Coupons! Deals! Discounts! Oh MY!

Is everyone else as sick as I am with the constant bombardment of Daily Deal sites? With some of these sites you have to supply them with an email address before you can even check out the deals. Not so cool in my books.

Now, I am one for a good deal, but I am over all the spam in my inbox. Seriously done with it.

But Monica (I hear you ask) How will you know when you can get cheap OPI nailpolish - one of your favourite things in the WHOLE WIDE WORLD?

Ah ha my friend! I have found a way.

Readers... Meet Chelsey.

I found out about Chelsey today. She's a pretty classy site which is aimed pretty much bang on my demographic. Must admit, I was always a little jealous that the boys have Get Frank and we get nothing. Well, no more.

I'm getting off topic. Sorry.

Chelsey has aggregated all of the coupon/deal/t'shirt and even booze offers on one page:

Sweetbix right? I'm setting this page as one of my open on startup tabs right next to Gmail, FB, grabaseat and Reader.

This is especially good as there is no need to supply your email address just to check out the deal.

Brilliance. Thanks Chelsey.

Oh, guys. Haven't forgotten about you. Get Frank also do a deal aggregator.

BNZ - Find Your Start

What a delightful treat to stumble upon Friday evening.

There in Aotea Square was a tasty projection for BNZ and a short story competition thingee (Literacy Awards) that they are running called findyourstart.co.nz.

Unfortunately it wasn't a perfect evening for such a fantastic ambient piece, but I still thought it was rad.

Projected on the wall was this:

and if you continued to watch, you got the start of a short story already written for you (also, there were people coasting around the square handing out cards and story starters on them).

The BEST part of all of this? The story starters which were projected onto the wall were being written off the cuff by a couple of creatives in a van:

Who, from what I can tell, were writing from about 6.30pm to 11pm. That's a lot of off-the-cuff writing.

In case you all missed it and want to check it out, I even took a video. You're going to have to excuse my laugh half way though. It seems as though the guys in the van were drawing inspiration from people who were walking past, which was awesome when it was the people obviously coming out of an evening at the Civic, but when they were talking about the crew I was with... even more hilarious.

So nice work BNZ. What a wonderful promotion (people don't know how to use their words anymore, it's great to be encouraging it) and fabulously executed. I love interesting and different ambient ideas. Totally my favourites.

The Awesome Reaction Opportunities of Online Advertising

Jeepers, what a news day! Hows about that Obama unscheduled announcement at 3-something this afternoon? That was a ripper.

News started coming through Twitter about 2.30 this afternoon about the unscheduled announcement from Obama and then very quickly the rumour mill went into overdrive in that it was to announce that Osama Bin Laden had been killed and the US had the body.

This kind of news of course spreads like wildfire on the internet. The announcement was to be streamed live on The White House website, which of course was delayed for almost an hour. During which time, everyone was hungry for information, which meant publishers had to turn information around SUPER QUICK.

As @tweetdaniel pointed out, TV3 didn't manage to get it quite right:

I would recommend clicking on the link above so you can check it out in full, but basically, it reads:

"We are currently experiencing extremely high traffic due to the announcement that Barack Obama is dead. Please bear with us we will be back up soon."

Whoops.

Not sure that was right.

Now, if you've read my blog before, you will probably know that I don't have a lot of nice things to say about TVNZ. I still don't, because when I tried to watch a live stream on tvnz.co.nz this afternoon it wanted me to report the error in loading, which I tried to do a number of times. Le sigh.

However, they did manage to do something right today (shock horror I know).

There I was, reading Mashable.com on what was to be announced and what do I see, but a One News banner run through the Google Content Network:

I do not tell a lie, this was up within half an hour of me first reading about the rumour that Obama was going to announce the death of Bin Laden. Now, it's not the prettiest of banners, but it's bang on. All the information you need. Up to date. Relevant.

I think it is awesome and just shows how online is the best medium for this kind of immediate response. Press also gives the opportunity for quick reaction turnaround, but for that, we're talking the next day, not within the hour. This is just too good. Brilliant work.

This doesn't change anything though TVNZ. This is clever, but all is not forgiven...

Make Easter Awesome

Buy only Palm Oil Free Chocolate

This handy guide courtesy of Auckland Zoo.

Why do I care about this? I've written quite a lot about Cadbury and what they have been up to, but nothing got me more that their Glass and a Half of CRAP ad. Thankfully they have changed their ways, but if you're going to gorge on chocolate this Easter, I hope it doesn't come at the expense of the Rain forests.

Happy Easter!

AirNZ - you disgust me

As in actually disgusts me.

I understand it's April Fool's Day and you guys are all about trying to be clever and forward thinking and someone has told you that the Rico thing was a good idea, but whoever told you that this was a good idea is a fucking moron.

Grab a Seat had a special promo on 'today':

You select male or female, enter you age and then enter your weight, giving you your cost for a seat. As you increase the weight, the person expands filling up more and more of the 3 person seat. Hit Calculate and you end up here:

Brilliant. This one is not as bad as I entered Male and 89kgs, but when I put in my weight it basically told me that I was a lard arse. Awesome. Thanks very much. I actually prefer the term 'cuddly' to lard arse. There is some positive brand association right there.

I actually think that The Real Steve Grey sums the whole thing up best, but you can read that over at his blog here rather than me retelling his story.

I was offended. I thought it was an awful, unfunny promotion and so, as I do, I tweeted about it:

Do you think I go any response from AirNZ. Of course not. Way to use twitter as a broadcast medium Air NZ instead of having a conversation with your customers. You're kinda missing the point.

In the afternoon they sent out this tweet:

I can only assume I am not the only one that was not impressed. In fact, the response from my followers who replied to me made it obvious that I was not the only one.

Between this and the Rico bullshit that they have been putting out the damage that they have done to this brand in my eyes currently is irreparable. I will be avoiding AirNZ at all costs.

Oh, what also doesn't help the cause, is when either an AirNZ or agency person starts responding to such complaints on Twitter. Only to me/@tone & one other person, but this doesn't help the situation. In fact, you're making it worse. Honestly, what were you thinking?

Dumb Whore?

Seriously, some people really have too much time.

The upheld complaint about the below ad has even made it's way to AdFreak.

When this ad first came out, I applauded it. I think it is a stunning ad for Hallensteins and I was thrilled to see such a mainstream brand use a band as non-mainstream as Sleigh Bells. Freaking fantastic. AdFreak seem to have missed the point of using a Sleigh Bells song and coincidentally also missed the fact that most 'hipsters' don't own TVs anyway. Well, not that they would admit to...

Apparently the complaint was about the lyrics in the song which are: "Deaf chords, dead ends, sling set can't meet their demands, dumb whores, best friends." Now, Infinity Guitars (which is the name of this song) is actually one of my favourite songs on Treats, I have listened to it numerous times and I have never heard the words Dumb Whores specifically. It amazes me that someone listening to the song for the first time, as a snippet, could pick that up. How long did they spend tracking down the song and the lyrics before they got hot under the collar and wrote to the ASA?

The reason this lead to a complaint is that the ad ran in The Princess Diaries 2 (which, incidentally rated 5 TARPs against a Male 18-39 audience - I'm assuming Hallensteins audience here) instead of Motorway Patrol which is usually scheduled in this timeslot.

So, the issue here (as far as I can see) is not that the ad is inappropriate, the issue is that whomever is responsible for TV for this client is paying no attention whatsoever to their clients schedules. TV Buyers should know by now that TVNZ are a pain in the arse and change their programming 2 weeks out. If you're not paying attention to your downloads, then yes, this is likely to happen. The second that the programme title change came through this spot should have been moved.

The other issue here is that the ad would have been classified as G so there wouldn't have been any warning bells for the network when the spot was detailed in a G rated programme. Now, is CAB getting raked over the coals for this? Of course not. The ad isn't actually offensive. Get off you high PC horse, this ad kicks arse.

Advertising or not Advertising?

So I came across this video today: (I would recommend watching the whole thing - bit of a twist in there.)

There are a number of things that I find curious about this video.

First and foremost - IS THIS SOME KIND OF ADVERTISING?

Why do I think this? Well, it was only uploaded on the 17th of February and it has had over 110k views? Also, I get the impression that this was shot in NZ... pretty impressive numbers for something from NZ. Social circles for boosting views can only stretch so far here.

I feel like there is something else behind it. I realise that working in advertising has made me quite cynical and question pretty much everything I see, but come on... what do you guys think?

Trying to find more info on this, I am officially loving You Tube's stats which show where the traffic is coming from:

These numbers all seem to be due to loading the video on Reddit. I don't know much about Reddit. Can anyone load something up and hope for the best?

Could it be that this is just one of those videos which has a little something which makes people want to pass it on?

It's doing my head in. If this is advertising, what could it be advertising? Castlepoint? Castlepoint is delicious, it sells itself. Viral for a new band? They have relatively decent voices. Is there a record label behind this?

Anyone else got an opinion on this? Or know a secret squirrel backstory?

Any or all information gratefully appreciated.