Putting paid to corruption

Corruption is everywhere to a greater or lesser degree. Unfortunately in India, corruption is pervasive and affects the poorest people the hardest. 5th Pillar, an Indian NGO, has come up with a unique way to protest corruption and give people a voice. It's called the zero rupee note, and is, in essence, a transferable protest sign. Much like Iranian dissidents defacing their country's currency to protest the dictator, this note allows for a widespread and distributed protest without having to openly demonstrate.

It's a very interesting way to promote something, and a great way to give a voice to people who deserve one.

KFC sues self over advertising, creates black hole in space time continuum

Crispy or grilled? That is the question.

One part of KFC, the KFC National Council and Advertising Cooperative is suing another part of KFC, the YUM! Brands Kentucky Fried Chicken unit over the promotion of grilled over crispy chicken. Franchisees see the advertising as biased towards grilled chicken and are fearful over slumping sales due to consumer perception of crispy chicken being unhealthy.

The National Council and Advertising Cooperative who designs the marketing programs for the most popular chicken restaurant on the planet contends that Roger Eaton the president and chief concept officer for KFC is promoting grilled chicken over the more well known crispy offering.

So, the whole things comes down to who gets to call the marketing shots, but in the end, it's all about the chicken. Delicious crispy grilled deep fried breaded broiled flame kissed sauteed seared roasted barbequed chicken. Of course that's assuming that KFC is still in the chicken biz and isn't going to evolve into a never-ending loop of litigation.

Mind you KFC has had some pretty weird things associated with it in the past so them playing chicken about the chicken isn't that far fetched.

The pen. The sword. Who wins?

If you can't speak your mind, you aren't free. It's a universal right that extends to people, groups, countries, corporations and everything in between. As the old saying goes, I may disagree with what you're saying, but I'll defend your right to say it. Let's all take a moment to enjoy that freedom. It's freedom to advertise and freedom to disagree with that advertising. It's freedom to start up a site that slams WalMart or a bank, and it's freedom to tell the government that their ads aren't too convincing.

Now, for your viewing pleasure and as a reminder that not everyone enjoys freedoms that we exercise every day, here is a gallery of posters protesting the suppression of speech and the denial of that universal right.

Tax this to pretty up that.

Toronto city council is debating a new tax on billboards this week. Links are here and here. The idea is to implement a tax on billboards in the city and use the revenue to facilitate a cleanup and beautification of the city. And anyone who's been outside lately knows we need a cleanup here.

One side of the fence sees billboards as urban blight and visual pollution. The other sees them as a sign of business-friendly city government.

Billboards should be taxed, but so should all the other pseudo-advertising that clutters up the great outdoors. From those plastic signs for roofers to the posters that seem to overlap one another in a space of minutes. If a budget can afford a billboard, a poster or the printing of thousands of plastic signs, it can afford to pay a tax to use public space. If it doesn't pay a tax to use public space, then why should it be allowed to remain? This isn't a freedom of speech issue, it's not an example of government being unfriendly to business. It's about public space and who gets to use it.

Take peoples money...

then scam them.

Great way to foster that consumer relationship.

From The Huffington Post.

Here's what's happening. Well known e-commerce companies have been sending post transaction marketing offers to consumers immediately after something is purchased. Consumers are offered cash back if they simply click a confirmation button. When they do, their credit card information is automatically passed on to a marketing company that signs them up for a credit card subscription for a package of useless services. The rebate is rarely paid. The U.S. Senate is not impressed.

Sounds dodgy doesn't it? Really unethical. The kind of thing only a really sleazy company would do, not a well known one like say...1800Flowers.com, Fandango, FTD, Orbitz, Priceline, Shutterfly, Buy.com, Barnes & Noble, Expedia, as well as many more.

It's kind of like the death of a thousand cuts. If so many well regarded and well known companies are out there finding underhanded ways to score a few more pennies from their customers, customers are going to migrate back to personal shopping where you see the person you're handing money to and have more control over your own data.

Adding fuel to the fire.

It's a given that many images used in marketing materials are photoshopped. Usually they're done to enhance or otherwise improve the objects in the image. Sometimes they don't.

The most recent disaster to hit the internets is Ralph Lauren, a photoshopped image that is on the grotesque side, and as an added bonus, threats of legal action combined with takedown notices against two sites that have reproduced and commented on the image.

So, instead of admitting that it was a mistake, performing a small mea culpa and putting the whole thing to rest, they've decided to light a big fire and invite everyone over.

Brilliant.

I won't bother commenting on the use of photoshop to promote unhealthy body-image stereotypes or the like, nope, not me.

Buy our car. Or else.

Toyota has opened up an entirely new avenue of effective communication with their target demographic.

Sheer terror.

In a misguided and ill-advised effort to promote the Matrix model, Saatchi & Saatchi decided to embark on a campaign that was meant to mimic Punk'd in style and tone.

It didn't.

Instead it mimicked a lawsuit, filed by a consumer and recipient of some target marketing by Toyota that failed to generate the sought-after emotional response. In her attorney's words "She slept with a machete next to her bed and she slept with mace. She could barely sleep or eat normally."

Well done. Any publicity is good publicity right?

It's the outdoor equivalent of telemarketing.

Need your roof done? How about a mover, or a divorce, or both? Maybe you need some posters put up everywhere, and I do mean everywhere. Stop signs, mailboxes, parking meters, hoarding, light poles, newspaper boxes, sidewalks, phone booths, walls, doors, cats, cars, those weird boxes that control stoplights, pretty much anything that stays still long enough to get something slapped on it.

Toronto is part of a democracy, and democracies have things like freedom of speech, and in a democracy people, and corporate entities have rights. But don't you think that postering and stickering have gotten a tad out of hand? It's not guerilla, it's not unique, it's not new. It's ugly, it's a waste of resources and it's as visually irritating as a mistimed strobe light.

Everyone has a right to advertise. They don't have a right to blight the landscape just to make a buck. This isn't keeping thousands employed, it's not serving the public good and it makes the city look like it doesn't really care who does what on public property.

Here's an interesting article about the law in Toronto and how it's not enforced. And here is The Advertising Hall of Shame.

"What if?" package design

What if marijuana were legal? What if you could pick up a dozen joints, pre-rolled, at the corner store. It might happen, recent trending is showing an increased acceptance of marijuana and projections for tax revenues show it paying off a whole lot of deficits.

But more importantly, how would it be packaged?

That's the question print magazine asked in their article "Building a Better Baggie"

Lying? From a PR person? I don't believe it.

Amazing what some people will do to convince conusmers to buy their product. And coming on the heels of a study that shows people trust online reviews more than most other kinds, it begs the question, who do you trust?

From the Wall Street Journal:

By Mary Pilon

Russ Taylor was looking for a very good espresso machine.

So the Atlanta lawyer did what many of us would–he surfed to Amazon.com and began trolling user reviews for high-end espresso makers.

On the DeLonghi Perfecta Digital Super-Automatic Espresso Machine, an $1,800 metallic blue machine with a built-in burr grinder and five coffee-strength settings, he saw that user “T. Carpenter,” a self-described “espresso addict,” raved about the product. Then he saw that the same user had posted an ecstatic writeup for another, less-expensive DeLonghi model. Could it be that the espresso addict had two high-end machines?

As he chronicled on his blog, he clicked on the Amazon reviewer’s profile. (It has since been taken down by Amazon.) Taylor found that “T. Carpenter” was indeed a gadget aficionado, having written 12 reviews. All for DeLonghi products, and all raves rated with 5 stars.

He did a Google search and found that a Tara Carpenter was employed as a communications manager with the company. (Screenshots are on his blog.) He says he notified DeLonghi customer service and received a cursory email with no response to his specific questions regarding the reviews. So he contacted us.

We called DeLonghi, where a representative confirmed that Tara Carpenter is employed by DeLonghi and did write the reviews. The company issued the following response:

The Amazon.com guidelines “prohibit positive reviews for products in which the author has a financial investment in,” and for that reason only, the reviews were removed from the Amazon website. While T. Carpenter did not personally gain any financial stake in the process, we have since opted to respond to on line reviews in a more official capacity using the vendor response platform provided by Amazon to clarify product use and care issues, or address specific compliments or suggestions by the consumer community.

We find no false statements in any of the reviews posted by T. Carpenter. Our employees are passionate about the products we make and sell and this is a quality we are quite proud of in all our associates.

Carpenter will continue to be employed at DeLonghi.

Amazon user reviews are a powerful tool for shoppers. And companies know it. (Belkin experienced a similar snafu for faking positive reviews.) The thought that some would masquerade as objective users is upsetting to Taylor and poses a problem for Amazon, which hosts millions of user reviews and strives to keep them all legit.

Amazon guidelines for reviews state that a customer needs to have made a purchase on the site. They’re filtered for naughty things and allow readers to flag sketchy listings, which are then reviewed and removed, if necessary. Ratings themselves are also graded for how helpful they were, creating an incentive for constructive feedback.

They also prohibit “the use of the Service for commercial purposes such as advertising, promotion, or solicitation” and “the impersonation of any person or entity or forging of any e-mail communication or any part of a message.”

Amazon has to police a huge and exponentially growing space. So it’s up to shoppers to take any star rating or comment with a grain of salt. The real-life equivalent would be questioning someone standing outside a store yelling “shop here!”

“I think the majority of reviews are fantastic reviews,” Russell Dicker, Amazon’s senior manager of community content says.

Dicker declined to comment on specifics of how Amazon spots phony listings for security reasons. (The U.S. government isn’t going to tell us all the things that make a dollar bill special, either.) “Making reviews helpful and making them a pristine source of consumer opinion is incredibly important to us,” he says.

And as for Taylor and his espresso machine hunt?

“I’m still looking around,” he says.

Truth, justice and marketing budgets

Here's an article from Consumer Reports about paid blogging and what the U.S. Federal Trade Commission is going to do about it. Short story, they're against paid blogging that masquerades as unsolicited commentary. So fawning reviews, viral campaigns and the like are going to have to jump through some pretty big hurdles in order to get away with it.

From ConsumerReports.org

"Is that blogger review really a paid ad? The FTC wants you to know.

The web was abuzz in April with scare talk about the Federal Trade Commission’s plans to put “bloggers in handcuffs,” “turn them into criminals,” and muzzle bloggers’ free speech rights.

What evil plan is afoot? The FTC is updating its “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising,” which were last refreshed in 1980. What this has to do with bloggers is a new form of advertising, called word-of-mouth marketing, in which advertisers pay your favorite bloggers to “review” their products. The bloggers get paid, for example, with free product samples; gift certificates for JCPenney shopping sprees; cash payments; or the loan of a $30,000 Ford Flex for a year.

The bloggers are supposed to write whatever they want about the product—pro or con—but the payments put into question whether they would be inclined to seriously bite the hand of a “friend” lending a car or giving other valuable goodies or cash. (Consumer Reports buys and pays for the products it tests, and doesn’t accept free samples.)

The FTC aims to more explicitly bring advertisers who hawk their wares through seemingly unbiased bloggers under their truth-in-advertising guidelines, which would mandate the same thing required of traditional advertising: The honest opinions or experiences of the blogger/endorser, no false or unsubstantiated statements, and disclosure—by the blogger—that he or she is being paid.

In other words, an advertiser who greases the palms of bloggers to fabricate “spontaneous” Internet buzz for his product or service can’t pretend that he’s not advertising. Blogs that promote products “are consumer endorsements. To the extent they’re paid for, they come under jurisdiction of FTC,” Richard Cleland, assistant director of the FTC’s Division of Advertising Practices told me in a recent interview.

Consumers easily recognize a regular print, broadcast, or Internet ad for what it is—and know to be appropriately skeptical. But a sponsored blog post that doesn’t look like an advertisement at all can catch consumers off-guard. No wonder advertisers covet and court the endorsement of bloggers, and studies show that bloggers influence purchase decisions.

Under the proposed guidelines, bloggers who turn their supposedly independent daily musings into a paid commercial—like advertisers themselves— would have no special license to deceive just because they’re using the Internet."

Like the fist of an angry god

That's what it's going to feel like when you're sued by Microsoft. They're essentially a defacto government with an incredible array of resources available to them, like very predatory lawyers.

The crux of the issue for 3 doomed souls in the U.S. is 'click fraud' - manipulating online ads to generate fraudulent revenue. Apparently one in every seven clicks isn't legit and Microsoft has decided that an example needs to be made.

Personally I'd rather have the U.S. government after me than Microsoft.

Advertising and controversy - duh.

Calvin Klein ads are sometimes considered akin to late night movies. Racy, risque and suggestive. And of course every time they put one up on a billboard or into a magazine it generates a lot of press.

What's that saying? Any publicity is good publicity? Yeah, that's the one. And guess what? Calvin Klein listened, took it to heart and got a whole lot of free press. Again.

The fact of the matter is they want the controversy, they want the reaction, they want the commentary.

Anyone remember Brooke Shields?

Pssst. Want to be a model?

The internet. Home to..well pretty much everything. Including a whole bevy of unscrupulous people. In some cases marketing people. The same people who might 'repurpose' your holiday snaps into something much more sinister...

Close your eyes, and keep them closed for the next year or so.

A Modest Proposal: Three-Strikes for Print

By Ed Felten - May 13th, 2009

Yesterday the French parliament adopted a proposal to create a "three-strikes" system that would kick people off the Internet if they are accused of copyright infringement three times.

This is such a good idea that it should be applied to other media as well. Here is my modest proposal to extend three-strikes to the medium of print, that is, to words on paper.

My proposed system is simplicity itself. The government sets up a registry of accused infringers. Anybody can send a complaint to the registry, asserting that someone is infringing their copyright in the print medium. If the government registry receives three complaints about a person, that person is banned for a year from using print.

As in the Internet case, the ban applies to both reading and writing, and to all uses of print, including informal ones. In short, a banned person may not write or read anything for a year.

A few naysayers may argue that print bans might be hard to enforce, and that banning communication based on mere accusations of wrongdoing raises some minor issues of due process and free speech. But if those issues don't trouble us in the Internet setting, why should they trouble us here?

Yes, if banned from using print, some students will be unable to do their school work, some adults will face minor inconvenience in their daily lives, and a few troublemakers will not be allowed to participate in -- or even listen to -- political debate. Maybe they'll think more carefully the next time, before allowing themselves to be accused of copyright infringement.

In short, a three-strikes system is just as good an idea for print as it is for the Internet. Which country will be the first to adopt it?

Once we have adopted three-strikes for print, we can move on to other media. Next on the list: three-strikes systems for sound waves, and light waves. These media are too important to leave unprotected.

Just do it yourself

"Last Saturday, ads-in-public-spaces activist Jordan Seiler spearheaded NYSAT, or New York Street Advertising Takeover, where teams of artists, videographers and activists replaced 120 unregistered billboard advertisements throughout the city with original art installations.

Here's a little background from cronicasbarbaras.com about the targeted billboards:

As the main organizer explained to the artists who choose to get involved, the agency that owns the 'attacked' billboards operates on an illegal basis. "NPA outdoor operates over 500 street level billboards in NYC ranging in size from about 4'x4' to 50'x12'. All of these advertising structures are illegal. I found this out by talking to the NYC Department of Buildings which has no permits for the NPA outdoor structures but has its hands full dealing with the rampant illegal billboard situation. I have also spoken directly with NPA outdoor employees who have told me that the NYPD will jail them from time to time at which point NPA lawyers bail them out and they are compensated 500 dollars for the nuisance of spending the night in jail".

There's a lot of coverage of the event available online, as well as pics and videos of the various installations. Here are a few good places to check out the results of the event. Some of the art is quite nice."

Well, you mess with the bull, you get the horns. And art. Delicious art.

Social Media and Marketing legalities

Marketing in social media is a very new frontier for everyone - the rules are still fluid about rights, content and use. But what happens when someone takes the content that was provided under one guise and repurposes it to do something else?

Here's some food for thought:

"Former dating columnist Julia Allison, an Internet microcelebrity now famous for not being particularly famous, has finally gone too far in her attempt to acquire Facebook fans. She may even have broken the law.

The ruckus has been stirred up by a sudden rise in the number of people who list themselves as fans of "Julia Allison" on Facebook. Allison has confessed to what happened: After Allison had a meeting with Randi Zuckerberg, the sister of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg who is now actively promoting the site's celebrity pages, Facebook listed Allison's page on a list of suggested pages for new users.

That accounted for most of the jump. But Allison also admitted that she had Facebook "convert" 2,500 people who had requested her friendship on Facebook into fans. That's where she got herself in trouble.

Allison declared herself a "brilliant businesswoman" after her egoblogging startup, NonSociety, cleared five figures last year. She hopes to make more by accumulating a fan base and then shamelessly marketing products to them. In theory, she ought to be familiar with the strict laws around endorsements.

New York, California, and a number of other states have strict laws regulating what's called "commercial appropriation" — simply put, the right to control whether one's name and likeness is used in an advertisement to give the appearance of an endorsement.

Legal pundits have long been alarmed by the way Facebook skirts these rules. When users sign up to be fans of a product or celebrity on the site, the privacy argument goes, they didn't necessarily consent to broadcast that fact to all their friends in a way that's similar to an advertisement. Daniel Solove, a law professor has called this feature of Facebook a "privacy debacle" and argued that simply expressing appreciation for a product or person wasn't the same as signing up to appear in ads. But at least this involves users who willingly signed up to be fans. What of people who found themselves yoked into fandom without giving any kind of consent at all?

That's what happened to 2,500 users who aimed to be friends with Allison, but instead ended up in ads for her described as "fans." Facebook can't fall back on its old defense that they volunteered for the endorsement. They could well file a class-action lawsuit against Allison and Facebook. Nothing in Facebook's terms of service seems to cover such a conversion, which Allison now admits Facebook did as a favor for her.

There may be no separation in Allison's mind between friendship and a commercial relationship, no line between the self and the product. But there is a distinction in the law.

The lesson here: Sometimes first judgments are right. And sometimes guilt can be a dangerous thing."

Thanks for the promotional goodies, but can you get me a lawyer?

Whoopsie.

"Electronic Arts today contacted game writers around the country asking them to return the brass knuckles they were sent as part of a promotion for Godfather II.

The representatives said that the company wanted to make sure that the brass knuckles were "properly disposed of. Contacted by email Friday, an Electronic Arts spokesperson verified that the company is asking that all of the brass knuckles shipped out be returned.

Brass knuckles or metallic knuckles are illegal in many of the states that they were shipped to. They're also illegal in California, where EA is based. In Colorado, possessing an illegal weapon is a class 1 misdemeanor, according to a Denver police spokeswoman. Illegal weapons are defined as a blackjack, gas gun, metallic knuckles, gravity knife, or switchblade knife."

You're doing it wrong.

Here's a link to an interesting summary of the officially sanctioned study of anti-marijuana advertising in the U.S. It was commissioned by the 'Drug Czar' under the Bush administration.

What I find most interesting is that the millions of dollars being thrown at it are not really showing a measurable effect. If this were any other campaign, don't you think you'd want to re-think the entire thing?

Ooops! My bad.

When you're planning on doing some doorstep drops to promote something, it's always a really super-wise idea to ensure that whatever you've chosen to actually drop isn't something that generates alarm in the recipient. Y'know, like white powder in an envelope or green pills left anonymously on doorsteps. That kind of thing tends to do the exact opposite of what you wanted it too and you wind up looking like a bit of an idiot.

Actually, like a huge idiot...