Category Archives: Advertising
3 Features We’d Like To See On A Facebook Brand Smartphone
Yesterday, we wrote about reports that Facebook may introduce a Facebook smartphone this Thursday. What could Facebook possibly add to a smart device that Apple or Samsung haven’t already thought of? How about features like these:
1. Notifications of everything! A friend got engaged? Consider yourself notified.
You type a note of congratulations. Consider yourself notified of every other person who congratulates the friend after you.
Someone in your contact list turned their phone off “Airplane” mode. Notified.
Someone sent you email from Yahoo or Gmail – slow down there, why are you using competing products? Haven’t you tried the new Facebook email? Sounds like someone needs a notification telling them about Facebook mail, and a prompt asking them if they would like to reply to all future emails from Facebook mail. You don’t want to do that? Too bad, while your phone was in your jeans, your hip clicked the “like” button to the prompt, and there is no way to ever undo that.
2. Notification prioritizer. “Tired of getting so many notifications of everything on your phone,” we imagine Mark Zuckerberg saying at the keynote. Well, now you can prioritize your Tweets, Facebook messages, and texts into the following categories:
- What are people up to on Facebook?
- Events on Facebook that you did not get invited to, and the name of the person who did not invite you.
- Ads that you will see whether you want to or not.
- Ignore everyone! (only works if you agree to receive a notification of a new ad every five minutes).
- Arguments of the validity of words from the “Words With Friends” chat room.
- Notification of changes to terms of service, slowly week by week, agreeing to get rid of all of these preferences, and enjoy the new priority sequence called whatever-we-want-to-show-you!
3. TV Shows You Watched. Because if you look at your Facebook account you’ll see they’ve lowered the bar from shows you like, to just whatever you’ve watched. We’re guessing it makes it easier for advertisers to figure out who fast-forwarded through the commercials on their DVRs on shows they recorded by accident. The good news, is your phone will now record every show you watch, and then show you the commercials as your new visual ring tone!
World Eagerly Awaits Which Chemically-Colored Smoke Will Emerge From The Vatican!
As reported in the New York Times, mystery chemicals will be burned in cartridges at the Vatican to let the world know via chimney-smoke whether a new pope has been chosen.
Black smoke = no new Pope.
White smoke = new Pope!
What 3 Other Colors Of Smoke Emerging From A Chimney At The Vatican May Mean
1. Greenish-Yellow Smoke. The color-producing cartridges were manufactured with budgetary considerations in mind, in Wuhan, China using the city’s yellowish-green smog.
2. Blue Smoke. Instead of reporting a new Pope hire, someone at the Vatican is about to be fired for making smoke the same color as the sky, leading to more spectator confusion!
3. Red Smoke. A new Pope has not been chosen, but enjoy this smoke advertising the remake of Red Dawn, now on DVD!
3 Superbowl 2013 Commercials Getting Extra Free Publicity For Being “Controversial”
The Superbowl is today, which means it’s time for everyone to watch someone who lip-synced the national anthem at a recent presidential inauguration perform live, while corporations vie to show the most controversial commercials allowable by law!
So here are 3 of these commercials that have been causing controversy over the past week:
1. Go Daddy. A “super-nerd” makes out with a “supermodel.” Yeah, this may be controversial if it happened in a 1980s teen-comedy featuring nerds, like say
Revenge Of the Nerds. Otherwise, we have to assume it’s just another day at the Pinterest headquarters.
2. Volkswagen ad featuring people of various ethnicities talking in Jamaican accents. The Huffington Post reports that the Jamaican government endorses the ad, and notes that people of various ethnicities speak with the accent in Jamaica. So case closed, Mon! Everyone feel free to drive their Passats directly to Jamaica!
3. Coca-Cola ad showing Arab man in desert walking a camel. The ad then shows that some sort of Cannonball Run-like race is happening in the undisclosed desert, also featuring a bus of Las Vegas showgirls, a cowboy, and a bunch of post-apocalyptic bikers.
However unlike the real Cannonball Run featuring Jamie Farr as a wealthy Arab, in this race, the Arab is not given a chance to win the race. Because viewers can vote online for who should win, but there is no option to vote for the Arab.
We can see how this one is actually problematic, however on the bright side, at least the camel isn’t encouraging people to smoke, like the once-popular-and-legal Joe Camel. And so, to the camel, we quote another former cigarette slogan “You’ve come a long way, baby.“
3 Worse Individuals Your Wife Could Run Off With Than A Lottery Winner
We thank funny blogger/novel writer Indy Tony for nominating us for the “Versatile Blogger Award,” an award that requires nominees to nominate 15 new bloggers to accept the nomination.
As a versatile news team, we believe in demonstrating our versatility by respectfully declining all chain-letter-like award nominations by writing an entry about the nominee’s blog, regardless of the topic.
Our position about chain-letters probably was formed when following instructions on a chain message on the PacSun Facebook fan page timeline in which the poster warned that if we did not forward the message to 15 people forthwith, a ghost would appear in our bedrooms, but if we did forward it, we would meet our crushes the next day at 8 p.m.
We were initially sceptical of this claim because we knew we were spending the next day at 8pm ironically watching TLC’s Extreme Cheapskates on one of the televisions at the local Best Buy.
While at the Best Buy, cheaply using the cheapest laptops, we only had time to forward the message to 14 Facebook Friends, most of which were each other, creating mass confusion as to whether each message received increased the requirement by fifteen people.
However, none of this created any ghosts in our bedrooms, which were mostly filled with mattresses we found in dumpsters thanks to advice from Extreme Cheapskates.
And so, due to this experience with chain letters, we will instead invest our time reviewing Indy Tony’s Blog. Which takes us to an entry entitled “Happier Than A Pig In Slop.”
Don’t be fooled by Tony’s blog title. It’s not all about pigs. There’s more to read about in life than pigs, people!
In this entry, Indy Tony, came up with a novel idea while driving from Cleveland to Rochester, to see his kids, whom he must love dearly, to drive from Cleveland to Rochester, where the most exciting thing to see en route is a McDonald’s in the middle of an interstate in Pennsylvania. Read the rest of this entry
We Promised You A Photo To View On Your Electronic Devices This Christmas
So here you go! A picture of the partially-constructed tree at Rockefeller Center! Hey, this site is called “Not The Worst News,” it’s not like we gave you a photo of a Rockefeller sapling.
The incomplete nature of the tree depicted symbolizes the incomplete solution to the fiscal cliff from Congress.
3 Worse Photos You Could Be Viewing On Your iPad This Christmas
1. A tagged photo on Facebook reminding you of exactly what you were doing at the office Christmas party last week.
2. A tagged photo of you at the office Christmas party last week, that you just accidentally set as your default public photo for the entire world to see. You have to be careful where you put your fingers on these touch-screen devices! One wrong swipe, and you’re liking ads for “Mature Divorcees In Your Area.”
3. A screenshot emailed from your friend’s computer that shows the photo of you at the office Christmas party is now a top story in his Facebook newsfeed, as part of an ad for “Mature Divorcees In Your Area.”
You Can Now Sell Your Soul For A $3 Cheese Coupon!
Yesterday, we wrote about Kraft issuing a press release announcing intentions to sacrifice JELL-O pudding to the gods to avoid a Mayan apocalypse. Well, we have to hand it to the company’s marketing team or ad agency(ies) for coming up with another entertaining campaign, as we see that in Canada, Kraft Foods is offering a coupon for $3 off a bag of shredded cheese if you sell your soul.
Specifically, all you have to do is “sell your soul” by sharing details of the cheese or offer or whatever information is shared by clicking a Facebook “share” button.
3 Less Fun Coupons To Exchange For Your Soul
1. An expired coupon for Twinkies. Even if it hadn’t expired, we wonder whether your local store will honor a coupon from the financially-troubled Hostess Brands.
2. A coupon entitling you to the deed to a haunted mansion, where all you have to do is spend an evening in a haunted mansion. We don’t know where you clip your coupons, but if we’ve learned anything from cartoons, the mansion is never really haunted, and the crazy old uncle who bequeathed it to you is still alive and had an ulterior motive to play a prank on you.
3. A coupon for eBay, if you intend to use it to attempt to buy someone’s soul on eBay. As we’ve written about here, souls have been offered for a wide price range, starting around $3 on eBay. That said, selling your entire soul to only get a discount on a soul seems like a bad deal, especially since we question whether the discounted soul could be shipped in time for Christmas.
Skydiving cats.
CNN reports people are angry after a Swedish insurance company commercial featured skydiving cats.
“As if anyone would buy insurance so their cats could skydive,” we thought, knowing for that reason and only that reason the ad must be fake.
Through the miracle of technology, the cats weren’t actually skydiving, but through the other miracle of technology, people assumed whatever they saw online was real, no matter how ridiculous.
3 Additional Unrealistic Things Involving Cats To Not Get Angry About
1. Rappin’ cats. MC Skat Kat is just a cartoon character, folks.
2. Cats singing the Meow Mix jingle. We’re not gonna fact check, but rather assume this never really happened.
3. Cats playing keyboards. Again, no reason to get angry, unless you’re the guy in this link being taunted by keyboard cat.
What’s Pizza Hut Stuffing Their Crust With Now?
Pizza hut is now advertising Hot Dog Stuffed Pizza in Canada. “It’s greatness – stuffed with greatness!”
Wait a minute… if you stuff greatness with greatness, aren’t you making one solid circular object of pure greatness, indicating it’s really not stuffed with anything? We’ll let the philosophy majors decide.
3 More Things A Pizza Chain Could Stuff Their Crust With
1. Ballots for the upcoming U.S. election! Spoiler alert: you’re not helping your favorite candidate win by illegally stuffing multiple ballots into a a pizza and then consuming it.
2. Ballots for a Pizza Chain Contest To Determine “What Crazy Unhealthy Item Should We Stuff Our Crust With Now?” The good news if the ballots are made of paper, you’d be eating fibre which may be healthier than whatever food product you voted for. Although if you voted for “hot dogs” you could have just gone to a Canadian Pizza Hut (while supplies last.)
3. Stuffing. Stuffed with stuff. We’re not talking the stuffing you serve at Thanksgiving, but rather than cottony stuffing at Build-A-Bear Workshop. Even the inanimate stuffed and unstuffed bears may frown upon your culinary choice. And the more animated, animatronic bears at Chuck E. Cheese’s may frown more if someone tries to stuff their classic dough and cheese pizza with anything.
McDonald’s Ad Saying “100% Beef Not 100% Cow” May Give Philosophy Majors New Topic To Debate At 2:00 A.M.
As we’ve reported twice, McDonald’s Canada is running a new ad campaign that allows Canadians to ask the company questions on a web site via Twitter and Facebook.
As previously mentioned, they have blanketed Toronto’s busy Yonge and Bloor station with ads. As a picture says 1,000 words (unless it’s a poster saying less than ten words), here are some more examples from the station.
But this is the poster we want to write about today:
100% Mysterious!
Okay, if you’re pondering the meaning of this, the web site has an explanation, which you can read here. Basically someone asked if cow organs and snouts were used in the burgers, and McDonald’s said no. Dear McDonald’s, your poster would have made more sense to us if it said “NOT 100% of the cow.” You know, because beef is 100% made of cows.
But enough “grammar” this and “logic” that! What about the cows out there? Certainly some insecure cows may be offended that their entire cow-hood appears to be question.
3 More Boolean Functions For Ads
1. 100% Hot Dog, Not 100% Ingredients You Really Want To Know.
2. 100% Good Cholesterol, Not 100% Well-Behaved Cholesterol, this cholesterol just got a tattoo of its Harley.
3. 100% Images And Words For The Purpose Of Advertising, Not 100% Optical Illusion, So Please Stop Staring At The Ad And Just Read It, And Then Buy The Product!
