So I have a Google Wave account and have not been able to spend much time playing around with it. At first glace it appears to be an attempt to unify email, chat and social networking all into one web base application.

I was sharing this theory with A Mistake and he responded "isn't that Facebook?"

Indeed, and there are few things that Wave lacks that Facebook has, like Farmville, Mafia Wars, "What dog do I smell like" and "who was I in a past life" quizes, move trivia, Scrabble and Bejeweled. In other words, all the crap that I hate about Facebook (and so does A Mistake).

Likely I am vastly oversimplifying the situation. Alex Victory linked to this site that has more information about "What Wave is" and how it works. I will read that before making a final proclamation. 

But here's the point, Google is doing what it ALWAYS does: it identifies a concept (in this case, "how do we evolve mail and chat"), creates a product, pushes that product out "by invitation only" for an Alpha Test, gets geeks like me to play with it, learns from what the geeks do/say and evolves it into something good and useful. Hell, Gmail was terrible for the first two years.

Think about it. Without investing one advertising dollar Google has generated a ton a buzz about a new product. I have had five conversations about it in the last week alone. When was the last time you had that many discussion about a product without seeing an ad?

Effing Brilliant.  

Thanks to my friend GB for sending this to me. It's also all over the advert world, but GB was one day ahead of the curve.

I tried to embed the full object, but can't seem to get it to work. Trust me, click through and then click the banner again once you get to the next page, or view it here.

You have got to be kidding me

The truth??? If you are looking for "the truth", I am not sure that you're going to find it in the teachings of a nut job hack science fiction writer. I have to assume they have some sort of media budget, because Em told me that she "saw that  on TV". Ummmm....WHAT??? This is running on television...where my children can see it?

Sometimes I hate my chosen profession

There are two more at AdFreak.

...on so many levels.

[Warning: Clip is maybe, possibly, kind of, slightly NSFW, but not really. In doubt? Read AdFreak's post first.]

Let me get this straight, actual advertising budget money was spent on this? Really? Did an agency work on this, because that is a briefing I would LOVE to be in. It may have gone something like this:

Account Supervisor (AKA "FAU"): OK guys, the client wants a series of Flash animation videos of men using Gillette products to post on YouTube.

Art Director (AKA "Wise Ass"): I know, let's do one of a guy shaving his nuts.

AS: You want an animated guy shaving his nuts on YouTube? The client will never buy that.

AD: How do we know until we try?

AS: I just know. They will never buy that, it's crude.

Creative Director (AKA "Wise Ass' Better Half"): This whole project is so lame. Didn't manscaping jump the shark with "The 40 Year Old Virgin"? Metrosexuals are like 10 years ago. And no one watches YouTube anymore, everyone's on Hulu. What's the point?

AS: The point is we are getting paid to...

Account Executive (AKA "The one who keeps us all in line"): And we have to have it done in three weeks.

Interactive Team (Note: there will be at least four of them in the room): What???? We need at least 15 weeks.

CD: And I need a month to think of ideas other than the pecker shave.

AD: No you don't, I got 'em. Ummmm...let's see...head shave, chest shave, back shave and under arm shave. DONE! Let's go to lunch, are we done here?

AS: What about face shave?

CD: Too obvious. Its been done.

AS: But the client specifically requested that one.

CD: Just post a video of a guy really shaving. It's not worth our time to do that one in Flash.

AD: Are we doing a version of this for chicks?

AS: OK, we're done.

Alright, maybe I exagerated a bit.

That's not MY agency, but it is not too beyond the relm of possibility.

Boing Boing points out that the recently passed "Credit Card Bill of Rights" includes a clause that requires a minimum font size of 12 points for all "written information, provisions, and terms in or on any application, solicitation, contract, or agreement for any credit card account under an open end consumer credit plan, and all written information included in or on any disclosure required under this chapter with respect to any such account”.

Now, I'm no "big city lawyer", I'm just a simple marketing executive who happens to have a few clients that will be directly impacted by this legislation. As a consumer, I totally get this. Clear information is the best. I think that the "Schumer box" is a great way to provide credit card rate information. As an Account Manager I am looking forward to the work that will come in over the next year as all my clients have to meet this new requirement. But as a Marketing Manager I am totally freaked out.

Do you realize how big 12 points is?

By comparison, this is 10 point, and this is 12 point. That's a big difference. Most of the type on a credit card "legal insert" and application is either 10 point or 8 point, or smaller. So if everything, even the type on the application has to be 12 point then the whole solicitation is going to be nothing but legal copy.

Oy, this legislation is going to cause some meetings.

Not content to no long need the services of not one, but TWO great ad agencies, CareerBuilder.com has decided that their next great Superbowl creative will come from...YOU!!! Yes, YOU!!!.

They are holding a contest for the best user generated ad and will anoint a winner whose spot will run DURING THE SUPERBOWL!!!!

I have so many problems with this, where do I begin?

• Oh, right, there's my earlier point that this brand has seen at least 3 legitimately great Superbowl spots in the last five years and shits all over the creative teams who develop them.
• There's the fact that the prize is $10,000. REALLY?? $10,000? That doesn't buy you a f**king bowel movement in the ad biz (yes, I just equated CareerBuilder's prize moeny to taking a dump, deal with it).
  
• What's that? It's $100,000. Oh, well OK then.
• Has no one sent them the memo? Dear CareerBuilder, consumer generated SuperBowl ads are SOOOOO 2007, it's time to evolve guys, we're all done with this trend.
• The corporate justification for this farce: "For a brand like CareerBuilder, which is about helping people get to their next great position, this made sense for us, and with the situation [the country is] in economically," says Richard Castellini, the company's chief marketing officer. Oh f*** you guy who will not have a job by the time this spot airs. Your going to play the economy card???
  
• Finally its the fact that this is a job site in a down economy giving two guys with a video camera a $100k job ONCE instead of, I don't know, actually building a partnership with an agency that can help you grow business while you give hundreds of people jobs.

I guess this is what we should expect from a site run by a group of newspapers. They know so much about running a good business model.

Arggghhh. I don't know why this makes me so mad, but it does.

Not mine of course.

Job site Careerbuilder.com has split with agency Widen + Kennedy, largely regarded as one of the top creative shops in the country (Nike anyone?).

This is just the latest chapter in the "Careerbuilder is a bad client" meme, having previously put the account into review after incumbent agency Cramer-Krasselt (also considered to be a REALLY good shop) made a Superbowl ad that failed to win top honors in The USA Today AdMeter. That review prompted then C-K CEO to say what every ad man wants to say to a client just once, “There are a few times in your life when you have to tell someone to F*** off and mean it.”

Let's quickly review the brilliant work of these two firms for this terrible client:

First up, this C-K gem, you know them you love them, the office chimps:

The target insight is brilliant: don't we all feel like we work with monkeys sometimes? Yes we do and there is a way you can change that. But OK, after a few years this got a little long in the tooth and expected, so C-K gave the client this little slice of awesome:

Again, how excellent is this insight? Work can feel like a battlefield, but you don't just have to survive the battle. This, I belive is the spot that lead to the f*** off quote. And rightly so. Your agency gives you the chimps and then they give you this and after all that you say "we want to see what else is out there"? F*** off indeed.

Ok, so you go another direction and get W+K and boy do they go from big epic to small story:

Not my top pick of this bunch, but again a great insight: you may hate your job and you don't have the guts to quit, but you need to follow your heart. It's a little expected, but not bad.

This year W+K was faced with the really tough task of doing a Superbowl spot for a job site in a terrible economy and I think they hit a home run:

Wow. Once more, great insight: it's the every day things that can drive you insane at a job. This, coupled with a great execution and a lot of humor makes for a fun ad.

So what is Careerbuilder going to do after four great campaigns by two great firms? Take the creative in house. RIGHT...THAT is going to work.

Oh, and the results speak for themselves here: when this all started Monster.com was the market leader in online job search, now its Careerbuilder. I am sure those internal teams will be able to keep that up AND get top honors in the Superbowl AdMeter, no problem.

Never fear, this client will be back on the market for an agency once the economy turns around. And when they do, look out. Or just say f*** off and save yourself some time. 

‘Stimulus’ Works Its Way to Madison Avenue

As marketers remake campaigns to address the recession, advertising copywriters are liberally peppering prose with financial words and phrases, particularly “stimulus” and “stimulus package.”

Wow, this industry really is devoid of any new ideas. Personally, I have yet to see a "stimulus" creative cross my desk, but I guess my guys are not phoning it in.

My favorite highlights from the Times article are this one from Trojan (OK, they get a pass, this is a gimme for them):

A commercial for Trojan condoms, sold by Church & Dwight, presented “our own stimulus package, the Trojan Pleasure Pack.” The spot was created by the Kaplan Thaler Group in New York, part of the Publicis Groupe.

Then there is Valpak, which Em saw in our mail pile and even she said "That is a terrible headline":

Valpak Direct Marketing Systems ran ads that described its Valpak coupon packets mailed to consumers as “the original consumer stimulus package since 1968.”

And here is the final word on this:

“When people hear ‘stimulus package,’ they think of the government,” said Tom Koenigsberg, chief marketing officer at CiCi’s Pizza in Coppell, Tex. “It’s time business provided stimulus packages to give consumers a chance to save money.”

I don't know Tom Koenigsberg, when I hear "stimulus package" I giggle a little bit. But maybe it's just the 13 year old boy in me.

Has it occurred to any of these CMOs that their agencies may be playing an elaborate and juvenile joke on all of them? Oh, wait, ad agencies never do anything juvenile.
 

There, I said it. Yes, I am a marketing professional with a blog, a Facebook page, LinkedIn, IM, a very large RSS feed and email (which someone in the media department told me will be "dead" by the end of the year so that doesn't count) and I HATE Twitter.

I've known about Twitter for two years now, having first heard about it from "new marketing" guru's Joseph Jaffe and C.C. Chapman. I got the concept right away: IM meets SMS -- real time communication with the utility to use it on your phone. Stuck in the airport (as Chapman once was)? Send out a Tweet and see if your friends can help. Not being a big text guy a shrugged it off, filed it away as a channel to keep an eye on and moved on.

Then 2007 became 2008 and Twitter exploded. And now it is everywhere. And I hate it.

Why? Unlike other social media or Web 2.0 application, Twitter lacks metadata. You can't comment on a Tweet, you can only Tweet back and hope someone is watching. This means that all Tweets have equal weight. You can't rank them or build a dialog (all this is better deconstructed by another "new media" guru Robert Scoble).

But that is not the only thing that drives me nuts. The other piece I hate is how many people in media and advertising think Twitter is the end all be all of social media (see Scoble's reference to Michael Arrington). Even Twitter calls itself the "messaging system we didn't know we needed until we had it". Oy, hubris anyone?

There is no doubt that Twitter is important. It is a great way to push information out. It gives people another direct line to one another and companies a direct line to customers.

But it is also full of problems like the Fail Whale (and the fact that it freezes up on me several times a day). Then there is the fact that searching is insane. Trying to follow a long list of Tweets to get useful information is almost impossible. Of course the New York Times seems to be half buying into the lie that taken collectively, Tweets can give companies valuable information about what customers are thinking. Yes, but so can blogs and Facebook and email. And we are only talking about 14 5 million accounts (not necessarily people and not necessarily all active users) who are generally highly tech savvy.

I won't even get into the insane levels of navel gazing on Twitter. On a blog post that would seem kind of wrong. In this world we all want to share our thoughts and have people read them. But I think Farhad Manjoo put it well: unlike other communications tools, "[Twitter] is not a faster or easier way of doing something you did in the past, unless you were one of those people who wrote short 'quips' on bathroom stalls."

That is exactly the point. Without the metadata Twitter is not really part of the conversation, it just shouting into the series of tubes and hoping someone is listening.

I contend that its growth has more been driven by a false sense of urgency by the media and marketing people (we missed MySpace, Facebook snuck up on us, YouTube came out of nowhere, damn-it, we are NOT going to miss this one without some hype). It is also, as Gawker pointed out, driven by the hyper-speed of the media cycle and the obsession with "real time".

Let's all just take a deep breath here and realize that Twitter is not the end, it is a beginning. If it is indeed the first in a new form of communication then it will not exist in 10 years (quick name the first consumer ISP, the first big search engine and the first major "social network").

Yes, we are in a communications revolution, and no, the revolution will not be televised (credit Jaffe with that one). But the internet has taught us two things important things in the last 15 years: nothing is permanent and nothing is the end. I choose to reject Twitter, just like I rejected Friendster and MySpace, but embraced Facebook. I rejected Live Journal and Blogger only to sign-up for Vox. We all need to communicate, but we all find the right tools to use for us.

I called this post "I hate Twitter", but it more accurate to say that I hate the Twits who think they have this all figured out. Just STFU so we can all keep looking for the app that will make you yesterday's news.

UPDATE: Follow-up post, "The backlash has begun"

So I am 2 for 3 on my prediction from yesterday on which marketing publications would pick up on the #AmazonFail dust up: AdAge and AdFreak both mentioned it today. (Note: check the search results, even now there are Twits who have yet to get the memo that this was all a prank by a hacker.)

AdFreak also kindly points out the next big social media blow-up: Domino's Pizza and thier salami farting employees.  And yes, the Twits have already picked up on it.

Oy, is this going to happen every day? I'm not sure I can deal with that.