Gmail "reads" your email.  Then Gmail serves up ads you want to see because they know what your email's about. 

In this case, Gmail Madness Exhibit #1, the email is about the passing of my sister-in-law's old beau named "Hugh."  The relevance
Continue reading "Gmail Madness Exhibit #1" »

contextual ads, Gmail
Posted by lee sachs at 3:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Take some off-label hard drive housing and call it "Hotdrive."  Ok.  Get a product shot on the box and, I dunno, something else, some stock photo, maybe businessmen.  Understood.
 


So who the hell are these guys having a drink in a bar and laughing it up?  And why with the term "hotdrive" associated to these clowns am I getting a vague hetero(homo?)sexual vibe here?    

bad photos, businessmen, stock photos
Posted by lee sachs at 10:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I understand that they need to have a shot of the product in use, but did they have to drown a duck in soapy water?!  Why didn't they just put some clothes in there? 

bad photos
Posted by lee sachs at 1:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

You never know when someone is going to be thinking about a vacation.  So it's not a bad idea to advertise on a website about travel. 

Posted by lee sachs at 7:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Catalog Headline Writing is a very special breed of Marketing Madness.  What gets me is not so much the idea that my feet will love me.  (When did they ever have a choice anyway!)  It's that they will love me F O R E V E R. 

Just like "sex sells," romance can be injected into marketing to make everything warm and fuzzy.  TLFF (TLF-Feet).

catalog, headlines
Posted by lee sachs at 12:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Nothing says "commitment to delivering unmatched quality" than making men sprint on a field in business suits.

Posted by lee sachs at 7:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From the "sex sells" department. 
You know you want that online degree!  Don't you baby!?!  You want those credits!!  Tell me how bad you want to earn those credits!!  You like to study baby!?  You love those big books!!  Big books...with all those pages!!!! YEAH! 
Oh sorry...where was I?

Posted by lee sachs at 8:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This was from a flyer handed out in New York City.   The pink paper is not the ideal stock to be using, but I'm not sure any stock of paper would've helped.  I think the reason you can't see below his shoulders is because this is from a mug shot and they cut off the number he was holding up.

On a side note, another sign of Marketing Madness would be arbitrary "quotation marks" on "various" different "phrases."  As in, "Hair Stylist/All Types of Haircuts."  Do you think they want us to chuckle and think, "Oh that IS funny.  He's not a hair stylist!  He can't cut all types of haircuts!!"

Posted by lee sachs at 1:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Do you know this guy?  He's on the "splash screen" that appears when you open a PDF and Acrobat is launching. 

What is he so happy about?!  Just because he can leap through the air with really high-waisted very baggy pants does not make him acrobatic.  He looks great in the air, but with feet like those, he's going to collapse under his own weight when he lands.  That'll teach him to be happy. 

Posted by lee sachs at 4:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Somehow, when I think immunity I'm thinking the smell of rubbing alcohol, needles and runny noses.  I could then go into some joke about the "Green Giant" but that's just silly.  Let's stay focused here. 

Posted by lee sachs at 6:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

That headline above is how I think those words "luxurious premium vinyl" appeared on the bottom of this package.  Why would anyone, in all seriousness, intentionally write those 3 words together unless someone had a gun to their head. 

I will be posting many more examples of what I call, "copy for copy's sake."  An art director, a product manager, who the hell knows what lackey is responsible, but the mad world of marketing is rife with copy slapped on packages that serves no purpose except to splash a few words in front of consumer's faces.  It could just as well say, "durum lumbar osprey" and it would have the same meaning. 

You gotta' love lightning bolts! 

Posted by lee sachs at 11:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

This flyer was at our bank, the-soon-to-be-eliminated WaMu, just 2 days after the bank collapsed and Chase swooped in and picked up the pieces.  Just a plain 8 1/2 by 11 sheet of paper, laser printed, a stack of 'em at the counter when you walk in.  

I'm imagining in the panic of the collapse and all of the machinations around one global bank acquiring another domestic firm practically overnight, crammed into some warren of cubicles is the team responsible for communicating something, ANYTHING, to WaMu customers.

In marketing, they usually have a creative brief which will capture what the tone should be, some key phrases, who is the primary audience, objective, etc.  It's the initial framework for a campaign a client might send to an agency.  Except when your entire business has crumbled to pieces and you don't even know if you're going to get your paycheck, let alone have a job tomorrow.  Writing a creative brief is the last thing on anyone's mind.  So I think it went like this.  Someone barks into a speakerphone:

"WE NEED FLYERS!!  SIMPLE!  LOTS OF THEM!!  KEEP THEM UPBEAT!  AND HURRY!!  WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!!"

So the copywriter, who is probably collecting unemployment right this second, rattles his brain. 

"Hmm, what is good about this situation?  Let me look at a fact sheet about Chase.  Hmm...no.  No.  AH!  Here's one, they have a trillion dollars!!!"  

And that is really, really how this flyer came to be. 

Posted by lee sachs at 12:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This was inside one of those trophy-like cases when I walked into a hospital.  Some awards, plaques and then this card they must be so proud of.

Posted by lee sachs at 8:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This was at one of those self-serve baked goods joints at an airport.  People in a hurry at airports don't want to wait until someone selects their muffin.  Okay, so give them paper, patty paper. 

I don't know if it's the alliteration or the fact that a commercial paper product intended for ground beef patties is being used for cookies, but I feel like someone, somewhere at this airport eatery is having some fun.  Not everyone will notice, they think.  But those that do, will appreciate the funny little things in life.  After all, that's what Patty Paper does...and she knows. 

Posted by lee sachs at 10:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm just not buying this.  I don't mean the cookies.  The chef.  Not only is it just terribly inefficient to be pouring chocolate over one cookie at a time, look how he's holding the ladle!

Posted by lee sachs at 11:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Can you spot the actual relevant information on this web page?

I've marked up the page to make it a little easier. 

Posted by lee sachs at 11:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Sometimes, copywriting is written SO sincerely that it just makes me want to go to run out to Chuckie Cheese or something.  The usual offenders are vegan, organic, green, let's make everything we do sound so nice and perfect that you'll have to love us marketers.  Face it, even the hippie dippie farmer selling alfalfa sprouts is in a business and wants to turn a profit.  They may not be hell bent on destroying the planet, but they ARE a business.  And they ARE marketing. 

Packages laden with short paragraphs that proclaim the joys of all humanity and how wonderful the world would be if we just all held hands and loved and practiced random acts of kindness, oh and by the way, will you please buy my damned nuts so I can make some friggin' money?! 

They're actually serious when they talk about the "inseperable relationships between the vitality of the soil, the energy of plants, the taste of ripeness and viability of farming."  They forgot to mention the oneness of the soul, the eternity of the mind, the expansiveness of the infinite and the wholeness of everything that is what we make everything that is what we are ... and stuff....like that.  Y'know? 

 

Posted by lee sachs at 3:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)