The BadAds Weblog: April 2003

Where's Your Head At?

For reasons unfathomable to us at BadAds, some individuals love to incorporate ads, brands, and logos into their life. They collect and display Coke memorabilia in their home, they buy The Sopranos Cookbook or Simpsons-themed Monopoly games, they decorate for the holidays with Disney character ornaments.

These folks may have sordid tastes, but at least their passions remain private. More disturbing are those daft enough to pay for T-shirts, hats and pants that advertise the shop where the item was purchased.

Worst of all, however, are those who sell out their body to inflict ads on others. One person benefits, while the rest of us suffer the consequences. British marketing firm Cunning Stunts made the news in February 2003, for example, with its "foreheADS" campaign, in which college students have logos temporarily tattooed to their foreheads. Students must display their branded foreheads for at least three hours per day in student bars or busy shopping areas, for which they receive a weekly sum of £88.20 ($138.66).

As Cunning Stunts promises on its Web site, "In a congested market where thousands of products are screaming for consumers' attention, our solution is to shout even louder whilst doing somethin g different – literally cut through the clutter."

If suckers exist for temporary tattoos, surely there's someone gullible enough to become a permanent human billboard. Indeed, Jim Nelson is that gullible. The 22-year-old Illinois resident auctioned space on his head on eBay, and Web hosting company C I Host took home the winning bid.

After four hours in the tattoo chair, Nelson now sports a 25-square-inch, orange, blue, and black logo on the back of his shaved head, a logo he must display for five years. Nelson's contract also requires daily travel outside his Chicago-area home and occasional travel throughout Europe and the continental U.S.

And what will Nelson receive for shaming himself before the world? A million dollars? A million dollars annually? Not even close. "Our final bid for his services was $7,000 for a 5-year contract," says C I Host's Nancy St. Pierre. Thus for his 1,827 days of indentured ser vitude, Nelson receives less than $4 per day.

As Christopher Faulkner, CEO of C I Host, said in a very familiar sounding statement, "In this economy and industry, you have to be constantly looking for ways to break through the clutter and be noticed. This idea certainly fills the bill."

"Breaking through the clutter" by adding even more clutter – what a novel idea. Never mind that such actions make the public tune ads out even faster, not to mention the turn-off that comes from having your product associated with someone stupid enough to turn his or her head into a billboard. If you can find a sucker and make "headlines," that's all the reason you need.

Thanks for the heads-up on this topic goes to Neil Schwartzman, who added a choice description of Jim Nelson's sellout: "Loathsome use of the human body, surpassed perhaps only by necrophelia."

April 25, 2003

Habeas Nonporkus

If you steal haiku
For advertising e-mail,
We can make millions.

Opt-in, opt-out, do-not-e-mail, delete, delete, delete – nothing seems to work against spam because the swine who send it don't care whether or not you want to be contacted. They have your e-mail address and they're going to use it. As long as the cost of sending out millions of messages remains low, they'll keep sending them.

Thankfully, the cost might get a lot higher soon, at least for some Internet abusers. Palo Alto-based Habeas introduced a novel spam-fighting system in August 2002 in which the company licenses a trademarked haiku that senders include in the e-mail header to guarantee that the message isn't spam. Individuals can license the haiku for free, a company license runs around $500, verified opt-in senders have variable prices, and mass mailers cannot license the system at all. E-mail recipients can set their filters to receive any message containing the haiku, which isn't the one listed above, and feel sure that these messages are legit.

How does this fight spam, you ask. "Habeas is built on the premise that our novel application of federal copyright and trademark protection can stop spam, which is time consuming, resource draining, and costs everyone money," said Anne P. Mitchell, Esq., president and CEO of Habeas. If you accept e-mail solely from your contact list and those who use the Habeas haiku, then theoretically you should receive no spam.

Spammers can easily incorporate the haiku into e-mail headers, but Habeas vowed to sue anyone who did so for at least $1 million for trademark violation. Seeing as they have no scruples or sense, spammers stole the haiku anyway, and now Habeas is indeed suing them. Named in the suit are Avaland and Intermark Media, which allegedly used the haiku without permission, as well as Dale Heller, Stan Stuchinski at BigDogSecrets.com, Clickbank and Keynetics. Heller supposedly signed up for a Habeas license, then used it improperly to advertise the companies named as co-defendants.

If the courts rule against Habeas, then its business model dies and we go back to hitting the delete key. However, sin ce Habeas promised to sue misusers and trademark law does provide them with a valid argument, there's hope yet that spammers will have to cough up the loot and start searching for real jobs.

April 21, 2003

Milk Marketing Campaign Turns Sour

Whenever a new form of communication springs up, marketers rush to blanket it with ads. With the Internet came banner ads and pop-ups; with e-mail came spam, spam, spam, baked beans, and spam; and now with blogs come efforts to turn bloggers into shills.

That's the idea behind Dr Pepper/Seven Up's failed marketing campaign for Raging Cow, its series of flavored milk drinks. As John Heinzl explains in an article in The Globe and Mail, Dr Pepper flew five popular bloggers and their parents on an all-expenses-paid trip to Dallas. Once there, writes Heinzl, "it gave them samples of the drink, T-shirts, hats and Amazon.com gift certificates, then sent them home to sta rt pumping Raging Cow to their friends on the Web – without disclosing that the company had put them up to it."

The Raging Cow Web site put up by Dr Pepper included a tiny copyright notice crediting the company, but otherwise it tried to hide its connection. Visitors to the site, however, quickly sussed out who was pulling strings behind the scene and lambasted the site's message board. "This website is FAKE," wrote one poster. "When you are advertising under false pretenses and not being up front about what you're doing ... that isn't just wrong, it's immoral and disgusting."

Andrew Springate, director of marketing for Dr Pepper/Seven Up, said the company wasn't trying to deceive anyone, despite the absence of company ID. "For us the blogging campaign is just an extension of what we consider to be the oldest form of advertising, which is word of mouth."

Maybe Mr. Springate needs to hear some words from your mouth to better understand why his company shouldn't be trying to inject advertising into the world of blogging. (Extra points to the reader whose caustic remarks make him shoot milk out his nose.)

Dr Pepper/Seven Up, Inc.
P.O. Box 869077
Plano, TX 75086
Phone: 800-696-5891
Online Contact Form

Thanks to wholesome BadAds reader Bob Pezzolesi for spotting this news item.

April 11, 2003

Video Displays in Taxis "Unfare" to Passengers

New York City has always been dense with ads, but that doesn't mean we can't fit in a few more, right? In addition to the city's recently announced plans to market itself as a commercial property and offer naming rights and licensing deals to corporations, the NYC Taxi & Limousine Commission has been experimenting with rear-seat video displays in 400 of the city's 12,187 cabs.

Four companies – Taxi Vu, Interactive Taxi, eTaxiNY, and (ahem) I Love Taxi TV – are vying for long-term contracts for their offerings. I Love Taxi TV presents a 14-minute video loop with seven minutes of material from the History Channel and A&E's "Biography" and seven minutes of ads. "I call it short-attention-span theater," said spokesman Bruno Lucarelli, in a Washington Post article by Paula Span.

Interactive Taxi lets passengers use a touchscreen to pull up headlines and weather reports and view restaurant directories, but ads continue to run on t he side of the display. eTaxiNY, the only service without ads, employs a wireless service that lets you check flight times at airports and pay for the cab ride with a credit card.

In her article, Span quotes driver M ario Nunez as saying that a quarter of his passengers have complained about the Interactive Taxi display, calling it "annoying." One rider complained, "It's an extended infomercial.... Another advertising intrusion in a place you don't need it."

You got that right, brother. There's nothing to compare in any circle of Hell with the thought of being stuck in a traffic jam with endlessly rotating ads blasted at you. The TLC did mandate that "mute" buttons be installed in each bulletproof screen, but that's small relief from the flashing video.

The TLC, which plans to make a final decision about the monitors by fall, has a survey online that asks for rider feedback about the ad barrage. "It's great when you can get the public weighing in, helping government make decisions. It's almost like casting a vote," says Matthew Daus, TLC Commissioner/Chair.

Well, BadAds reader? Mr. Daus awaits your comments on taxi ads, so don't be shy at telling him that this intrusion of ads upon previously ad-free space is entirely unwelcome. And if you're wary about using the survey, contact him directly and give him an earful.

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