Like Brian Morrissey at AdFreak, I’m not a big fan of tag clouds (or “weighted lists”, to use a description from my visual-design past). Whatever their utility as navigation tools, they’re usually ugly as sin, especially when applied to a blog/site that devotes 90 percent of its content to one or two topics (obviating the need for this sort of filtering in the first place).

But take away the navigation aspect, and apply the size-weighting of fonts to mindshare concepts, and you’ve got something. Specifically, you’ve got Brand Tags, an experiment of name-brand products and services with word-association.

Above is a sampling for Tropicana, with a pretty typical lineup related to juice products. Not all brands fare as well or predictably, though: American Airlines ominously tags high for 9/11, while Jagermeister embarrassingly (for a liquor product) registers a strong false-postive as a beer product.

It’s intriguing, although I’m not sure how much faith you can put into an anonymous and limited sampling. Definitely worth a gander, though.

Way to cash in, Moldy Peaches.

It was only a few months ago when you were compelled to reunite as part of the soundtrack for indieflick-hit Juno. Having gotten a taste of that — which included mass-audience gawking via “The View” — you’ve now lent your signature song, “Anyone Else But You”, to Atlantis Resort on Paradise Island for their latest TV commercial.

And probably worse, it’s not even the original song, but rather the melody with some reworked, marketing-specific lyrics grafted on. Selling out doesn’t get any more customized. I’d say the indie cred has flown right out the window…

I wish I could find the commercial online; I guess it’s too new to have been YouTubed.

The above is a crop from a bus-shelter ad I cameraphone-snapped a month ago, somewhere in midtown Manhattan. I like the composition, in that it used the familiar symbol signs for the human form to get its point across about the alienating effect of social phobia.

Not to mention that I have a touch of that particular anxiety myself. So I really identify with that black standalone glyph — much as I’d prefer to be one of those multicolored in-the-crowd types.

A couple of weeks ago, I got a PR-blast email offering up an interview opportunity with the CEO of SocialMedia Networks. Just another Web advertising middleman, but with a twist: It’s exclusively targeting the Facebooks and MySpaces of the online world.

I didn’t take the bait, partly because I knew someone else would.

Ads on social network sites aren’t new, although far-reaching monetization attempts have met resistance. Marketers follow the eyeballs, and when more and more people spend more and more Web time on these dedicated sites, that’s where the money will go.

But how effective will these ad pitches be? Operating on the premise that a website is just another website might not work in these settings, because something like MySpace is tacitly considered a no-sell zone. That doesn’t mean it won’t yield responses, but those will probably be accompanied by higher-than-normal instances of backlash.

In a sense, blogging marketer Paul Chaney probably best characterizes this approach thusly:

Advertising on social media sites like Facebook, Bebo and others is akin to going to a restaurant and asking for a seat at someone else’s table. Maybe they’ll be receptive and maybe they won’t. Conversely, to create your own branded socnet is to invite others to have a seat at your table.

It’s all context. That’s why I always felt that all those commercial presences via MySpace/Facebook pages — promoting movies, consumer products and even rock bands — are odd fits. If a social network’s purpose is to foster person-to-person connections, how is someone supposed to credibly claim a “relationship” with a marketing piece?

Conversely, I don’t agree with the call for advertisers to create their own dedicated, branded site just for a MySpace-like experience — that’s a lot of heavy lifting for a campaign which might or might not have a short shelf-life. I guess that opens up an opportunity for a third party to offer up a middle-ground solution: Cookie-cutter social-network setups that can be developed for single-purpose messaging campaigns and that can be ramped up quickly.

Try to follow along here:

To introduce their new non-pizza offerings, Pizza Hut had some fun with an April Fool’s announcement that it was rebranding itself as “Pasta Hut”.

As a follow-up to this campaign, it’s been running a TV commercial to promote these new dishes, called Tuscani Pastas. The spot follows a time-honored format — hidden-camera taste-testing — but with a questionable wrinkle:

The commercial purports to gather unwitting eaters to try the food at Tuscani in New York, and then revealing to them on hidden camera that in fact it’s Pizza Hut pasta, not Tuscani’s pasta.

As far as I can tell, there’s no Tuscani restaurant in New York. Although it’s a pretty effective ad, it seems to me that if they made up the whole thing it’s particularly egregious, even for the advertising world.

No Tuscani’s, but no problem:

The people were invited to an actual restaurant that is named Provence, he adds, but [according to ad agency BBDO] “we intentionally did not reveal the name and instead outfitted the restaurant as ‘Tuscani’ to reinforce our new product launch.”…

True, the fact that the restaurant is presented as if it is named Tuscani is not factually accurate. But I believe that it falls within the realm of artistic license, particularly since the campaign has already used an element of imaginary name-changing.

But wait, it gets even more convoluted:

One final note, dear readers. The New York Times reported that the restaurant Provence was scheduled to close last week and reopen in May under a new name, Hundred Acres. Maybe Pizza Hut could ask the owners to rename it Tuscani — at least long enough for folks to stop by for a pasta dinner.

So basically, the restaurant on TV is a fake makeover of a real NYC restaurant, which is itself now “fake” in the sense that it’s no longer open — but is in the process of getting a real makeover/rebirth.

Throw in the French/Italian/fast food cuisine switcheroos at play here, and my head hurts. On top of that, my stomach’s growling.

Something very off-kilter is going on in Milwaukee’s public-service advertising scene. Witness:

- A billboard on I-94 that warns against the hazards of driving the highway while distracted is itself criticized as being too distracting:

“When I tried reading every word on that sign, I started leaving my lane,” says one driver, in a report from the local TV station.

- This is in the wake of February’s anti-pedophilia ads for the Family Violence Partnership of Milwaukee, made unintentionally creepy with Photoshopped depictions of little girls with D-cup breasts.

Is the professional advertising community in Wisconsin really this inept at messaging? I can’t tell who did the highway ad; if it was Serve, who did the Family Violence Partnership pieces, that would actually be reassuring, because then at least the ineptness can be isolated. Otherwise, you’d have to conclude that Milwaukee’s got a serious dearth of qualified ad shops.

I’m on vacation in Florida, and thus won’t be near the action during Pope Benedict’s papal visit to NYC.

But, if I choose to immerse myself in the experience, I can via WatchThePope.com, which itself is an outgrowth of Brooklyn’s own The Prayer Channel. This combined online/offline presence boasts an advertising and marketing message of “pray-by-pray coverage”.

Alas, the spirit does not move me. Maybe I’ll catch the sure-to-come “big Popein’” retrospective when I get back to town.

The above picture is of former Spice Girl and current soccer-wife Victoria Beckham, taken by Juergen Teller as an advertisement for fashion house Marc Jacobs. This shot is fairly typical of Teller’s avant-garde approach to photography.

Two things: One, I never would have believed that Stick Spice had enough meat on her bones to represent with a pair of legs like that. And two, this disembodied-limb look is the closest thing to an appearance that she’ll ever make on this blog.

Are the logos above twins? Apparently, they are to Steve Jobs: Apple Inc. is suing New York City to prevent its eco-friendly GreeNYC campaign from using an apple symbol, contending it’s too similar to the computermaker’s mark.

I’m usually sensitive to even a whiff of intellectual property infringement, as most people seem willfully ignorant on the very concept of look-and-feel mimicry. But I have to say, I don’t see much merit in Apple’s suit here. The “infinity apple” design obviously looks like an apple, as intended; but I think the resemblance to the home of the iPod ends there. There are enough points of distinction between the two images that it’s hard to see confusion widely setting in.

Plus, consider the context here: New Yorkers are used to seeing Big Apple messaging all the time. If the GreeNYC ads were somehow to roll out in other parts of the country, I might see the concern. But since that’s not going to happen, and the City audience can distinguish between the two apple-themed concepts, I don’t see a problem.

Less seriously, this could be a signal that Apple is getting ready to unveil some sort of environmentally-optimized gadget, and were prepping a green apple logo of their own. Under-ripened marketing, perhaps.

David Pogue ponders why more companies don’t embrace the transparency of corporate blogs, podcasts, Facebook pages and other public-facing interactive communications.

And he inadvertently hits the nail on the head with this observation:

Now then. We all know, intellectually, that no matter what image a corporation tries to project, it’s made up of ordinary people with personalities, insecurities and lives. But because the marketing and P.R. teams work so hard to scrub, control and package a company’s image, the public ordinarily sees none of that human side.

And all that scrubbing toward uniformity is exactly why you don’t see more penetration of Web 2.0 techniques. Corporate imagemakers are paid for version control — maintaining a buttoned-up storefront that conveys a “serious” company. The idea is that anyone who wants to do business, especially in terms of swapping real money, won’t do so with a bunch of clowns who are goofing around on MySpace on company time.

That’s typically not the marketing wonks pushing such an agenda. Ultimately, the company chieftains are the ones who yea or nay the approach, and since they usually become immersed in fairly rigid corporate cultures (especially when the money becomes larger), they are less comfortable with informality in their brand messaging.

So is a Web 2.0 approach the key to unshackling this closed loop?

When a company embraces the possibilities of Web 2.0, though, it makes contact with its public in a more casual, less sanitized way that, as a result, is accepted with much less cynicism. Web 2.0 offers a direct, more trusted line of communications than anything that came before it.

Well. Anything can be managed at the source. There are plenty of examples of corporate blogs that are ill-maintained, becoming little more than token permalinks filled with press-release text. I don’t think Web-based techniques are inherently purer than any other marketing collateral; maybe their relative newness triggers more trust from public audiences, but that will wear thin as traditional corporate communications techniques get channeled through them.

Ultimately, Web 2.0 gimmicks work only as long as quality content inform them. When they come in contact with corporate America, the quality becomes more restrictive the larger a company gets, and that includes once-spunky Web operations like Google (despite internal efforts to preserve the loose atmosphere). Doing business unfortunately leads to the narrowing of paths.

The mass-market version of the World Wide Web has been around for, oh, a dozen or so years now. In all that time, advertising and marketing types still haven’t figured out a solid way to monetize digital media for the same impact as print, radio or television.

Yeah, there’s Google AdSense and other syndicates. Plus plenty of examples of the success of online campaigns and viral marketing. But they’re all fairly isolated, and a drop in the bucket compared to the overall media advertising picture, future trending notwithstanding.

So it’s no surprise that online video, the latest Web content frontier, is similarly bedeviling Madison Avenue (and beyond).

There is an interesting concept sprouting out of the approach toward capturing monitor-glued eyeballs:

During a recent episode of “Lost” on ABC’s Web site, for instance, Taco Bell offered a virtual photo shoot with Sports Illustrated swimsuit model Daniella Sarahyba.

As viewers watch video of Sarahyba on location, they use the mouse to move around and snap up to 100 shots. Afterward, viewers can download the photos (with a Taco Bell logo in the corner), choose another locale or resume the show without missing a second.

“It becomes a lean-in experience rather than just a lean-back,” said Shawn Chapman, senior manager for brand communications at Yum Brands Inc.’s Taco Bell chain. “I think consumers give us credit for doing things a little bit differently.”

“Leaning-in” — meaning compelling Web viewers to focus attention and give undivided attention — instead of the default “leaning-back”, which conveys the usual multi-tasking passivity with which most people interact online (and, incidentally, with television). It’s a great shorthand for goal achievement.

It may not have invented junk mail, but Valpak, that St. Petersburg-based firm that’s celebrating 40 years of business this year, certainly maximized its potential with direct-marketing precision that drills right down to neighborhood demographics:

From the beginning, the company has staked its success on measurable results. [Company founder Terry] Loebel required advertisers to record how much coupon-carrying customers spent. Valpak remains an intensely data-driven company, with the ability to divide neighborhoods into blocks of 10,000 residences.

For instance, Valpak can tell businesses which neighborhoods have swimming pools, where new houses are being built and where people with certain income brackets live.

If you have a mind to sabotage this sort of datamining, there doesn’t seem to be a way to do so, other than promptly tossing the unopened baby-blue overstuffed envelop to prevent further information compilation. That just slows down the machine — it doesn’t pervert the already-collected data. If it makes you feel better, you can always tear the coupons to shreds, or burn them, before depositing them into the trash bin.

Wait, wait… I work in marketing now. Strike everything I just wrote. Redeem the hell out of those direct-to-your-door coupons!

I was well-aware of Valpak’s presence in St. Pete when I lived there, but I never followed them particularly closely, either personally or for the business magazine I worked for. That’s probably because it sold itself to Cox Target Media long ago, and as a result was no longer considered a “local” company. Too many layers of corporate crud to cut through to get any information.

Yep, the folks at Sci Fi Network have gone to town in promoting the upcoming fourth season of their most popular show, the reimagined “Battlestar Galactica”. I’ve seen this ad around New York, and the obvious homage to da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” (along with the hot blonde in the skimpy red dress) makes it eye-catching.

So why, when I look upon it, do I not feel any particular awe, but rather am inspired to tack on the Austin Powers-inspired caption, “She’s a man, baby!!”?

Probably because I’m not a fan of “Battlestar”. I mock what I don’t understand, I guess.

But others are down with the science, including all the “Da Vinci Code” style visual teasers this ad contains for plot revelations. An excellent way to buzz up a show beyond its hardcore fanbase.

Incidentally, using “The Last Supper” as a motif is a rampant sci-fi geek practice.

UPDATE: I don’t know if this is the case with all versions, but I just saw this ad on a busstop shelter, and it had the following tagline, strategically placed between the accusatory finger-pointer and blondie:

The Final Revelation

I’m sure that’s further whetting scientifictive appetites.

Perhaps as a nod to its allure among the greasier segments of American male society, Vegas.com is running a “Welcome, Douchebags!!” travel promotion, complete with $25 discount when entering code DOUCHEBAG at checkout. And for extra good measure, they’ve staked out MySpace territory for this campaign.

Want to take advantage of those savings for your next stint in Sin City, but unsure as to whether or not you properly qualify? No sweat — just take the provided Vegas Douchebag Quiz:

- Do you know where to get the best spray-on tan?
- Do you like to show off your nipple ring in public?
- Do you know the difference between beer and malt liquor?
- Do you wear your chain inside or outside your shirt?
- Do you own more than 5 different trucker hats?

Thankfully, I’m not even close to a “fo sho” on any of those questions. Never hurts to do a personal inventory, though.

Even more than the unconventional approach, I’m surprised that Vegas.com didn’t engage Hot Chicks with Douchebags — which is of course the douchebaggiest blog on the Internet — as a partner in this marketing effort. Missed opportunity all around.

I realize that the term “killer app” has long since strayed from its computer-tech origins as a shorthand for “killer application”, i.e. a gotta-have-it program that ignites usage by a wide audience.

Still, I don’t think I ever before ran across the use of “killer apps” as a descriptor for bar food. But that’s what Applebee’s is calling its new menu of “Ultimate Trios” appetizers in TV commercials.

I don’t have an specific linkable proof of this usage, but I did find this semi-drunken Twitter citation. It’ll have to do as far as corroborating my recollection.

Killer apps, in the form of chicken wings and mini-burgers. Has geek-chic jargon come so far that it’s now effective in mass-market food advertising? Regardless, unique as it is, it’s not the first time the concept of killer appetizers occurred.

A testament to how thoroughly the specialty bottled water market has ingrained itself into consumer habits is this ad campaign from Pepsi arguing that its Propel brand is superior to Coca Cola’s (nee Glaceau’s) Vitaminwater, based on a familiar nutritional measure:

The commercial goes direct for Glaceau’s jugular, pointing out that the “enhanced” product has 100+ calories per bottle, which would require an “extra 492 sit-ups” to burn off. The solution? Propel, which has only 25 calories.

The weird thing? We’re talking about alleged water — which, in its unadulterated form, has zero calories.

So this campaign is basically using caloric intake to tout one water-based beverage over another, without pointing out that you’re better off going with unflavored/unenhanced H2O if you truly want to eliminate the calorie concern.

Yes, I realize that the appeal of these workout waters is that they’re tastier than “plain” water (that, and their handy portability via plastic bottle). Still, it’s weird to me that calorie-counting is being applied to this product category, as if it were just another food. Like I said, it’s a testament to how established this once-niche offering now is on the American consumption menu.

I came across this unattributed quote today:

“Advertising may be described as the science of arresting the human intelligence long enough to get money from it.”

It’s got that cynical edge to it that never fails to turn me on.

In turn, this definition brings to my mind the concept of the willing suspension of disbelief.

In fact, I think the principle is similar in both cases, i.e. manipulating the mind in order to make it more accepting of a narrative construct — whether that construct consists of creative works, or a sales pitch. Maybe that’s what makes the one-two punch of content and advertising delivery so effective in the first place.

It’s getting to be contagious: First South Harlem gets re-branded as SoHa, and now — well away from Manhattan, no less — Yonkers is getting into the act by promoting its southwestern area as SoYo.

If you’re going to pimp Yonkers as a desirable place to work/live/play, I guess it makes sense to stick to the part that’s as close as possible to NYC. Basically, the folks they’re looking to attract are the ones who’ll shuttle themselves from their cheaper-rent residences to the Metro North train station leading to the City on a constant basis, thereby spending the minimal amount of time possible in the Yo.

Again, makes sense. As does the concept of identifying Yonkers with the five boroughs, since in a lot of ways it’s practically the sixth borough. I know some Bronx neighborhoods (including Woodlawn, which might just be part of SoYo) straddle the borough-municipal border. Why not strengthen those ties mindshare-wise?

I’m not sure how long SoYo, aka the Southwest Yonkers Planning Association, has been around. They don’t appear to have a web presence, which is not a good sign. Can’t depend on garbage-can wraps and subway placard ads alone to spread the word, especially since, well, we’re still talking about… Yonkers.

Greg Wyshynski holds special affection for the distinctive TV commercial toy pitches of his youth:

As a child of the ’80s, the art of the goofy action figure commercial has always fascinated me. Somehow, two little kids holding up He-Man figures, talking to their father on an exercise bike while a bombastic theme song pounded in the background was the pinnacle of marketing genius back in the day. Hell, just seeing it again made me want to run out to Toys ‘R Us and purchase Man-E-Faces.

Which is why this modern-day application of that advertising style for the Los Angeles Kings’ upcoming player figurine giveaway nights resonates so deeply, for Greg and probably other twenty- and thirtysomethings:

I dunno. Even though the kitschy angle is obviously the aim, to me it comes off as overly cheesy. I think they were trying too hard. And I’m not at all convinced that the players were properly into it.

Or maybe I’m holding the NHL club’s production values to too high a standard. I can’t help it — for I’ve seen the light when it comes to this strain of advertising, in the form of this Biblical epic selling the Jesus Christ Action Figure:

I wonder how Jesus Christ Action Figure Night would play in National Hockey League arenas around North America. Maybe if He were wearing full goalie gear — y’know, “Jesus Saves”?

Name-dropping actual name-brands is nothing new in literature; the works of one Stephen King come readily to mind.

Having those brand-names inserted into a novel’s narrative and dialogue per an advertising/marketing agreement? It’s been around for a few years now, and it seems to be gaining currency, particularly among youth-targeted fiction. But there are different approaches to injecting interwoven ad messaging — including the option of foregoing the exercise altogether upon re-issue.

With “Cathy’s Book: If Found Call (650) 266-8233,” a genre-bending mystery for young adults by Sean Stewart and Jordan Weisman that was published in 2006, the authors learned that product placement could be a touchy subject. After their publisher, Running Press, an imprint of Perseus Books Group, revealed that the authors had agreed to have characters wear specific makeup lines made by Cover Girl in exchange for promotional ads for the book on beinggirl.com, a Web site aimed at adolescent girls and run by Procter & Gamble, Cover Girl’s parent, the book came in for criticism. Ralph Nader’s advocacy group, Commercial Alert, urged book review editors to boycott it, and the novelist Jane Smiley wrote a disapproving op-ed article for The Los Angeles Times; The New York Times wrote a critical editorial as well.

Now the novel — which features a series of clues that are given out in voice mail messages, Web sites, letters and other documents included with or referred to in the book — is set to come out in paperback on Monday, and all the references to Cover Girl’s products have been removed. A drawing in the hardcover edition, for instance, shows Cathy wearing “Cover Girl lipgloss ‘Demure,’ ” and “Waterproof Mascara —’Very Black’ ,” but it appears in the paperback version without any makeup noted. And at the end of the hardcover edition, Cathy talks about wearing “a killer coat of Lipslicks in ‘Daring’ “; in the paperback she just says, “a killer coat of lipstick.”

The justification is that the marketing agreement applied only to the first-edition hardcover, so the clean-up for paperback is just as much a business deal. But we are talking about making the novel’s prose unusually malleable, to the point where it doesn’t represent a permanent record. Not that we’re talking about Shakespeare in this instance, but how does this affect other genres should the product-placement arrangement gain popularity? It’s a slippery slope.

Goaltenders enjoy the spotlight that comes with being the focal point of the on-ice action. So maybe it’s natural that they’re the ones spearheading the long-expected migration of advertisements onto major-league player uniforms, in the form of the Goaltender’s Club, a proposal to sell corporate logos on the jerseys of the NHL’s 60 goalies.

A copy of the goaltender’s club proposal, obtained by the [Toronto] Star, shows corporate presence on a jersey could range from subtle to more invasive.

One proposal shows Roloson’s blue and orange team jersey with a small Rexall logo above the Oilers symbol. The drugstore chain’s symbol could also be “sublimated (dyed right into the fabric) on a portion of the sleeve.” A second proposal depicts Brodeur’s Red Devils jersey. The team’s NJ on the chest is positioned above a large tag for the bank UBS and adjacent to an RBC logo. Bank Morgan Stanley’s symbol could be featured on the goalie’s sleeves and shoulders.

A third proposal shows Detroit goalie Hasek’s red jersey, again with the Red Wings’ logo front and centre above the larger symbol of insurance company AIG. The company’s logo could also be displayed on the sleeves and on the bottom of the jersey’s back. The presentation also suggests goalies be allowed to choose the jersey’s colour and depicts Hasek’s in black, blue, green and white styles.

The differentiation of the goaltender’s uni colors is the biggest problem I have with this concept. I know it mirrors European soccer goalies’ looks, and that’s why I hate it: Goalies on the grass look like clowns half the time, donned in a shiny outfit that makes him stand out from his teammates to the point of distraction. It’s an unnecessary visual divider for the spectator. I don’t care how explicit it might otherwise be to tell which goalie is with which team — breaking that uniform pattern breaks the uniformity. That’s why they’re uniforms, remember?

Actually, the biggest problem I have with this scheme is that it’s based upon the idea that NHL clubs are hemorrhaging cash, thereby justifying the monetization of another aspect of the game. Any declaration of poverty among the major-pro franchises is met by extreme skepticism by me, because it’s a refrain that’s been repeated for decades, despite rising franchise values and ever-sweeter arena/commercial real estate deals. In short, I don’t buy the justification.

But does any of that matter? There’s money to be made, and players’ jerseys are the vacuum waiting to be filled.

My sense is that the NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL are all waiting one another out. The first one to blink — be it hockey or one of the other major team sports — will be the green light for the others to follow suit. Until then, the idea seems too minor league for North American sports mores to accept all at once.

I’m resigning myself to the expectation that it’s a question of when, not if. I’d be really pleased if the NHL, being my favorite sport, not be the one to cross the line first. But I’m sure that, say, 10 years from now, it’ll all be academic.