Since I posted about the investment banker standing on the corner to get a job (that's sounds worse than it should), I've heard from a couple of people that have done similar things. I got an email from Michael Roberts. He launched his own "hire me" website- hirethetallguy.com. Which landed him a job at EnviroMedia. I just love the slogan on his website, "Because Big People Do Big Things". I don't know why that's so funny to me.

And now I'm really into finding other websites of people advertising themselves for work now. What else you guys got?

...Sex and The City. A friend and HBO employee invited me to the in-house showing of the just-debuted last installment of the show, which got me thinking.

Thinking about convergence. It's everywhere in advertising. The mad rush to digital, mobile and web-whatever is not unlike SATC's move to the big screen. And the same troubles you'd expect with a TV show going movie happens with traditional going to new advertising.

As consumers, we expect the same product — we want to see the same thing we experienced in a 30 second spot to translate online. But can it?

How are you, as addies, recreating your brands in new media? Can you expect the same results online? As a virulent moviegoer, I try not to miss anything (hence my spending more than two hours at HBO), and I have to say the film was interesting. Not my style, but interesting.

Nonetheless, it's just a question and I'm hoping you can answer it — can you expect the same results in traditional as in new?

Ah commenting. (Note: Mr. Parker, could you be any more grizzled?) I am a personal fan of the half beard with beer-in-hand look that accompanies a slow news day. But now you're just reveling in your comments. Sitting in the warm, gooey goodness that comes with fruitful words from cohorts, age-old-addies and those who just want to say something quirky.

Really George, really?

"But times like today, make it all worthwhile... I'm talking about reading the comments on my last two posts..."

Times like today...when news is as fruitful as a 93 year-old hooker. That's nasty.

So now we've stepped out of the ring and into the land-of-George, rife with witty banter and much ado about your own greatness. Bravo, sir.

Well to say the least, it's clear that your readers are into you. Had we some comments to cheer about, they'd be posted right in here. But the best one so far is as follows.

From "Milk Now a Product Latinos Use"

Courtesy Plingyplang (btw thanks for logging in — we know it's a pain in the ass): "The delayed campaign might have something to do with the fact that people of non-European ancestry are more prone to milk allergies. Just about everyone in my (Mexican) family is lactose intolerant."

But we don't know why it's a pain in the ass. So tell us. If those of you who have attempted to log in and got flustered would let me know where the issues were, I could relay the notes to the dev guys and get it fixed. Lemme know. Adhound@gmail.com or adhound (IM). Let's get this thing fixed so you can all can get back to ripping.

Crayon and JaffeJuice dot com's own Joseph Jaffe has put himself up for sale on eBay in the name of "Team in Training, the fundraising arm of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society." Their goal is $10,000, with lots including "Chris Brogan, fellow Crayonista Greg Verdino, Joe Jaffe wannabee, Geoff Livingston, Aaron Strout."

The bidding on this consultant started at $1,000 and as per the last check is up to $1,125, and a winner gets to have dinner with the Crayon consultant.

Apparently, there will be scotch and conversations on how to improve your biz. To bid, click here.

James McQuivey, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc., told ComputerWorld that, "The home is the most likely path for Apple, given the other alternatives...In mobile, for example, Apple just can't go far enough."

Forrester predicts that in five years, the megalith will be so vital that they'll have hardware to connect your computer with, yes, wall clocks. WTF?

More from Sr. McQuivey:

"Apple has never been about only selling technologies. What it's really interested in, at least since Jobs' return, has been in having a love affair with consumers. And there's no better place for that love affair to culminate than in the home and the living room."

So Forrester, you're predicting Apple will grow? I hope there wasn't too much money spent figuring that one out. I need another Captain Obvious picture...

Just a note — how awesome is this image? Apple should jump all over the idea, and pretend they hate it. Hmm, who's to say they aren't already doing that? I wonder how "Let's Get it On" feels...

Time to rant a little about shit that has been pissing me off lately.

To begin, pain-in-the-ass spammers are at the heart of a few changes to this site. There are a lot of them (spammers), and they all like to bombard our commenting and tip sections with penis-enlargement info, upskirt videos and Fallon's contact info.

Nobody wants that.

Being that we don't want any of this stuff either, we have to require some things that prove to us that a human is typing and not a computer.

Furthermore, this site is run by MediaBistro. Get over it. The vast majority of changes have been made, and the bottom line is a few more ads and the dreaded register-before-you-post. What's the big fucking deal?

For the scarce few bloggers that have the cojones to tell you who they are (Toad, Parker, etc. — myself), each day is another opportunity to step up to the plate and knock a line drive into the gut of any agency, ad-douche, or hack that makes the mistake of doing something remotely stupid. It's a good feeling and you love to read about it. So send us tips and we'll do the rest.

Although new to AS, I've also posted all my contact info (Matt Van Hoven, adhound@gmail.com, 651 470 1311) on this site. There's no profile page yet so deal. So if you have something to say, call and say it — or email, comment, send a tip...whatever. But don't begin to bitch about having to register. It takes two minutes and anyone with half a brain can click the "do not email me ANYTHING" button. One day, you'll lose a job or be bored with whatever you're doing and decide to surf the MB jobs page, so quit you're fucking complaining about having to register. It's lame, an old story and nobody gives a shit.

You still get to be anonymous, and it's not like anyone is going to find out who you are just because you're registered. I don't really care and neither does MB — so leave your fears at the door.

Adscam commented on this issue, so check that out if you like. Parker says he doesn't want us to have his personal information. What are we, Nazis? Are we planning a take over? No, we're not Nazis. We're bloggers, Mr. Parker, and we want to talk about advertising. Don't worry, we're not going to sneak into your house in the middle of the night and steal your first edition signed "MadScam."

Wait, didn't you write that?

Update: Tribble agency is weighing in.

Editor's note: The video was acting nuts, so we had to take it down.
See the full video here.

PSFK has launched a mini-television station, so you can catch all the talks and panels that have taken place during their conferences. Check out this one on social media:

In a "new guns" versus "marketing gurus" debate, Josh Spear(Undercurrent) and the very smart Noah Brier (Likemind) join unsuspecting mastermind Marc Schiller (Electric Artists) and Steve Rubel (Edelman) to debate how social media will change in 2008 and how companies can leverage this digital phenomenon in the most rewarding way. Moderated by Noelle Weaver of SS+K.

Okay, so really, we're posting this because social media and advertising is a hot topic right now, (Schiller and Brier have some interesting things to say) but also because Rubel and Spear get into a bit of cat fight, which is hilarious and kind of sad. For Josh that is. Someone should have told him to check himself before he wrecked himself, know what we're sayin'?

Take a look. Skip to around 14 minutes and 23 seconds to get the goods with context. Don't care about context? Jump to 22 minutes and 35 seconds where Spear attacks Steve on Edelman's fake Wal-Mart blog a few years ago. It goes downhill from there. We call Rubel the winner and Spear a big, big loser.

Yes, the reports are true. SuperSpy is stepping down from AgencySpy to work on other things. The folks at MediaBistro have, for reasons unbeknownst to me, given me this opportunity to write in her stead. Let the debauchery begin.

Did I say debauchery? I meant journalism.

My name is Matt Van Hoven — aka AdHound — and I'll be doing my best to provide a fraction of what SuperSpy has spent so much time & effort doing — giving you insider info, news, and stuff we've heard.

Insert cliché about filling shoes, it not being easy, and my hope for a good run.

I, along with others, will do my best to keep you in-the-know, but your help is needed. After all, sifting through b.s. ain't easy — so let us know what you hear. More after the jump - but it's probably not worth reading.

continued...

Creativity recently held a roundtable featuring the best and brightest of the agency world including: David Droga, Bob Greenberg and Gerry Graf.

The excerpts sound was as one would expect. People pumping their agency ego. Example - Tommy Means:

"I started
Mekanism about seven years ago in San Francisco, literally surrounded by this explosion of new media... We're fortunate enough to get invited very early on in the process to act as a sort of strategic and creative partner... We have a film coming out in May that we did with Mark Cuban and we have a couple of properties that we have in development as a joint venture with MTV that we are really excited about."

Yawn. Lots of that going on from Droga and Greenberg, too. Frank Lantz from the company we would love to be working at area/code taking about his company (surprise) and gaming (interesting):

"We are really interested in games that have some sort of interesting overlap with the real world. We do a lot of stuff about cross media game experiences where there's something happening online and it's synchronized to a TV broadcast. (We did) a game [Discovery's Sharkrunners] that's a persistent, browser based personal world with sharks in it, and the behavior of the sharks is driven by real world sharks that are tagged with location aware devices.... We have a Facebook game which has nothing to do with location or physical space but it's about taking the players' existing social network and mapping a game experience onto that."

Word up. Creativity goes on to ask them all the difference between a good spot and a great spot. You guys know the difference, right? Not going to excerpt that here. Save us all some brain space.

Eddy Moretti of VBS.TV got invited which is too hot. Love VBS. He said:

"And we are getting about 2 million people a month. One of our little series was called Heavy Metal in Baghdad, about this heavy metal band from Baghdad that we decided to go visit in the summer of '06. And then the guys escaped Baghdad and went to Syria so we met them in Damascus and shot more there, and we suddenly had a feature film on our hands. The film went to Toronto, to the Berlin film festival, it's going to be out in theaters here in N.Y. and in L.A. and three other cities. Now we go into a meeting and suddenly we have some leverage. For us I guess schmigital also means the age of the pitch is kind of over."

Then a random VCU Student asks: "I think "storytelling" has been mentioned at least 18 times, which is very reassuring because I'm a writer. I also accept how technology has to come into play in all of this. How will we make sure that our storytelling stays relevant when we go to these new things?"

Bob get all it's not all about story. It's about information, too. The Tommy was all like "I disagree totally." He said:

"I disagree totally. When you're inviting somebody to spend time with advertising, that's the important thing to remember, this is fucking advertising. You have to be really really smart about how you weave the branding into the storyline. I think that is the biggest challenge right now for directors that are working outside of the 30-second spot. At the end of the day you still have to deliver a message and if you're not making them laugh, if there's no drama, if there's not crisis, conflict, resolution, you are going to lose them. Period."

Oh word. Do you guys agree? You can check out all the drivel from the roundtable over here.

"Eight former executives of AOL Time Warner Inc. fraudulently inflated the company's online advertising revenues by more than $1 billion between 2000 and 2002."

Get the fuck out. Are you surprised? How long have magazine publishers been pumping up their numbers, pulling the same schtick?

Anyway, four of the executives have agreed to settle the civil charges brought brought by the SEC by paying out almost $8 million in fines. They are David Colburn, Eric Keller, Jay Rappaport and James MacGuidwin.

Pending charges remaining on the others: John Michael Kelly, former AOL Time Warner chief financial officer; Joseph Ripp, ex-chief financial officer of the AOL division; Steven Rindner, a former senior executive in the business affairs unit, and Mark Wovsaniker, former head of accounting policy.

New York-based Time Warner was just shocked, shocked by the scandal, which includes subscriber counts. Time Warner agreed in late 2004 and early 2005 to pay $300 million in a settlement of civil fraud charges with the SEC and $210 million to resolve charges of criminal securities fraud in a separate investigation by the Justice Department.

[source]