The Obamas Are Your New Ideal

A kind reader sent me this banner, in which you are encouraged to get your nasty, flabby arms in shape. How will you do that? By visiting Kim's Diet Plan (dot com). Apparently Kim is the one accosting everyone with images of her plumpness.

Kim wants to sell you some berries and clean your colon, which will make you have arms like Michelle Obama's. Presumably, she will also show you how to suck in your stomach. Kim lives in a nearby town, according to her website, unless her website is lying to me and filling in a different town name for every visitor, based on IP. But I don't think Kim would do that.

Kim's banners reminded me of the series of banners featuring ladies exercising because President Obama wants moms to go to school. The first one I saw was a women doing violent sit-ups. Then I saw two ladies in a gym boxing. Here's the latest.

A video of two women doing jumping jacks on the beach feels disconnected from the goal of getting moms to finish college, but what do I know? Dancing gay cowboys was a huge hit for lowermybills.com. And even they changed horses and got on the Obama gravy train.

The goal, banner designers, is to get attention, like the lowest form of humor: slapstick. The banner ad doesn't need to have anything at all to do with whatever it is you're selling. Allow me to demonstrate.

Let's imagine a product or service. I know! Printer cartridges! Here's how we will sell them in a banner ad.


Maybe that was a cheap shot. OK. I'll try again.

Obama Will Get You Better Insurance

In no danger of losing their crown as the Kings of the Stupidest Banner Ads in the History of Earth, Lowermybills.com (who can forget dancing gay cowboys?) is now on the Obama bandwagon.OK, but what does Barack Obama have to do with my auto insurance rates, and why is he wandering around the country with his arms folded and a scowl on his face?

And why does the White House float around the country, eluding Obama? Is it a political statement on the part of lowermybills? Is it a game? Are you supposed to help Obama find his house? WTF is going on here?

NOTHING is going on. It's just lowermybills doing what they do best: getting your attention in the dumbest ways possible. Lowermybills is the kid in the lunchroom who only makes people laugh because he purposely snorts milk up his nose.

But as dumb as all the lowermybills campaigns are, I'm told they are among the most effective banners ever.

So keep this formula in mind when creating banners:

Stupid/Senseless¹⁰ + Heavy Rotation = Success.

You Don't Know What You've Got 'Till It's Gone

Remember all the creepy Dancing Banners for Lowermybills.com? They were pretty awesome in hindsight. Jennifer Uhll, creator of the ads, stopped by Where's My Jetpack not long ago to defend her work. She was very nice in the face of people commenting not only that they hated her and her 80s big hair, but that she should burn in Hell for what she did for banner ads.

I miss Jennifer's work now, because here's the latest from Lower My Bills, found at the New York Post. A tarantula climbs a woman's breast in this animation. When it reaches her shoulder, she convulses in cartoonish horror. Wow. Where do I sign the loan papers?

Yes, it caught my eye. But really, is that all that matters?

Probably. Sometime soon we'll be hearing about how this was LowerMyBills 2nd most successful banner campaign, right behind "Dancing Rooftop Couple."

Bring Back the Dancing Gay Cowboys

LowerMyBills.com is at it again, this time it's a man in one of those new man skirt-kilt things.

Or perhaps he's just a 1940s-styled Private Eye in a trenchcoat and a penchant for dancing like a total White Spaz, but he's no improvement over their previous dancing efforts.

I get it. Motion draws the eye to a banner ad, or else I wouldn't have seen it and blogged about it, right? But I just don't want to do business with a mortgage company that employs such methods.

I would much sooner use a mortgage company that blatantly flaunted the assests of its lenders or brokers.

Lower My Blood Pressure

I was all set to congratulate LowerMyBills.com for going with a more tasteful Flash banner, this fairly innocuous sand-raking scene found at msnbc.com, (that sure beats the crap out of dancing gay cowboys) when I discovered in my toolbar a sneaky pop-under ad I got served on an earlier visit to The Washington Post.

You cannot escape these people.










And have you noticed, The Washington Post (dot com) is like that stretch of highway in some desperate part of the country where they said, "The more outdoor advertising, the better!"? (Think Highway 65, between Springfield, Missouri and Branson.)

She Makes Gay Cowboys Dance

This is Jennifer Uhll from Los Angeles, and she is responsible for the lowermybills.com dancing banners. They're apparently not going to stop anytime soon.

If you'd like to drop Jennifer a line and thank her for her work or perhaps commission some dancing silhouettes for your clients, you can do so at her website, which has a dancing silhouette.

Jennifer, I know you're just doing your job, and you've given a lot of ad bloggers a lot of material to rant and talk about. That is what this business is about. So....good job.

Full story is here.