Blog of the Moment: AdFreak

November 22nd, 2004

There’s a new blog on the block, and if you’re interested in the advertising industry, it’s worth adding to your blogroll. AdFreak, a product of AdWeek Magazine, is a collaborative effort by AdWeek staffers to chronicle all the latest and greatest campaigns in the ad world. Unlike the straightforward style of AdWeek Magazine, AdFreak presents its contents in a comical, sarcastic manner mildly reminiscent of the great Defamer.

Since I only have one TV and one Mac, I can’t be expected to keep up on all the latest ad campaigns myself, and that is where AdFreak excels. Check out this piece on Virgin Atlantic’s new online campaign. Brilliant stuff. I already wanted to fly on Virgin, but now I REALLY want to. Try out the dream interpreter… it actually works pretty well for most of the basic dreams (viz. “I came to work naked”, “I was falling off a cliff”, etc).

Online ad campaigns like the Virgin Atlantic dream interpreter and the new CNN Under your Command video piece are a good indication that the dawn of internet advertising is finally upon us. We’ve always known that garish, cheaply produced banner ads never did a whole lot for branding or sales, but now that we have things like Flash video and smart interactivity in our arsenal, the internet may soon overtake TV as the most immersive and effective advertising medium.

Before I worked at Disney/ESPN, I worked for a pretty major ad agency here in Seattle, and the attitude towards internet advertising back then was that it was sort of a “necessary evil” in the business. Everyone knew that being a full-service agency they had to provide it, but no one was particularly interested in it. After all, who wants to design banner ads for a few thousand dollars when you can direct cinematic television spots for hundreds of thousands of dollars? I see all that beginning to change though now that we have stellar examples like the Virgin Atlantic and CNN pieces. As soon as agency creative directors see what we’re able to do online these days, I feel like a lot more attention will be paid to the space. And once that happens, look out… we’re in for some great campaigns.

Anybody have any other examples of great online campaigns they’ve seen recently?

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11 Responses:

Jeff says:

They have some pretty cool stuff there. I’m not sure if I could get that into their content though. Admittedly, I really want to fly virgin now though.

#1 - November 22nd, 2004 at 6:26 pm
Ryan Berg says:

I could definitely get into their content. I’m in college studying graphic design, working at my school newspaper’s ad department as a creative, and would like to get into the ad industry post-graduation. This site speaks right to me.

#2 - November 23rd, 2004 at 11:15 pm
Seth Thomas Rasmussen says:

Are there any people out there advocating responsible, sensible advertising? For instance, are there adpersons blogging about their discontent towards the atrocity that is the billboard on wheels? Or perhaps their disgust at the abuse of the practice that created commercials before movies at the theatre?

And because we’re talking about advertising: etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.

#3 - November 24th, 2004 at 11:19 am
Mike D. says:

Thank you Seth. Jesus, I was beginning to think the only thing readers of this site cared about were browsers, text replacement, and web standards. I’m glad someone has an interest in interactive advertising.

That said, I don’t really know the answer to your question. I feel like advertsing is self-regulated in a way: Ad people try crazy stuff like popunders and eventually the technology comes out to block this advertising. It’s a delicate balance advertisers must strike to make sure their message is pervasive but not annoying.

On that note, check out ComeClean.com for another great use of interactive Flash in an ad campaign.

#4 - November 27th, 2004 at 12:45 pm
Dustin says:

I thought this would be an appropriate place to write this…since I saw this error today.

Screenshot

Looks a little problem occurred with sIFR. I have js enabled and styles on…so what happened?

(Editor’s Note: I finally switched my site from IFR to sIFR this weekend so you are seeing a cached .js or .css file. Hitting reload should fix the problem. I think I will move to naming my .js and .css files by date now so this doesn’t happen.)

#5 - November 28th, 2004 at 8:58 pm
Karen says:

I was just on Spring Break in Miami and saw street teams promoting a new site for Victoria’s Secret PINK: puppyordog.com. Have you guys seen it? About time that someone turned the tables on girls gone wild. The site is hot, or, rather, the guys are!

#6 - March 22nd, 2005 at 8:42 pm
David says:

I just now saw that website and it’s a direct copy of amihotornot.com It’s about time someone used that concept!

#7 - April 23rd, 2005 at 5:31 am
Creford says:

That’s a great site! But I thought it was discommodious that the domain name http://www.adfreak.com would be redirected to http://adweek.blogs.com/adfreak/ .
Thanks for introducing this site!

#8 - May 3rd, 2005 at 9:33 am
Link Right 2 says:

adfreak

adfreak

(via Mike Davidson)

There’s a new blog on the block, and if you’re interested in the advertising industry, it’s worth adding to your blogroll. AdFreak, a product of AdWeek Magazine, is a collaborative effort by AdWeek staffers to …

#9 - November 22nd, 2004 at 5:54 pm
Blankbaby says:

A new blog about ads, freak

Hey, everybody, look! A new blog entitled adfreak is on the scene. The niche topic of this recent addition to the good old blogosphere? Why, advertising of course, and it looks pretty good to me.

#10 - November 22nd, 2004 at 9:27 pm
Juan Pablo Aqueveque | Weblog says:

¿Qué es ser un geek?

Seguramente muchas veces haz leido este término en sitios o welog’s relacionados con tecnologías de la información. Intentemos definirlo, ¿qué diablos es ser un geek?….

#11 - November 30th, 2004 at 10:55 am

Shared

How 3D works, and why it's back:

Great article on the ins and outs of three dimensional imagery. Still doesn’t change my opinion that well-shot conventional cinematography is more impressive than the novelty that is Avatar.

The Importance of Removing Features:

This is one of the most useful articles I’ve read in a long time. As we work on focusing, strengthening, and simplifying Newsvine, the concepts discussed by Lukas ring true. “Saying no” has never been a strong suit of mine. It’s very helpful to remember how important of a quality it is. (via fullstopinteractive)

Newly released video of the space shuttle Challenger disaster: It was 24 years ago, I was in 5th grade, but I remember it like it was yesterday. School was stopped immediately and they wheeled out televisions in every classroom for us to watch the news footage. It’s great that this video has been released, but holy crap, how do you tuck something that away for two decades???

A nicely done british parody of 60 Minutes style video journalism. It’s easy to miss how formulaic our news is sometimes. (via B-Tizzle, originally via E-Chizzle)

Colosseo: This is why Cameron is a king and we are all just pawns in his world. I can’t wait to get my hands on this poster. I will point out, however, that the outro credits on the video need some kerning. Someone is going to lose their right hand for that.

Spezify:

New ways of searching are almost never as useful as old ways of searching. Spezify is pretty awesome though. It’s a visually interesting, never-ending, horizontally and vertically scrollable, topic explorer. I don’t think I’d use it for digging deep on anything, but to get a quick visually rich sampling of a topic, it’s quite fun (via tiff, a long time ago actually, over email).

Realism in UI Design:

Reminds me of my favorite logo design advice: “Never waste a stroke”. (via gruber)

The best hockey team intro ever: Or as Tyler says “The Alaska Nanooks are my new favorite hockey team”.

jimray:

Rachel’s right, this is the best thing ever. At least, once you get the joke. Being the old fart that I am, I had no idea why this was funny until I spent about 30 seconds figuring out what a Team Jacob was and and then it was only a matter of time before, well… it would seem this poor girl confused Pat Robertson, douchebag supreme, with teen heartthrob and Twilight “star” Robert Pattinson.

Interesting. I just assumed “switching to Team Jacob” meant converting to judaism.

AWP Express:

I have no idea if these guys are any good or not, but this is the best example of a design agency site I’ve seen in a long time. It’s clean, extremely readable, very well-written, friendly, free of fluff and hyperbole, and contains clear calls to action. If you own your own agency and are trying to drum up work, you could learn a lot from how these guys present themselves. (via CSS Beauty)

Avatar: The Making of the Bootleg Makes me want to skip the whole 3D thing and support the Canal Street cinematographer’s guild.

Why Are Europeans White?:

According to Frank W. Sweet, it all goes back to cereal.

How to use CSS @font-face:

Very thorough writeup. It’s almost time to walk sIFR peacefully into the sunset. (via oxygensatchel)

A great HDR Tutorial from Wolfgang Bartleme (aka “The Austrian Wolf”). One of these days, I’m going to start shooting this way… probably after it’s an automatic function of the camera though.