This is disturbing - Don’t say I didn’t warn you. It’s a recent commercial for Domino’s Pizza that features a rapping “Pasta Dude” who gets knocked down by ‘the man’ (or rather, ‘the mom’). It seems like they were going over the top in an effort to be funny, however this is one of the worst commercials I can remember watching in a LOOOOOONG time. Sorry for the bad review, but I meant it when I said that this spot was disturbing. I’m not going to get into the credits for this one other than it was somehow allowed to leave the hallways of Crispin Porter + Bogusky. And why is that? Similar to their mac-clenching Microsoft team, this one probably prefers Papa Johns.

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Good news for all you Mad Men fans, you’re favorite stars are back on Twitter!

Apparently AMC, acting on advice from their interactive agency Deep Focus, has changed their minds and allowed Twitter.com to reactivate their accounts. I’m willing to bet that the “advice” given involved a lot of yelling, sighs and forehead hitting. Congratulations guys..you saved your client from alienating their brand from the very customers who were evangelizing it.

You can read about AMC’s initial decision to have Twitter.com suspend the fan-created accounts on my earlier post found here.

Thanks go out to Silicon Alley Insider and Daniel Terdiman from cnet for the update.

Welcome back Don & Peggy!

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Twitter is buzzing with the news that last night the Twitter accounts for Mad Men characters Don Draper (@don_draper) and Peggy Olson (@peggyolson) were taken down. At first the outrage was pointed towards the folks over at Twitter, with reports stating that it was because these accounts fall under their new spam restrictions - The accounts were not real people saying real things (yet all were promoting a similar product).

Twitter employees fired back that it wasn’t their initiative, but rather a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notice issued by AMC. Apparently these twitter accounts were NOT all part of a marketing campaign for the show! I will say this, each of the accounts (there’s more than just Don and Peggy on Twitter) seems to have stuck to the character they were portraying. While AMC has the legal right to protect their brand, why ruin a good campaign? Especially one that is free?

Ben Kessler found the rest of the cast who had Twitter accounts and posted them on his blog. They are:

and

- Apparently a new Peggy Olson account has been created, this time with an underscore in her name. One of her first ‘tweets’ was in regards to the account suspension:

MG Siegler from VentureBeat was the first to report of the DMCA takedown:

Twitter has responded back to me on the issue. Apparently it wasn’t a spam issue at all, but rather a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notice that Twitter’s support team responded to, co-founder Biz Stone tells me. I guess AMC didn’t like others playing the roll of its Mad Men characters besides the actors who play them on TV.

I wonder if this was the inspiration for the influx of fake Mad Men accounts (taken from SomeEcards.com):

I don’t think this is the end of this story….

UPDATE! Mario Parisé from the StrategicText blog has come forward to reveal that he has been twittering under the Paul Kinsey (@paul_kinsey) account. It is still (as of 12:45pm EST) online. He’s got a great post about it over on his site. Go check it out.

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This is a re-post of something I caught over on the adfreak blog, apparently the NY office of Avenue A/Razorfish has recently implemented a new method aimed at getting their employees to start submitting their timesheets in a more “timely” fashion: They’re showing “offenders photos” with a message indicating what crime that employee has comitted.

In the example above, the text reads:

“I haven’t done my timesheets in 3 weeks.”

The adfreak posts then goes on to say that according to an agency rep, this new tactic of public display is paying off with an increase in diligence for timesheet submissions. Hmm… I wonder if they bothered to check and see just how many current employees have also showed a newly-found diligence in updating their resumes/portfolios? Do they realize these “offenders” are their employees? I wonder how long it’ll take until one of their programmers switches the photos/messages out with explicit photos of top-level agency execs (perhaps from last years’ company Xmas Party)? Or better yet, how long until someone realizes that this might give off the wrong impression to their clients about the agency’s ability to manage their own employees.

I can’t imagine this tactic being something that would look appealing to anyone seeking employment there, that is… unless you happen to be looking for a job in accounting, in which case you’d probably love the thought of being able to ridicule those bastard creatives who think they’re just so cool in their black tshirts and hipster hair-do’s… “accountants are all nerds” my ass! You’ll show them who has the real ultimate power!

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Here’s a quick round-up of some articles that I’ve found interesting over the weekend -

also on the same topic:

And while still in a “mashup” mood there’s this:

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Here’s a little interactive map I found recently that’s pretty cool from the interactive section of Portfolio Magazine. It’s a fast-loading flash piece that features roll-over prison locations that house some of the recently incarcerated CEOs of notoriety. It’s almost like the white-collar dirty C.E.O. version of VH1’s Where Are They Now? series.

For instance, here’s what you get when you roll-over the icon for the Federal Correctional Institute in Texarkana - low and behold, Michael Kopper, our old buddy who used to be a high-level exec at Enron in the Global Finance Division. Poor guy, his sentence is for 3 years and 1 month, and that’s after he was the FIRST to rat out his co-workers! Good luck with the soap Mike!

In related content, if you yourself happen to be on the failing end of a large lawsuit and think you might be facing some time in ‘the slammer,’ I’ve dug up some articles (and selected a few items from each) that may be of help to you in preparing your Armani-suit-wearing-self for that eventual exchange to wearing nothing but the brightest of orange jumpsuits. So read-up, and don’t forget - they always say to beat-up/shiv someone random on the first day to prove you’re tough, otherwise you may just find yourself developing a newly found fear of taking a shower!

The C.E.O. Survival Guide: Pre-Prison Prep:

Don’t Get Sick
• Prison medical staffs may not be up to the standard you have come to expect, so seek as much preventive care as possible before you head in. See your doctor for a thorough physical, including tests for TB, hepatitis B and C, and H.I.V. And get your heart checked.
• Have as much dental work done as you can: Get new crowns and fillings; have your dentures reworked. In prison, the wait to see a dentist can be two to five months, and prison dentists tend to extract at every opportunity.
• No contact lenses are allowed, so buy a heavy, tough pair of frames. Make sure you have plastic lenses, as fellow inmates may want to steal glass ones to craft weapons.

From SnarkySpot - A Word Of Advice:

Avoid anyone offering to “take you under their wing” or help you out. Generally, they are booty bandits, or Jailhouse pimps running a well thought out and practiced game against you.

The Ultimate Prison Survival Guide - No really, this is a legit guide… everything has been half-serious until I came across this one. If you are dumb enough to be going to prison, i’d memorize this before your first day. It gives you useful tips like:

Never stare at another prisoner for more than a second or two. He may be a walking powder keg, set off by an intrusive stare. He may either assault you on the spot or wait until darkness. Even if he doesn’t kill you outright, your face will never look the same again.

and another gem:

NEVER involve yourslef with punks. Do not have sex with punks, do not associate with those who have sex with punks, etc. Many an inmate has been killed by a jealous boyfriend. This may not seem like the shiny happy egalitarian thing to do, but believe me, neither is dying.

Mike - I hope they have some sort of computer class in Texarkana and you can get online to read these guides…. i know it’s a little late by now, but who knows, that last tip might come in handy, especially after they ran all those articles on your sexual orientation…. perhaps that might explain why you were so eager to give up names? Best of luck to ya.

To everyone else, go take a look at the interactive map, it’s pretty neat how they presented the information and I’m sure that you’ll recognize most of the people featured on there.

This is a lesson to all the recent start-ups who are finding themselves with ridiculous amounts of newly found investment capital - You can only cook the books for so long before you end up with a fire……..that and hire an honest accountant.

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[here's a close-up of the actual ad it didn't like]

As some of you may know, I live here in Atlanta, GA. The part of town I currently reside in is right between downtown and an area called Cabbagetown (I live in Inman Park). Well, if you’ve been paying attention to the news at all you would have learned that we had a tornado hit us last night…. well, it landed right on top of where I live. I’m ok, my actual complex did not sustain any noticeable damage, however I went out this morning with my camera and took a bunch of shots so that I could show the aftermath. The shot above was one of the first that I took, as it was a billboard that found itself about five blocks from where it use to be…..which leads me to believe that tornados hate advertising… either that or it never got to review the piece before it went into production… tornados HATE it when that happens.

The only reason for the delay in uploading the photos was the fact that my power was just turned back on (it is around 1:30pm EST), and has been out since 10PM last night. With a lot of businesses closed due to the tornado, including the Starbucks where I was hoping to have been able to use their wifi/power plugs, that didn’t give me many options. So now that I’m back online, I’ve quickly comprised a collection of photos and uploaded them to my photo gallery and flickr account. You can view them both here:

www.brentter.com/photos/
www.flickr.com/photos/brentter/

The worst hit were the Georgia Dome, which you can’t get anywhere near right now, and a loft complex just a few blocks away (close enough to view from my balcony). Here’s a side-view of the complex and the damage that the tornado did to it. By the way, what you can’t see is that it actually drilled straight down through the building and actually hit the basement. Luckily it was a building that was being remodeled so no one was currently living in it, however all of the other buildings next door were beaten down by the storm leaving Cabbagetown full of debris and downed trees. That and a lot of people woke-up to find their roof in their neighbors front yard.

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As for their so-called medical claims of it’s effectiveness, well, it turns out that the true validity of the tests conducted on the product fall in what I would consider a “very grey area” of legitimacy. Brought to light by an ABC News report from last year, it was discovered that their so-called reputable claim wasn’t as clear-coated as they tried to make it appear.

taken from the article:
“Airborne said that a double-blind, placebo-controlled study was conducted with “care and professionalism” by a company specializing in clinical trial management, GNG Pharmaceutical Services.

GNG is actually a two-man operation started up just to do the Airborne study. There was no clinic, no scientists and no doctors. The man who ran things said he had lots of clinical trial experience. He added that he had a degree from Indiana University, but the school says he never graduated.“

Keep in mind though, this still didn’t stop the product from being heralded by super-celebrities likes Oprah, who even went to the extent of bringing Mrs. McDowell onto her show to be interviewed as well as tout the benefits of consuming her “Miracle Cold Buster.” It did, however, spark an interest in 2007 by the Federal Trade Commission as well as a handful of state attorneys generals who then began investigating the medical claims that the brand had been promoting since it’s introduction in 1999. According to a NYTimes article, those investigations are still ongoing, however a class-action lawsuit was filled claiming the brand blatantly deceived consumers with false advertising. It was not until just recently (two days ago) that the case was finally settled out of court for $23.3 Million Dollars. In addition to that the brand will be required to pay for ads in Better Homes & Gardens, Parade, People, Newsweek, and a variety of other magazines and newspapers instructing consumers how they can obtain refunds.

David Schardt, one of the senior nutritionalist at CSPI reviewed the product and reported that “Airborne is basically an overpriced, run-of-the-mill vitamin pill that’s been cleverly, but deceptively, marketed.” That should have been obvious, all the product contains is a variety of over-the-counter minerals with a heavy dose of Vitamin A.

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