Techdirt. Stories filed under "advertisement"

Was An Advertisement In Vogue The Inspiration For The Star Wars Opening Crawls?

Timothy Geigner — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 19:58:00 PST

A long time ago, in a magazine far, far too female-oriented for me to read...

It is a period of intellectual property wars. Rebellious forces, striking from the internet, have pointed out several times in the past the hypocrisy of people like George Lucas, who at times jealously guard aspects of their creation despite evidence of his own work being a mixture of borrowed culture.

During these wars, spies managed to link to one possible example of George Lucas borrowing culture for his ultimate movie opening, THE TEXT CRAWL, possibly borrowed from an advertisement that appeared in Vogue magazine several years before the first Star Wars film premiered.

Pursued by the copyright Empires, Prince Geigner raced to post the picture of the Vogue ad, uncertain evidence that even those that embrace intellectual property know deep down the way culture works throughout the galaxy....

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UK Couple Pressure McDonalds To Remove Their Boat From TV Ad

Mike Masnick — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 13:16:30 PST

In the continuing saga of people thinking they have a right to what other people see, a British couple has pressured McDonalds into removing their boat from its TV commercials. Adweek dug up the ad itself, which you can see below, along with a still image of the boat from the ad:

As you can see, the boat is way off in the background. And the boat is seen for a grand total of 3 seconds. Yet, the couple got very upset:

"We didn't see the advert ourselves at first, but lots of people kept saying to us: 'Oh, we saw the Badger on the McDonald's advert.' It was quite irritating, especially as we are not fond of fast food and the Badger has a beautiful galley where we cook everything from scratch. We even make our own bread," said Gloria Parsons, 63, who owns the boat with her husband Alan, 72.

"Then one night we were watching something and the advert was on every break, right across about two hours of the programme. Lots of people were very excited to see the Badger on screen, but we weren't. She is very precious and very special to us, and we felt upset that this large corporation would just ride roughshod over our feelings. It wouldn't be acceptable to go into someone's garden and just take a shot of their house, so why use the Badger?

A radio station heard about them being upset and called McDonald's, who agreed to re-edit the commercial without the boat and issued an apology. Of course, in the end, the joke may be on the couple, as their efforts have brought a ton of attention to the original ad and just by judging from the comments on YouTube, people really like the commercial.

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Great Moments In Marketing: Disney Pulls Movie Trailer Off YouTube For Copyright Claims

Mike Masnick — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 14:38:00 PDT

Ah, the stories that just make you shake your head in wonder. The purpose of a movie trailer is that it's a commercial. It's a pure advertisement with the math being simple: the more people you get to see it, the more likely you are to get people interested in shelling out cash to see the actual film. As such, you would think that anyone would be thrilled if people are actively promoting that advertisement for you. Not at the Walt Disney company, apparently. After a trailer of the hotly-anticipated Tim Burton adaptation of Alice in Wonderland hit YouTube, Disney sent a takedown notice to pull it offline. Because heaven forbid people actually want to see the advertisement they put out.

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So Much Hate For Microsoft's Seinfeld/Gates Buddy Ad

Mike Masnick — Fri, 5 Sep 2008 14:44:00 PDT

I wasn't going to comment on Microsoft's new ad campaign featuring Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates buddying around, but the response among the press and bloggers is almost universally negative -- often in extreme ways, and I don't get why there's such a virulent negative reaction. Just a few examples:

And that's just a quick sampling that I grabbed in a few seconds. It goes on and on from there. To be honest, I'm not sure I get this massive negative reaction. The ad itself is a little silly and barely mentions Microsoft at all, but isn't that bad at all. And, to be perfectly frank, you have to think that Microsoft is thrilled with the reaction. It's gotten a ton more people talking about the campaign than any normal ad program, and it actually does a bit to humanize Bill Gates. And, it fits in with what we've been discussing about how advertising needs to be content first and advertising later.

Also, I'm a bit surprised that none of the commentators seem to be comparing this to the very similar efforts that American Express did four years ago also with Jerry Seinfeld. They created a series of "shorts" somewhat similar to the Seinfeld/Gates episode, and people enjoyed them. Is it just because it involves Microsoft that people react so negatively? Already Microsoft has been able to draw people into the storyline (even if negatively), and it can now use future episodes to continue to entertain and educate. That seems like a good thing, not something to be so widely trashed.

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