Clownsourcing

There is no shortage of idiotic online schemes.

The latest one to draw the hysterical attention of the advertising trade media is "crowdsourcing." Crowdsourcing is essentially a way to get unemployed free-lancers to work for you on the cheap. If that's your idea of a good time, have at it.

I have it on pretty good authority that one of the first major ventures into clownsourcing has been a

The Power Of Old Media

At the beginning of July, before Apple offered the world free "bumpers,"  I wrote a post called Apple Playing With Fire.

The thrust of the post was that Apple had better deal with its antenna problem. At the time, Apple was doing its usual stonewall.

Then something happened. As The New York Times reported, on July 18th...
The iPhone’s antenna problems might have remained a dust-up between

Old Spice Campaign Smelling Better

Here at The Ad Contrarian world headquarters, we try to stay as far away from "Rate-A-Record" as possible.

If you want to know what some blognozzle (thank you, George) thinks about some ad, there are about a trillion blogs for that. I don't know what the hell this blog is about, but it definitely isn't about that.

Nonetheless, last week, in the course of writing about some results I saw

The Amazing Blindness of Marketers

One of the long-running themes of this blog is how the marketing and advertising world have lost touch with reality .

There are two major manifestations of this disconnection. As you might expect from an industry as confused as ours, they are contradictory.

First is the delusional religion of the shiny new object. It is a tendency to fall in love with whatever is new. It is a future-fantasy

Old Spice Numbers Smell Fishy

I've been on vacation for a while, but I've noticed a lot of web fuss about the Old Spice Red Zone After Hours Body Wash campaign. The one with that guy who looks just like me.

In case you've been even further from civilization than I have, the campaign has been an advertising and media sensation, winning major awards and poking its head into every corner of the social web.

Well, according

Emotional Connections vs. Logical Connections

I've been on vacation for a while and I know some of you need a little something to get upset about, so here's a little piece of past contrariana.

On many occasions I have poked fun at "branding," "brand babble" and their many incompetent practitioners. And while that is great fun, there are some serious points to be made.



There are a few product categories that are highly reliant on brand

The Omnicom-Google Deal

For years now (it only seems like decades) The Ad Contrarian has been warning* marketers about the questionable effectiveness of web advertising and the unprincipled, self-serving cheerleading for online advertising that has been going on in the advertising industry.

Now, The Wall Street Journal is reporting that a major deal has been struck between Omnicom and Google worth hundreds of millions

Sudden Unintended Hysteria

The editorial board here at Ad Contrarian world headquarters is getting a little full of itself lately.

For the second time this week, stuff we have written has turned out to be prophetic.

In March, we posted 4 columns (you can read them here: #1, #2, #3 & #4) about the hysterical, inaccurate, irresponsible press reporting of alleged Toyota "sudden unintended acceleration."

Those if us with

Sometimes Even Bloggers Are Right

Here at Ad Contrarian World Headquarters there is no more pleasant surprise than finding out that something we've been howling about for years turns out to be right.

Those of you who have read my semi-brilliant book, The Ad Contrarian (which you can download free right here) know that one of the three principles I espouse is this:
"Advertising messages should be created for, and directed at, the

Apple Playing With Fire

On October 30, 2009, I wrote a post about the unreliability of the iPhone....
Someone left me a voice mail at 3:30 yesterday afternoon. It didn't arrive at my iPhone until 7:55 this morning. That's 16 hours and 25 minutes later. I'm really getting tired of this shit....Here's the thing, Steve. I don't need an app that tells me what my fucking sperm count is, or when Jupiter crosses the

Perfect Storm of Hysteria

Last year we witnessed a perfect storm of hysteria.

Unhinged "experts" and feverish media outlets conspired to enhance their self-importance in a worldwide hysteriafest called "swine flu."

The World Health Organization announced: "All of humanity under threat."

Here at Ad Contrarian World Headquarters, our Global Science Division was busy ridiculing these overwrought maniacs. We told our

Three Years Old And Still Not Potty Trained

Today is the third anniversary of The Ad Contrarian blog. It's nice to still be alive after three years.

Here are some thoughts from a post I wrote on the first anniversary of this blog. They're still true:
Ten days into it I thought I had run out of things to say. Apparently I have a bigger mouth than I imagined. Five Things I've Learned About Blogging This Year:
It ain't easy being