Hey, here’s a question. Can anyone out there name one crowdsourced ad that has been good? Well, there's Silk's Bukkake Ad! Oh wait. That sucked.

How about The Obama Poster design? Well...that seemed to have gotten bad press, since it was an unpaid solicitation to create a jobs poster.

Why would they be upset? Is it because crowd sourcing is nothing more than a cynical ploy to get free work? Or in the case of at least one ad agency, you actually pay them to work? Is it because asking someone to give up their talents for free, no matter how you spin it, is a shitty thing to do?

Yes indeed. And it’s also why the American Federation of Musicians of the U.S. And Canada have started a petition in the hopes of getting Dresden Doll and singer extraordinaire, Amanda Palmer, to pay her musicians.

According to AFM’s petition,

After raising almost $1.2 million for her new album and tour on Kickstarter, Amanda Palmer put out a call for "professional-ish" musicians to volunteer to rehearse and perform in her Grand Theft Orchestra. In return, Palmer says, "We will feed you beer, hug/high-five you up and down, give you merch, and thank you mightily."

Let's start with the obvious. Palmer raised $1.2 million in advance for her new album and accompanying tour, yet says that she can't afford the $35,000 needed to hire musicians. That doesn't pass the smell test.

Radio Lions Grand Prix winner was "Repellent Radio" for Go Outside Magazine by Talent, São Paulo, Brazil.

Ok, so what? Well, President of Rob McLennan said in his President's Message: "I’m really looking forward to working with the world's leading creatives to find the freshest work for one of our oldest mediums."

After discussing who is allowed an opinion on advertising with Simon White, Johnny, Dave Trott and Luke Sullivan, Johhny pointed me to what the creative circle is up to.

In my search for why there are so many jerk-comments these days, I found that the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory, or the Online disinhibition effect is partly to blame for this behavior. Simon White a.k.a Purplesime weighs in on it in this blog post "Don't feed the trolls".

The Guardian spells out doom. Zuckerberg is King, even if I didn't vote for him. In "Why Facebook's new Open Graph makes us all part of the web underclass" Adrian Short even pulls out the old 'if you're not paying for it, you are the product', a cliché I am also guilty of using when hating on Facebook. He dubs the phenomena of 'if you're not on Facebook you're not on the web' to antisocial networking.

Welcome to the hivemind, otherwise known as Collective Consciousness. You know: having a shared belief system. Similar group behavior. Polite society. In real life, anyway. Online the hive mind is the stuff of Kafka and Orwell, or their thirteen-year-old versions anyway.

Live Broadcast of Crispin Porter + Bogusky and Burt at Eurobest

Update - we've updated this so much we had to make a new super bowl commercials spoiler post here..

If you want to be surprised come February 3rd, *do not* read more for the most detailed inside scoop we are able to provide. During the week we'll be updating this information as final Super Bowl commercial news comes to light, as it typically does as we close in on the finish line. We are posting the 2008 Super Bowl XLII commercials here already.

Inside you will find information on advertisers, agencies, directors, concepts and more.

Again - if you don't want to see this information - you don't have to - but you have been warned that clicking "read more" will definitely give you more.

UPDATED! - 01/28/08 @ 4.30pm EST, UPDATED! - 01/29/08 @ 7.30am EST, UPDATED! - 01/29/08 @ 11:15am EST, UPDATED! - 01/29/08 @ 3.35pm EST, UPDATED! - 01/29/08 @ 6.05pm EST, UPDATED! - 01/30/08 @ 6.53am EST, UPDATED! - 01/31/08 @ 7:15am EST, UPDATED! - 01/31/08 @ 10.15am EST
UPDATED! - 02/01/08 @ 7.23am EST

SVT - Swedens state television - are currently airing an ad campaign which states two simple truths, but in doing so court controversy. The first truth is the one I keep repeating in every posting about childhood obesity and the link to advertising since 2003 - the reality is that while advertising aimed at children in Sweden is illegal in theory, it isn't in practice. The super in this ad reads:

Children advertising (advertising to children) is - forbidden forbidden forbidden - in Swedish Television- BUT - TV3 and Channel 5 - are not Swedish Television. They are English channels that air in Swedish. - And then you can ignore the ban.

The Executive Vice President, Government Relations of the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) in the United States, Mr Dan Jaffe, has a blog where he posts opinions and commentary on ad-happenings. He also has a PR company who emails everyone who's anyone whenever he makes a new post in that blog, which I find really interesting. You don't just need a blog these days, you need a PR company as well in order to be really cool. Cooperkatz helpfully alerts me whenever Mr. Jaffa writes on about fast food ads and the rise of childhood obesity, I wonder if they ever read my earlier posts on the same topic. Jaffa writes in his post:

What is even more frustrating is that there is an ever-growing body of evidence that demonstrates that advertising is not a major factor in the obesity challenge that we increasingly face around the world. In Sweden and Quebec, for example, they banned all food advertising, yet their obesity rates are not lower than many societies that have no such restrictions and substantial rates of food advertising.

And yet again I must repeat the fact that the so called ban on advertising to children in Sweden does not exist, see the article Uninformed UK debate about childrens advertising marches on posted March 28, 2005. It's incredibly annoying that people are using this futile and fruitless "ban" as an example in their arguments.
Are they spreading disinformation on purpose or do they not know the facts I wonder. Which is worse?