The Suits Must Die.

The advertising industry at a dead end.

Greg Stene, Ph.D.

Mass Communication

Idaho State University

Pocatello, ID 83209

208.282.4539

[This is the Forward only. I'm seeking a publisher for the whole book.

Note 2004-01-15 Paypal, the eBay owned internet-bank thing has frozen our assets and shut down the Commercial Archive's only donation option right before the superbowl (ouch) due to the nudity in this image. Read more here

The now infamous Sophie Dahl Opium ad has become the most offensive ad of 2000. It'll go down in history kids! Or at the very least, become a trivial pursuit question. Aren't we proud?

Opium: a whopping 948 complaints - but the ad was never banned.

Violent TV Programming will stop you from buying anything - as a new study shows that violent programs make you angry - and angry people don't remember the commercials aired. Current Directions in Psychological science have an article in their latest issue (you have to pay to read it) written and researched by Brad J. Bushman and

That Opium poster with the pale white nude Sophie Dahl - is now banned in most countries, like prude old Sweden and shockingly - Great Britain. Meanwhile back in Soho, FCUK are in trouble for that name again, you really should see Trevor Beattie's respons to that here. Stateside Ikea sells furniture with a leather teddy and a whip. Is sex the only way to get attention (and banned) these days?

The Globe and Mail

Pardon me, but I feel an adrant coming on.

After throwing away the mind-numbing device in my house - otherwise referred to as a Television - I quickly grew addicted to other visual stimuli, movies on DVD. There seems to be no DVD out there without a "making of" section, showing "behind the scenes" of each film. Most of them have countless games interviews and a quick link to the movies web site as well.

Steve Jobs has ripped'em a new one. The latest batch of iMac ads, five in all, has now been released to the teeming masses. Love them or hate them, the expanded designs of the iMac shell were created to get attention, and it worked.

This has been an interesting find -- Never before have I found a(n) homage to advertising that has created such enthusiastically opposing responses from those I have shown it to. Produced in 1998, it somehow remained underground... until now.

It's a short film entitled New Testament, created by the folks at Swankytown. It won a handful of US film festival awards, received a nifty write-up by Apple, and miraculously cost under two grand to make.

They may not have had actual products, and we now know they never made actual money, but several dot-com companies ponied up some nice ads over the past two years. Even the Super Bowl won't be the same without them.

Pets.com and their funny little sock puppet? Buh-bye.

Oxygen.com and the baby girl who raised her fist high? Barely breathing.

Considering entering some work into the prestigious Cannes lions award show this year?

Do so, the awards have high quality, good competition (from all over the world) and the week of the show is a blast. However, if you want to enter the Cyber-lion awards - you might spend your money better elsewhere.....

The Access Hollywood show reports that while dotcom companies made up 80% of last year's Super Bowl spots, they'll only represent 10% of the sponsors for the 2001 gridiron gala.

With the past few months dotted with e-casualties, many may fear they'll kick off before the kick-off.

The gimmick. Everyone has at least once, tried to use a gimmick. I'm not talking about dancing penguins in beer ads, but the way you put together, or in your portfolio. Will it explode when opened? (I'm guilty of that gimmick) Does it have a mirror cover? Does it contain framed artwork? A statue? Freeze dried foods?

Has everyone seen the new business wins lately by BBDO?

...but a plucky columnist retaliates and uses advertising to illustrate how silly the whole thing has gotten.

Check out Gregory Freeman's spiffy waxings in the St. Louis Post-Dispach where you will discover what will become of mr whipple and charlie tuna and the quaker oats guy etc - good stuff! (There - is that crediting the source enough!?)

I just have to show you this spot. What on earth are they selling? Are actors and stuntdrivers in the same union?

Come october 2nd, Ericssons new campaign will launch, the message: "The Mobile Internet revolution. It's an everyday thing" is going to appear everywhere - TV, radio, billboards, newspapers, the Internet - making it Ericsson's largest ever advertising campaign.

In a message sent to Ericsson employees, Kurt Hellström and Torbjörn Nilsson, president and vice president respectivly share their vision of the future:

Spam is not advertising - it is the cancer of the web. We all know and agree on this - if you do not sign up to receive messages and still do, you are of course a tad mad. It is the advertising reserved for get rich quick schemes rather than the High Street brand name. What if you don't sign up for anything , and get spam SMS'sed to your mobile phone? What is that? SpaSMS! You have to get the message, press button or two read it delete it, and *beep* you get another identical one. *argh!* When signing your mobile phone contract you usually sign a clause stating that you do not want to receive unsolicited messages to it, hence, anyone spamming your phone is actually breaking a law. Some mobile phone companies sell your phone number to the highest bidder - the claus in the contract will protect you from such barbarism. Or will it? Diesels's King Frank has taken to spamming mobile phones in Holland with useless SMS messages, probably thinking it's another cool "ad virus" media in the making- and Dabitch is mad.

NBC contributed the latest example of advertising "standards and practices" hypocrisy when it cut a new Olympics spot from Nike spot off at the knees this week.

The spot, a parody of slasher movies, features runner Suzy Hamilton being chased through the woods by a chainsaw-weilding masked man. The Nike-clad Olympian easily outdistances the psycho, leaving him panting in exhaustion as supers pop up stating "Why sport? You'll live longer."

The network cited an unspecified "number of viewer complaints" as the reason for its flip-flop on the previously approved spot. Once again, advertising is being subjected to scrutiny that programming in the same media is spared from.

In the last few weeks, the spoofsite craze has been reported on here in work for apparel companies Lee and Diesel. Well, now this bit is being used to jump start an 11 year old battery campaign.

The Energizer Bunny is hopping on the fake dot.com gimmick with a new campaign built around TV spots for bogus net businesses and accompanying URLs to parody sites.

Has the line between creative and cliché been officially crossed yet? If so, it's time to say "dots it" and move on to the next tread.

Here we go again.

If you have seen KingFrank.com you might have had a sense of Deju Vu.. Another media-virus internet site? Oh yes, but it gets even better than that.....

Earlier you might have read the articles about the rubberburner.com, borntodestroy.com and supergreg.com created by Paul and Linus at Fallon (US) for their client BuddyLee.