Archive for January, 2009

Whopper < Privacy

Perhaps you’ve heard of the recent campaign by Burger King called “Sacrifice your friends for a whopper”? The campaign was a downloadable app for Facebook that would allow you to “remove” friends from your account to accumulate points to receive a whopper. As usual, BK’s strange and juvenile tactics spread like wildfire and soon people were being published on home pages across north America that they had been sacrificed by a friend.

All in good fun? Facebook didn’t think so.

A week following it’s creation, Facebook approached the app creators to ask for a change in how the application published the friend removals as it violated privacy agreements. Naturally, I know I would be a bit miffed if someone decided that whopper > kathryn, so it comes as no surprize that Facebook decided to make this request. However, I want to know how many people needed to complain to make this change come about. With ridiculous petitions and complaints about the interface changes that happened to FB last year, I would think they would have a tin ear by now.

For more on this story, check out the following links:

http://www.insidefacebook.com/2009/01/14/whopper-sacrifice-shut-down-by-facebook/

http://blog.clickz.com/archives/topics/advertising.html

If you’re not reading the clickz blog, you might want to start. It’s one of my favourites.

Miller One-Second Ad

MillerCoors announced on Tuesday that it will be airing a one second advertisement during this year’s Super-Bowl. They have stated that “…it wouldn’t make sense for this brand to pay $3 million for a 30-second ad”

Really? Why would anyone want to do something crazy like that?

What is the point of a one-second commercial? What can they possibly do in that time?

“Now introducing….*end*”

“Miller is the mos…*end*”

“Drinkmillerittastesgre…*end*”

Right, it tastes ‘gre’ and it’s the ‘mos’. I’m definitely going to try that.

Read more

Those are fightin’ words.

It’s on Alexander. It’s ON!

Shooting Everyone in the Feet

Last night I saw an ad on television promoting TV as a good advertising medium. This commercial could have taken many routes to demonstrate why to choose TV: wide reach, audience engagement, impact of visuals+sounds etc. However, it decided to go another way entirely – it showed, among other things, a dog pissing on a newspaper.

Wait, what?

Yup… A DOG PISSING ON A NEWSPAPER. Read more

The litmus of cool.

too_hard

There comes a time in everyone’s life when they find themselves saying things that don’t 100% fit coming out of their mouths. As troublesome as hearing your parents use slang pulled directly from your mouth, using words that are casually tossed around between your kids is not necessarily the best bank from which to pull.

To save you from having the kind of “awkward cocktail moment” best suited for the movies, here’s a handy list of words, why they are being used and when you should refrain from dropping these into your conversation.

Read more

Introduction to DSA Online | The Blog

Welcome to Birds on a Wire, DSA Online’s blog. Starting in January 2009, Alexander and I are setting out to blog that which is interesting, important and relevant to the Canadian ad community, with a particular focus on western Canada.

Alexander and I head up the interactive division, DSA Online, at the DSA Media Network – Western Canada’s largest independant media shop. During our online journeys, it became clear that both of us had things to say that were of interest to our clients, peers and suppliers. Therefore, we wanted to create a blog that would focus on topic of interest brought up during our seminars and teaching stints.

This month, we’re loosely sticking to the theme “viral”. As the industry crawls out of the brutal cold that seems to have hit everyone this season, it seems like a solid plan. So, grab a hanky and join us for Viral January and be sure to stop by often to see what is going on.