The Puffereview — a blog about undistinguished advertising

Two men were shot and killed today at CBD Smash Repairs in Florence Street, Brunswick, according to The Age and other media. It’s a horrible story, and not something anyone would make light of.

So it is unfortunate that the initial article published by The Age online had this advertisement displayed next to the story:

Yes, it’s an advertisement for life insurance right next to a story about people being shot dead.

Insure their future with OnePath EasyProtect Life

Now obviously this isn’t deliberate; I doubt anyone would think it is funny to place an advertisement for life insurance next to an article about a horrible and untimely death.

Most likely it is the result of an automated system assigning the advertisement to this page. Maybe the system picked up the word life from ‘fighting for his life’ and decided this would be a suitable article for life insurance. It is insensitive and inhuman to advertise life insurance in an article like this, but unfortunately that’s literally what a computer is: inhuman.

The complex algorithms and targeting of online advertising is meant to be ‘smart’, delivering more relevant and more useful advertising than a printed newspaper ever could. But foolish advertisements like this make me wonder… is online advertising really that smart?

For a while I have felt uneasy about the advertising I see on Facebook. None of it is blatantly false, but it seems somehow… dirty.

It smells. That is what is wrong with Facebook advertising: the ads aren’t quite bad enough to lodge a complaint about, but not good enough to make me feel comfortable. The work-at-home jobs that sound too good to be true. The expensive electronics advertised at impossibly low prices. The photos of random women that look like soft porn.

The problem is proof. I don’t know if the work-at-home jobs are scams, it’s just the impression they give. I don’t know if those new iPads were really discounted by 97%; it feels dirty because that same ad has said ‘Today Only’ for weeks now. But I have no way of confirming their veracity.

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There’s an run-down dilapidated building at 200 Lygon St, East Brunswick, which gets lots of advertisements plastered over it. With its sagging awnings and prominent graffiti, you’d think most businesses wouldn’t want to put their name on that building.

But advertisements for events, performances, shows etc are constantly being pasted up on the walls of 200 Lygon St. The ads look just as shabby as the building, seemingly put up without much care and collapsing under their own weight, fraying and falling onto the street. When it rains sometimes the whole lot comes down in a pile of paper and paste.

Here’s what is currently on the side of the building — an advertisement for a Roger Waters concert ‘The Wall’ that is, ironically, falling off the wall:

It’s a typically poor job: the panels don’t line up and it’s already disintegrating after just a few days.

But I reckon that it doesn’t matter. All an advertisement for an event needs to do is draw your attention to the event. If you love Roger Waters, then the mere fact that a concert is occurring is probably all it takes to convince you to buy a ticket. I doubt that any fan would decide not to go just because the advertising looks like crap.

Advertising from brands that we’re more ambivalent about is never this messy. You never see, say, Telstra or Woolworths paste advertisements on run-down buildings — I think they know it would reflect badly on them. But in the entertainment business, fans already have strong opinions on the entertainer and aren’t going to be influenced much by peripheral things like advertisement quality.

So the result is that promoters for music events and other shows can get away with shabby work. Doing things properly would cost more money and seem unlikely to increase sales. Unfortunately that means we’re probably stuck with our streets looking like a junkyard.

It’s been a few months since my last blog post due to me moving the blog between servers — and taking a rather long time to finish the job. So welcome to new The Puffereview with a self-important graphic design and, ironically, no money-making ads.

Like most things, with advertising there is a right time for it and a wrong time.

EasyCGI is a company that got that timing wrong. EasyCGI used to host my email, and they were reliable and cheap. Yet I dumped them as part of the server move because their advertising annoyed me so much.

Why? Because when I logged in to do something urgent, instead of displaying my account EasyCGI would usually present me with an advertisement like this:

Full page advertisements would appear when I log in to EasyCGI Control Panel.

It was extremely annoying because I am always logging in to complete a specific task. That’s exactly the wrong time for an advertisement. The ad gets in the way of the task; there is no way I’m going to consider an ad when I’m completely focussed on a different task.

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Fake graffiti on a Mattel ad, corner of Swanston and Victoria St, Melbourne

“that’s pretty impressive graffiti”

Someone slipped a note under my door last week.

It was a handwritten note in blue ink from a local real estate agent. Someone wants to buy my house! The note says:

I believe I have a buyer for your property
If you are interested in selling please call me on …

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She’s got 800 friends on Facebook, updates her status daily and posts lots of glamorous photos online. But I can’t remember the last time I actually sat down and chatted with her. With the pervasiveness of Facebook today it seems we all know someone like this. She’s never going to dump us from her friend list, because the size of her friend list is a badge of honour. Our relationship with her might be tenuous but it will continue in perpetuity — unless we cut it off.

Facebook is only a few years old but the phenomenon is not new. There have probably been people pretending to be our friends ever since humans learned to communicate; but in the last few decades marketing companies have turned fake friendship into an art: they call it relationship marketing.

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I would love to have been at the meeting of Organic Dairy Farmers of Australia Limited when they decided to manufacture things in New Zealand. Who put their hand up and suggested milking cows in New Zealand? I imagine a very uncomfortable silence in response.

Here’s some butter I purchased from those people recently:

Organic Butter from Organic Diary Farmers of Australia

It’s butter. It’s organic. That’s good. The wrapper also has a company name: ‘Organic Dairy Farmers of Australia’. Curiously though, the butter is not Australian.

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We all saw rather too many annoying political advertisements during the recent Australian federal election. But one stands out: Bob Katter’s TV advertisement was an instant classic with its broad Aussie accent and pure puffery.

How about this line:

Bob’s on the job, all day and all night.

Does he literally work 24 hours a day? No, of course not, but that is not what they’re trying to say. Bob Katter has a larger-than-life image and this advertisement plays to that. The words might be wildly exaggerated but that is Bob Katter. Call him up when a croc’s on a loose.

The words themselves were brilliant, but there is one big fault with how the words were used: they’re not on the internet.

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