Flash Trash

Visiting Wonkette and was served this pop-under ad for some e-card site. (Thank you, Tribal Fusion. Whores. Or pimps. I'm not sure.)

It's an animated augmented woman, getting ready to take off her dress and reveal to me her giant plastic floatie-toys. Yeah, I want to send this e-card to a friend. The kind of friend who just discovered the Internet and thinks animated birthday cards are so hilarious!

Which reminds me: I once worked with a guy who when he was 18 was in a relationship with a 16-year-old. Her parents disapproved and turned him in to the law. He was subsequently put into some sort of deviant database for 20 years and was required to undergo counseling. The following conversation actually took place between that guy and another of my co-workers:

Guy 1: They'd ask questions like, "Have you ever been sexually aroused by a cartoon character?"! I was like, "What is this? Am I having fantasies about cartoons?"
Guy 2: I don't know, man. Pocahontas was pretty hot.

Nailin' It

Nail Communications of Providence, Rhode Island (state motto: "The Tiniest State") has a rare handle on Social Media and the Web 2.0 craze. Clicking that link will take you to an irreverent PDF/white paper of sorts, outlining Nail's approach to Web 2.0. It's long and involved, but what it amounts to is a little common sense in this wild frontier. Maybe you're already doing what Nail recommends, but I know for a fact that many of you aren't. Nail is offering this PDF for free, giving away all of their secrets to all the other shops and new media start-ups doing it wrong. (And hopefully putting a few of the scheming, scamming charlatans out of business in the process.)

Check out their 8 Internet Marketing Experts to Avoid. I've worked with a few of these clowns. If you see yourself in any of those profiles, I'm sorry. I didn't write it. It's never too late to get your girlfriend to cut your faux hawk.

Nail also has a nice site, utilizing the whimsical Flash animation so prevalent with agency sites, but keeping navigation simple, a rare thing with hipster shops. You don't have to guess where anything is, which is refreshing. I'm not sure why agencies (usually the big ones) think it's creative to create a site so unnavigable that it requires guesswork and insider cool to figure out.

Go Nail.

Giant Man Plays God in Photoshop Nightmare

Northwestern Mutual, what are you doing here? The man's worries are golfing, fishing, photography and relaxing in an innertube on a lake?

OK, so weird and incomprehensible is your ad that I will actually read the copy in an attempt to understand it. Nope. That didn't work. Guess I will have to go to your website, letyourworriesgo.com and figure this out.

Oh, now I get it.

No, I don't.

I'm in a beautiful landscape where I can choose a rocket, a balloon or a submarine to launch my worries away. (I cannot, however, choose to turn off the incessant and annoying birdsong loop.) My "worries" are again represented by people whom I drag into my vehicle of choice. (Fun: drag them high in the sky and let them go and watch as they fall to earth.) OK, vehicle finally loaded (damn, that was tedious) and off they go! All those people jettisoned into space, never to be heard from again!

Finally, the "explanation" for all this silliness. Northwestern Mutual is interested in eliminating "societal worries" like hunger, natural disasters, financial security and retirement planning. They have $1 million to give away.
Wow. That was such a long and disjointed journey. But now you know that Northwestern Mutual cares about you and wants to alleviate your worries. Seriously, that's why they are in the business of wealth management. Because they care.

Marketers Will Tell You When to Drink

And since Cinco de Mayo is on a Monday this year, they've turned this weekend into "Cinco de Mayo Weekend." That's an extra day of beer sales! Just as Guinness wants you to celebrate "St. Patrick's Season," Corona, Dos Equis and Tecate are on the air with ads, along with Jose Cuervo, Patron and I'm sure a variety of salsa makers, urging you to party like a frat boy on Spring Break in Cancún, Mexico's most Americanized location. Or party like a Girl Gone Wild at Daytona Beach, one of Florida's skankiest beaches.

Cinco de Mayo is a celebration of Mexican heritage and pride, observed primarily in the US, and though the beer makers would have you believe it is Mexican Independence Day, that is just a very-well marketed myth that has served to increase beer sales. It's not a holiday in Mexico. It's a reason to party in America.

Dos Quis has trotted out their "Most Interesting Man in the World" ads again, and their website is a pretty interesting bunch of discoveries based on the character. The "Most Interesting Man" reminds me somewhat of Chris Christmas Rodriguez, an overly macho character who makes you laugh as he redefines what it means to be a man.


For Corona's part, they're sticking with the beach thing, where bottles and limes are the main focus and life is a very relaxed party for two. Their website is a vertigo inducing exercise in finding the usual objects like desktop backgrounds, commercials and pictures.


Tecate, sadly, is under construction. No "interacting with the brand" here. Nobody "experiencing" Tecate. This is also the only site that is bilingual. By their placeholder pictures, one can assume Tecate favors a futbol-loving culture.

And does anyone really think that requiring a visitor to enter their age on an alcohol website will keep minors from entering an alcohol website? Time to get rid of that ridiculous custom.

So wear a silly hat, make embarrassing mariachi noises and shake your maracas while you down plenty of Mexican beer and tequila. It'd be the American thing to do.

A Jag by Any Other Name Would be a Ford

I've said it before, Jaguars look like Hyundais these days and Hyundais look like Jaguars. Now Jaguar has a new seizure inducing website to introduce the new XF. The Flash overkill on this site is like those rock guitarists who make all kinds of noise by turning up the gain and distortion and then running a pick all up and down the strings. It's not friendly to the eyes at all. What I noted most about the new XF is that they've removed the iconic Jaguar hood ornament from the vehicle. Shame.

Grannies in a Landslide

Rob Mosley of Nonsense, a London-based agency, has asked if I would comment on his firm's contest to determine which website concept they should go with. (You may go and vote now.) His actual email subject line was "Worth a mention? Or plain old turd?" Having been forced in the past to write direct response emails, I always appreciate a good subject line.

I will play middle of the road broadcaster here and say "They're all very worthy concepts." Billboard, Bulletin Board and Grannies are great ideas. I will predict, however, that Grannies will shred the other two in competition. (I still disagree with Stuart, who commented over at AdRants that I didn't understand what I was talking about when I said Bulletin Board had been done by Firehouse Dallas, as designed by James H. of Yonder Ponder.)

Just as it's always been somewhat "underground funny/cool/hip" to like bacon, you can't go wrong with Grannies. They're out of touch with the culture (hopefully), generally full of wisdom and usually good for a laugh (unless they've started to lose their minds and drool regularly). Not to draw too many comparisons between Grannies and bacon, but hopefully you know what I mean.

And an excellent use of social media on the part of Nonsense to get the word out about their agency. See? It can be done.