Monday, February 18, 2008

Advertising dollars well spent

I don't know about you, but I've stayed out of the so-called next generation DVD wars. I'm old enough to have actually bought a Betamax VCR and paid the price. Besides which, neither of these formats will enjoy the dominance DVD has had for the last ten years because they'll be replaced by digital downloads before they gain that sort of foothold.

A series of nails seems to be getting nailed into the coffin of Toshiba's HD-DVD format so I wasn't surprised to see an article predicting that Toshiba were about to admit defeat. But I was amused while reading the article in The Age website to see an ad for HD-DVD prominently placed in the same article pronouncing it dead in the water.

There's an old advertising joke that says "50% of all advertising money is wasted - if only we knew which 50%." He's a tip: the money spent advertising a product next to an article saying that product is dead? That's probably wasted.

As the advertising for sites like The Age is dynamic this little gem of irony will be a fleeting thing. If you have a similar sense of humour to me, you may appreciate the fact that I saved a screen shot of this little piece of advertising magic:

HD_bluray

For the pedants:
  • I know nobody at Toshiba said "please place an ad for our product next to an article saying our product is dead"
  • I know nobody at The Age said "Let's put an ad for HD-DVD next to an article saying it's dead" - Toshiba simply bought an set amount of advertising and the ad was placed an arbitrary number of times in a particular section of the website
  • Get a fucking sense of humour
  • No, your sense of humour isn't fine, if you can't just appreciate a simple joke without deconstructing it and finding fault you are fucked up!
  • If you're the sort of obsessive dweeb who behaves this way, here a few more to set you off:
  • Ron Paul is a gay nazi paedophile drug-smuggling terrorist
  • Open source software is a communist plot designed to destroy our way of life and murder kittens
  • Your mother fucks truck drivers for 50c a throw and most of the time they ask for their money back

Can anyone tell I've had to deal with some really stupid obsessive-compulsive pedants recently?

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