I'm Chilling Chilling Back Back in Cali Cali

I'm at ad:tech all week, trying to stay awake at the sessions and partying well in the evenings. Met the guy who "invented" Gevalia, courtesy of John Engler. He lavishes free drinks on the downtrodden and kisses on both cheeks. It's all very Benevolent King of the World.

Follow the goings on at the ad:tech Blog. This year is kind of exceptional because our writers include some seriously young, opinionated and media-savvy people. They scald everything they touch -- and the victims deserve it, I'd say.

How Many Ads Can Talk You into Eating Chocolate Plastic?

In the press room at ad:tech I met a guy called Frank Nein of OrionsWave, who observed the ad and marketing sectors are falling into turmoil -- spinning uncontrollably into hell, sifting through the din in search of equilibrium in a world gone self-publish and multi-platform.

And I can't stop thinking about Chris Franklin of Big Sky Editorial, who laughed at the idea of a viral ad. "All ads are viral!" he'd said. The point he made was that in order for an ad to succeed, it should be watchable again and again.

How many of our frenetic new manifestos are ideas that have always been there, or at least should have been?

With that, and as a kind of tribute to the future, I give you the Tootsie Roll ad. I couldn't count on my fingers and toes how often in childhood I saw this spot.

What's awesome about it is, most everyone I've met who's roughly my age still knows all the words to the song. We enjoyed watching it then; a lot of us still do.

And in our lifetimes, we ate a hell of a lot of Tootsie Rolls.

Multi-Platform Advertising: An Out-of-Body Experience?

First ad:tech session of the week: Media & Entertainment: Programming, Distribution and Advertising in a Multi-Platform World.

Moderator Ira Rubenstein kicked things off by cutting to the chase. Observing that the "old media model" revolved around scarcity, he asked how panelists make media buying and planning decisions for a show like Heroes when you can watch it on NBC, Hulu and Joost.

What followed were a bunch of really good-sounding quotes if you happen to be a fan of Seth Godin's literary masterpieces: Understand your audience! Follow the good content! What is your consumer looking for?

But then the wind changed. And the boys ran with it!

Drew Reifenberger, Senior VP and GM, Superdeluxe, Turner: "Generally consumers are OK with advertising and accept it as a reality. We should just try a lot of [different ad models]."

He emphasized sponsorship models versus CPM-based models. Good examples - in my opinion - include tasteful product placement, online web dramas (like what Tide did with Crescent Heights, only watchable), and maybe episode-spanning ad buys for feature shows on sites like NBC, ABC or Hulu.

I'm a big online TV watcher, and I don't generally mind repeated ad messages too much if they're good. (Strangely, Australia's tourism department does this quite well.)

What won me was when Ted McConnell, director of interactive relations for P&G, remarked, "Brand equity is expensive to build, and it builds over time. It's sacrosanct."

Sacrosanct. For six seconds, I believed again. But he went on!

"The content of your message reflects on your equity. It gets harder every day as content gets slung around -- who knows where it's going to land? That's an issue."

No, that's a takeaway if I ever heard one.

In every panel there's always one super-quotable person. In this case, that person was McConnell.

McConnell went on to say channels have different levels of intimacy. If you want to succeed in the digital era, you have to learn to balance the intrusiveness of your message against the intimacy of the channel.

He elaborated by observing you can say what you want in an outdoor ad without hurting a user's experience of "outside" (unless you live in Sao Paolo), but you oughtn't ruin a private dinner party by knocking on the host's door and trying to sell Tupperware.

A good illustration always wins the day.

Not to say McConnell was the only star. EVP and CDO Curt Hecht of GM Planworks/Starcom Mediavest Group had his moments in the sun, too.

"Don't get fooled by shiny, blinky things!" he admonished. "They're just tactics looking for a home that are not really being driven by the consumer at the end of the day."

But to save us all from the slippery slope of fundamentalism, he added, "It's really easy to get excited by half the stuff that comes across my desk in a given day."

How do you know when the hype train is going to conceive a super star? At ad:tech in particular, you hear a lot of noise. (Just ask Craig Peters.) But hey, you have to sympathize with the "shiny blinky things" vendors. It's tough to get even a winning product to a catalystic point.

McConnell sent us home happy with a little philosophy (always a great closer): "In a world of infinite niches, I think there's going to have to be something that's more structural that's introduced. One example of that is widgets. What's a widget, really?"

I held my breath. Was he going rhetorical on our asses? No. As we've learned to expect from our P&G homie, he kept right on going.

"[A widget's] just a container."

And before we could go flying into speculation, he rapidly illustrated his point with a FedEx comparison: FedEx has done an excellent job of taking the emphasis off the interior and placing it on the container itself.

Sagacious.

But here's to hoping that whatever we use to stock our widgets, Facebook apps or direct mailing envelopes are just as compelling as the shiny blinky brands on the outside.

Why Take Sides When You Can Roll with the Punches?

Overheard on the ad:tech NY press room floor:

"The whole point is to remain agnostic."

Digital advertising and spirituality: two sides of the same coin?

Rehashing the Blur: ad:tech's Monday Party Scene

ad:tech NY is packed. Is every New Yorker in advertising?

I'm not going into huge detail about last night's shenanigans since Steve already bared our souls (curse you, AIM!). This is more like a moody play-by-play of stuff worth noting.

For reasons not worth discussing, listening to Like a Prayer always puts me in a state of religious ecstasy and self-loathing. These aren't feelings you want to have over breakfast while hung over. Which leads to the question: who buys the Muzak for hotel dining halls?

Flash back to Monday evening, the reason for said hangover. As Audrey said in Breakfast at Tiffany's, "Quelle night!"

Last night I checked in at the Paramount. My room is matchstick-size and features a gigantic tapestry of a man sitting over my bed. I'm scared of it. Paramount is otherwise cool if you don't mind the Eastern European Alice in Wonderland aesthetic which, when you're slightly tipsy, is kind of nice.

First stop of the night: Soho House for the Old Timer's party, where I found a couple of members of our OG ad:tech party crew: Adrants co-editor Steve Hall, and John Engler.

I felt disoriented by the musical selection (The Train by Quad City DJs?) and decor -- wallpaper with bookshelves printed on it. (Titles included Stupid White Men, a Roget's Thesaurus, and a book about orchids.)

While snapping shots of the wallpaper I met Peter Shankman of Geek Factory. We shared complementary views about vice, ad people that double as porn stars, and pogs (the best marketing platform that never happened), then debated what books were worthy of converting into wallpaper. He chose The Art of War. I picked the complete Oxford English Dictionary.

Perceiving the growing sense of lameness in our midst, Steve and John whisked us to the Datran party, where Brian Ambrose and I did a pseudo-twist to Dancing Queen.

Then the crew hit Pascha, where we all lost each other. In my blind quest for the loo, a security guard asked if I was Asian and said we should get married.

Affirmative action in action.

Later another security guard took my arm and asked if I wanted to party with some dudes in a VIP lounge. I said okay and he introduced me to the CEO of a start-up I've never heard of but that is apparently "very forward-thinking," someone said. The CEO had a big bouffant and kept throwing cigarettes and drinks and glasses over his shoulder. I guess that's how you roll in the VIP.

He kissed the back of my hand and said if I wanted to hang out there I should be "very sweet to everyone," then he kissed the serveuse's face. (The VIP lounge had its own bartender.) I said, "Awesome." Later he and I put our arms around each other and sang "We will, we will ROCK YOU" into one another's faces.

A Senior VP of Microsoft was there too, apparently because the up-and-coming startup wanted to recruit him. He was kind of like Patrick Bateman except maybe not as tall, and he appeared to be in the world's worst mood. I avoided him after he failed to laugh at any of my Super Awesome Jokes.

I half-heartedly danced with the serveuse and got to talking with a few media guys who told me the internet is where it's at and mobile is the future: out-of-the-box thinking. I suggested we look further out of the box and try bringing digital video technology to gravestones, which was dismissed as "possible, but not in the next five years."

They did, however, like my idea that people should make nostalgia montages of old ads at clubs and raves, which was validating.

The intellectual parrying lasted until 2 AM, then inhibitions dissolved and we brought back dances from the '80s until 2:30 in the morning.

Nothing fills you with both religious ecstasy and self-loathing like a string of ad parties will. With the exception of Like a Prayer.

YPulse: Closing Up with the Coveted Words of (REAL!!!) Tweens

If you followed my Advertising Week adventure at all, you probably know I hit YPulse on Friday. In the late afternoon, a bunch of kids were corralled onto the stage to give us one last shot at learning their inner-workings before hitting the road.

Like the minds of the demographic it hopes to distill, the one-room YPulse Tween Mashup conference hall is a different world.

Upon entering, you're accosted by Michael Jackson's ABC (this is before Hanson's Mmmbop was spun about 6 different times) -- and with so much pink SWAG just waiting to be snapped up, you feel roughly the same emotional tug that only Lisa Frank's overpriced unicorn-shaped pencil sharpeners could conjure.

With all this going on, the YPulse atmosphere serves to make marketers feel pre-adolescent and out-of-touch, all at the same time.

While waiting for the feature -- a panel consisting of children who seem worlds smaller than I remember being at age 12 -- I hung out with Maura of WeeWorld and a girl named Allison from Fleishman-Hillard.

From what I could gather, FH is a data aggregating firm for youth.

"So what exactly do you guys do?" I asked. "Is it a TRU kind of deal, where you take streams of information and paint pictures of Queen Bees and goths...?"

Allison gave me a look that actually made me feel like a member of the demo we came to see. She has a very expressive face. "No," she replied. "Actually, we make forecasts about upcoming trends."

"Cool," I said. "How do you do that? Like, do you take previous data and..."

Before I could finish, Allison interrupted in a manner most factual. "Our founder just knows things," she said. "He really has a good grasp on what's going on."

"I'm sorry, I don't understand." Seriously. I was confused.

Allison replied, "Well, he's made a lot of predictions that turned out to be true," she explained, broadening her hands for emphasis.

"Oh, he's clairvoyant," I said. After this she seemed to think I was some species of lizard, so she stopped talking to me for the most part, but I hung out near her anyway because that's where all the computer outlets were.

Somehow, it seemed fitting to close up a week-long ad conference orgy with a panel consisting of eight 10-12-year-olds.

Each of the kids gave their names and ages. They started out shy, with personalities that developed once they realized every marketer in the room was falling all over himself to field a question. And not even just for general opinions, either. On actual products. From what I recall, a woman from a major technology company actually asked whether they like the special features on her firm's DVDs.

"I like playing the games," a 10-year-old (who's teaching himself how to CODE!) answered nonchalantly. "But I hate it when you send me to websites. I like doing everything from my remote control."

Most of the panel members already owned a cell phone, though I can't remember having possessed one until I was 14 - and even then I was considered ahead of the curve. Talk about being dated. The kids also said they prefer to IM rather than text their friends, though one girl said the idea of texting was appealing, mainly because she didn't have a mobile phone and all her friends did.

A few young members of the cult of Apple expressed their preference for instant messaging because they could video chat.

The oldest of the group, a 12-year-old girl, kept emphasizing how technology gets boring after awhile, and sometimes she wants to go out and play, or see her friends face to face. Other panel members echoed her view - the 'net could get boring, it helps to get some fresh air. These opinions seemed largely overlooked.

Who plays outside anymore? That was so, like, mid-'80s (remember those branded basketballs that McD's used to give away?).

More importantly, the wee gen-Y reps admitted that when an ad appeals to them, they make the coveted click. Ads with little games are popular, but the most favored of all are ads that don't redirect them to another website. In fact, it's "really annoying" to get sent to a page they don't want to be on. Tell it like it is, baby.

Sometimes, they show an ad to their parents if it features something they really, really want.

This is a tendency that's not new to kids, but is largely overlooked by marketers in the digital era - unless you're Virgin (Parental Enlightenment, anyone?), which pretty much never overlooks any opportunity that involves desperate feats for attention.

In the early '90s, Nickelodeon leveraged kids' willingness to bring parents to ads by giving them examples of how they could actually nag adults into buying them a subscription to Nickelodeon Magazine. I wish I could find the example I remember. In any case, here's a classic in which kiddies are encouraged to tell their parents about some weird experiment involving herring, and give their parents the phone number for the Nick mag.

"Just give them the number, heh-heh." Even while awash in pleasant nostalgia like this, that guy still creeps me out.

Never underestimate the power of "gimme."

Advertising Week: An Awkward Prologue

After a 4:00 AM dash through the dark, followed by a five-hour bus ride, followed by an eight-block trek with a Streetwise Manhattan map, I've crossed the threshold of the Paley Center and made it to the Promised Land: Advertising Week 2007 in NYC.

Paley's squeak-shined glass windows have become giant YouTube stations. Beyond the lobby, thoughts about marketing by great men and civilians line the walls. The whole set-up fills my eyes with De Beers quality tears. (This may be less of an emotional reaction than exhaustion resulting from insomnia, and the fact that I haven't eaten.)

Apparently members of the press were only able to pick up their passes yesterday morning. This is disappointing. I call Blake the press pass guy. Blake is warm, pleasant and, in fact, female. "I'll bring you your pass around 1:00," she says.

Bummer. It's 10:00 AM, my first session's at 2:30, and I've still got a gigantic duffel bag with me. In a sea of suits I am the one jean jacket. And I'm sweaty and gross, and did I mention I've got a gigantic duffel bag with me?

I look, quite frankly, like an asshole. It's like a scene from Pretty Woman but 10 times worse.

An AdWeek director takes notice of me - possibly to throw me out - but goes the motions of asking who I'm with. I tell her the whole sad story, then I decide to head to my hotel until my press pass arrives.

"That doesn't make any sense," she says. And in a fit of unexpected kindness (or worship - or pity?) she adds, "Have a seat, I'll find you a workstation where you can set up and put down your belongings."

I take a seat beside one of the AdWeek volunteers, who has been charged with guarding the door and handing out programs. He's a happy-enough-looking dude. I turn to him, introduce myself and say, "So, you're volunteering for AdWeek?"

Hesitation. "I am here to ensure your every need is met," he says mechanically. His eyes dart around furtively. He presses the tips of his fingers together. "I'm new," he adds slowly.

"Um, awesome," I say. "So are you with AdWeek or are you doing this for school or...?"

"I've heard there are volunteer opportunities," he steamrolls loudly. "I don't know about unpaid ones. I don't know anything about that."

"Cool." I pause to work out where in fuck-all I went wrong. Are we even speaking English? "So what's it been like so far, are you enjoying--"

"Look." This is the first hard statement he's made since we shook hands. "If you're going to do a story on me, I'd appreciate if you tell me."

"I'm sorry...?" I'm appalled, genuinely hurt and confused, but he cannot admire his handiwork because he's already turned away. "Sir, I don't know what I did to make you feel like..."

He starts to whistle. He won't look at me.

We've reverted back to the sandbox. With that, I decide I'm going to do a story on him. This is that.

"Do you mind if I plug in my computer?" I say to no one in particular.

"I'll have to ask my manager," he says icily. The manager is a woman named Erin, who has been talking with the AdWeek director about where to station me.

"Sure, do what you want," Erin says, waving her hand in my direction.

I open my laptop and start screwing around on the 'net. The spazzed volunteer keeps looking for excuses to walk behind me and glance hard at what I'm doing while appearing nonchalant.

Later the AdWeek director returns and invites me into the Darfur session at noon.

"It really doesn't make sense for you to go back to your hotel and come here again anyway," she says with a warm smile. I love her. I would pledge my allegiance to her.

I ask her if she's sure, and she says everything will be fine.

Saving Darfur. SCORE!

That's how I currently find myself sitting in a large theatre below the camera guy (Richie; he likes photography), watching pictures of George Clooney and hungry-looking children dart by on a gigantic projector, at the very beginning of the Saving Darfur session.

I'll tell you how it goes.

Hero

I could have used him this weekend. O_O

Anyway, Ruby Conference photos here. They don't convey much beyond my inability to hold a camera still, but at least now you have proof that my ass was indeed warming a seat at the Tech Museum, not in Dubuque, Iowa doing God-knows-what.

Though it's safe to say I felt like Alice might if she wandered into the looking-glass and found herself in East LA.

At 2:00 AM.

Wrote furiously most of Saturday and Sunday. Computer kept freezing. It was bad enough I had a 7-lb. PC, but did it have to get all anxiety-disorder on me too? I never thought I'd experience such acute Mac envy but the world changes when you're surrounded by the haxor elite.

Check out conference coverage at CMSWire. That's not everything; the editor and I are still parsing out a lot of my inflamed hoo-ha. While I had a winning time I was deliriously happy about sliding into my own bed on Sunday and falling asleep to South Park, even if it was the Super Adventurer child molestation episode.

I see the code, I see the code, I see the code.

Post 4/20 Chronic Bust, Geek-Style

I'm in San Jose for the Ruby Conference taking place at the Tech Museum. I've never felt so profoundly out of my element. It's an orgy of haxordom, a veritable Anandtech forum blown-up and come to waking life.

One discussion of interest took place when the founder of Chronic showcased his Ruby-based date and time parser. It's fairly new, and dude admitted the product was mildly buggy, but a burn war of /b/ proportions erupted and I felt the urge to duck.

What Chronic does is interpret natural language and parse out the date. So if you put in "This Tuesday 5pm," it'll spit out "4/24/2007 at 17:00" or some such. Potentially useful for reservation-setting, event creation on calendars, that kind of jazz. Google Calendar does something similar for its Quick Add function.

"Can Chronic interpret 'Five o'clock last New Years Eve'?" someone asked.

"No," the founder admitted, and it was on.

Things got worse at live demo time. It would have been too tame to expect a bunch of devs to politely ask him to input "Noon Friday next week" or "Today's date and time." Requests like "Fourscore and seven years ago!" and "Next month of Sundays!" came flying forth, and one guy actually demanded that the parser reflect 12 noon as 00:00 because that's what it's supposed to be, and everyone misuses it.

Dude decided to nix the questions with the exception of one last from a row of young cavalier coding elites: "Can I have a pony?"

"If you're good," our fine speaker replied, not missing a beat. "One day..."

At the conclusion of the presentation he smilingly suggested his audience turn in a patch or two, then stepped down.

Wild. This place is like church camp, except God has been replaced with code, and praise songs have been replaced with hax heckling.

Heading off to dinner with a guy whose team allegedly built the first Ruby-based CMS. This should be promising.

A Little Help Here, Please?

One of my biggest pet peeves is bad spelling in the professional world. Words on an ad, in books, in official documents or on any other traditional media riding the wave of public view possess an element of sanctity that's totally obliterated when a typo is overlooked. I never forget it. It's like trauma.

I'm in Southern California for a conference. This afternoon in desperate pursuit of coffee I halted my sassy walk and choked on a cashew when I saw a large banner reflecting the day's break-out sessions.

I can't even quite remember what it said. All I recall is the word PROFFESSIONAL. All huge, all extra-extra, in all its pre-fab pop-up synthetic print glory.

Please spellcheck your creative before blowing up 20 copies and slathering them from end to end of a convention hall. Particularly if you're an education association that shall not be named because I am nice like that.

Ugh. No wonder high school students can't read.

RIAA: Still Suing Kids? Get Over It Already

I'm loath to elaborate on the goings-on of the diversity conference for a second time, considering I covered the main points on Adrants the next day. But there is something I didn't mention simply because there was no graceful way to include it without making the write-up sound awkward and unfocused.

During his keynote Larry brought up the Youtube copyright situation and flabbergastedly cried, "Everybody's still trying to own stuff. Owning stuff is over." (Not quoted to scale.)

To explain, he noted that information is digital, totally fluid. What can you do in the face of a flood, raise a hand and say stop? Fluid has an amazing capacity to get around you and even through you if necessary.

Tough luck for those whose professions revolved around licensing content and distribution rights. But hey, it forces us to find different ways to make money and improve upon the landscape of communication altogether. I don't have a problem with that. Growth is tough but not without its rewards. (One such reward: evading death - or worse, complete obsolescence - a wee while longer.)

All right. It's nearing 2 AM. Sleep: FTW.

Prelude to the Diversity Conference

So, the Advertising Industry Diversity Job Fair and Leadership Conference (we need a clever acronym for that) hits SF. Adrants, a sponsor, conveyed me out yonder to represent in the flesh, though the snark ain't out to play. (I'm really sort of shy.)

This evening I attended the networking reception at the Academy of Art student gallery. To start with, I was just blown away by a lot of the work the students in the advertising school are doing. The focus of the exhibit sought to define humanity, a broad and esoteric cat-chase that is really what advertising is all about. While the point of advertising is to sell, great ad people manage that by telling a story about society or the person encountering the product.

In many ways advertising helps relate our values to us, tells us what we want and lends a glimpse of who we want to be. Just ask an Apple fanatic or a Google employee. That's not to say there aren't two edges to that sword.

This networking event notably marks my first group encounter with other members of the marketing and ad community. I started to get pretty stoked about the panel I'll be moderating tomorrow, a dialogue between professionals on what it's like to work in the ad and marketing industry. I got to speak with the panelists beforehand and a lot of hot topics promise to rise to the forefront. A few button-pushers include the issue of diversity and the upsurge of women, who are shaping the industry as both consumers and advertising entities.

I have to say there's probably never been a more exciting time to get involved in this industry. It literally seems to be rebuilding itself: conversing more with consumers instead of at them, and marrying the technical with the creative. It's like the wild wild west all over again, except with no horses and better media.

I'm also inclined to think people smell better now too, not that I'm all leaning in and checking or anything.

The job fair is free for students or people looking for work. If you're in town, drop in.