Planet Green Video ads - good for mother earth and funny

Here are couple of links. I personally love the second one with Tommy Lee and Ludacris. Sure, we all assume that he doesn't shower, but it's still funny and just check out the look on Ludacris's face - priceless.

THE MAN WITH A SOLAR POWERED SWIMSUIT

LUDACRIS AND TOMMY LEE IN A DINER

New Dark Overlords of Dark Marketing

McDonald's - can you believe this, yes McDonald's is doing Dark Marketing. Company that usually limits their marketing efforts to cheap plastic action figure type toys produced for 2 cents a piece somewhere in the South Pacific, is now doing Dark Marketing.

What's even better is the fact that they are doing it quite well. Maybe not real well, but well enough. Unlike the pathetic efforts by Sony (fake tourist: they paid people on the street to pretend that they are tourists and asked bypassing strangers to take their picture with a Sony camera) and Skype (fake enthusiast: they paid people in London Tube to pretend to love the Skype voip service and to participate in loud dialogs witnessed by other travelers). Pathetic and borderline unethical efforts.

No, McDonald's has taken a refreshingly honest and laid-back approach - a branded ARG. I love ARG's. They are creative, mysterious and often combine all possible ways of communication. The Lost Ring has been going on for quite a while now and is counting down to the Olympics. McDonald's has demonstrated restraint and has not plastered the whole experience with their Golden Arches Logo. Sure you will see them, but it's kinda like a post-roll. Not in your face at all and hiring Jane McGonigal as the designer is working out great. The game is great and the Corporation with big money is not ruining everything. How unusual, how unbelievable.

In my opinion the most surprising thing about The Lost Ring is the person with enormous cojones. The person who came up with the idea in the first place and then made the pitch to one of the most conservative and easily startled corporations in the whole wide world. I love you.


P.S. Then again I just recently fell in love with Julia Allison, so don't take it too seriously.

AS Starman - Can you hear me ground control?

Excuse me for such a frivolous comparison to a classic. I'm not even sure what made me think of it. My situation with cable and Internet service is probably the exact opposite of what Major Tom was experiencing in the song. In my case Starman would be the ground control that couldn't care less that "I'm floating in a most peculiar way".

See, for three weeks now, instead of the 77 channels I got only 6. Yes, I wasn't really watching most of them to begin with, but still. I'm paying for them. Plus losing the international news channels does annoy me.

I do take full responsibility for my failure to stay on the phone line for longer than 10 minutes and because of that I have not been able to talk to a actual physical person customer service rep. That is - if they do exist.

So here I am with six channels and Internet connection that's iffy at best. Since I do like to vent and like most people enjoy complaining about bad consumer experiences, I told my story to a good friend. Do you think he was shocked or surprised? No. I may add that he's also a Starman customer, if only for few weeks.

To my great disappointment he managed to top my bitching story with one of his own.
And it's a good one. He decided to get Starman Digi-TV service at the end of May. One of the deciding factors was that they were offering two months service for free. As it happened, he became a Starman Customer on May 31 at around 16:00. Just recently he was attentive enough to notice, and this is a riot, that they counted these 8 hours in the month of May as A MONTH.

I know and you know that this is not a coincidence. Long conference table with at least eight people sitting behind it was involved and a conscious decision was made. I just can't believe that they didn't discuss what should happen in case some one calls. See, my friend was told that his situation will be investigated.

Unfortunately "your situation will be investigated" is the corporate equivalent of giving a finger. What is there to investigate? You tried to trick your new customer and you were called on it. So apologize and fix it right then and there. Done.

But no, AS Starman considers us all idiots with bank accounts. I will spread the word and tell this story on every possible occasion. This is our last chance. They don't realize that this is not 20th century. All they have is the service they offer and we have the power to reject it.

If you do the math solution taken from a pretty good book by Mark Hughes - for every 23 unhappy customers who take time to complain to you, your company will have ten thousand enemies who didn't bother to write or call. Starman are you getting this? Right now it's 2 down 21 to go and 10 000 is a freaking ARMY.

Wasn't expecting this

Rimigratsioon

Dear Rimi,

I respectfully ask you to cease all advertising efforts present and future. See, I still haven't recovered from " tudish piip ". Your explanation that these are sounds - "tudish" being the thump that merchandise makes when it hits the moving belt at the cashiers and "piip" when it gets UPC scanned... I just couldn't wrap my mind around that. Every time I tried, I was getting a feeling like I'm having an embolism, so eventually I stopped. And now this.

Rimigratsioon. What the hell do you mean by that? Yes, yes I get it - play on words. The first one is obvious- RIMI and then what? Migration? Immigration? Something else?
And if it's migration, then migration of what? Are you talking about money migrating out of my pockets into yours? I can't even guess what's the deal if it's immigration.

So please do us all a favor and stop. If for no other reason then think about public safety, people are driving past your billboards doing 50-60 km/h and we all know that
laughing, rolling around and driving don't mix.

Please stop, no more.

Respectfully Yours,

Ron






OK, guys I really could use your input on this, in any of the world's languages.
I know I'm not laughing alone.

vidSENSE

No doubt vidSENSE is an original and ambitious online video advertising solution, that differentiates it-self from all the wannabes by taking the video content from publishers environment to the advertisers domain. Great...except a tiny issue that doesn't sit well with me and maybe others. See the very first step in their advertising process is basically deception.

This is how vidSENSE describes the process in their DEMO, they call them content units - small pictures or thumbnails taken from vidSENSE video content, that are invitations for viewers to click on them. And now it gets little creepy, at least in my opinion and I'm quoting vidSENSE: "Content unit appears to be part of the website, it does not look like advertisement and because of that gets much higher CTR ".

Let's see - appears to be part of the website, meaning that they are not. So you guys figured out a way to trick me into watching advertising and you are actually proud of your-self.

No, it's not all bad. The fact that all the viewing takes place surrounded by the advertisers brand, since it takes place on advertisers website is a brilliant idea.
It's just that I can't get over the very first step, you deceived me and tricked me.

Sure it generates traffic to advertisers website, but what kind of traffic? Disappointed, pissed off traffic who in the next step are googleing products that similar to pop-up blockers will block involuntary traffic direction generators.

Maybe, maybe not.

And what about the brands? Do they want consumers with funny tastes in their mouths viewing content in this branded entertainment type of environment?

Again, maybe, maybe not.

Here's an good counter-view to mine by Seana Mulcahy who always makes an excellent point, as she did in her last post for OnlineSPIN. I just happen to disagree with her on this subject.