Street-Level Sales and Marketing

Sean Carton's June 11 ClickZ column brought up an intriguing idea -- and raised a spectre of sorts. While Google's Street View can be used as a useful shoe-level tool in terms of orienting one's self on a street corner or while in transit, it also opens up opportunities for dynamically inserted advertising.

One approach to this -- albeit in a nascent state -- can be seen in the technology offered by Idelix. That company's tools allow advertisers to dynamically insert spots on directions provided by mapping services from Google, Yahoo, Mapquest, and the like. Ads can be placed at the city, street, or brand level.

It's only a matter of time before ads are dynamically inserted into Flickr pictures, perhaps!

Hybrid Viral Marketing

Thanks to Jason Kottke for pointing me to a new paper by Duncan Watts that explores the idea of "big seed marketing."

Basically, the idea is that viral marketing campaigns bolstered by large mainstream media advertising campaigns can create an escalating conversion effect that neither activity would catalyze on their own. The math behind the idea seems solid, and it reminds me of my recent PodCamp talk "What If Ads Were Content?"

The more ways people are able to share, keep, and annotate ads online -- and off -- the more effective those ads could become.

XLNT Party Time

XLNTads, which specializes in consumer-generated advertising, announced the members of its Creator's Advisory Board today. The board will advise the company on user features and other aspects of the business, which is slated to introduce brand advertisers in July.

Board members include:

• Sean Bury, Invisible Engine Films
  
• Angela Calman, video producer and publisher of Mediamogirl.com
  
• Jefferson Chaney, video editor, director and producer
  
• Mark Day, comedian and video creator
  
• Kevin Nalty, viral videologist and founder of Will Video for Food
  
• Zack Scott, video creator and entertainer
  
• Matt Wyatt, Invisible Engine Films
  

That's a pretty impressive roundup of videographers, producers, publishers, and entertainers who've made names for themselves on YouTube, Revver, Metacafe and other popular video-sharing sites. It'll be interesting to see what develops.

The Rise of the Machines Rises Again

Zimmerman's Pick-n-Click might have met its Bride of Frankenstein crushworthy counterpoint in the debut of Blip.TV's DIY ad-making service. The service is designed to help Web content makers make promos for their content and is being tested by Make magazine.

Spamvertising

A big ol' boo and hiss is sent out to Skycontrol, an "international magazine" of aviation and aerospace news.

I recently received an email from them, and because I've never signed up to receive anything from them -- and don't want to -- I followed the instructions at the bottom of the email to unsubscribe from whatever list they had me on. This is what I got in response:

This mailing list is currently not accepting unsubscriptions.

Huh? Isn't that... illegal? I've contacted the company directly to request removal. We'll see what they say in response.

Rest in Posts

The AdJab team is calling it quits. Coverage of the ad industry will continue in TV Squad.

I've appreciated your work, folks. May this change bring only the best and brightest to all involved.

Boston Bombshell

A marketing stunt pulled off by the Cartoon Network and New York-based marketing company Interference Inc. went haywire this week when almost 40 blinking electronic signs promoting the cartoon Aqua Teen Hunger Force were mistaken for bombs.

The signs, slightly reminiscent of and perhaps inspired by the Space Invaders tile graffiti, raised quite a ruckus. Law enforcement agencies closed down highways, bridges, and part of the Charles River. Two men were jailed and later released in connection with the stunt, which was replicated in nine other cities to no hubbub.

Community leaders in Beantown showed little sense of humor in response to the campaign. My favorite remark was made by Congressman Ed Markey, quoted in a MediaDailyNews article: "Scaring an entire region, tying up the T and major roadways, and forcing first responders to spend 12 hours chasing down trinkets instead of terrorists is marketing run amok. ... Whoever thought this up needs to find another job."

Personally, I think the use of electronics -- and the urban installation approach -- is intriguing. But it seems the stunt backfired. If the campaign was intended to inspire word of mouth marketing, it seems limited to bad mouthing -- even if the too-proper Bostonians overreacted.

(On another note, does Frylock look like Jim Mahfood or what?)

Subliminal Messiahs

I'm watching the 1980 movie Agency tonight. Directed by George Kaczender and based on the 1974 novel by Paul Gottlieb, the movie focuses on a series of intrigues at an advertising agency.

Lee Majors plays the firm's creative director, who begins to get suspicious when the staff of the agency -- recently acquired by a man with no advertising experience (played by Robert Mitchum) -- begins to agressively turn over. What finally persuades him that something is awry is the mysterious suicide of a colleague, who'd been acting increasingly paranoid.

I won't give away too much of the plot, but in the end, the movie is about the insidious insertion of subliminal messages in advertisements. There are some quite comic moments, including an opening sequence of a surreal goth-meets-hippie dance number staged for an underarm deodorant featuring a breathy musical chorus of "No sweat," a scene in which Majors's character points out that a print ad for Scotch includes a subliminal death mask in the ice cubes, and the scene in which Majors's character sees the real ad behind the ads.

The print of the DVD, issued by a division of PMC Corp., isn't that great. There are some momentary glitches in the very beginning, and the audio is marred by some amount of hiss and overly boomy voices.

Regardless, if you're at all interested in advertising, it might be a movie worth watching.