Category: Uncategorized

Sometimes I have no idea why I see the ads I do

I know that there are lots of you out there who worry about the trails you’re leaving all over the internet, and are concerned that, thanks to Big Data and The Cloud and the NSA, pretty soon advertisers will be beaming perfectly targeted predictive ads straight into your head and you’ll become a consumer culture zombie, mindlessly buying things you never needed and definitely didn’t want.

I myself, however, do not fear such an eventuality.  And here’s why:

This is an ad that I have now been served 3 times in the past 24 hours when I went to watch a video on YouTube.

Digital video advertising is the Big New Growth Thing in online advertising. One of the more recent related trend subsets on YouTube has been for content providers to run their own videos as ads.  It’s a good strategy, because if you’re not paying close attention, you can be fooled into thinking that the ‘ad’ is actually part of the video you’re trying to access.  It seems to work particularly well for musical artists, because listening to 30-60 seconds of a song (before you realize it’s an ad and click the ‘skip ad’ button) can actually give you an opportunity to like a song you probably wouldn’t otherwise have heard.

But this Xiaochu video isn’t undiscovered music – it’s a weird mashup which seems to reference K-pop, Pikachu and even that old strange favourite, Magibon. I found it incomprehensible (and I probably know more about K-pop fandom and Magibon than you do), and not just because of the language barrier.  

I expected the comments section to be filled with ‘WTF?s’, but no – it’s got plenty of likes and lots of positive comments.  So it’s hitting the mark with some kind of target audience.  The thing is, I’m so far outside the target audience, I’m practically in another solar system – so why did YouTube serve me the ad?

Well, it could be because I have a strange YouTube viewing history; it could be because Google thinks I’m a 24-year-old shopaholic who lives in Ottawa (that’s what they came back with when I checked my Google stats a couple of years ago); it could be that whoever wrote the ad tech algorithms that apply to this particular situation had a hangover that day.

But the bottom line is this: As long as I’m getting served ads like this on a regular basis, I know that Big Data really has no clue who I am or what I’m interested in.  And until they do, I’m not panicking about whether advertisers (or the government) knows too much about me.

 

I’m not sure I even know what to say about the information in this infographic, put together by some outfit called Adology Marketing Forecast.  I think my best hope is that this data represents a sample size of, say, 17 respondents. Because otherwise I just don’t know how to explain some of the breakdowns here.  I mean, I get that small businesses aren’t going to use billboards or cinema advertising – it’s usually far too expensive for a small business – but a whole lot of them are going to keep spending on Yellow Pages (!) while ignoring online ads and not even trying cable tv.

I suppose maybe the good news is that only 20% are going to be using ‘coupon books’.

 

 

As any first-year advertising student knows, Volkswagen has produced some iconic, and even just plain great, ads over the years.  (My personal favourite is 1997’s ‘Sunday Afternoon‘ spot, mostly because I love the soundtrack.)

So it was with some dismay that I noticed their recent ‘Winter Relief’ campaign:

Now, I’ve been stuck at home with an 11-month-old baby for the past few months, so no one is more in need of some ‘winter relief’ than myself.  And I always like campaigns which have been tailored specifically for the Canadian market.  

However.

Go Google “winter relief”.  Can’t be bothered?  Here, I’ll help you:  The first search return for “winter relief” isn’t Volkswagen – it’s the Wikipedia entry for Winterhilfswerk, described as

“…an annual drive by the Nationalsozialistische Volkswohlfahrt (the National Socialist People’s Welfare Organization) to help finance charitable work. Its slogan was ‘None shall starve nor freeze’. The drive was originally set up under the government of Heinrich Brüning in 1931, though Hitler would later claim sole credit. It ran from 1933-1935 during the months of October through March, and was designed to provide food, clothing, coal and other items to less fortunate Germans during the inclement months.”

Sounds okay, until you realize it was one of those Nazi programs that sounded good but was really just another excuse for Hitler’s Storm Troopers to terrorize people without actually helping anyone at all.

And of course it came with its own advertising materials, such as this one (which I’m almost reluctant to post here, in case someone does a Google image search for me and this thing turns up – I had problems with that Ramzpaul blog post and the resulting Southern Poverty Law Center piece.  But when you censor yourself out of fear of these people, they win – and they shouldn’t):

Volkswagen already has a bit of a public relations challenge vis a vis its relationship with Hitler – choosing a campaign name or tagline that is reminiscent of a Nazi program seems like a bad idea.  Yes, ‘winter relief’ is catchy and lends itself to all kinds of taglines, but it’s not genius and I’m sure that the creative team over at Red Urban (Volkswagen’s Agency of Record in Canada, if I’m not mistaken) could have come up with plenty of alternatives. (I myself like ‘Winter Solace’, since it sort of sounds like ‘winter solstice’, which is a phrase people are already familiar with.  But maybe ‘solace’ is too fancy.)

So what happened?  

Well, my guess is that no one bothered to Google ‘winter relief’ until the campaign was already halfway through the approval process and everyone was excited about it – and they just figured no one would notice the connection.  And maybe they were right:  I wouldn’t have noticed it unless Max (a history geek) had mentioned it, and I haven’t heard or seen anyone else talking about it, online or otherwise.  Since Max and I aren’t in the market for a Volkswagen, maybe it doesn’t matter what we think.

I still think it was a bad idea.

 

 

In spite of what your parents and the kids in b-school tried to tell you, these days good writing does count – and can make a real difference to ROI for lots of things.  

But not all copywriting is the same.  Here’s a handy primer.

 

It’s no secret that I love The West Wing.  I’ve seen every episode at least 3 times (some a lot more than that), and I often drive Max a little nuts by going all Rocky Horror Picture Show while it’s on (i.e. quoting lines along with the characters). 

Unfortunately, right now, the only place and time I can reliably watch The West Wing (due to babies and various A/V setups) is 8pm weeknights on CTS, the Christian channel. This is a little annoying because they not only bleep out every ‘hell’ and ‘damn’, they also tend to remove entire scenes that they deem too racy for their audience (they cut scenes of unmarried people waking up in bed together, for example).

Also annoying is that they seem to have only a handful of advertisers, so you see the same ads night after night after night. For the past few months, we’ve been subjected to this one from Blue Cross, about how ‘the Thompsons’ need supplemental health insurance:

I hate this ad.  Not only because it’s boring and involved about the same amount of creativity as a boiled egg, but because its nod to ‘diversity’ is so transparently shallow as to be offensive.  The ad addresses ‘Billy’s’ need for new teeth, ‘Mr Thompson’s’ fall off a ladder, and ‘Mrs Thompson’s’ need for new glasses.  ‘Grandma Thompson’ (at least, I think she’s supposed to be someone’s grandmother) sits, ignored, in her wheelchair, with only her little dog for company.  But what about the little girl?  She’s not identified, and her only role in the ad is to hold up a sign (well, and to help Grandma Thompson – perhaps with a Blue Cross plan, that’s as much help as you can expect).

What is she doing in this ad?  I’ll tell you:  Someone said “We should have, like, some diversity in there somewhere, guys – 32% of our target audience is non-white…”, so they shoehorned this poor girl in to the picture.

I think it’s great when advertising reflects our diverse culture – I love that Cheerios ad (with the ‘white’ mother and the ‘bi-racial’ daughter) that everyone’s been talking about. But just sticking in an older person or a person of colour, without making them part of the action or even referring to them, is the worst kind of pandering.