AdScam/The Horror!

So, here I am early on a Sunday morning with fuck all to do before starting to grind out some brilliant and erudite AdScam posts for your education and amusement, not to mention my weekly psfk column that you all look forward to on a Tuesday… Then I don’t know why, but I thought it was time to see how the current “Agency of the Future” Victors & Spoils is doing… And guess what… Their Web site no longer seems to exist! Google and Bing searched no longer bring anything up. Their Facebook page hasn’t been updated in two weeks and their Twitter feed has very few Tweets and nothing about the agency. Maybe I’m missing something here and these geniuses are up to some kind of virtual/crowdsourcing/douchenozzelry that is beyond me… But for an outfit that had a full page blast in the New York Times trumpeting about how these guys had discovered a fucking cure for cancer… How quickly (less than five months) things can change. Anyone hear anything?

Remember this? How fucking apt!

In his ineffable fashion, Tom Messner, in a comment on my post bitching about how fucked up computers are, reminds us of the legendary Jack Tramiel, who survived Nazi concentration camps and went on to become a typewriter mechanic before founding the Commodore computer company. For a time, Commodore was the largest PC company in the world. Jack flogged that, then bought Atari, long after Nolan had moved onto Chucky-Cheese… Really bad pizza made by giant rats. For a brief period, the Atari account was with then start-up San Francisco agency, Goodby, Silverstein… At a time when ace blowhard and major douchenozzle Andy Berlin was still there. Apparently Jack drove everyone fucking nuts, and in his usual style, wanted everything cheap, or better yet, fucking free. The guy is still alive and no doubt making some poor fuckers life hell.

Everyone loves Jack!

News that Peter DeNunzio is being pushed out of his role as President of the NY office doesn’t surprise me. Peter is a real smart and nice guy, so obviously is a bad fit for one of the most fucked up agencies on the face of the planet. I worked with Peter for many years at Ogilvy, New York, and I’m sure the only reason he left was because he had a splendid offer when the shop was more FCB than fucking Draft. The thing that would kill anyone in that job is having to report directly into Laurence Boschetto, when he isn’t “pumping something” in his corner gym! They’ve brought in another Chicago wanker to do the bidding of Hughie, Dewey & Louie. Good luck to him, he’s going to need it. Peter… email me! 

Welcome to Draft/FCB!

Hot from Silicon Valley this morning… Newsweek contributor Dan Lyons, who is also the originator of the fucking hilarious "The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs" blog and his novel "Options: The Secret Life of Steve Jobs – A Parody," has been signed up as the writer of a new Epix Channel TV show to be called "iCon," with Borat director Larry Charles, who wrote and produced for both "Seinfeld" and "Curb Your Enthusiasm" in charge of the pilot. Epix says in a press release that the show will be "a savage satire centering on a fictional Silicon Valley CEO whose ego is a study in power and greed." Oh fucking yes… Talk about truth being stranger than fiction… Jobs is a brilliant guy, but extremely weird, paranoid and with delusions of omnipotence… Otherwise, he’s just your average gazillionaire!  

Digg it baby!!!

Great article by Tom Hinkes over at AdAge spelling out how fucked up consumer brand marketing is, because it’s all come down to the safety of numbers, otherwise known as “datametrics.” Yeah, that’s right, the same shit BDA’s and their holding companies love to go on and fucking on about - Remember how Enfatico hammered their “Enfatolytics” as the way of the future? That worked well, didn’t it? As Tom points out… Marketing departments used to be the creative engines powering successful corporations. Now they're overrun by number-crunching nerds. As a direct consequence, despite all the conspicuous focus on "change management," the way brands respond to change in the marketplace has deteriorated. My remedy for this mess… Blow up all the fucking MBA mills, ban the use of Power Point for ever… And most importantly shoot all the accountants.

Let them eat each other!

If you have the stomach for it early in the morning, check out Kevin Roberts cringe inducing blog. This week he posts about “Music”.. As you know I'm a big believer in work/life integration. And music is a big part of my life. For the last year or so I've been working on a new business with my youngest son, Danis. Our first goal is to reignite music retail and provide music lovers with their dream environment for discovery and rediscovery...Oh yeah, and who the fuck is funding this… The long suffering Saatchi shareholders? And besides which, how does this guy, who spends his life jetting around the world and staying in 5 star hotels have time for this shit? He also hammers away about “Lovemarks” and how this is demonstrated  by a fucking ice cream shop in Auckland, New Zealand. How the fuck does this guy get away with this shit?

Much better without the head!

I posted a couple of days ago about all the Microsoft Dweebs secretly using iPhones on the Redmond campus, and how during his usual fist-pumping entrance to an all-company meeting last fall, CEO and ace douchenozzle, Steve Ballmer grabbed an iPhone from an employee who was taking a picture of him and pretended to stomp on it. Fucking crazy… He should have stomped on it… God jobs would pull out an Uzi and shoot any non-Apple shit to smithereens. Steve does not fuck around. He gets the job done. There’s even a story that Stephen Elop, president of Microsoft's business division and a former iPhone user, tossed his iPhone in a blender at a company meeting shortly after he was hired in 2008. Yeah fucking brilliant… The clown had to do a fucking homage to Blend Tec’s “Will it blend” masterpiece. Why don’t the fuckers at Redmond make shit as good as Apple… Then my fucking computer would stop crashing. Bollocks, time for a drink!

You show me non-Apple shit and you die!

If you’ve been wondering where the fuck all the erudite, insightful, brilliant and jaw dropping AdScam posts have been all day… It’s simple, my computer and it’s various bits of Microsoft rip your guts out ‘cos we can, software have been making my life a fucking nightmare. It’s fixed now… For how long is anyone’s guess. But as they have ninety percent of the computing universe by the short and curlies, there’s fuck all you can do about it… Which brings to mind this rather pertinent question… I haven’t seen anything new from CPB on Microsoft in fucking years… Mmmm… Too busy on Mac & Cheese, or Dominos, or BurgerWank. It’s always funny how the frat boys pick up something new and announce their first efforts with a great deal of fanfare, which the ad trades stick their tongues way up the old orifice, then fuck all ‘till it turns into a Deadenbacker, or A Man’s Laws, or a Nike. Still, plenty of suckers left around. Meantime, back to the Kaypro.

On the other hand...

Remember my post of Tuesday about the mind numbingly boring Even William's SXSW Keynote speech? Well, Diane Mermigas over at bNet has a very fucking funny follow up on it. Which shows how the Twitter – Meister was the recipient of hundreds of tweets while delivering his interview with some wanker from Havas Media Labs. Here’s a fine example… “Attendees leaving the keynote in droves after finding out there were no free hot dogs/t-shirts/button/key chains,” tweeted jonsterp.”There is a line to get OUT of the keynote,” tweeted robkknoth. And this beauty… Fast Company’s indictment, calling the exchange “the most horrifically devastating keynote in SXSW history.” As Diane points out, showing up on stage isn’t enough. You’d better have something to say worth tweeting about. Fucking dead right!

SXSW Swag!!!

Everyone is all hot under the collar and creaming their jeans about SXSW, with over 11,000 attendees getting fucked up in Austin, Texas, for South by Southwest. It used to be just a music festival, then film, and now digital. Which means it will inevitably get fucked up by the VC heavy hitters who are being increasingly drawn by the shindig’s growing reputation as a sort of Burning Man festival for digital technology. Big brands, such as Microsoft, a platinum sponsor, use the conference to burnish their credentials with an audience that would otherwise tell them to fuck off. "If you believe in the consumerization of technology, South by Southwest is one of the most important events in the world," said Chris Bernard, user experience evangelist at Microsoft. Dontcha love that “Evangelist!” This is not religion, you Twat, it’s technology… Unless it’s Apple shit and GodJobs puts in an appearance. But Steve is way too cool for that… He only goes to his own events. Wicked!!!

Austin... Why the fuck would anyone in their right mind go to Austin?