Comcast’s “Televisiphonernet” is a great spot that works on various advertising levels (humor, message, target audience). Comcast, however, has missed the digital forest for the trees. When searching for this ad online, I was frustrated and confused. Despite my best televisiphonernetting skills, I could not locate this ad in any of the usual places—YouTube, Google, or even Comcast’s own website (for shame, Comcast!). Finally I located the ad on the website of a Bruno publication called Boards.

Comcast should dial up AT&T, who also threw their hat into the buzzword ring with their “Your Seamless World” commercials, otherwise known as Virgicolementoflaggantonio.

They have all of the commercials from this service easily accessible on YouTube. For example:

My suggestion to Comcast is that they stop multitasking and spend some time focusing on their Internet presence. True, message is important, but so is making it accessible to as many people as possible.

The most effective marketing artfully blends a crisp message with impeccable placement (a rare combination of timing and location that hits the right audience at the right moment). Add a touch of dark humor, and you’re impossible to ignore.

Bus side ads are nothing new, but bus tops? A high-level photoblogger captured this CareerBuilder.com placement, which uses the usually unseen real estate above the bus to tremendous (if potentially offensive) effect. The concept is effortless, the targeting is spot-on, and the impact is—well, let’s let just hope the impact remains figurative.

Somebody at city-centric website LAist spotted this rotten example of display-ad deception:

Seems like a decent deal, until you get closer.

In LA, a rose by any other name just stinks.

The very funny site Very Funny Ads is living up to its name, digging out this chestnut from 1965.

Be advised that you will probably have to hit yourself with a ball peen hammer to get the jingle out of your head.

Don’t watch commercials with me. I ruin the experience. I complain when the message is off-target or heavy-handed. I will change the channel when a Mazda “Zoom-Zoom” commercial airs because I loath that tagline-whispering child. Why is he even there? I doubt the car’s top feature is that children talk in whispers when it drives by.

Recently, however, that purveyor of gourmet burritos and tacos, Chipotle, has won my cynical heart. No, not with their food (never ate there) but with their radio jingles. I was so entertained by a 30-second song called “Life is Burritoful” that I sought it out on Internet. That search led me to discover Chipotle Radio.

At Chipotle Radio, I can rock out to “Burrito Bol,” bop along to “Call Me Avocado,” and chill out to the reggae stylings of “Know Thy Lunch.” The irreverence and humor in these spots is right on target—perfectly in tune with the lighthearted (yet hearty?) vibe we associate with Mexican food. It’s not just a meal, it’s a fiesta. Sure.

These spots are so catchy that the next time I pass a Chipotle I just might stop in. I’m sure that’s not the absolute ideal result Chipotle desires, but at least I’m not changing the station.

Perry Marshall starts off his article, “Old-Fashioned Discernment in the Age of the Internet,” with the following:

You know what’s wrong with the Internet? Smart people and stupid people get equal airtime. And since stupid people tend to shout longer and louder than people who have acquired wisdom and judgment, ignorance generally prevails.

He goes on to say that stupidity is cheap and plentiful:

. . . with stupidity, your options appear to be endlessly open, whereas wisdom is scarce and expensive and usually involves up-front commitments.

More surprisingly, he claims that you—and your customers—decide between the two every day. This seems to be contradicted by his later claim that “in the 21st century the #1 success skill—a skill that NOBODY ever seems to talk about—is discernment” (defined as keenness of insight and judgment).

I’m perhaps wrong to conflate “wisdom” and “discernment” here; perhaps he sees them as different. But assuming they are the same or at least related, do you decide to be wise/discerning, or is it a skill you learn? Maybe you must decide to learn discernment.

Regardless, I think he’s got a point about the importance of the skill. In a world where we have exponentially more information competing for our attention than a generation ago, discerning what is important enough to pay attention to will be ever more important. Advertisers become more adept at manipulating us, so if we don’t want to lose our shirts, we’d better become more discerning.

However, Marshall’s bread and butter is Internet marketing and publicity. He lists some observations of wise men vs. fools, including this one:

Wise people research online and offline. Wise people take a trip to the library and search collections of used books. Fools suppose that if it can’t be found on the first page of search engine results, it surely must not exist.

Sound observation, but if stupidity really is cheap and plentiful, we marketers are going to have to keep working on making that first page.

TiVo has changed the way we watch television, cutting commercials out of the equation. Sometimes, however, we stop for an ad that grabs our attention, which means it’s doing something right.

Now, TiVo has found a way to keep track of that action.

The Top Commercial Rankings reports will utilize TiVo’s StopWatch service, which tracks consumer viewing behavior down to the second, and provide ratings for both live and time-shifted commercial viewing, compared with ratings for actual program viewing.

More interesting, however, is that it turns out we like to watch good ads, even when we have the power to skip them outright.

Many of the highest-rated commercials for live viewers were also the highest-rated among time-shifted viewers — all of whom had the opportunity to fast-forward through every commercial.

So, promotional content, done well, can catch an audience even if they understand the transaction. Testament to the value of strong content and good production value?

The dating site Chemistry.com has started a new ad campaign that slams eHarmony’s policy of rejecting supposedly “unsuitable” applicants while pointing out that Chemisty.com has no such exclusionary policy. Is the campaign inspired or misguided? Slate’s Seth Stevenson weighs in with some good points and more background on the politics and dating site infighting the campaign has kicked up.

Putting the politics aside for this post, I want to focus on Stevenson’s final conclusion about the overall effectiveness of the campaign. I think he’s right. You have to be really careful to ensure that messaging works for ALL your audiences. In Chemistry.com’s case they have two main audiences: 1) those who already know they want to join a dating site (and, in some cases, got rejected by one) and 2) those who are thinking about joining a site, but want to shop around and choose the one with the best possible dating pool.

Chemistry.com’s ads speak only to audience #1. For those people, the ads will certainly be effective. The tag line “come as you are” sounds friendly and open, and implies that if they’ve been rejected elsewhere unfairly, they have a “home” to come to.

But it seems to me Chemisty.com completely ignored audience #2 when designing the ads. To those people who probably have never used eHarmony or who have no opinion of it, the ad messaging sounds dangerously like, “We’re the dating site that accepts all the other sites’ rejects!” Probably not what a discerning dater wants to hear. And even worse, it seems like there might be a danger of the ad not just failing for group #2, but completely backfiring—it’s possible the campaign could actually send more of this group to eHarmony, because there may be a distinct desire to take the eHarmony test just to reassure themselves that THEY aren’t a “dating reject.”

So will the ads work? Well, if there are more people out there in camp #1 than camp #2, Chemistry.com will probably be able to call the campaign a success. If there aren’t, they won’t. But seriously, are there THAT many eHarmony rejects? And even if there are, ultimately wouldn’t it have been smarter to craft a message that would work for BOTH groups, to capture everyone possible?

The mayor of Sao Paulo, Brazil has made advertising illegal in his city. No posters. No bus sides. No flyers. Nada. Zip. Scratch. Bupkus.

Note to self: Sao Paulo needs social network sponsors.

So I’m a creative. So what. That’s one of those broadstroke, high-altitude descriptors that boarders on the pejorative. Use creative as a noun, and you’ve conjured up the image of some ratty-jeaned dilettante who spends all his discretionary income on Red Bull and salon haircuts. (Hey, I just described myself).

Sure, we get to write/film/design for a living, but I’ve always maintained that, professionally, what we do is more craft than art. We’re tradespeople, like carpenters or electricians or steamfitters. Yeah, the ideas we have and the solutions we recommend can have beautifully artistic components, but form always follows function.

So, if some black-turtlenecked type with lozenge-shaped glasses tells you your communications strategy should “emote a genuine resonance” or “bespeak the segment-centric zeitgeist” or some such malarky, run screaming in the opposite direction.

Creative we may be, but there are ways to keep us in line (and ways we keep ourselves in line while we’re at it). Tug McTighe over at American Copywriter offers up a smattering of suggestions that do just that. The lesson is that when creatives (cough, cough) and clients work together, the results are bee-yoo-ti-ful.

Example thus:

Too often, we create concepts out of thin air based on poorly written briefs or for ill-conceived projects. So start with research, do benefit testing, interview consumers of the product, watch them at home, whatever . . . Respect each other enough to try to do it right the first time versus wasting two weeks concepting a project without the proper insights or account planning.