The Dallas News has a bold new strategy for "becoming the most comprehensive and trusted partner for local businesses in attracting and retaining customers and continuing to generate important, relevant content for our consumers": Making it's editors report directly to advertising sales managers
posted by Artw on Dec 3, 2009 - 87 comments

"What if America wasn't America?" That was the question posed by a series of ads broadcast in the wake of the September 11th attacks, ads which depicted a dystopian America bereft of liberty: Library - Diner - Church. Together with more positive ads like Remember Freedom and I Am an American, they encouraged frightened viewers to cherish their freedoms and defend against division and prejudice in the face of terrorism (seven years previously). The campaign was the work of the Ad Council, a non-profit agency that employs the creative muscle of volunteer advertisers to raise awareness for social issues of national importance. Founded during WWII as the War Advertising Council, the organization has been behind some of the most memorable public service campaigns in American history, including Rosie the Riveter, Smokey the Bear, McGruff the Crime Dog, and the Crash Test Dummies. And the Council is still at it today, producing striking, funny, and above all effective PSAs on everything from student invention to global warming to arts education to community service.

Additional resources: A-to-Z index of Ad Council campaigns - Campaigns organized by category - Award-winning campaigns - PSA Central: A free download directory of TV, radio, and print PSAs (registration req'd) - An exhaustive history of the Ad Council [46-page PDF] - YouTube channel - Vimeo channel - Twitter feed
posted by Rhaomi on Sep 11, 2009 - 69 comments

Persuasion: Why men in ads are dumb, goofy or completely inept. Several YT commercials and a thoughtful essay.
posted by five fresh fish on Aug 7, 2009 - 147 comments

This site examines the cross-cultural trend of headset-wearing customer support representatives on corporate websites! [more inside]
posted by exlotuseater on Feb 18, 2009 - 28 comments

Data-Driven Enhancement of Facial Attractiveness
posted by phrontist on Sep 8, 2008 - 39 comments

The evolution of the US presidential campaign ad, 1952 to 1996... 1952: Eisenhower-Nixon (We Like Ike, The Man from Abilene) vs Stevenson-Sparkman (I Love the Gov [apologies for the intro], Ike... Bob..., Vote Stevenson/The Music Man, (Remember the Farmer, Back to the Days of '31). Bonus: Newsreels dealing with the campaigns. 1956: Eisenhower-Nixon (Eisenhower Answers America: The Cost of Living [excerpt], Corruption (california spot)) vs Stevenson-Kefauver (How's that again, General?, The Man from Libertyville [same annoying intro], Ad-lee, Ad-lie). Bonus: Election Day newsreel, including a santa Claus arriving in a flying saucer; Eisenhower, Suez, and hungary in 1956. [more inside]
posted by flibbertigibbet on Aug 22, 2008 - 46 comments

Billboards that display a personal message for you...that was sort of cute, and voluntary. Billboards with speakers that focused sound on a spot...voices in your head are not so cute, and not voluntary. Billboards that photograph you, and him, and her, process the imagery, perform a statistical analysis, and return a targeted ad based on your demographic profile...maybe plan a different route home....
posted by Kronos_to_Earth on May 31, 2008 - 21 comments

Blacklisted! The bankruptcy of the liberal Air America Radio Network is old news. What's new is a leaked ABC memo to affiliates (.pdf original) listing 90 corporations and major advertisers that stipulated that their ads not be aired during the broadcast of Air America content. Is there any hope that radio or television news in the United States can report stories that do not uniformly support the goals and viewpoints of the S&P 500? There are of course, alternative models. Is it time for a PBS Newschanel?
posted by washburn on Nov 4, 2006 - 58 comments

Remember that really shocking circa-2003 PUMA advertisement that no one would take responsibility for? Its mystery has finally unraveled.
posted by Bryan Behrenshausen on Feb 10, 2006 - 38 comments

Alternate Reality Advertising? I noticed this peculiar advert on this morning's commute. Seems it's part of an immersive ad campaign. Since when do gamers have enough money to buy luxury rides?
posted by gnutron on Apr 21, 2005 - 13 comments

Breaking News: Pop-up ads suck. Wired has a little op-ed piece about the netizens' extreme dislike of pop-up and pop-under ads. Using such choice quotes as, "A study conducted last year by Dynamic Logic found that almost 80 percent of those surveyed had a 'very negative' opinion of pop-up ads," the author goes on to chastise mainstream sites that still make use of them. Of course, his advice would be taken a great deal more seriously if his column didn't sport a massive pop-up ad for Blockbuster Online.
posted by LondonYank on Mar 3, 2005 - 30 comments

The Indiana Supreme Court scolded personal injury law firm Keller & Keller for their television ads that "create an impression that the claims they handle are settled, not because of the specific facts or legal circumstances of the claims, but merely by the mention of the name of the respondents' firm to insurance companies." Interestingly a search for this turned up Network Affiliates Incorporated, a company that sells advertising to lawyers. Television ads are evidently not the best way to find competent legal council and are considered to be unethical in parts of Australia. (Just to provide four different points of view on this issue.)
posted by KirkJobSluder on Aug 9, 2003 - 14 comments

Reporters Sans Frontières (Reporters Without Borders), an international organization advocating free press worldwide, has seen great success with a recent ad campaign featuring photos of famous French journalists murdered in a variety of methods (NSFW). It's been so successful they're now contemplating taking the campaign global, including the U.S.
posted by me3dia on Apr 1, 2003 - 12 comments

Sony writes 'article' for Salon. In an effort to find new revenue streams, Salon has published an ad/article written by Sony Corp. National Geographic and Parent Soup have also published ad/articles, though the New York Times said no. While the articles do not directly reference Sony products, the feature people who do fascinating things with technology... technology which, it just so happens, is advertised conveniently right next to the technology featuring passage. Is this sort of thing ever ethical? If so, what sort of disclosures are necessary. Clearly the ad/articles are intended to appear to be regular content.
posted by 4easypayments on Dec 2, 2002 - 29 comments

Popup ads on your TV So, the media moguls have decided that they're tired of you ignoring their advertising...and thus, they will now insert popup ads into the live feeds. And you thought product placement was annoying. From Slashdot
posted by dejah420 on Jul 16, 2002 - 48 comments

"Happiness has not gone up even, as a society, we've gotten richer and have more access to more things. Advertising is the illusion that stops us from recognizing that." Sut Jhally is a communications professor at the University of Massachusetts, founder of the Media Education Foundation, and an excellent teacher of media literacy.
posted by tranquileye on Feb 23, 2002 - 56 comments

MSNBC taking advantage of high site traffic; FORCING ads. Personally I'm speechless. I think every other major site out there (no doubt the crippled Yahoo also) is doing this oor will be in the upcoming hours.
posted by HoldenCaulfield on Sep 13, 2001 - 24 comments

Serendipitous convergence of current events and "underground" marketing efforts — coincidence? Or maybe this is a better question: which will still be around in six months, the worm or the sickeningly-sweet, caffeine-laden beverage?
posted by barkingmoose on Aug 3, 2001 - 8 comments

'Is media bias real?', part two: Left-leaning media criticism folks FAIR have produced a report detailing some examples of of publishers, advertisers, and government officials killing stories they don't like and placing stories they do. What about the Chinese Wall between the business of news and the actual newsgathering? To quote a CBS news producer on the distinction between entertainment and news, "That line was over a long, long time ago....That line is long gone."
posted by snarkout on Feb 25, 2001 - 18 comments

USA Network complies with Tylenol's request to halt production of a drug-tampering movie.
posted by gluechunk on Dec 6, 2000 - 11 comments

Is this annoying to anyone else? I usually get most of my news from either ABCnews.com or CNN.com, then this morning I noticed that every time I load ABCnews, an annoying ad banner pops up for AT&T over the browser toolbar. I know that big sites have used popups before (usually as announcements or something else), but an ad popup on such a major site seems like an even further blurring of that line between media and advertising. I guess I'm switching news sources.
posted by almostcool on Nov 28, 2000 - 18 comments

I approached this review expecting it to be of the "major media providers are the problem, not the solution" sort, but discovered something somewhat different: "It’s not that the medium of the modern political campaign–television advertising–failed to do justice to men of substance, but that men of substance failed to adapt to television advertising..."
posted by dcehr on Aug 7, 2000 - 3 comments

Advertising on Your GPS Reciever It looks like advertisers are already dreaming up new uses for the higher quality GPS signals.

"You're walking down the block, your phone goes off as you pass every store and tells you that there's a 50-percent-off sale." Someone remind me why it was a good idea to deregulate the GPS?
posted by darainwa on May 27, 2000 - 4 comments