivety of early 21st century science, technology, and culture? It's not difficult to imagine, 40 or 50 years from now, space tourists visiting the Roadster on its occasional flybys of Mars and Earth. I wonder what they'll think of all this?
Update: The Roadster has been assigned an interplanetary ID by NASA: Tesla Roadster (AKA: Starman, 2018-017A). Using data from a Chilean telescope, astronomers have been able to figure out how fast the car is tumbling in space from the changes in brightness: 1 rotation every ~4.8 minutes (although there's some disagreement in the comments that it might be twice that). At any rate (har har), here's a time lapse video of the car taken with the 4.1-m SOAR telescope in Chile:
Astrophotographer Rogelio Bernal Andreo also captured the Roadster moving across the sky in this video:
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The worst commercial aired during last night's handegg match was this Dodge Ram ad featuring a snippet of a speech by Martin Luther King Jr. King, of course, was an outspoken critic of capitalism. In fact, later in the very same speech, he railed against this type of advertising. Here's the audio of that part of his speech overlaid on the Dodge Ram commercial:
Now the presence of this instinct explains why we are so often taken by advertisers. You know, those gentlemen of massive verbal persuasion. And they have a way of saying things to you that kind of gets you into buying. In order to be a man of distinction, you must drink this whiskey. In order to make your neighbors envious, you must drive this type of car. In order to be lovely to love you must wear this kind of lipstick or this kind of perfume. And you know, before you know it, you're just buying that stuff. That's the way the advertisers do it...
It often causes us to live above our means. It's nothing but the drum major instinct. Do you ever see people buy cars that they can't even begin to buy in terms of their income? You've seen people riding around in Cadillacs and Chryslers who don't earn enough to have a good T-Model Ford. But it feeds a repressed ego.
You can listen to King's speech in its entirety here:
(thx, hyder)
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The "It's a Tide ad" commercials that aired during the Super Bowl is the best ad campaign I've seen in forever. With the lovable David Harbour winking at the camera, they effectively turned every commercial into a Tide ad, just like they said they would.
It's not necessarily that you were looking at everyone's clothes and wondering if they'd been washed with Tide, but you were constantly on the lookout for Harbour, wondering when he was going to pop out with a knowing smirk and say, "gotcha, it's a Tide ad". Even during the trailer for Solo, you weren't entirely sure it wasn't some cross-promotional thing that ended with Harbour picking a piece of lint off of Lando's impeccably laundered outfit, looking straight into the camera, and saying, with a tilt of his head, "Tide ad" while Chewy softly bawls offscreen.
I kinda hate myself for loving these ads, but dammit they're super clever. They used the energy of their opponents against them, like in ju-jitsu. Even the third-quarter ad for another laundry detergent (whose brand name I can't even remember) seemed like a Tide ad. (Is life a Tide ad? ARRRHGHGGhh)
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In a video for Audi, Candide Thovex skis in locations around the world without any snow. He skis in the jungle, on water, on volcanic ash, down sand dunes, and across the Great Wall of China. The sand dunes in particular look incredibly fun. I wonder how many pairs of skis he ripped up making this?
See also Thovex's past videos: a fun run down the mountain, more creative freeskiing hijinks from Candide Thovex, and his previous commercial for Audi (love the ending).
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A good idea, persistence, the value of limits, the power of collaboration, turning weaknesses into strengths, procuring funding for creative projects...there's a little bit of everything in this video on the creative process in action.
For years, Max Joseph had an idea: what if you could turn highway divider markers into an animation via the zoetrope effect? You know, Burma Shave by way of Eadweard Muybridge. He kept telling people about this idea until one day, someone agreed to fund it. He found some enthusiastic collaborators and started work. They soon reached a potential failure point — the project as originally conceived was logistically impossible — but quickly found a solution that made the project thematically stronger without straying too far from the initial concept. (via swissmiss)
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Videos designed to invoke ASMR ("autonomous sensory meridian response") in some viewers have grown in popularity in recent years. The videos feature soothing sounds and visuals (gentle whispering, soft scratching, watching a task being diligently performed) that are meant to provoke a response of brain tingling or a state of bliss in some people. In an attempt to ride the wave, Ikea has made a 25-minute advertisement for college dorm furniture that uses common ASMR techniques. I dunno, does cerebral euphoria make people want to buy closet organizers?
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Last month, I told you that I lost the advertising on kottke.org after The Deck folded. After fielding lots of feedback (thank you!) and checking out a few different options, I've decided to try out Carbon Ads. By going with Carbon, the advertising on kottke.org retains many of the features I enjoyed about The Deck: a single unobtrusive ad per page, a curated group of sites and advertisers in the network, set it & forget it, and prompt payment. You'll find the ad on each page of the site, in the post sidebar (or just below the post on mobile).
Before I let you go, I need a tiny bit of your help with this. If you use ad blocking software when you read kottke.org, could you please whitelist kottke.org and/or Carbon Ads (carbonads.com)? It should be pretty easy...check your ad block software's instructions if you've never done it before. I don't want to get into an argument about the ethics or morality of advertising or ad blocking, but I will say that blocking ads on kottke.org means less revenue for the site. As previously discussed, advertising is an essential piece of the ongoing stability of kottke.org and whitelisting the site would help me out in that regard. Thank you.
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Frito-Lay and Marvel have teamed up to offer a limited-edition Doritos bag to promote Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. The bag comes with a integrated MP3 player containing the soundtrack from the movie, a pair of 80s-style headphones, and a USB charging cable.
Plug your headphones into the bag, press play, and enjoy the Doritos packaged inside!
Their custom hashtag isn't taking off the way that they had hoped (only 1 result on Twitter and 2 on Insta), but I have to admit, this is kinda cool...exactly the sort of weirdo product promotion that people would have gone bonkers for in the 80s.1 Engadget has a look at the bag and how it works:
The bags are sold out on Amazon (and I don't think they were ever available anywhere else), but if you really want one, they are selling on eBay for anywhere from $50 to $500.
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For the past 12 years, working on kottke.org has been my full-time job. For all but two of those years, my primary source of income has come from a small advertisement that appeared on each page of the site served up by The Deck. The Deck was small advertising network that displayed ads on sites like kottke.org, Daring Fireball, swissmiss, MetaFilter, and The Morning News from advertisers like MailChimp, Slack, Adobe, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, etc. etc. etc. The ads were small & clean and accompanied by a bit of text and a link; that's it. No tracking, no targeting, no pop-ups. The ads were tasteful, polite even. In exchange for allowing these companies a small piece of my site to tell you folks about their products and services, I was paid a fixed amount every month, direct-deposited like clockwork into my bank account. I never ever had to think about it — we didn't even have a contract!1 — all I had to do was write. All in all, a fair trade for everyone involved.
Sharp-eyed readers will note that The Deck ad is no longer on the site. Some months ago, Jim Coudal informed me that the ad network was struggling to attract advertisers. An attempt at restructuring failed and, as of March 31, The Deck is no more. There's much I could say about the challenges faced by small independent sites now and how drastically the online advertising market has changed in the past few years, but mostly I'd like to thank Jim (and original Deck co-conspirators Jason Fried and Jeffrey Zeldman) for building a service that allowed me do my thing with minimal fuss for so long. Jim, I wish you continued good luck in steering the Field Notes juggernaut.
So, where does that leave kottke.org? Luckily I anticipated something like this happening1 and the launch of memberships back in November has left the site on stable financial ground, even without advertising. Thank you, members! Seriously, you people saved the Building & Loan. And if you're not yet a member and you find value in what I do here, there has never been a better time to support kottke.org.
Even so, in the interests of necessarily diversifying the revenue of this here very small business, I will be looking at options for replacing The Deck with....something. I have a few leads and ideas but am open to suggestions. Wanna do a year-long sponsorship of one of the best independent sites on the internet? Got a line on a small ad network with tasteful advertising? Do you have experience with online advertising and advice for me? Let's talk. Chumbox providers need not apply.
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In the second episode of the 6th season of Mad Men, ad man Don Draper of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce pitches Heinz on a campaign where you never actually see the product. The ads show French fries, steak, and a hamburger with the tagline "Pass the Heinz" and your mind fills in the missing ketchup bit. Here's the pitch (which doesn't exactly land w/ the Heinz folks):
Now, in the real universe, the actual Heinz is running Draper's ads.
Partly a PR stunt, partly just solid on-brand communications, the campaign is sure to delight fans of the AMC show, which in July will celebrate the 10th anniversary of its premiere. And in a nice touch, the ads are officially being credited to Heinz's current agency, David Miami, and to Don's fictional 1960s firm, Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. (Draper and Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner, who approved the idea, are both listed in the credits.)
Heinz tells AdFreak that each one will get its own billboard in NYC. All three ads will also run in the New York Post, and the fries execution will run in Variety too. The ads will get support across Heinz's social media channels as well.
See also Malcolm Gladwell on The Ketchup Conundrum.
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Ezra Edelman's fantastic documentary OJ: Made in America won the Oscar for best documentary this year. In a video for Fandor, Joel Bocko explains while the film's focus is on Simpson, it also explores seven broader themes about contemporary America: sports, the media, Los Angeles, class, domestic abuse, policing, and race.
OJ: Made in America emerges not simply as a brilliant biography, it's also a stunning social portrait that can stand beside any novel, epic film, or piece of longform journalism.
And in this video for The Atlantic, Edelman explains how, before murdering his ex-wife, Simpson was an advertising pioneer, the first black athlete to become a nationally known product pitchman, appearing in commercials for Hertz, Chevy, and Schick.
One of the most interesting aspects of Edelman's film is how Simpson's feelings about being black shifted after his arrest. For most of his life, he distanced himself from the black community, famously declaring "I'm not black, I'm OJ." He didn't get involved in the politics of the day or speak out like Muhammed Ali and other prominent black athletes did. He enjoyed preferential treatment by the LAPD, who help him keep his abuse of women under wraps. Black America had nothing to offer a man who enjoyed being rich and famous in white America. But then the trial happened and he hired Johnny Cochran, who made race into the central issue of the case, deftly aligning Simpson with a black community who had endured decades of racism and brutality in LA at the hands of society and the police.
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I know, I know. This is a car commercial and it's morbid and at this moment in time it's not really that funny, but it caught me at just the right time today and I laughed harder at this than I have at something in several weeks. So I guess even ad agencies are capable of enabling righteous acts (or at least inappropriately hilarious acts) these days?
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Wes Anderson directed a short holiday film starring Adrien Brody for H&M. It is delightful. You can criticize the twee formality in his work,1 but this is a reminder that Anderson can bring the emotion when he wants.
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A site called FamilyBreakFinder produced a world map with every country's tourism slogan on it. A few of my favorite slogans:
Netherlands: The original cool
Colombia: Colombia is magical realism
El Salvador: The 45 minute country
Slovenia: I feel sLOVEnia
Cape Verde: No stress
Spain: #spainindetail
Morocco: Much mor
Bhutan: Happiness is a place
India: Incredible !ndia
Some of these countries should ask their ad agencies for their money back. (via @ftrain)
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As a chaser to the last post, here's Hillary Clinton's latest campaign commercial. This is right up there with the best political ads I've seen. Obama's words are taken from his speech to the Congressional Black Caucus last month.
Our work's not done. But if we are going to advance the cause of justice, and equality, and prosperity, and freedom, then we also have to acknowledge that even if we eliminated every restriction on voters, we would still have one of the lowest voting rates among free peoples. That's not good, that is on us.
And I am reminded of all those folks who had to count bubbles in a bar of soap, beaten trying to register voters in Mississippi. Risked everything so that they could pull that lever. So, if I hear anybody saying their vote does not matter, that it doesn't matter who we elect, read up on your history. It matters. We've got to get people to vote.
In fact, if you want to give Michelle and me a good sendoff, and that was a beautiful video, but don't just watch us walk off into the sunset now, get people registered to vote. If you care about our legacy, realize everything we stand for is at stake, on the progress we have made is at stake in this election.
My name may not be on the ballot, but our progress is on the ballot. Tolerance is on the ballot. Democracy is on the ballot. Justice is on the ballot. Good schools are on the ballot. Ending mass incarceration, that's on the ballot right now.
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From a New Zealand sketch comedy show called Funny Girls, a send-up of a typical manly man "built tough" truck commercial. I barely watch any actual TV anymore, but those truck commercials have always been the worst. (thx, sarah)
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While attempting to do a commercial for the chicken pot pie at Dysart's Restaurant in Maine, this gentleman has a little problem with saying his lines. This just gets funnier and funnier as it goes on, and it is imperative that you watch until the very end. This is the hardest I've laughed all week.
P.S. If you live in New England, you can get a Dysart's pie shipped right to your house. Fruit pies only, but they presumably still have that buttery crispy crun- ... dammit! (via @heyadamroberts)
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The advertising that Volkswagen ran in American magazines and newspapers in the 1960s was legendary, perhaps the greatest ad campaign ever. This is a great little documentary about how the ads came about — pitching "a Nazi car in a Jewish town".
I had only ever seen a few of these ads...what an amazing campaign. For this one, they didn't even bother showing you the car, an assurance to the buyer that you knew what you were getting.
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A new commercial from Apple pairs photos & videos shot on iPhone 6 with a poem from Maya Angelou called Human Family.
We seek success in Finland,
are born and die in Maine.
In minor ways we differ,
in major we're the same.
I note the obvious differences
between each sort and type,
but we are more alike, my friends,
than we are unalike.
We are more alike, my friends,
than we are unalike.
We are more alike, my friends,
than we are unalike.
You can hear Angelou recite the entire poem here:
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A cute Ikea ad imagines what Instagram might have been like in the 18th century...it involves a painter and a lot of driving around in a carriage soliciting likes.
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Lo and Behold, a documentary about technology and the internet directed by Werner Herzog is coming out soon and so Herzog is doing some interviews and such about the film and dozens of other topics. With Paul Holdengraber, Herzog talks about North Korea and volcanoes:
The North Koreans apparently had seen quite a few of my films. I established a trust with them. It's very strange because you're accompanied by people who would look after what you were doing, who would politely tell you you cannot film this, or cannot film that, and at one point I filmed something which I was not allowed to do, so I wanted to have it edited or deleted. But since they are filming in 4K or 5K or so, very complicated data management, we were unable to delete it, and they wanted to take the entire memory hard drive. And I said, "But it contains two days worth of shooting, that would be terrible." So I said, "You know what, I can guarantee to you that I'm not going to use this material." And they said, "Guarantee, what do you mean by that?" I said, "Just look me in the eye, what I offer is my honor, my face, and my handshake." And they said "ok" and they trusted me. And of course I'm not going to use this moment of filming that I was not supposed to film.
Herzog talked about Pokemon Go and film school with Emily Yoshida:
Q: You might be able to catch some. It's all completely virtual. It's very simple, but it's also an overlay of physically based information that now exists on top of the real world.
A: When two persons in search of a pokemon clash at the corner of Sunset and San Vicente is there violence? Is there murder?
Q: They do fight, virtually.
A: Physically, do they fight?
Q: No-
A: Do they bite each other's hands? Do they punch each other?
Jason Tanz spoke with Herzog for his profile on the director and his new film:
Herzog grins as he takes a seat in a conference room at UCLA, which has been set up for an event later this evening. His eyes droop, but his skin is remarkably smooth, like the surface of a slightly underinflated balloon. And then there's that voice-silky, portentous-you can imagine it coming out of a GPS system giving driving directions to Valhalla. "I like to look back at the evolution of modern human beings," he says of his interest in the Internet. "Using fire or electricity was an enormous step for civilization, and this is one of those. And I think the poet must not avert his eyes."
What is interesting about Lo and Behold is that it's technically branded content. No, really:
It's a bonafide film that premiered at Sundance in January and has been generating lots of buzz heading toward its wider release. It also happens to be one giant ad, half in disguise, for POD New York client Netscout. The whole thing started out as an agency idea to produce short videos about the internet as part of a online Netscout campaign. But after they roped in Herzog, the vision for the project soon changed-for the better.
"I come from a digital background, and I've talked about the internet for my entire career. My first job was as the internet guy at DDB in Brazil," Pereira said. "When we hired Werner to do content about the internet, I felt like, OK, I know it's going to be awesome, but I'm pretty sure I know what I'm going to see. But actually, it's mind-blowing. We gave him the beginning of the idea and told him, 'This is where it starts.' He took it from there and owned it. It's a mind-blowing documentary."
I saw the film last week,1 and from what I remember, there's nothing about Netscout in the film. They financed the film but according to Tanz, Herzog had final cut:
Herzog retained final cut while granting McNiel veto power, a privilege McNiel used only once, to excise some of the more horrifying troll comments, a decision Herzog now says he agrees with.
See also 24 pieces of life advice from Werner Herzog.
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The Internet Archive has just uploaded a bunch of commercials that were shown during Saturday morning cartoons during the 70s, 80s, and 90s.1 Holy nostalgia bomb, OMG that Frosted Mini Wheats commercial! I somehow remember most of the 80s ones...can I delete those memories somehow to make more room for new thoughts about AI, self-driving cars, and climate change?
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Keiichi Matsuda's Hyper-Reality "presents a provocative and kaleidoscopic new vision of the future, where physical and virtual realities have merged, and the city is saturated in media". This is like a 5-minute episode of Black Mirror. Do not want. See also these previous videos about augmented reality overload, including an earlier video by Matsuda.
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Is this for real? 43 people simultaneously tossed coins into jars while standing 15 feet away with only a single miss? Impressive.
If it is fake, how'd they do it? CG? Coins dropped from above each jar? It seems unlikely the broken jar near the beginning of the sequence was done in CG or resulted from a coin falling from above. The coins, jars, and tossing seems real. How about 43 motion-captured green-screened robotic arms accurately tossed the coins and the actors were added in later. Or was it magic?
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