Pictures of pathetic puppies and kittens put to the music of Sarah McLachlin just not making you reach for your wallet anymore? Sarah needs to try Crowdrise, a joint by Edward Norton (yes, that one), producer Shauna Robertson and the brothers who founded Moosejaw, Robert and Jeffrey Wolfe. Except they probably would insist on making the dogs and cats wear funny hats. Seriously.

After all, the site’s tagline is, “If you don’t give back, no one will like you.”

It’s too much to explain here, and anyway getting it from the site is way more fun, but let’s just say Crowdrise is a next-generation fundraising site for the next generation. Like everything these days (except driving and going to the bathroom), the site makes it a social event to give or solicit funds. And it’s funny and it’s cool and it’s really irreverent, which is probably a first when you’re trying to separate people from their money (although the charities’ information itself is never altered).  Plus, it’s got Ed Norton (did I mention that?), Sean Penn and a bunch of other celebs pitching for their favorite charities, as well as regular folks who are moved by a cause, and all the regular folks who give.

I love it. Human beings respond to humor (Super Bowl ads), and I don’t think anyone has to stop being human when they’re working on behalf of charities or donating to them. In fact, that’s a bit of the best of humanity—why not wear it on our sleeve and have a little fun. After all, most of the charities are simply trying to make it possible for the less fortunate to laugh again, too.

If you’re serious about advertising in Austin, there’s only one place for you to be tonight. Here’s what you need to do:

Step #1

Buy your ticket, get off of the couch, get the kids a sitter, put on some clothes that your mother would approve of, and get yourself to the annual Austin ADDY^® Awards Show at ACL Live at the Moody Theater (attached to the W Hotel).

Step #2

Valet your car (you’ll burn the same amount in gas looking for a parking spot—this is Austin, after all), come inside, order a drink from one of the multiple bars (it’s like they built this theater around the bars; it’s awesome), snatch a few of those killer hors d’oeuvres, and check out the amazing work your peers (maybe your coworkers—maybe YOU) have done in the past year.

Step #3

Grab another drink, snatch some more hors d’oeuvres, and strike up a conversation with any of the Austin ad community’s most creative and innovative thinkers and doers. Listen, talk, argue, laugh, learn, be cool and be inspired.

Step #4

Ah, the show. Luxuriate in the dulcet tones of host Carl Settles’ voice as it washes over the crowd, announcing the awards. Watch some really great commercials. It’s just like the Super Bowl, only without the distraction of a football game nobody who loves advertising really cares about that much.

Step #5

Hang out with your new friends some more. Drink some water (Safety First!). Grab another bite or two. Cry when it’s over. Wish you had entered something, or vow to enter more next year. Leave energized that you get to live and work in the most creative city and business ever. Smile all the way home. Phone your spouse from the driveway because you forgot your key. Repeat next year.

See you there tonight!

The Austin ADDY^® Awards show/party/extravaganza is just over a week away, and if previous years are any indication, it will be awesome. Like last year, the ad community will again tear up the ridiculously cool ACL Live at the Moody Theater, liquor will flow copiously, amazing work will be on display, and everybody’s who’s anybody in the biz will be there wishing they had done ‘that’ campaign.

Now, if you don’t already have your tickets and if you’re on the fence about attending, I could go on forever with all the great reasons you SHOULD be there… but in the interest of full disclosure, here are:

The Top 10 Reasons You May NOT Want to Show Up for the Austin ADDY Awards

1. You’ve completely forgotten how to let your hair down; if it doesn’t require a tuxedo or a ball gown, it certainly doesn’t require your presence.
2. There’s nothing left for you to learn or accomplish in advertising; not attending the year’s most important local industry event is the best way to prove that.
3. You believe the best way to hone your own creativity is to ignore the award-winning work of others, unless, of course,  they’re your boss.
4. No matter how impressive their bios might be, our internationally acclaimed judges just can’t be trusted to know good work when they see it. Or else they’d have picked yours. If only you’d entered it.
5. You prefer events with really long lines at the bar, and you’re allergic to an endless variety of unique and delicious appetizers.
6. You really don’t care that much about the Austin advertising community; if only they were hiring in Amarillo.
7. It’s on a Thursday night, and all it takes is missing one episode to lose the dramatic narrative thread of The Big Bang Theory.
8. Advertising is okay; but what you really want to do is direct.
9. You don’t care for ACL Live at the Moody Theater because the vibe is just too… cool, or something.
10. Being around large groups of incredibly talented, fun, interesting people gives you hives.

So if none of the above fit you, and you want to party with and be inspired by the coolest people in your industry, we’ll see you next Thursday night! Get your tickets now!

As Republicans, Democrats and Ron Paul all cast about for a way to jump start our economy, the ad industry stands ready to show us the way out of our fiscal doldrums. According to this Adweek article, ad agencies think marketers will spend more in 2012 than those very marketers are predicting they’ll actually spend. It doesn’t matter whose predictions are more accurate or for what reason. What matters is why marketers clearly should adopt this amazing new economic model:

• Spending more on advertising is better for the economy than not spending more. Sure, their shareholders might be a little miffed, but their shareholders probably don’t work in advertising.

• Who knows advertising and its value better than agencies? If you agency says you need to increase your ad spending, you’d be foolish not to. They wouldn’t tell you to spend more if you didn’t need to.

• When marketers spend more on advertising, advertising agencies can hire more people, and those people can help spend us out of our problem. We’ll need to pass a law that says agency people can only buy American cars, but it’s a small price to pay, and since Chrysler’s current ad campaign had Eminem in one spot, at least Chrysler is cool again. So, no worries there.

• Consumerism is the lifeblood of our economy.  The only way we know what to buy is through advertising. If buying more stuff is our patriotic duty, then buying more advertising is the least thing marketers can do to help make our jobs easier.

The way I can see it, marketers have a choice. They can go back to the old way of doing things, waiting for someone else to begin hiring again, ramping up production slowly as sales increase, eventually increasing their ad budgets by 1.3% over five years, delaying the recovery until well after the Mayans have told us it won’t matter anymore. Or, they can be boldly patriotic, listen to their agencies, and turn this sucker around before Valentine’s Day.

(Just to be clear, if anyone shows this blog to my teenage girls before next Christmas, I will hunt you down.)

My New Year’s resolutions vanish around the same time as the Christmas peanut brittle, leaving behind small, sticky traces of guilt to gnaw cavities into my soul. I find helping others improve themselves a lot easier, much more fun and way less disheartening, so here are the New Year’s resolutions I’m suggesting for the advertising industry (inspired by immersion in holiday TV).

1. Outlaw the Lexus holiday jingle forever. Along those same lines, produce one real person we can identify with who has actually bought a $60,000 car for their spouse for Christmas without informing said spouse they’ve mortgaged their kids’ college education.
2. Make fois gras from the Afflac duck. It was marginally tolerable before Gilbert Godfreid tweeted something unfunny and offensive (shocking!) and got fired; the nationwide casting call for the replacement quacker was clever, but the ad they’re running now just makes me hate all wildlife/human rap groups.
3. If you want me to stay awake to watch your commercials at 1:30 a.m., please stop running so many at once. If I’m hooked into The Twilight Zone marathon, I’d sit through two 30-second spots every three minutes. But when you run 10 of them in a row, I’m snoring after the first four or five. Then I wake up in the middle of the next episode, very confused. I don’t need that.

Okay, I’ll do one for me. In fact, you can help me with this one. I resolve to do more in 2012 to help make/keep Austin the only city where any ad pro with an ounce of self-respect would want to work.

Happy New Year!

Last summer, Danielle and I told you about  The Pitch, a new AMC reality show all about advertising. At the time I called it the Stupidest. Idea. Ever.

No surprise here, they’re doing it. It’s in production now for a spring 2012 premiere. The producers were able to sign four agencies: NYC’s The Ad Store; SK&G in Las Vegas; The Hive in Toronto and McKinney in Durham, N.C. The list of agencies who turned them down reads like an industry who’s who, but AMC seems to think the critical and commercial success of Mad Men naturally translates into Americans being love with the ad business, so why not?

I can think of a few reasons.

Mad Men isn’t about advertising; it’s about the 60s and sex with Don Draper. Jon Hamm could play virtually any man from the era, as long as he’s in a position of power, and the result would be the same. People watch reality programming to see pregnant teens and housewives scratch out eyes, but advertising isn’t inherently about conflict. Oh, some stressed AD may press extra hard on the dry-erase board or an account exec may tap a pencil impatiently, but nobody’s going to get called a slut, and how can that be good for ratings? Besides, most of the people I’ve met in my 26+ years in the business are nice, funny, compassionate, caring people—you know, the kind who have no place on reality television.

Advertising isn’t exactly ice road trucking or deadliest catching—it’s about ideas being conceived, gestated, born and raised. Ideas having sex is exciting because it happens inside our heads—it doesn’t lend itself to voyeurism. And above all, people watch Cake Boss because it’s something they’re in awe of, something they can’t do. On the other hand, everyone thinks they’re more creative than ad agencies. And people aren’t going to TiVo The Pitch just to be able to say, “I could have thought of something better than that.”

If I’m wrong, I may sell my TV.

I’ve never knowingly clicked on an ad in Facebook. I go to Facebook for friends, not coercion. Yet marketers will spend $2.74 billion next year on social marketing ads this year. Someone is clicking on these ads to make that kind of investment worthwhile. Who are those people? And would you please stop?

I understand Internet advertising is here to stay, and I’m no Luddite. But does marketing and advertising HAVE TO BE EVERYWHERE ALL THE FREAKIN’ TIME? Sorry. I know, this is the Austin ADVERTISING Federation’s Web site. I write ad copy for a living. But we’re rapidly approaching a time (maybe we’ve already arrived) when we will never NOT be targeted and sold to. You can’t watch a damn YouTube video without having to close a bunch of ads. Ads are coming to your refrigerator. They’re all over your phone, now they’re on your tablet and in your face at the urinal. Of course they’re on TV, on billboards, at the ball game, all over airplanes. They can beam images directly to your contact lenses—you know the ads are already in the works. It’s only a matter of time until a war will be sponsored, and the tanks will sport magnetic signs for brand placement in all those YouTube posts.

In 1993 some idiot thought it would be a great idea to launch a one-kilometer-long ‘space billboard’ into low earth orbit. From the earth your brand would be about the size and brightness of the moon. In space. Next to the Big Dipper and Orion as well as all those constellations nobody but astrologers can really see. Visible all the time, permanently, until the orbit decayed. Brilliant. It didn’t happen, but not because anyone came to their senses, but because funding dried up when they realized the Mylar monstrosity would quickly become nothing more than confetti and streamers from all the junk and bits of creation zipping around up there.

I don’t know if the same people who came up with the space billboard thought up social media advertising, but the effect will be similar. Soon, the only way to escape will be to go outside and stare at the moon.

Oh, except for this.

I know you’ve seen this commercial. You can’t watch a football game or any half-way popular reality show without seeing Jennifer Lopez drive her shiny new Fiat back to ‘the block’ to soak in the real. Because that’s where she feels at home—‘cuz she’s from the South Bronx, yo. And as she tools that itty-bitty car up and down those mean streets, taking in all the life that’s there, she tells us what this place means to her; it recharges her, rejuvenates her, because check it—to us they may be just streets, but to her, well, they’re her playground.

Except she’s in LA doing her close-ups while a double drives the Fiat. She may say she’s still Jenny from the Block, but not in a commercial. It can be dangerous in the South Bronx, you know? And we’re talking New York, here—they have lots of potholes plenty big enough to swallow a car that size.

I’m not naïve. None of this is all that surprising. There’s nothing in advertising or on TV or film—any media, really—you can count on as being truly real. Special effects are no longer special—nobody ever asks “how did they do that?” anymore, we just forget that we’re not really watching eight-foot-tall blue people ride winged steeds or a gecko walk and talk and annoy. But those stories and messages don’t hinge on how down-to-earth and ‘real’ those characters are. Lopez and Fiat are saying to us, “Look, Jenny drives a Fiat because she’s such a real person (except that’s not really her, but you know, it could be, if she ever came back here, especially in a tiny little car that she drives herself).”

I call shenanigans!

Watch this AT&T commercial. Did you catch the guy saying, “Huh?” Wasn’t he awesome? I totally believed him. Such pathos. Really nailed it. I truly felt like he actually wasn’t paying attention because he was so engrossed in his phone. I totally forgot he was acting. Like watching Pacino or De Nero.

Now the ad’s gone viral (not because it’s awesome) and Nate Dern is famous (not for his acting ability).  According to Todd Wasserman’s blog on Mashable, Nate posted about the ad and his part in it on Reddit, and social media has decided both the ad and Nate to be ‘relevant’ for a few minutes.

Actually, upon some investigation into who Nate actually is, I admit I’m a big fan. He’s the real deal, a writer/performer/Artistic Director at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater, a sociology PhD candidate at Columbia University, and pretty damn funny. His Lost Vagina Monologue (NSFW) kills. (So, he may be the exception that proves the rule.)

Yet none of his accomplishments seem to be as important as his single word in a forgettable cell phone commercial, and not because he delivered his line with aplomb, but because he decided to roll the social media dice and mention it in an obscure post that somehow pleased the gods of group think. Not that this is unusual; it’s the clear hope/expectation of every video, post, tweet and comment that together are forming the background din of the Matrix: “I will be noticed, and I will be rewarded.”

We appreciate worthy content more than ever. But the sheer volume of noise long ago far outstripped human ability to find it—it usually finds us, and only if others deem it valuable enough to tell us about it. It appears that the only way now to establish one’s credibility in the world is to gain acknowledgement from the amoebic, formless mob that passes value judgments with a “Like” or “Share” button. And the only way to gain that  acknowledgement  is to add to the noise even more. Which means colleges seriously need to start teaching the art of self-promotion at a much higher level.

Because lack of self-esteem is clearly not a problem.

The Internet has provided unto mankind great bounty. Fewer trips to the library. Angry Bird cheats. eBay. Faster fantasy draft picks. eHarmony ads. Knowing every move of people I’ve long forgotten. But mostly, it’s brought us a plethora of pundits, prognosticators and gurus. People who are sure that they alone know exactly what the Internet means, you know, to mankind. The ones who always seem to find a new way to say, “The Internet will fundamentally change [INSERT FAVORITE TOPIC HERE].” Sometimes they’re right (yay, shopping cart!).

The most recent favorite topic of Paul Adams, ‘global brand experience manager’ of Facebook, is marketing and advertising. In a speech at the recent Geo Loco Conference, he foretold that the Internet, as it’s evolving, is sounding the death knell of push advertising and marketing (aka advertising and marketing). Because, he says, pushing is passé in a social media world. He says the “Minority Report”-like scenario of pushing marketing messages to the phones of passersby is a ‘stupid idea’ because the marketers who are enamored with the idea aren’t looking at it from “a people perspective.” (I think it’s a stupid idea because it would be annoying.) Instead, he says, it’s all about what our friends tell us. (I mentioned he works for Facebook, right?)

He says social media is going to make it impossible for marketers to get messages to people in traditional ways because those messages will all be filtered through our friends. He also says that we (I assume he means Facebook) can for the first time measure how people are influenced by others. That, coupled with how we’re increasing our understanding of how the brain works, is showing us that people don’t make rational decisions based on fact; our subconscious makes them based on emotion. (Full disclosure: the creepy term ‘neuromarketing’ makes my skin crawl.)

If he’s right—and he really may be—the smart marketer of the future will no longer create great advertising but instead focus on convincing our friends that we need something, and let them convince us. So, now we’ll have to learn to distrust our friends as much as we’ve learned to distrust traditional advertising.

On the other hand, weren’t we supposed to be on the metric system by now?