Ahhh… Debbie Gibson and Lorenzo Lamas, together at last. Plus this movie has a mega shark and a giant octopus, apparently. How can it go wrong? My answer: In every possible way.

I don’t know what the makers of this movie were thinking. Maybe they wanted this movie to be the next Snakes on a Plane; maybe they had a lifelong vision of a mega shark and a giant octopus doing battle, and finally had the chance to make that vision a reality on the big screen. Maybe this is some sort of tax scheme or ploy a la “The Producers”. Who knows. Who cares. Whatever.

Brussels advertising agency So Nice sent out an email to its clients saying they need to shrink their staff, and asking the clients to choose which employee should go. The email had a link to youchoosewefire.be, where each of the prospective ex-employees lists their strengths and weaknesses.

The small 10 person agency has apparently been financially squeezed by it’s clients paying their bills later and later. Co-founder of the company, Laurent Duffaut, said the email was a “scandalous and provocative way to get a reaction from our clients”. But the email has generated a ton of interest outside of just its client base. In five days, the site has had 30,000 unique visitors casting 17,500 votes.

So with one simple email and website, they encouraged their existing clients to pay up, and spread their name around to new potential clients. Nice move. Unfortunately, it seems a little like holding a kitten hostage to me, appealing to your customers empathy…OR ELSE. It leaves a bit of a bad taste in my mouth.

It’s a very common crime in my part of the city: a thief puts on a orange reflective vest and maybe a hard hat and steals some a)electrical equipment, b)large bits of metal, c)whatever. Thief then sells his booty for scrap, collecting a tiny fraction of what the goods are actually worth to their original owner. Here in Philadelphia, thieves have been known to actually steal manhole covers and sell them as scrap metal. Indeed.

A similar thief in New Zealand may get what’s coming to him though. He stole 15 transformers worth almost $5000 dollars, most likely because he wanted to sell the copper in them, which is worth about $150 dollars. But the equipment he stole belonged to an advertising company, and they’re doing what advertising companies do best… advertising it. They captured an image of him on a security camera, and put up a billboard with his face on it.

“It’s a crime that has a big impact on our company, and he’s netted some small change from it,” says Mark Venter, owner of the company. So they decided to do what advertising companies do best. “It was too good an opportunity to ignore,” says Mr Venter. “We felt obligated to say ‘right, can we match this guy’s face to a name?’”

Good stuff.

In the 1950′s, psychologist Solomon Asch performed a series of now famous experiments on social conformity. In the re-enactment video above, you can get a good idea of what they were about.

All of them involved a group of participants answering some very simple questions about their perception (for example: which line was longer than the other?, which lines were the same length?, etc.). All but one of those participants were “confederates”, meaning they were in on the experiment, and were asked to give the same incorrect answers. Asch wanted to see how the remaining subject would react to the rest of the participants behavior.

The results were startling: When they were surrounded by participants giving an incorrect answer, 75% of the subjects followed along and gave the same incorrect answer at least once, and 37% of the subjects followed along and gave an incorrect answer the majority of the time.

If even one of the confederates gives a different answer, the conformity drops dramatically (from 5% to 10%). And this dissenting minority doesn’t even has to give the correct answer. It just has to be an answer different from the majority.

The Scary Part:

The most frightening aspect of the experiment only came to light recently, in 2005. Dr. Gregory Berns from Emory University led a study where the researchers used an fMRI brain scan on the subjects in an experiment similar to the original Asch study. The results showed that, when individuals conform to a group’s opinion, even when the group is wrong, perceptual circuits in the brain light up. This suggests that groups actually change the way we see the world. Second, when an individual stands up against the group, they observed strong activation in the amygdala, the fear center of the brain. All this suggests that not only are our brains not wired for truly independent thought, but it takes a huge amount of effort to overcome the fear of standing up for one’s own beliefs and speaking out.

Humans are a social species, we’re built to function in a group. If everyone around us starts running, it makes sense for us to start running too, without putting much thought into it. This is the reason advertisers are so keen on giving the appearance of popularity. It’s why political ads have shots of cheering crowds, and car commercials say “best selling sedan of 2008″. It’s why our opinion of a politician changes when we think that a majority of people support him.

Dr. Berns brain scan study showed us that our actual perception can change solely based on the opinions of those around us. This is a frightening aspect of the human brain and, hopefully, one we can try to counter now that we are aware of it.

Adam Pacitti started the website TheGirlOfMyDreams after he supposedly had a dream of a girl of such amazing beauty, that he felt he had to find her in real life. So he drew her, and he posted the drawing online along with a video. Fortunately for us and everyone who loves hilarious things, Adam draws like a 5 year old. Yes, you saw it correctly in the video. Here is the girl of his dreams:

I’m still torn over whether Mr. Pacitti is a genius or slow-witted goon. If this is fake, he’s a genius, and he’s found a way to bring hundreds of thousands of people to his website and get exposure in the national media. But his website doesn’t have any ads, so it looks like he’s not making any money from whole thing. That means it may not be fake, and that’s a disturbing concept for me.

Here’s a line from his website:

I don’t think that I dream about people that don’t actually exist. Whether they are friends, family, or people that I’ve seen on television; everyone that has ever been in my dream I’ve seen somewhere. I genuinely believe that this person exists.

Really? Did you hear who else was in that dream? Zombies. Yes, it was a dream about zombies. Does he think zombies exist in real life, and that he just saw a few in his daily travels and worked them into his dream? My mind is boggled by his strange logic.

So, Adsavvy-ites, I leave it to you… what do you think about this one? Real or Fake?
Like I said, I’m still uncertain, so leave me your conclusion and your reasoning.

And meanwhile…
I’ve been inspired by Mr. Pacitti’s quest, and I’ve decided it’s time for me to try to settle down with my dream girl as well. Here is my dream drawing, as best as I can’t draw it. Bear in mind, I’m not an artist.

HAVE YOU SEEN THIS GIRL?

Also bear in mind, this picture doesn’t even begin to convey her fantastical beauty. She was perfect in every way, almost inhuman, unreal… dreamlike. But I’m sure she exists because why would I dream about someone who doesn’t exist, right? That’d be crazy.
But let me just clarify:
- She doesn’t actually have a lazy eye.
- She doesn’t have bald spots all over her head.
- She has a nicer smile.
- Her boobs are less like balloons and more like boobs, in fact they’re quite like Kate Nash’s boobs.

Other than that, the drawing is pretty accurate.

Obama’s new ad, entitled “Destination”, has hit the airwaves, and it makes some subtle, and some not so subtle, jabs.

The main point is that McCain plans on keeping Bermuda business open, and plans on continuing to allow it as a tax shelter. The subtle sting of this ad is made more harsh, though, by the economic climate here in the US. It makes it seem as if McCain is out and about, living his rich and famous life in Bermuda with his 13 cars and his billionaire friends while the average American can’t afford to pay their mortgage. The underlying message is a continuation of the previous ad about McCain’s 13 cars.

It is important to know, however, that Obama’s own campaign headquarters is provided by a company based in Bermuda. So he’s guilty of the off-shore benefits he’s attacking.

According to YouTube’s AdBlitz, The Tide Talking Stain commercial from Super Bowl 2008 was the number 1 commercial of the year. So let’s take a look at why it worked, and how it’s style can be duplicated as a general marketing principle.

There are several things that work about this commercial. First, and foremost, you’ll notice that the majority of the commercial sounds like an annoying foreign language. This grabs the viewer’s attention because immediately the viewer is aware that he is unable to make sense of the pseudo-language. Not only does it grab the viewer’s attention, but it forces him or her to focus even harder while trying to make sense of the gibberish.

But annoying often doesn’t work by itself. In fact, annoying can create negative associations with the product. So Tide needed to pull in a few additional strategies to make this commercial work. What did they do?

Well, two things. They brought in the humor hook part-way through the advertisement, introducing a surprise absurdity: a talking stain on the interviewee’s shirt. They simultaneously introduced the “I can relate” hook both in terms of awkward embarrassment for the interviewee and empathy for the interviewer (everyone’s been in a situation where their conversation partner has some embarrassing “look at me” issue).

The “I can relate” hook works wonder for reinforcing the viewer’s need for the product. No one wants to walk into an interview with a distracting stain on their shirt. What’s the solution? Tide To Go.

Brilliant Marketing.