Feb 2008 update! Due to the overwhelming popularity of this article, and the current war being waged in the Comments section, be sure to check out the follow-up article after reading this.

I had to work pretty late last night, which means I didn’t make it to the gym until 10 and found myself eating dinner at 11:30.  Since my cooking is an Abomination to the LORD (along with gays and shrimp) and Kansas City pretty much closes down at 10, I was forced to eat dinner at the bar & grill across the street.  Little did I know that, much like Tom Hanks in DaVinci Code or anyone cornered by Tom Cruise for “a couple seconds”, I was to be plunged into the world of the occult (well, I did play some D & D in high school… yeah I said it.  What of it, bitch?!  You wanna go?! :) ).

Wednesday nights are usually dead at this bar, having only a light smattering of alcoholics, under-sexed desperate divorcees, off-the-clock bar staff, and people stuck eating bar food for dinner at 11:30.  Not last night!  I walk in to see 150 people in the bar, the vaaast majority being women around 40.  It was as if Axe Body Spray was shooting a new ad, but the casting director had misread his directives:  “Ohhhh!  Get women ‘around 20′!  I thought that was a ‘4′!  I mean look at it.  Doesn’t that look like a ‘4′?  Anyone?”

Anyway, I’m putting on my pith helmet, camouflage vest - you know, Cougar  Hunting gear - when I start to realize a low-droned, jingling hum underpinning the normal bar sounds.  I looked closer at these women - they were all wearing gaudy, cheap silvery bracelets, earrings, necklaces and the like.  I’m not talking one bracelet and some smart-looking earrings.  No, no - long, dangly fucking things hanging from their ears and 3-6 bracelets on an arm.  They looked like that one dude from Kung Fu Hustle that fought with the iron rings.  “What the hell is going on here?” I’m thinking to myself.  Seeing the look of confusion on my face, one of the waitresses informs me, “Silpada Convention this weekend.”

Ah, yes!  Silpada!  Various women in my family have told me of this - my mother, a couple aunts - they have all been accosted at one point by some silver-clad zealot, handed a brochure, and advised, “Oh you simply must come to my next Silpada Party!”  Aunts, Mom:  Stay strong!

From what I can tell, Silpada is some sort of cult for sex-starved women in their late-20s to mid-40s (the bell curve peaks closer to the latter) whose dreams and aspirations died long ago… withering away in their gated-community, cookie cutter homes… driven from their souls by their fold-down-seat-grocery-storage minivan with the “beeping-shit” feature that warns of the neighbor kid’s battery-powered tricycle left in the road.  This emptiness has left them broken down and seeking out one another in order that they my find solace and seek out new initiates via the selling of crappy, overpriced trinkets.  Think Tupperware-Party-Meets-Freemasons.

Oh sure, it started out with just a couple room mothers looking for a little extra cash.  It started out as “A Fun Ladies’ Night out Playing Dress-up with Jewelry”™ (do not use this catchy phrase in your own ad campaign.  It is trademarked!).  But then, says the Illustrious Leaders, “we each [started taking] $25 from our grocery fund and pursued our passion for Sterling Silver Jewelry”.  The higher truths of sterling silver jewelry took the place of food, and a New Religion was born!

Based in Lenexa, KS (just a few miles from my home!!!), it quickly spread nationwide, via the standard Housewife Comm-Ops channels and frequencies (The View, The Tony Danza Show, et al).  And now we have come to this - national conventions centered on silver fucking trinkets! 

Not scared?  Well have a look at this video from their site.  Allow me to quote from one of its testimonials:

It’s “Silpada-ish”, I don’t know! I can’t explain it. You can’t put a name to it. It’s just.. a feeling. It’s there and you want it! Why would you not want to do this?!

Do you see?  Do you see!  “Silpada-ish”  - self-referencing circular logic: the hallmark of any cult/religion.  Synaptic breaks that diminish her ability to put words to thoughts in a way normal people can understand.  “It’s there and you want it” - a crack-like addiction.  She has to have it.  The mouse simply must pull the lever one more time.  Guys, if you’re not scared shitless, then you’re not paying attention!

If one of your loved ones expresses interest in a Silpada Party, pay close attention, for there is still time.  Direct your loved one’s interests into something that provides social interaction, but (here’s the important part) has value.  My mom will be the first to admit that she flirted with the dangers of Tupperware a bit back in the day, but resisted the seductive pull of Uselessness and ended up working with blind children.  Remember, your wife doesn’t want to be stuck with your bratty kids all day.  She wants to contribute to the greater society.  Your wife has been your rock of support - be hers now!  Don’t let Silpada get her, lest you be stuck spooning against the cold metal of a silpada necklace for the rest of your years.

If your loved one attends her first Silpada Party, things become serious.  But there is still time.  She is now a “halfling”.  Listen carefully:  you must now offend the local cult priestess (this will usually be the one that hosted the party, but if someone else in the cult is wearing more bracelets and has a short, styled-and-highlighted hair cut, she could be the actual leader.  Best to insult them both).  This will start an Indignant Gossip Chain - “Can you believe her husband?  The nerve!  You know, if she married him then what does that say about her?”  This IGC will send shockwaves through the Silpada Hive, resulting in the ostracization and expulsion of your loved one.  This will be hard on her;  this is “tough love”.  She will thank you for it in the end.

You must prevent her from attending her second Party.  After two parties, she’s in.  It’s over.  She is destined to become a silver-and-turquoise-bejangled, loud, obnoxious, gossipy drain on our society that undertips her waitress.  All her energies that could have achieved such noble aims, will now be funneled toward selling shit jewelry that my Grandmother wouldn’t be caught dead in.  You will have to scurry your children out of the house so that your living room may host your own Silpada Parties, voraciously devouring the souls of new, hapless initiates through the visages of ambrosia salad, deviled eggs, and “A Fun Ladies’ Night out Playing Dress-up with Jewelry!”™.

The only way to stop her at this point is with a silver bullet.  You must steal one of her bracelets and melt it into a bullet.  Do not use a gun!  The silver is of such poor quality, it will jam your gun and backfire.  No, you must just throw the bullet at her.

Good luck.. and God Speed. 

I really don’t know what to make of this video at GoAwayParis.com.  It could be that one day, this guy decided, “Wow, sure seems a lot of people can’t stand Paris Hilton.  What a ridiculous thing to spend one’s time dwelling on.  I bet I can take a piss and make a fortune by starting a ‘campaign’, making a video, and selling these idiots cheap stickers and t-shirts!”  Roll cameras!

Alternatively, this guy could be one of the fucking idiots using up all his activist points in this bullshit endeavor.  He’s either a brilliant opportunist parting fools from their money, or he is kind of a douche.

Cast your vote in Comments section!  As for me, the black stocking cap and general gravitas of the song is tilting my vote toward “douche”.

Thanks to Cindy for the link.

Sprint has some gorgeous new spots airing right now for their “Ahead” campaign.  Check out the post over at Transbuddha to see the spots and learn a little about how they were made.  Evidently it’s an art style called “lightning doodle”, which was invented by the owners of a site called Pika Pika (I wouldn’t bother visiting it - the site is pretty lacking in info/nav).  Not a whole lot of detail on the process there - something having to do with lights, stop-motion, long-exposure photography, and fetal pig blood… I think.

Anyway, Sprint has latched onto the art form and built a website (above pic) and tv spots around it.  Just another example of web virals bleeding over into traditional media.  Now, if Sprint just spent a little less time filming art fags* running around with flashlights in a park, and a bit more time on delivering good customer service and a reliable network.. why hell, they just have a product worth buying.

I live in KC - the world headquarters for Sprint, and I hear their coverage still sucks (I ditched them years ago).  I do not claim to have any expertise regarding mobile phone business strategy.  But christ, I would think that a mobile network provider would at least want to ensure near-perfect coverage in the city of their World F’ing Headquarters.  I mean come on, that’s just a matter of pride.  If I were to advertise myself as a master landscape artist, you’d better believe I’d have a goddamned Miagi garden in my backyard.  “Holy shit!  Is that an indoor/outdoor koi pond?!”  “Yep.  Here’s my card.”

Oh and while we’re at it, let’s have a look at the KC-local Sprint advertising (right).  “Oh, I get it!  Kansas City is known for barbecue and barbecue has lots of sauce on it and I live in Kansas City!  Sprint is really appealing to me as a Kansas Citian!  Sprint gets me!”  Fucking retards.  

* I dig artists.  I have gay friends.  But damn it, “art fag” is such a funny term to me.  So indulge me.

Recently I posted on an ad by Toto - makers of the bidet-type-thingy called the Washlet - that was to run on a large billboard in Times Square.  It seems these asses did not sit well with the proprietors of Times Square Church - TSC’s preacher, Neil Rhodes has successfully gotten the ad pulled and a lawsuit is underway.

This makes absolutely no sense to me.  Hey Preacher, your church is in Times Fucking Square!  What the hell did you expect?!  You don’t want to see sensational ads?  Move your god-damned church to Tennessee!  As the article points out, there’s already a strip club right across the street for chrissakes!

And isn’t “cleanliness next to godliness” anyway?  Or should we now say, “cleanliness is right across the street from godliness”?  What possible beef do you have with a company promoting proper nether-region sanitation?

I think I know what this really comes down to.  Based upon all the news I’ve seen over the past few years, plus the recent $660 million dollar sex abuse settlement last week, it’s obvious to me that these naked asses are simply too much of a sexual temptation for the preachers of Times Square Church.  Preacher, I can help you through this: just remember that all those asses on the billboard belong to adults.  You guys prefer children, right?

Thanks to David for the find!

Awhile back, a Belgian senate candidate named Tania Derveaux caused quite a media stir by making a campaign promise: she was going to give 40,000 blowjobs to random men who signed up at her website.

Well, like most campaign promises of politicians, she didn’t deliver (why yes, I did sign up).  However, it did get me on the Derveaux mailing list, where I found out about her latest project, called Intellectual Porn.  The byline is “a movie about love, friendship, and other deep shit”.  Awesome.

More from the site:

IP will be a revolutionary cinematic experience. It will be real porn of an intellectual and profoundly meaningful level. It will break all porn taboos and make porn accessible to family audiences.

IP will do to porn what The Matrix did to action movies. And the whole movie will be free for everyone to download.

“Porn accessible to family audiences.”  Have I mentioned I’m totally in love with this chick? 

Anyway, there’s an open casting call for her IP partner.  And after looking at the submissions so far, I gotta say, the field’s wide open.  There was only one submission that was remotely good, but not for the intended reasons.  Be sure to pay attention to the 1:11 mark.  “Ooh, Tania, look at zis body.  I’m going to make sweet, sweet - Mommm!”

Yep, another off-topic post.  But Adchops’s friends over at Scene Stealers are going to be on a new show on VH1 called World Series of Pop Culture, so I just had to shamelessly promote them.  Evidently, it’s a quiz show about how well you know pop culture trivia, which means I would totally suck at it.  For you see, I don’t fill my brain with useless trivia.  No, no.  I fill mine with useful things… like alcohol… and porn.

Be sure to check out the show, and I promise to resume markety/advertisey type stuff tomorrow.

Warning - this has nothing to do with advertising.  But my mouth dropped a little when I read this so I thought I’d share.  In an effort to thwart the rapid filling up of our landfills with dog testicles, scientists have developed a contraceptive implant for male dogs.

Yes.  That’s right.  Some scientists actually got up every morning, kissed their wives on the cheek, and went to the office to work on doggy birth control.  Said the team lead: “This is a major milestone for us.  Now that we’ve knocked dog contraception out the box, we can return our efforts to children’s leukemia.”

The 7-11 convenience store chain has a neat cross-promotional with The Simpsons right now - for the month of July, select locations have been turned into “Kwik-E-Marts” from the show.

We can only wait and see on how well it’s executed, but it’s a very cool idea in concept.  We truly are in a time of massive cross-pollination between media forms and marketing styles; this is yet another testament to the new Gestalt - in this case, a parody of a parody!

They’re really going all out.  Not just renaming products (Slurpees will, for the month of July, be labeled as Squishees), but contracting suppliers to actually create products from the show: Malt-O-Meal has created a new product to don the label “Krusty-O’s”.

The advertising concept is called reverse product placement (I’m sure the exec who came up with that term is verrrry proud of himself).  Instead of a real product being placed in movies, songs, etc., an initially fictional product uses its media familiarity to make the jump into reality.

Not content to just bring fiction into reality, they’re going the other way as well (lots of “going both ways” lately, huh?), with their “Get Animated” campaign.  Through their Slurpee.com website, you can be registered to win various prizes, the grand prize being a guest spot on the a Simpsons episode.

For those of you reading this who are in one of the selected cities, please visit your local Kwik-E-Mart give us your thoughts on it!

This article at The Economist has nothing to do with marketing, and yet possibly everything to do with it in the near future.  A fascinating study found that men with high testosterone levels make economic decisions in an entirely different way than those with lesser amounts.

Researchers made an alteration to the classic game theory experiment where one subject splits a pot of money with another subject.  The splitter obviously wants to keep as much to himself but the catch is, the “splitee” has the right to accept or reject the offer.  Either both get money, or neither.

In a one-off game, pure logic would dictate you always take the offer.  Hey, free money!  But experimentally, this is never the outcome.  People will sacrifice their own well-being to punish Scrooges.  Evidently, especially so for men with high testosterone.  From the article:

As he [Dr. Terence Burnham of Harvard University] describes in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, the responders who rejected a low final offer had an average testosterone level more than 50% higher than the average of those who accepted. Five of the seven men with the highest testosterone levels in the study rejected a $5 ultimate offer but only one of the 19 others made the same decision.

That’s right, the chemicals coursing through our veins actually influence economic decisions.  Can you imagine it?  Marketing groups determining “molecular demographics” and tailoring their marketing accordingingly?  Very ”1984″ (ya know, that ref just doesn’t pack the same punch now that it’s 20 years in the past).  Wait!  Have you ever noticed how the grandma handing out bratwurst samples at the grocery store has a little cup (not a trashcan!) in which to put your used toothpick?!  Holy shit!  They’re taking saliva samples!  They’re already tracking us - get out your hats! 

Business and marketing is all about playing to your strengths, and only to your strengths.  Check out this vid of some French Canadian coalition forces in Afghanistan using a French-made rocket launcher.

French people: unlike many Americans, I like you.  You’re sophisticated, stylish, your women have accents that drive me crazy, and you top it all off with this sardonic elitism that - while offensive to many - I fucking love!  But let’s sort out our roles here.  Your exports are ennui, chic, parfums, and cheeses.  Our exports are bravado, ill-conceived nation-building plans, jobs, and kickass weaponry.  Got it?  Now get it sorted before you get someone killed.