Well the Doc opened up the old mailbag today and here’s what poured out.
Dear Dr. Ads,
Imagine my surprise when I unfolded the Boston Globe the other day and saw this:
My first reaction was WTF?
What’s your reaction? Is Jimmy Kimmel really in trouble? That’s okay with me if he is.
– Sarah S
Dear Sarah S:
Jimmy Kimmel is really in – who knows what.
Here’s the story as told in the ad . . .
Read the rest at Ask Dr. Ads.
Boston’s SEIU Local 1199 has been dope-slapping HealthBridge Management for – well – ever, eventually seeing the nursing home company file for chapter 11 bankruptcy earlier this year.
But the labor union’s not done yet.
A week ago Sunday, 1199 ran this ad in the Boston Globe:
Apparently tired of bringing a knife to a gunfight, HealthBridge countered with this ad in the following Sunday’s Globe:
The text:
Stay tuned for further details.
From our Whiskey Tango Foxtrot desk
The hardworking staff freely admits that it’s painfully out of touch with modern culture, but really . . .
We have no idea what this ad is about or why it ran in Thursday’s New York Times.
You tell us.
Please.
From Politico’s new Capital Playbook, yet another marketing vehicle for the insatiable Politicoctopus.
CORRECTION OF THE YEAR, from Queens Chronicle: “This article is wrong in its entirety.”http://goo.gl/ynFYgr
The monumental error in its entirety:
Queens dissed on City Council speaker meetings
THEY’RE TONIGHT THROUGH THURSDAY, BUT NOT HERE
by Peter C. Mastrosimone / Editor-in-Chief | Posted: Monday, November 18, 2013 5:19 pm
CORRECTION
This article is wrong in its entirety. A forum was held in Queens Nov. 14. That event was announced by someone other than Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez and was not referenced in his Nov. 18 announcement because it had already happened. We regret the error.
Queens is getting the outer-borough treatment when it comes to public participation in the choice of the next City Council speaker.
A series of public forums on filling the position will be held this week “across the city,” in the words of Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez (D-Manhattan), who announced the events Nov. 18.
Well, not quite across the city. Queens and Staten Island have been left out.
That’s despite the fact that one of the leading contenders for speaker, according to the conventional wisdom, hails from this borough. That’s Councilman Mark Weprin (D-Oakland Gardens). The other three mentioned as leading the pack to replace outgoing Council Speaker Christine Quinn (D-Manhattan) as head of the 51-member body are members Melissa Mark-Viverito (D-Manhattan), Dan Garodnick (D-Manhattan) and James Vacca (D-Bronx).
Rodriguez said in his announcement of the meetings that they will provide citizens the chance to “get involved” as the Council prepares to choose its next speaker, though he did not say exactly who will be attending the events.
“As the City Council moves closer to choosing the second most powerful position in New York City government, there are several opportunities for you to get involved,” the announcement says. “This week, a series of City Council speaker forums will be held across the city, allowing everyone to get involved by asking questions and addressing what the priorities of the City Council should be over the next four years. This is a great opportunity for you to find out more about each candidate and where they are looking to guide the city via their legislative agendas in the coming term.”
The forums, which begin tonight, Nov. 18, will be held on:
• Monday, Nov. 18, 6 to 8 p.m., New Settlement Community Campus, 1501 Jerome Ave., Bronx;
• Tuesday, Nov. 19, 6 to 8 p.m., Brooklyn Borough Hall Citywide Forum, Brooklyn;
• Wednesday, Nov. 20, 6 to 8 p.m., 55 Lexington Ave., Manhattan; and
• Thursday, Nov. 21, 6 to 8 p.m., Talking Transition Tent, Duarte Square, Sixth Avenue and Canal Street, Manhattan.
“Hope you can make it out!” Rodriguez said.
“Hope you can make it out here sometime!” the people of Queens might have answered.
Confused? No kidding. But that’s Queens for ya.
Blackberry reminds us of Sidney Falco in Sweet Smell of Success when J.J. Hunsecker tells him, “You’re dead, son. Get yourself buried.” (1:35)
Blackberry ads in Wednesday’s New York Times:
Remain in power?
Seriously?
Rest in peace is more like it.
As we noted yesterday, the hardsearching staff has been trying to locate adman Ed McCabe’s legendary New York magazine takedown of the 1988 Michael Dukakis presidential ad campaign.
And we finally did (via Google Books here. Click on Preview this magazine; piece is pages 32-48).
Or you can try to decipher these:
It’s a totally self-absorbed, entirely self-serving account of the campaign. But it’s a corker nonetheless.
From our Late to the Losing Party desk
Politico took a trip down Memory Lane the other day in this Josh King confessional piece from the new Politico Magazine.
Dukakis and the Tank
The inside story of the worst campaign photo op ever.
Matt Bennett can still hear the reporters laughing, all 90 of them. He can still picture Sam Donaldson doubled over, guffawing, on a riser that looked out over a dusty field in suburban Detroit. Bennett was a 23-year-old political rookie in 1988 when he was sent to a General Dynamics facility in Sterling Heights, Mich., to organize a campaign stop for Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis: a ride in a 68-ton M1A1 Abrams Main Battle Tank. The visit, meant to bolster the candidate’s credibility as a future commander-in-chief, would go down as one of the worst campaign backfires in history.
Following the event, after the reporters’ laughter subsided and Dukakis’s entourage was preparing to leave, one of the candidate’s traveling aides approached Bennett. “Nice event, Matt” he deadpanned. “It may have cost us the election. But beside that, it was great.”
King’s piece tries to answer the question “Why had an event that everyone now agrees was such a terrible idea ever happened in the first place?”
It makes for a fascinating read, but the Duke-in-a-tank moment was not the only reason the Massachusetts governor blew a 17-point lead coming out of the 1988 Democratic National Convention.
There was also the relentlessly ad hoc nature of the Dukakis campaign overall – especially its advertising.
The hardsearching staff has been trying to find a link to Ed McCabe’s 1988 New York magazine piece, The Campaign You Never Saw – a devastating takedown of the Dukakis sputtering message machine that produced dozens of ads (one memorable one had a quail – Dan Quayle, get it? – hopping around on a hot fry pan) that never made air. It was a high-priced version of Musical Ads, a scramble that cost the Dukakis campaign dearly.
At least we have the New York cover:
So, in the end, it wasn’t just the tank that tanked the Dukakis campaign.
It was the whole ting.
Beats by Dre, the fabulously successful head(phone)shop, is branching out, as this two-page ad in Monday’s New York Times announced.
Lefthand page:
Righthand page:
How soon?
From TheNextWeb:
Beats says its new Beats Music streaming service will launch ‘within the next few months’ in the US
Beats will launch its long-awaited music streaming service, Beats Music, “within the next few months” in the United States. Luke Wood, president and COO of the company, told TNW that it will be accessible on the Web, as well as from an iOS or Android device. Support for Windows 8, presumably through a dedicated app, will arrive at a later date.
Beats acquired MOG, another music streaming service, for $14 million in July last year. The company was already working on Beats Music before the buyout, but subsequently accelerated the project’s internal development.
GigaOM discovered in August that playlists were being touted as a core part of the Beats Music experience. Freelancers had been commissioned to compile thousands of these centered around a particular artist, activity, or the general mood of the listener. Wood corroborated this report: “We’re going to focus really heavily on playlists, because that’s how we consume music and that’s how most people consume music.”
Beats Music will compete with “established brands such as Spotify, Rdio, and Deezer,” along with newcomers Microsoft, Google, and iTunes Radio, the last of which has had a disappointing debut.
We’ll see how Dre for Pay does in the very near future.
Facebook CEO Mark (Data) Suckahberg has just sunk his talons deeper into your digital carcass.
New York Times piece (via the Boston Globe):
Critics probably won’t like Facebook’s policy
SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook pressed ahead Friday with changes to its privacy policies, first proposed in August, that make it clear that users’ postings on the service and other personal data can be used in advertising on the site.
But the company deleted controversial language that had declared that any teenager using the service was presumed to have gotten parental permission for their data to be used in advertising. The company says it already has that permission from other terms of use.
The proposed changes drew an outcry from many users, some privacy groups, and members of Congress, and prompted the Federal Trade Commission to scrutinize the company’s plans.
Of course, the FTC’s scrutinizing of anything means that nothing will actually happen . . .
Read the rest at Sneak Adtack.
Late last year, the Boston Globe was on the Old South Church sale of its historic Bay Psalm Book like Brown on Williamson.
But now that the auction is actually on, it’s the New York Times that has the scoop.
Let Bidding Begin for the Bay Psalm Book From 1640
David N. Redden recited the opening of the 23rd Psalm the way he had memorized it as a child: “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures.”
Then he opened a weathered little book and read the version it contained: “The Lord to mee a shepheard is, want therefore shall not I. Hee in the folds of tender-grasse, doth cause mee downe to lie.”
Those lines were in a volume published in Massachusetts in 1640 that amounted to the Puritans’ religious and cultural manifesto. It was the first book printed in the colonies, and the first book printed in English in the New World. The locksmith who ran the hand-operated press turned out roughly 1,700 copies. The one in Mr. Redden’s hands is one of only 11 known to exist.
Mr. Redden, who is the chairman of Sotheby’s books department and has auctioned copies of Magna Carta and the Declaration of Independence, among other historic and valuable documents, will sell that copy on Nov. 26. Sotheby’s expects it to go for $15 million to $30 million, which would make it the most expensive book ever sold at auction . . .
You heard it first from the Times.
Not the Globe.
Just sayin’.
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