mindsquirt

Hello to all.

I decided to share some of my most loathed banner ads with you that I encounter on an almost daily basis. Most of them are from checking my yahoo account. If any of you use yahoo mail, they might be familiar.

1) This is a video of a woman dancing by her work computer who is "surprised" to see the camera sneak up on her from the behind. I only hate this one because she does such a poor job at acting surprised. It is also pretty obvious that this company didn't want to shell out the dough to get a advertising company, so they asked Shelly down the hall to do the acting.







I also hate it because of the dancing. This is an ad for an online educational do-hickey, and dancing has nothing to do with it. They clearly just put in the dancing to lure the eye. I hate that.
If I were an banner-ad advertiser I would probably push the envelope and get people's attention by showing guns pointed at them and firing. There also should be some menacing-looking text that says "I am going to fucking kill you".

I might also use flashing signs that claim that their loved ones are being held hostage and show a picture of a person with tied up with a bag over their head.

Sounds far-fetched? Wait a few years.



2) I am not sure what the photographer was going for here in this personals ad. If they wanted it to look like the man in this picture look sadistic and is trying to force himself on this girl, they did a bang-up job. Notice she also is nervously smiling while shying away in an attempt to placate him in order to escape. She has a look of "Please save me".

If I was a woman, this is not the situation I would be looking for. Good work, Yahoo!











3) This add has Jared. I have more hate for Jared than there are stars in the sky.





I don't know who the other guy is but he has earned my hatred by appearing in the same ad.


4) Half of the time I check my email I have to stare at this idiot. I hate his cocky little smirk and that silly leaning stance of his. I would like to see him lean so far that he topples over that railing behind him into a tank of sharks.









I am not sure why Yahoo thought I would want to see him when I checked my email.

5) These dancing silhouette guys are the worst. They pump their fists up and down at about 10 Hertz and are really distracting.

Not so much "what is that?" curiosity/distraction, but more of a primal-flinching-instinct that goes back to when we lived in caves. It is more of a "My life is in immediate danger"-type-distraction. This is exactly what I don't like to go through when I am checking my email.

After seeing this one I was sure I had seen the worst. Then, recently I saw that they squeezed three of these hand-pumping maniacs into one banner. I like to call it the "Triple Lindy".

!!!!!UPDATE !!!!! : I FOUND A TRIPLE LINDY AD:

FOO
FOO
FOO
FOO
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When I tried to find an example of the Triple-Lindy for this blog, I couldn't seem to find it quickly. I guess the company had enough of the death threats. I hunted around on Monster.com and I made sure to search for job postings in true 2nd grade fashion and find some that contain the word "shit". Believe it or not, I found two. One was for a internet clothing store. A link is below in case you decide to shop there or want to avoid it forever.

http://www.karmaloop.com/

There is an exerpt from the job posting in red below . Please form your own opinions. I have none to share.

Isn't it interesting how I always start my blogs on one topic and end up on another? When that happens I call it a Triple-Lindy.

The Karmaloop Story:
Karmaloop was founded in 1999 to battle the evil forces of McFashion. In a world populated by Abercrombie Zombies Karmaloop was created to provide a universally accessible alternative - a boutique to outfit cutting edge culture. Plus, it seemed like it would be fun to start a web site & get free clothes.Against the odds, Karmaloop has weathered the storm & is a dot.com survivor! Karmaloop never received any venture investment and grew solely through the hard work of the Karmaloop staff & the support of the many we consider to be part of the Karmaloop extended family.

Every member of Karmaloop's staff is in their 20's. We don't just work for Karmaloop we live it (& all have closets full of clothes to prove it!).

Karmaloop has been through having one computer, storing clothes in my parents basement, carrying orders in shopping bags on the subway to drop at the post office before going to our paying jobs, working out of a tiny apartment, a crazy landlord at the piano factory, a crazy hosting company, low-money, no money, late pay checks, busted hotels, hundreds of trips on the Fung Wa (chicken run!), chasing a crack head out of the office, sharing an office with crazy people, drinking binges, a flood in the warehouse, and about a million people telling us "the Internet, ha ha ha, you will never make money on the Internet!"But through it all we always new we would make it for one reason: you!

Despite everything we were up against & all the crazy shit we had to go through, we had incredible support from our partner brands & you, our customers. You never doubted us, you spread the word, were patient when we screwed up, & gave us love when we did things right!

Labels: ads