Tag Archives: Anti-Advertising Agency

Um, a picture (of words) is worth a thousand words:

Do I even have to explain why this is so retrograde? Oh Facebook.

Or, maybe it might work… do pledges work? I know that competition has been shown to work in reducing energy use.

“delete your facebook its the cool fucking thing to do” & “kill your TV” written in sharpie on the wall of a Dunkin Donuts in Spring Creek on the New Jersey shore. Oh Facebook, the rebel tweens are turning on you already.

Okay, I’m going to come out and probably break with Anti Advertising Agency official policy, and say that I support ad-supported bike share programs. It is kind of making a deal with the devil, but the urban planning benefits have been demonstrated strongly. Getting cars out of the city, is worth the extra visual advertising. Plus people exercise, and are healthier, and are happier — bike riding is fun.

But this AdBike is just preposterous. The whole point of riding a bicycle in the city is to get somewhere. Transportation. Less space on the road. This is going to be worse than those trucks that drive around with billboards because it slows traffic down: I can’t imagine that beast of a recombent can move fast enough to remain save in the road. So its either going to stop traffic in the car lane, or dangerously take over the bike lane.

Just to give you a sense of how not-real-world this scenario is, check out his slacks and his shoes. He is wearing dress loafers. The only person who is going to be able to safely ride that bicycle in the city is going to be a real bicyclist. They are going to have serious muscles, and some kind of urban riding clothes and shoes. Like the bike taxi folk who have to work just to keep their behemoths moving. Dress slacks, that says a lot.

And all this is avoiding the fact that it looks stupid. If I were a marketer, I can’t imagine wanting my brand to show up on something that bulbous and dorky. Bikes are definitely cool. A lot of marketers and companies want to cash in on the bike = cool factor. But this bike is not cool. It is laughable.

And I’m restraining myself.

For more fun, check out the media kit

For more on why I like bikes, check out FoundBikes.com. Here is my ride

Oh Tom Cruise. Only a 124? Is this really an IQ test, or is it a Scientology Facebook trap! Oh those tricky Scientologists… I guess sitting around in the Union Square subway station just isn’t bringing in enough cult initiates.

“Michael Kraus saw the alert about the long taxi line. So he called his brother who lives nearby and got a ride home. Now he owes him a turkey sandwich.”

So advertising is about imagining potential futures. It is about hope, and aspirations and dreams. Is getting a ride home from the airport all those ad people could imagine using their service for? How about finding the subway station so they could take public transport. Now that would be something for the “community.”