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Kudos - this is creative !

“Great idea for Fissler pans. When you buy a piece of meat at the grocery store it will be wrapped in piece of paper with the pan on it.”

Via >  www.frederiksamuel.com/

Months ago when the Aedeas Group (The parent company to Aap!Global) was formed we read an article about the Million Dollar Homepage on the BBC News site.

The PR was effective, and within hours we decided to support young Alex Tew’s novel online advertising service to help him fund his college education.

We contributed with purchasing 200 dollars of purchasing space. You can see our mini advertisement above (see the three boxes of the Aedeas Group next to the Donut).

And while we thought it was a good idea, possibly a satire and even a scam, never did we expect that Tew would have sold out his platform and exit with a total of $1,037,100 in ad sales in less than a few months.

Buyer’s Remorse?

None at all – the gimmick has paid off greatly for most advertisers. The site still receives around 500,000 unique hits a day. How much traffic have we received? – Probably less than 200 clicks per month, but for advertisers world wide with cash to burn, buying 10,000 dollars worth of space on the board possibly could translate into some significant click through.

So Why Did We Support His Idea?

Yes, clearly the system is worse than any other media – it has zero targeting, a crowded framework, a lack of cohesive design and possibly discredits clients and more.
But because we thought it was a fun idea that challenged some of the foundations of online advertising and revealed some of the potential buy patterns of online advertisers we decided to support the project.

We weren’t alone - From a Wall Street Journal article on the site we find>

“While there’s also no way of knowing for sure whether Mr. Tew is the first entrepreneur to sell pixels, the idea was new enough that it felt that way to onlookers.

“I was like, ‘What’s this?’ ” says Daniel Khesin, vice president of marketing at DS Laboratories Inc., a skin-care company in Lake Success, N.Y. After examining Mr. Tew’s site, he says: “There was nothing inherently special about the page, but it was very obvious to us that at the very least, buying some pixels would be a good idea for the sheer number of visitors he was getting.”

DS Laboratories purchased 800 pixels. Almost overnight, he says, traffic surged at the company’s Web site by twentyfold, and all of the increase came from milliondollarhomepage.com. More impressive, he says, sales by Internet companies that DS Laboratories’ site links to jumped almost 50% within a week of the ad going up.

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This is the definition of “six-figure, top-tier, dazzlingly brilliant creative.”

http://84.40.3.164/

 I enjoyed this response and replying to it, so I wanted to put it in a more prolific location than hidden under comments.

“So why don’t I feel bad about what we do? Because we’re in the business of deploying new canvases upon which the great minds of advertising will actualize visions and concepts so cool, you’re not even going to care it’s an ad.�

Dunno if I totally agree…any half-hour of broadcast TV will confirm that there’s a lot more dreck than there are cool visions.

This whole business is corporate “fluffing� more than anything, is it not? In the end, the client/pornstar may look good, but I feel I need a bath.

“Traditional advertising spaces have become a mass market commodity, and consequently, their effectiveness has waned and their market value dropped.  With lower expectations and lower investment, there is little pressure to create a great campaign.  End result: we’re inundated with boring, cliché, and sometimes insulting-to-our-intelligence adverts.”

Dating back to the advent of VCRs, and especially now with the growing adoption and integration of DVR technology into set-top satellite and cable boxes, TV spots are watched less and less. 

Who’s going to engage top-tier creative for something that is not going to be seen by half the demographic?

Here’s my theory: DVRs are still a luxury item, owned and used primarily by those with money to burn.  Knowing that this valuable segment has tuned out, advertisers have stopped caring.  They advertise now not out of desire to influence or affect, but rather out of habit.

Result: “dreck”

Let’s remember though the exception to this rule: the Super Bowl.  It’s often said that half the viewers of the Super Bowl tune in not for the game, but the commercials.  Advertisers, knowing this, engage six-figure, top-tier, dazzlingly brilliant creative.

Result: “cool visions”

Effort goes where it is going to have the most effect.

As I sit here and ponder my response to the likening of our business to the set of a porn shoot, and with my musings on the decline of television advertising fresh in my mind, I can think of but one thing:

Guys Gone Wild.

I just saw a TV spot for this the other week, and I scoffed out loud.

I mean, first of all, I cannot believe they are able to advertise this the way they do on television.  Sure it’s only on past midnight, but it’s on relatively mainstream channels.  It has been the case where I am watching the History Channel, a somber documentary on the ongoing suffering of reservation-dwelling Native Americans, and suddenly a Carribean drum beat comes on and a sleazy voice demands “DO YOU WANT TO SEE HOT TEEN GUYS AT THEIR MOST UNINHIBITED”. 

I’m all for sex, drugs, and violence on TV, and some of my best friends are homosexual, but the way this message was delivered, I got a heaping case of the heebie jeebies.

Secondly, I cannot believe the success of Girls Gone Wild.  I honestly believe it may be the most successful DVD series in the history of mankind.  It’s so successful that the creator started with a couple bucks in his pocket and a HandiCam, and now he is a billionaire.  It’s so successful that Snoop Dogg guest starred.  It’s so successful that there is now Guys Gone Wild.

I can’t tell you how much I fear who/what is next to have Gone Wild.

Now that the filibuster segment of this posting is over, I will respond the allegation that we are but corporate “fluffers”, or maybe “shills.”

So here’s the deal: Benjamin Franklin, a founding father of this great country that we call the home of the ____ Gone Wild series, in 1789 famously said, “In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes.”  That may have been true of the world in 1789, but we live in the world of 2006.  The world of 2006 is one of intense, global competition; a world of more consumer choice than any other era of human history has ever fathomed.  There’s a new certainty: advertising.  And it’s only going to get more ubiquitous and more frequent as advertising markets expand to accommodate the influx of competition from emerging economic powerhouses like China and India.

Like it or not, advertising is here not just to stay, but to grow.  Advertising is an integral cog of the complex system that is capitalism, and its growth is a reflection of the adoption of capitalism in formerly less-than-capitalistic nations.  And aside from Guys Gone Wild, it’s really not a bad thing.

Philosophically speaking, I think you can affect change in the world through two divergent approaches.  You can be a martyr for a doomed case and hopefully be looked back on as inspiration, as opposed to roadkill, or you can stay on the winning side and affect change.

Nobody’s going to eliminate advertising from our daily life, nobody’s even going to reduce it.  Sure, by staying on the side that is putting advertising out on the street we are inevitably “fluffingâ€? by helping companies put their best foot forward.  That concept doesn’t make me feel dirty in the least; I mean we’re all out there looking, acting, and making ourselves out to be better than we really are.  Why shouldn’t companies do the same?  But by being a part of this process, I feel we are in prime position to improve the situation for consumers at large: by only involving ourselves in advertising concepts that are novel and innovative, we’re going to make it a whole lot more enjoyable.

Check your TiVo for Aap! Gone Wild.

Well I could have imagined this to be true in New Zealand where the ratio of sheep to humans is something like 20:1, but apparently in Holland, Sheep are wearing little jackets with advertising.

Take a look.

And while the impression rate will probably be low the campaigns lends itself tremendously well to viral and public relations campaigns, plus the connotations of warm sheep wearing jackets suggest comfort at Hotels.nl

Have clues on which company did this? Contact us. We’re interested in learning more.

Or Feel ashamed? Want to Fight Back?

Try Contacting

http://www.peta-online.org/

Or try Aap!Rails or metroVISTA – safer – more humane and even more effective alternatives.