Rumor has it that 7-Eleven is in talks to temporary convert a number of their stores into makeshift Kwik-E-Marts to promote the new Simpsons Movie.

If the deal sails, they may even sell Buzz Cola and KrustyO’s!
Oh, how I hope this pushes through… out-of-home advertising at its finest.

Technorati Tags: Beyond Madison Avenue, Advertising, Simpsons Movie, 7-Eleven, Kwik-E-Mart

By McKinney.  Nice work. [via]

Technorati Tags: beyond madison avenue, advertising, sleep number bed, select comfort, mckinney

Just wanted to take a bit of space to express my support for brilliant, respected blogger Kathy Sierra.  What Kathy is going through right now is so vile and vicious that I honestly don’t even have the words.  

Forget the fact that I’m a female blogger in a similar professional sphere… as a person I’m wound up and deflated over this horrific series of events.

Kathy, all of us here at BMA give you and your family our support. 

As you may have noticed (since I pointed it out in a rather subtle manner), BMA has been chosen to participate in the MVB (most valuable blog) competition that Joseph Jaffe put together.  When I originally posted, I don’t think this was up yet.  Now it is.  Please vote here!

And a big thanks to Austin Kronig of Fresh + Squeezed for the nomination to the pool! 

Technorati Tags: beyond madison avenue, joseph jaffe, jaffe juice, MVB, most valuable blog, fresh + squeezed

Check out Wine That Loves, and take a look at awesome design and a brilliant marketing play.  Even more impressive– their website is as well-honed as their product design.

It’s perky, it’s hip, it’s accessible, and the wine itself ain’t shit; in fact, the wines (and their respective food pairings) were chosen by Ralph Hersom, former Wine Director at Le Cirque in NYC.  I’m gonna go ahead and trust Ralph.

And seriously, those bottle designs… marvy.

Thanks, Springwise. 

Technorati Tags: beyond madison avenue, advertising, wine marketing, wine that loves

I see an odd similarity, don’t you?  I like the visuals in the Audi spot by The One Centre even though it seems like one, long directors cut.  The Pontiac spot by Leo Burnett has crappy music, however, the execution makes up for it.  Just for the record, this Pontiac spot is about a year and a half old, the Audi spot is less than a week old.

Technorati Tags: Beyond Madison Avenue, Pontiac, Leo Burnett, Audi, The One Centre

This is just brilliant. Lily Tomlin needles and needles the director of I Heart Huckabees, repeatedly blowing up until he explodes back at her.

Greatness. Make sure you watch the whole series.

via American Copywriter.

I’ve just noticed that Jaffe is putting together a March Madness bracket for blogs.  And BMA has been included in the list of contenders!  That’s awesomely exciting!  The other blogs included for consideration are:

1. Logic + Emotion - http://darmano.typepad.com/logic_emotion/
2. Russel Davies - http://russelldavies.typepad.com/
3. "Why Business People Speak Like Idiots" - http://www.fightthebull.com/blog/
4. "Eggs, Bacon, Chips & Beans" - http://russelldavies.typepad.com/eggbaconchipsandbeans/
5. Seth Godin - http://sethgodin.typepad.com/
6. Jaffe Juice - http://feeds.feedburner.com/jaffejuice
7. Cool Hunting – http://www.coolhunting.com/
8. NussbaumOnDesign - ???
9. Beyond Madison Avenue - http://www.beyondmadisonavenue.com/
10. Wired – http://blog.wired.com/
11. Adverlab – http://adverlab.blogspot.com/
12. BrandAutopsy - http://brandautopsy.typepad.com/
13. Gaping Void - http://www.gapingvoid.com/
14. Hello_World - http://missinglink.typepad.com/hello_world/
15. Mark Cuban - http://www.blogmaverick.com/
16. SpringWise - http://www.springwise.com/
17. PSFK - http://www.psfk.com
18. Adliterate by Richard Huntington - http://www.adliterate.com/
19. http://servantofchaos.typepad.com/
20. http://conversationagent.typepad.com/
21. http://blog.creativethink.com/
22. http://www.scottweisbrod.com/index.php/
23. http://www.micropersuasion.com
24. http://www.toprankblog.com
25. http://www.pronetadvertising.com
26. Where’s The Sausage - http://wheresthesausage.typepad.com/
27. Branding Strategy Insider - http://www.brandingstrategyinsider.com/
28. http://www.ck-blog.com/
29. http://powrightbetweentheeyes.typepad.com/
30. Church of the Consumer - http://www.churchofthecustomer.com/blog/
31. Modern Life is Rubbish - http://www.modernlifeisrubbish.co.uk/
32. radical Trust - http://www.radicaltrust.ca

I’m not sure what the system will be for narrowing these down to the final four (or will it be five?), but we certainly appreciate being included!

Technorati Tags: beyond madison avenue, march blogness, jaffe, blogosphere, ad blogs

Today’s wondrous example of shining stupidity falls on the shoulders of one of my favorites:  kinkos.  

Anyone who’s been to ad school knows the horror that is kinkos.  In two and a half years of printing books, printing ads for class, and other almost-daily needs, I don’t think they ever managed to get an order right on the first try.  And they do you this great service of offering the "express" area where you can sit down and print your own work, where you get to pay for not only the prints (which cost the same as they do on the bigger, nicer printers they use in the back) but you get to pay for the computer time too!  All for the convenience of express service. 

But that’s not why I bring them up today.  See, kinkos’ service has gotten WORSE since they were bought out by FedEx.  I know, it’s hard to believe that what I’ve described could get worse, but it has.  And their prices have gone up to boot.  Case in point…

This morning I stopped by kinkos on my way to work to mail an envelope overnight.  Nothing big; it was about a 6×9 envelope with say ten pages in it.  So I fill out the paperwork, put it in their even bigger envelope, and take it to the counter.  Where they tried to charge me…$38.  THIRTY EIGHT DOLLARS PEOPLE!  I don’t even know what to say to that other than WHAT THE F*@$ ARE YOU THINKING??

So I left kinkos and took my envelope to good old USPS where I filled out their version of the paperwork, put it in their larger-but-not-quite-as-huge-as-kinkos-so-therefore-not-quite-as-wasteful envelope, use their express machine (which did NOT cost me extra), got help from a USPS employee to make sure I got all the right stickers in the right places, and got return receipt service on my letter for……wait for it……$16.25. 

I don’t know what else to say to that.

Technorati Tags: beyond madison avenue, branding, kinkos, fed ex, fed ex kinkos

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

Stupid Technorati. Stupid bullshit advertiser.

I go to Technorati, and first I have a banner ad that plays the strikingly loud sound of gun shots. Then, I go back and the crap banner on the right starts playing a loud buzzing sound. A loud buzzing sound that doesn’t even offer me a way to turn it off.

Does technorati want to make themselves look like a two-bit player? Well, that’s all they are. And I wish them failure.

A stunning example pinpointing your ideal, ideal, ideal audience.

Splendidly done, Saatchi & Saatchi, London. 

via AdverBox.

Technorati Tags: beyond madison avenue, advertising, prius, the economist, adverbox

Puberty is MTV’s newest and first mobile venture. With characters like Boner, Booty, ‘Lil Nips, Fart, Belch, and Zit, to name a few, all of your adolescent nightmares come rushing back. Nightmares and horror stories aside, these videos are freaking hilarious and if you don’t laugh, you have no soul.

For more info check out Adrants.

Technorati Tags: Beyond Madison Avenue, MTV, Puberty, Maturity is Overrated

Gotta love flickr:

Featured with this quote: "they’ve lowered the bar for service, so the least they could do is lower the bill…"

Technorati Tags: beyond madison avenue, advertising, branding, customer service, wireless, cell phone provider, wireless provider, Cingular

I love my del.icio.us.

And my ma.gnolia. 

Even my co.mments.

And now, thanks to a snippet from the CrayonCast on Across the Sound #72, I’ve been introduced to a cool bookmarklettish site without ex.tra.ne.ous punctuation.

When you have a free minute, take a quick spin around Clipmarks.  It’s a neat little site that allows you to clip pics, text excerpts, even videos, and store them referentially to the original post.  Their slogan: "Just the best parts of the page."  It’s like the Muffintops of web 2.0!

A girl can never have too many webby aggregators.  Never ever.

Technorati Tags: beyond madison avenue, advertising, across the sound, clipmarks

I never saw this. My apologies if everyone has. It was a promotion for a Swedish movie about a year ago. Brilliant.

Warning. Adult content.

For someone that is so passionate about bands using new channels to distribute music and empowering fans to market for them, I should have my ass handed to me for not blogging about this sooner. On one day, March 22nd (that’s Thursday), bloggers, podcasters, and music lovers that don’t like the idea of the music industry suing its own customers, are going to strike fear into the heart of the Evil Empire, the RIAA. On March 22nd, we are going to send independent band Black Lab’s new song ‘Mine Again’ to the top of the iTunes charts.

Now before any of you cynics say this is a ploy by the band to get some exposure, guess again, this is being done by US to get the attention of traditional media, and the RIAA. Here’s what the band had to say on their site when they found out what the deal was:

Holy Crap!! hey everyone, welcome to blacklabworld, home of the american rock band black lab. apparently, some insane stuff is going on. as we speak, a group of podcasters, representing millions of listeners to cutting edge media, have decided to make black lab’s song “mine again” NUMBER 1 on the iTunes charts on March 22nd. one day, one song. the vision is to make a statement about the power of those who make, broadcast and listen to music outside of the traditional media models, and it’s an incredible opportunity for black lab fans to get familiar with podcasting and for the larger world to get familiar with black lab. I hope you’ll support us and the podcasting community on March 22nd by clicking this link and purchasing the song via the affiliate link (proceeds go to a scholarship fund, as does half of everything we will make on the 22nd). thanks!

 

Yep, I saved the best part for last. BumRushTheCharts, the defacto fansite for this movement, has set itself up as an iTunes affiliate. What that means to you is, if you buy Black Lab’s Mine Again via THIS LINK, the site gets 5% affiliate fees, and all the commissions earned via purchases from that link will be donated to fund college scholarships! Black Lab has also agreed to donate 50% of its earnings from all iTunes sales of Mine Again tomorrow to the scholarship fund as well!

So beginning at midnight tonight, you can buy Black Lab’s ‘Mine Again’ via THIS LINK, which will fund college scholarships, help support an indie band that supports podcasters, and bitchslap the RIAA. All worthy goals! Do your part to get the message out by blogging about this worthy cause! Hat-tip to Jaffe, who has been all over this. He’s threatening to add it as a case study in his upcoming book Join The Conversation.

Ladies, if your panty drawers (or is that redundant?) are looking a little…thin, perhaps you should stop by Times Sq. tomorrow evening for a short visit with Gene Simmons.  BMA got the following statement in an email from Christy Wise of Fanscape who, I guess, has something to do with promoting the event.

Gene Simmons has always had a firm belief in the notion that it’s not necessarily what’s up front that counts…he also counts the backs. He believes women are beautiful and the world is a better place for it. He believes women should be looked at and adored. And in light of that spirit, he has decided to unabashedly and unapologetically create the first ever “Ass”vertising campaign to launch season 2 of his hit real-life A&E series “Gene Simmons Family Jewels”. Gene will be joined by 25 scantily clad women at Hard Rock Cafe New York in Times Square where his model entourage - wearing underwear that reads, “Gene Simmons Family Jewels” across their rears - will be handing out branded panties to the people of NYC. After about 30 minutes at Hard Rock, Gene and his girls will make their way down to street level where they’ll walk through the busy streets to a chartered Double Decker Bus. From there, they will hit various hot spots around NYC to spread the word – and the panties.

Now here’s an oddity for ya:  a quick google search for "assvertising" leads here, but Christy is claiming that this is "the first ever Assvertising campaign".  Heck, Adrants was talking about it a year ago, complete with pictures:

So clearly our buddy Gene isn’t the first person to think of it.  Those tire prints aren’t even on panties (is that a step up or step down from Gene’s panty assvertising?)!  There’s even a flickr group dedicated to assvertising!

So, Ms. Wise, I’m callin’ you out!  This isn’t the first instance of assvertising.  It’s not even a new idea.  And this crap about Gene finding women beautiful and adoring them for making the world a better place?  At least call it like it is:  SEX SELLS!

But lets think about this…you’re giving away panties.  Women’s underwear.  By trouncing around NY with a group of…women?  Some guy is going to come home with these in his pocket and wind up divorced for it. 

I like a nice ass as much as the next guy.  But this is pitiful.  And yet fitting.

Technorati Tags: beyond madison avenue, advertising, assvertising, gene simmons, panties

Now one of the world’s most well-known brands, "Google" was an accident.  Last night I went to the BayCHI lecture at PARC given by Marissa Mayer (Product Manager for Google). A very well attended (standing room only session), Marissa took us through a presentation geared around the user experience at Google and the efforts/lengths they go to.

Some interesting facts came out:

1. The prime reason the Google home page is so bare is due to the fact that the founders didn’t know HTML and just wanted a quick interface. Infact it was noted that the submit button was a long time coming and hitting the RETURN key was the only way to burst Google into life.
2. Due to the sparseness of the homepage, in early user tests they noted people just sitting looking at the screen. After a minute of nothingness, the tester intervened and asked ‘Whats up?’ to which they replied "We are waiting for the rest of it". To solve that particular problem the Google Copyright message was inserted to act as a crude end of page marker.
3. One of the biggest leap in search usage came about when they introduced their much improved spell checker giving birth to the "Did you mean…" feature. This instantly doubled their traffic, but they had some interesting discussions on how best to place that information, as most people simply tuned that out. But they discovered the placement at the bottom of the results was the most effective area.
4. The infamous "I feel lucky" is nearly never used. However, in trials it was found that removing it would somehow reduce the Google experience. Users wanted it kept. It was a comfort button.
5. Orkut is very popular in Brazil. Orkut was the brainchild of a very intelligent Google engineer who was pretty much given free reign to run with it, without having to go through the normal Google UI procedures, hence the reason it doesn’t look or feel like a Google application. They are looking at improving Orkut to cope with the loads it places on the system.
6. Google makes changes small-and-often. They will sometimes trial a particular feature with a set of users from a given network subnet; for example Excite@Home users often get to see new features. They aren’t told of this, just presented with the new UI and observed how they use it.
7. Google has the largest network of translators in the world
8. They use the 20% / 5% rules. If at least 20% of people use a feature, then it will be included. At least 5% of people need to use a particular search preference before it will make it into the ‘Advanced Preferences’.
9. They have found in user testing, that a small number of people are very typical of the larger user base. They run labs continually and always monitoring how people use a page of results.
10. The name ‘Google’ was an accident. A spelling mistake made by the original founders who thought they were going for ‘Googol’
11. Gmail was used internally for nearly 2years prior to launch to the public. They discovered there was approximately 6 types of email users, and Gmail has been designed to accommodate these 6.
12. They listen to feedback actively. Emailing Google isn’t emailing a blackhole.
13. Employees are encouraged to use 20% of their time working on their own projects. Google News, Orkut are both examples of projects that grew from this working model.
14. This wasn’t a technical talk so no information regarding any infrastructure was presented however they did note that they have a mantra of aiming to give back each page with in 500ms, rendered.
15. Quote: Give Users What They Want When They Want It
16. Quote: Integrate Sensibly

 Found here.

Technorati Tags: beyond madison avenue, advertising, branding, Google, secrets

I love advertising agency’s websites because they are, well, creative. Creative in the sense that I actually browse around their websites to get inspiration. They are the coolest, weirdest, funniest, and best websites on the internet. Here are just a few I could name off the top of my head, so please add more.

Leo Burnett
Mother London
Butler, Shine, Stern & Partners
Topolewski
Wexley School for Girls

All these websites are cool and I know plenty of agencies have bland websites, but they don’t tease and taunt like one agency’s website: 86 the onions, whatever the hell that means. Where is their portfolio, their history, or anything useful for that matter? I searched under the finger and light bulb, yet no avail. I even looked under the suntan lotion and mannequin, but nothing. So if you haven’t yet, take a look at their website and fiddle around with the dial to see the "extras."

At first you might be thinking, "Oh this is neat, I can drop shit into the crock pot." Since I randomly had a bunch of time on my hands, I ended up throwing everything into that pot. I was getting real excited when I put the last object in the pot (a syringe) expecting an amazing result. Any result would have been nice, but there was none. I became angry and confused, therefore I wrote this letter.

From: Max Katsarelas <maxkats88@gmail.com>
Date: Mar 12, 2007 7:25 PM
Subject: website
To: info@86theonion.com

So I dumped all that stuff in the pot on your website and then what?
Nothing… I figured there would be a prize, maybe a cool video- nope,
just zilch. Sure, the "big eats small" thing was cool for the first
couple of minutes, except after 12 minutes it got a little boring.

Your work kicks ass, like the Mountain Dew stuff and Fuel TV
spots, but your website sucks. Bionic Arm=Kick Ass, Your Website=Sucks.
Lightening Audio=Kick Ass, Your Website=Sucks. Change your website,
complement your portfolio. Keep up the good work for your clients and trash
that shit you call a website. Can’t wait to see a new look, keep me
posted.

Cheers,

Max Katsarelas

Technorati Tags: Beyond Madison Avenue, Websites, 86 the onions, Advertising Agency

I hate to admit it, but I read Gawker.  It is, for the most part, an utterly useless blog that has very little to do with advertising.  But occasionally it manages to come up with an interesting NY tidbit.  Or, in this case, an interesting design tidbit.

Newspapers, in their infinite attempts to remain relevant, are going through major overhauls nationwide.  Apparently the LA Times recently underwent such surgery, and the results are none too impressive. Daryl Cagle points out on his blog, the mish-mash of fonts that the LA Times has commandeered in it’s "redesign".  He counted 22 on the top half of the front page.  TWENTY TWO people! 

Gawker also points to an interview with Mario Garcia, who I had never heard of before.  But he’s got some insights on newspaper design that might help the LA Times. 

Technorati Tags: beyond madison avenue, design, newspaper, LA Times, Mario Garcia, fonts, Gawker