Spock People Search: Search Engine Market Segmentation.

I have a favorite new search engine in beta that you should try called Spock at http://www.spock.com. Dedicated to People Search it's even better than Google at providing virtually all the internet information available on a person (and frequently some visuals). From a marketing standpoint what's most important here to me is that Spock represents the fact that the search engine market has matured sufficiently that Google no longer will be the only game in town and that there will be room for very well executed segmented entries in vertical categories: like people. I've pulled part of the John McCain and Hillary Clinton pages so you can take a look at how Spock search results look (and the example seemed relevant given the Iowa caucuses on Thurs.) So search for your old boyfriends or girlfriends by name. Or search companies to see who works there (the site is great at turning up accurate Linked In entries). There's a user editorial system which you can read about if you're interested. But try it. It's January 1, 2008. and Spock represents the future of search.

I'm back from break, the lights are back on and I'm rarin' to go. Happy New Year. Keep those visits coming.

Oh, by the way...these are also my picks for the Presidential contenders in November. Never say I didn't call it early.

Credits for Nike "Need Motivation" TV Spot: Agency, Director, Music, Production, Editorial and More.

(If anyone is listed incorrectly, I apologize, please let me know.)

Nike "Need Motivation" Credits

Agency: Crispin Porter + Bogusky

Executive Creative Director: Alex Bogusky
Creative Director: Evan Fry
Associate Creative Director: Dave Swartz
Art Director: Mark Taylor
Copywriter: Todd Tilford
Group Executive Producer: Matt Bonin
Production Company: HSI
Production Services: Film Planet Argentina
Director / Director of Photography: Samuel Bayer
Editorial Company: Bug Editorial
Editor: Andre Betz
Producer: Joy Copeland
Assistant Editor: Ben Shababo
Post Production: RIOT
Producer: Alex Decaneas
Producer: Peter Stanik
Flame Artist: Tom McCullough
Telecine Artist: Billy Gabor
Telecine: CO3
Visual Effects: WETA Digital
VFX Supervisor: Chris White
VFX Producer: Libby Hazell
VFX Onset Digital Supervisor: Susie Kleis
VFX Onset Digital Supervisor: Matt Sloan
VFX Head of Production: Eileen Moran
Music/Sound Design: Amber Music
Composer: Eugene Cho
Music: 2nd piece: The Hives, "Return the Favour"
Sound Design: Bill Chesley
Producer: Kate Gibson
Agency Music Producer: Bill Meadows
Sound Mixer: Philip Loeb
Sound Mix: Sound Lounge

Photoshop Contest: A "Pirates of the Caribbean" McDonald's Product Placement.

It's Thursday night and time for the weekly Photoshop Contest. You deserve a break today so we've put together a match made in CAA heaven (or more accurately, CAA hell). McDonald's and Pirates of the Caribbean. Johnny Depp & Company meet the Big Mac. Without doubt, this is one of the best drive ups that McDonald's has ever had (of their 31,000 locations worldwide). You needed that factoid, right? More product placements next week. Tune in.

Interactive Environmental Christmas Card from Wieden and Kennedy, London.

This is just a great interactive Christmas card from ad agency Wieden + Kennedy London. Based on a green initiative you can name your own tree, plant it and pump three buckets of water into it (don't give up even though you're almost ready to). At that point you can start decorating it with the tons of different ornaments you can see on the screen capture. The catch...to add more ornaments and lights you have to grow it by returning every day to water your tree at which point your entry will get bigger. Mine, no surprise, is scottstree. I started out traditional but I have great plans. The counter shows how many people have planted trees in what ultimately should become an intriguing forest (competitive one too, given the sites's sponsors).

Good stuff. Check it out and let me know what you think.
http://www.wiedenswood.com/index/index/hash/gzw18z5gxtwg8

Catholic Saints Images on Cell Phones: Church Leaders "Horrified" by the New Mobile Santini.

Everyone who moves in Italy has a wrinkled and worn saint card taped to their dash--or in their wallet or purse. So why not download your favorite saint (or saint to be in John Paul II) to carry around on your mobile phone. On Tuesday it became a reality. A sort of modern download that advertises the best of Catholicism (how I as an adguy think of it). Or...just a better, more permanent way to carry your Saint Christopher santini. Seems like a smart idea to me. And would look great on a new iphone.

But not everyone agrees. "This is in really bad taste," Bishop Lucio Soravito De Franceschi, a member of the Italian bishops conference committee for doctrinal matters, told the Turin newspaper La Stampa. "It is a distortion of sacred things...selling 'santini' for cell phones is horrifying," he said.

Not so says the originator of the idea. "We found a need and filled it," Barbara Labate, who developed the concept with her business partner in a cellphone services company based in Milan. "We are merely catching up with the times. I think this will appeal to young people as well as grandmothers," Fifteen saints launched the service. More are planned. About $4.50 a text message initiated download.

Rockstars can only be next. How about Saint Bono? Or Mr. Sympathy for the Devil incarnate, Mick Jagger?

Martin Scorsese Freixenet Ad: A Great Example of The New Advertising

The "Key to Reserva", Fabulous stuff. Long...but this Spanish cinema ad is where advertising should and WILL (well maybe not shot by Scorsese) be going. An ad for Freixenet Carta Nevada Reserva sparkling wine...plus an homage to Hitchcock. If you're into advertising, Scorsese or Hitchcock it's well worth the 9 plus minutes. The creative director Alex Martinez of JWT Barcelona has it right "...it's not enough now to buy the audience time--we have to create advertising that the audience chooses to spend time with." That's the cardinal rule of the new advertising no matter what the delivery system. In two weeks...I predict huge YouTube viewership numbers

Trojan Condoms TV Spot "Evolve" Music?

See the entry immediately below and take a look at the spot if you haven't seen it. There've been lots of questions about who wrote the music. For those of you not patient enough to scour your search engine here you go. iV music group created it. Steve Keller their CEO and Creative Director took an instrumental originally composed by Rivers Rutherford, built on its foundation, and wrote new lyrics. Keller is the singer...gossip says he did a scratch track (rough version) and the client liked it and went with what you've just heard. Fabulous stuff.

Trojan Condoms TV Spot "Evolve" Now on Google Universal Search.

Google's evolving Universal Search function which combines news, YouTube videos, books, images and more is becoming more and more helpful to me. I love getting videos when I just expect the typical written results. When I was Googling Trojan Condoms the other night for factoids for the Photoshop Contest featuring a Trojan Condom product placement, I ran into this fabulous spot which I should have seen but never did. What a way to break through the clutter. And what a great example of the importance of the music in a TV spot (see more above).

The New Facebook Faces Advertising Problems (Monitoring Behavior) and an Invasion of Adults (How Creepy).

OK...over Thanksgiving I had some long talks with some "classic" Facebook users--students from the same small group of highly selective schools where Facebook began in February 2, 2004. First at Harvard, then at the Ivies, then at the highly selective liberal arts colleges like Williams, Middlebury and the prestige universities like Duke and Stanford. Facebook then extended membership to anyone with a .edu mailbox and then, ultimately to anyone over 13. Yes, that means anyone from middle school kids to their fathers and mothers.

And, according to my college friends...that's just not cool. Nor are websites like the one above from cool dudes like John Edwards.

This broad democracy of membership is what bothers the college kids...they miss the good old days of 2004 when they were an elite band of college students or recent graduates. They don't want old people who are trying to be cool joining. So look out for problems when the membership blurs out through overexpansion.

Next, there's the advertising problem. Facebook recently announced an invasive ad program called Beacon, despite all its previous privacy problems. Beacon will funnel participating students online purchases to their network of friends. Friends will know when Sally buys the new My Chemical Romance CD or Jim buys a bodybuilding book from Amazon. Worst of all...users can't currently opt out of the program, and Facebook doesn't make it easy to opt out of individual updates.

None of the college kids I talked to thought this was cool...they don't particularly want their purchases shared with their entire list of friends...and whether they friend them or not they don't want a bunch of creepy adults frequenting their clubhouse.

The biggest internet and internet advertising issue of all is just now emerging which is PRIVACY. John Battelle, a smart guy, of Wired Magazine fame and the book Search is currently writing a book on the topic, and he's dead on. This will be the next big Supreme Court level issue everyone from Facebook to Google will face. It makes Microsoft the Monopolist look tame by comparison. Much more in the days to come. Gnite.

Turkey for Christmas Gone Mad...Not Turducken But Turgooponducheasnishuaichuffguihagaga?

Ok...Christmas is a little less than a week away and I've been doing tons of research since my Thanksgiving post on Turducken (pictured above from a website with an alternate spelling). I know it's silly but there's a lot of written background online and on the blogs. It never fails to amaze me.

I've found the ultimate Turkey line extension (as we call it in marketing). All the bell and whistles you could want.

From Wikipedia. "Some enthusiasts come up with the turduckencorpheail. This is a standard turducken, (Turkey stuffed with duck, hen, and cornmeal) which is then stuffed with a cornish game hen, which is then stuffed with a pheasant, and finally stuffed with a quail. Still others have pushed the envelope even further with the turgooponducheasanishuail, which includes both a goose and capon, in addition to the component birds of the turduckencorpheail. In recent years, another version called the turgooponducheasnishuaichuffguihagaga has been growing in popularity. It has all the properties of the previous two versions listed, but also includes beef, pork, lamb, and frog. The turduckencorpheail, turgooponducheasanishuail, and the turgooponducheasnishuaichuffguihagaga are not for the faint of heart; both are extremely time consuming endeavors, as birds of the proper size must first be obtained, and then prepared; removing extremely fragile bones from a bird such as a quail without breaking the skin is impossible for most."

By the way...before Wikipedia how would we know about this Cajuninsanitywit1800calories that's critical-to-know-stuff. I promise no more Turkish entrees/entries for awhile. Happy Holidays. Canned ham anyone?

Happy Thanksgiving; Are You Eating Turducken Today?

Just in time for Thanksgiving (or maybe a tad late...just saw the ad) arrives the Turducken, found as an Adwords match on my GMail this Thanksgiving morning.

From the site at fmfoods.com
Product Detailed Description
TURDUCKEN = turkey-duck-chicken

This is an amazing meal. We take a whole turkey and de-bone it leaving only the legs and wings. The turkey is stuffed with boneless duck breast and boneless chicken, completely seasoned inside and out and stuffed with our signature dressing. The Turducken weighs 12 lbs. and you can feast on everything! What a deal! (Sic!)

The Cornbread Turducken is stuffed with Cornbread Dressing and Pork & Rice Dressing. Feeds up to 15 people. Net Weight: 12 lbs. $49.95

What great advertising enabled by Internet AdWords...making it possible for Turducken to reach me. As an ad guy I'd suggest getting the word "turd" the heck out of there. Turd is just never a great association with food.

But...depending on how my meal at 4 PM goes, if it's boring I'm ordering up a Turducken for Xmas. How 'bout you? Wonder if I can buy one when the stores open at 5 AM tomorrow? Happy Thanksgiving.

While you're here...take a look at "Look Who's Coming to Thanksgiving Dinner" the Nov. 1 entry. More holiday fun.

Video of The Prototype Google Phone (or gphone): With an Intro by Sergey Brin

Buried in all the gphone Android development platform announcements is this video which presents a very clear idea of what a basic and more advanced gphone will look like before it's enhanced by developers. At this point very iphone like except it will be OPEN and FAST...huge benefits and, at least now, no emphasis on music.Also, a smart move on Google's part to run a competition with $10 million of rewards for the best developer's products. Nothing like a good old contest to grease the wheels of progress. And the stickier the gphone is, the better it is when it becomes a fully functional adphone with information like you see in the Google Maps reference below. Shades of the original IBM PC, no?

Photoshop Contest: "Guess Who's Coming to Thanksgiving Dinner?" Norman Rockwell Reimagined.

It's Thursday night and time for the weekly Photoshop contest entry. Thanksgiving is three weeks from today! Early this year. So in anticipation of the joy of family reunions, that annual feeling of being overstuffed, wretched excess...and the anticipation of the midnight sales starting in a few hours...take a look. This is the true meaning of a Rockwell Thanksgiving through the lens of " Guess Who's Coming to Dinner." The Tracy/Hepburn/Poitier film was released 40 years ago on the 12th of December 1967. Gnite.

In-Program Ads on NBC's Law & Order SVU Tonight

Just saw a first, at least for me...and it was surprising. A brief animated banner ad for the movie "American Gangster" including text/with a simple B&W graphic like the one above moved across the bottom of the screen. It appeared smack dab in the middle of two sections of programming and was interruptive as hell. Impossible to skip that ad.

Now the networks/channels have been running promotions for their own programming for some time. And YouTube now carries its AdWords at the bottom of videos, but this is major step in prime time network advertising.

Let me think about it overnight, and I'll add some more impressions in the AM. Gnite.

Here's the view from broad daylight. They're annoying as hell...but they did get my attention and since the buzz for the movie is good it did help remind me when, specifically, American Gangster was opening.

Lindsey Rumored To Enter "Don't Die Lindsey" Treatment Program

The ad below ran three weeks ago for a New Jersey addiction treatment center which offers the Prometa Protocols for alcohol, cocaine and methampetamine. What a strange ad story this is.



Today, Star Magazine "moles claimed that Lindsay is under the care of Matthew Torrington, M.D., medical director of the PROMETA Center, an outpatient clinic in Santa Monica specializing in treating alcohol, cocaine and metamphetamine (crystal meth) addictions that is at the forefront of a major controversy within the medical community."

“In my clinical experience, I have found the treatment to be very, very effective and an incredible aid to people who are suffering,” Dr. Torrington tells the weekly tab, “but the lack of accepted clinical testing, say some critics, raises many troubling questions about the PROMETA program.”

“At this time, there is no peer-reviewed research that has been done on the treatment,” David Kan, M.D., a substance-abuse expert at the VA Medical Center in San Francisco, spills to Star. “There is also no evidence to suggest it is productive.”

Targeted Video Ads on Google: A Better Approach from Blinkx?

Blinkx is a small British video search company.

The company released a tool Wednesday that lets online publishers place targeted text ads in any video embedded on a Web site based on the actual content of the video. That's a lot different (and may be a lot better?) than the Google approach you'll find above. Google figures out what ads to pair with a video based strictly on the video's title and any keywords attached to the clip.

Blinkx software "listens to" and "watches" the video, then inserts text overlay ads based on the spoken words and to some extent, the images in the clip. That technology depends on algorithms developed by a longstanding Google competitor, search engine Autonomy.

Here's an example of how Blinkx's contextual advertising might work: Imagine a teenager doing a podcast about a new digital camera. Blinkx software might create a text ad for the camera at the bottom of the video player, even if the clip isn't labeled with the digital camera brand.

Blinkx Chief Executive Suranga Chandratillake says the software can also recognize written words and even a small library of faces. That means that automatic ad targeting isn't limited to the relatively small amount of video content generated by media companies and savvy bloggers who carefully label all of their content with text tags, he says.

Advertisers will be able to insert targeted ads into the massive number of amateur videos on the Internet, many of which often weren't intended to generate revenue and so carry no content-related tags. Will they have to obtain rights to do this...we'll see?

YouTube Videos on AdSense

This is the start of something huge. Google takes a giant step toward offering television advertising. So...straight from Google's release:


Posted by Christine Lee, Google Product Marketing Manager, Google AdSense Site 10/9/09

Nowadays, website publishers realize that getting people to visit your website is only half of the equation. Growing your audience is important, but keeping your audience engaged and staying on your site longer is just as important, if not more so. This is why we're excited to let you know about video units on Google AdSense. Video units enable AdSense publishers to display videos from several YouTube content partners. The video units are ad-supported, and the ads are relevant to both the video and the site content, as well as unobtrusive. AdSense publishers and YouTube content partners will receive a share of the ad revenue, so video units enable both groups to earn incremental revenue.

We're excited about video units because we see this as the first step in content distribution on AdSense and a great opportunity to foster the content ecosystem on the web. AdSense publishers can now enhance their sites with interesting videos, YouTube content partners benefit from a new distribution channel, advertisers have a new vehicle to distribute their messages to their target audiences, and people can tune in to interesting videos on sites they normally visit.

From The AdSense Blog

AdSense isn't just for ads anymore; it's also a place to get video content for your site -- and earn extra revenue at the same time.

We're excited about the launch of video units -- a new way to enrich your site with quality, relevant video content in an embedded, customizable player. Simply embed a snippet of code and have relevant YouTube partner content streamed to your site. You can choose categories of video to target to your site, select content from individual YouTube partners, or have video automatically targeted to your site content. Companion and text overlay ads are relevant and non-intrusive. To further blend the YouTube player into your site, you can also customize the color scheme and layout as well as choose from three different player sizes.

If you're looking to build "stickiness" with your visitors, show quality YouTube partner video on your site, and earn extra revenue along the way, and want to know more, then review our common questions about video units. You can also check out the video below to see how it works.

OK...as the The New Advertising weblog author, I'm off to sign up and let's see how it works on this site...hang on.