Audi’s Green Police. Didn’t They say Hitler?

Januar 30th, 2010 • Comments Ads, Brands
Tags: Ads, Audi, Brands, Fail, Germany, Ideas, Philosophy, PR, Social Influence Marketing, Strategy

Let’s start an intellectual experiment.

Think about e.g. an ex-spouse in your life and now think about any object in your appartment. Can you associate it with him or her somehow? You probably can. Take the old vase in your living room and you will probably find a connection to your ex who loved flowers so much. Most likely you will be able to link the TV set to her preferences for ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ and so on…But why should you do that? Especially since you will be able to link pretty much anything to pretty much anything after thinking about it for a while. Plus, simply put, while you actually might not want to think about your ex-spouse anymore at all?

Well, that’s what self-proclaimed guardians of Political Correctness do on the web 24/7. They love to think about all kinds of connections because there is not one thing which makes them as happy as making up a good old PR disaster.

One information in advance: I am German and I work for a digital agency with Audi International on the client list (not PR, not Audi USA). This is just accidental and not the rationale behind this article. I am professionally not at all engaged in any Audi project even though I like the cars. I simply react on this article by Danny Brown, entitled “Audi and the Super Bowl Social Media Shit Storm“.  This is the story: In an attempt to spearhead a social media intiative, Audi USA (keep that in mind, it is important) had invented the so-called ‘Green Police’. It comes with a Super-Bowl ad, a Youtube channel and the inevitable twitter account. This is the more or less entertaining ad:

Did you realize it? No? Audi has just committed a major act of Political Incorrectness, according to Danny.

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Scare tactics. Apple, Microsoft and the question who’s lying.

November 6th, 2009 • Comments Ads
Tags: Ads, Analysis, Apple, Fail, history, Microsoft

Microsoft has delivered quite a lot of enjoyment to my computer screens when it came to ads. Highlights such as Songsmith and the latest Windows 7 party spots can only be described as either really, really dark self-ironic humor or plain and simple as bizarre. In comparison – all of us love the Mac and the PC guy. But what they do is actually still to paint a pucture of the boring, conservative, uncool Microsoft which constantly tries to ignore its bad product quality and still lies to the user. But is this true?

Check out this short analysis of Apple vs Microsoft spots. It rather makes me perceive Apple as a brand constantly working with scare tactics.

Dear Brands. Please learn to say I am not sorry.

Oktober 18th, 2009 • Comments Brands, Ideas, Social Business, Strategy
Tags: Ads, Brands, Fail, Ideas, Motrin, Pepsi, pepsifail, PR, Social Influence Marketing, Strategy, World

This article is a rant. A classic one.

Lately (I have to admit) I more and more get sick of the keepers of the holy grail of Political Correctness whenever a brand launches some kind of ironical, stereotype-laden communication tool in the social space. But wait, it’s not that simple! Actually I am more hacked off by brands who bow down to these people and beg for forgiveness whenever a group of these people start mocking around on twitter.

Pepsi and the score advisor app
Probably you have heard about the so-called Pepsi AMP fail. Early in October Pepsi has launched an iPhone application for its AMP range of energy drinks. The idea of the app is simple and (more or less) funny. After downloading the tool the user may choose between 24 different stereotypical female characters, ranging from “athlete” to “cougar” to “punk girl”. The app will then support your nightly challenge at the bar with helpful tips, pickup lines and conversation snippets to spice up your ‘pre score’ conversation with the respective woman of your choice.

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Ralph Lauren. Welcome to the photoshop of horror.

Oktober 11th, 2009 • Comments Ads, Brands
Tags: Ads, Boing Boing, Fail, Funny, photoshop, Ralph Lauren, visual, World

In case you haven’t heard of this story. On the one side of the distorted beauty ideal scale is Dove. On the other side of the scale is Ralph Lauren. Check out MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow picking up the sickest photoshop/PR fail I have seen in a while.

Facebook Connect. #OMFG.

Oktober 3rd, 2009 • Comments Tech, Tools
Tags: Diy, Facebook, Facebook Connect, Fail, Tools

I finally made it into white & nerdy paradise. I just wrote a Blog article about Facebook Connect not working well with Wordpress. I promise to return to more important topics. But I still hope rants like that are being monitored and help to improve things. So here we go.

Deep in my heart I know Facebook Connect is the big thing. I am absolutely convinced of the idea of decentralizing stuff, no matter what that stuff is. I think content should follow me not the other way around. So, Facebook: Yay! Actually.

For a couple of months now I have tried to install Facebook Connect on my blog. I know that when it works, Facebook Connect adds about 15-20% readers to your Blog, it leverages conversations and it makes a lot more stuff possible. So, let’s go for Connect.

No developer = No Facebook Connect

Problem is I have a creative background. I used to be a copywriter, not a coder. I know a couple of lines of HTML but that’s basically it. Everything else should be self-explanatory, friends help me…or whatever. Frankly, Facebook Connect was a challenge for me!

By today Facebook has only managed to come up with a couple of third party Wordpress plugins. None of them worked out fine. The so called Sociable plugin didn’t have any reasonable functionality while Adam Hupp’s plugin was the one I should finally be able to use (but I didn’t know at that time). Fact was when I installed the plugin it generated a king size error and nothing worked -> Deinstall.

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Fails. Land Rover tries to be funny.

Juli 25th, 2009 • Comments Allgemein
Tags: Apps, Brands, Fail, Land Rover, Mobile

I hate useless crap.

This iPhone app definitely belongs to this category: A Land Rover iPhone app which works like a navigation application but instead of showing you ‘how to drive over the road it draws a straight line between you and your destination’ (yeah, I got it…Land Rover, right?) Plus you can take a look at various Land Rover models. Wow! What’s that supposed to be? A senseless waste of iPhone space? Or a helpless try to win a Cannes Lion? Whatever: Fail. (via Ibelieveinadv)