Anthony Kistler of Lamont, Oklahoma, won AdJack’s second $1,000 CrackaJack sweepstakes prize last week. The day of the drawing was Friday, April 18, his birthday.
Anthony owns a farm in the northern part of the state where he raises wheat and cattle. He also drives a school bus, and works maintenance at Deer Creek Lamont High School, where his twin sons will graduate this week. His daughter graduates from Oklahoma State University of Okmulgee this month. … more
Why is it some folks say they hate ads? Last night at a big feed I was engaged in conversation with several strangers at my table. When the inevitable question of what I do came up, and I answered I write a blog about commercials, everyone at the table immediately tuned in, and they all had a story about a favorite ad.
One guy described a car ad someone sent him that makes him laugh every time he thinks about it. Another described an ad for a gymnasium that graphically suggests a woman could develop vice-like glutes. Just the scenario made the whole table burst into laughter.
Could it be that the same folks who don’t like ads don’t like jokes either?
Not that all great ads are based on jokes. “Failure”:/ad/failure, a Nike ad starring Michael Jordan, is a 30-second inspirational speech, a subtle pep talk, and a comforting reminder that even Jordan is human. I enjoy the technical whiz-bang of “Serena”:/ad/serena and “Popular Year for Gold”:popular-year-for-gold, HP’s ads that feature Serena Williams and Shaun White. You get a cleverly produced glimpse beyond the headlines into who these celebs are, and they seem pretty cool.
Let’s talk about dumb ads. Like everything else, one person’s dumb is another’s brilliant. Send me an email at “Jack@adjack.tv”:mailto:jack@adjack.tv and tell me which you think is which. Or just post your comments here.
I gotta go.… more
The moment is not far off when someone will happen to be the 3,000th person to register as a member of AdJack. If you haven’t registered yet, or you haven’t told your friends and family about it, this is a great time to do it. Somebody will be $200 richer soon.
If you’re already a member, you know that AdJack is a pest-free zone. You really do get to watch entertaining commercials here without fear of some evil geek invading your computer, opening the floodgates to all manner of crap. You’re safe here! Spread the word! It’s going to be worth $200 to somebody.
… more
Hello, Lamont, Oklahoma! Today’s $1,000 CrackaJack winner is from your town and—you aren’t going to believe this—today is his birthday.
“It’s funny,” AdJack CEO David Boland says. “It happened that the first CrackaJack winner was notified on April Fool’s Day. Of course she didn’t believe it at first. Now, our Lamont, Oklahoma member wins on his birthday. No wonder we have a little difficulty convincing our winners it’s no prank.”
Boland has sent the winner an email notifying him of his win. His name will be released here as soon as he completes and returns a release form.… more
OMG, we’re talking about what’s funny again.
Did I fall down laughing when I watched “It’s Always No”:/ad/its-always-no, Capitol One’s spoof on the way some credit card companies do business? Nope, but pretty close. It’s a riotous little piece that pokes fun at a vulnerable male ego, displays the sadistic snooping boss we all love to hate, and the over-the-top havoc created when “quality control” goes wrong, all in 30 seconds. Yea! It’s the equivalent of a car crash for all you action fiends, but wittier.
Speaking of wit, somebody on the FedEx ad team applies a great sardonic wit to depicting workplace realities. “FedEx Office”:/ad/fedex-office/ describes a familiar go-get-‘em team in a few deft exchanges of dialogue. “Conference Call”:/ad/conference-call plays two points of view, a worker’s escapist fantasy juxtaposed with a hip boss. The tag line—“We understand.” Then there’s the wry comment in “Half Pipe”:/ad/half-pipe on the current trend of fun stuff in the workplace.
A couple of advertisers tap the angst of unfulfilled promise, implying that if you’re beating time in a dead-end job, you should—and can—get up and boogie. Career Builders have come up with three ads each worth 30 seconds of your time. In “Help You, Help You”:/ad/help we witness Mike’s triumphant exit, with Mike himself in tow. A nice little surrealist pop. My brief mention of “Firefly”:/ad/firefly last week didn’t do this wicked little joke justice. If you’re a Simpsons fan, you’ll enjoy the type of humor. “Queen of Hearts”:/ad/heart has some gross-out fun with the idea of following your heart. In “Stork”:/ad/stork, Monster.com covers a lot of ground and time in 60 seconds. The spot isn’t about making you laugh outloud, but it is amusing that the man the stork risked so much to deliver is rubber stamping documents when the bird pays a visit again.
For another dose of surrealist fun, click on “Tide’s Talking Stain”:/ad/talking-stain ad. Will anybody notice that stain? The answer is indelible. … more
First he found the AdJack site and told his girlfriend about it. Then he recognized her user name in an item posted here lamenting the Bethel Park, Pennsylvania woman who failed to claim her $200 award for being the 2000th member to register.
Ciara Eisenbarth says she saw an email that said something about her being the 2000th AdJack member, but the news in itself wasn’t thrill enough to get a spam- and virus-wary Internet veteran to bite. “I saw it,” she says, “but I didn’t think anything about it, so I didn’t open it.
“My boyfriend called me Sunday night when he went to the AdJack site to watch his ads for the day. He saw the article about the woman who missed her chance to collect $200 and he knew it was me. He said ’are you kidding me? Why didn’t you open that email?’”
“When I tried to find it, it was gone,” says the St. Francis University freshman. “My brother uses my email every once in a while, and he must have erased it, thinking it was trash.”
She found an email address for AdJack founder and CEO David Boland on the website, and shot him an email asking if it was too late to collect. Although he had asked her to respond by noon on Thursday, April 10, he awarded her the 2000 milestone marker prize.
“We’re all learning a lot during this Beta period,” Boland says. “In the future I’ll give special award winners such as Ciara ample opportunities to collect their prizes for seven full days from the first notification. When it comes to the sweepstakes we hope members will be paying attention, but we’ll also make every effort to quickly identify winners.”
Boland urges AdJack members to add David@adjack.tv to their address books to avoid the prospect of treasure getting trashed or hung up in spam filters. “If you get a note from me, you can bet it’s something you want or need to know.”… more
A Hamden, Connecticut man, piggyrpi, and a Bethel Park, Pennsylvania woman, ciarachristine, won cash for being the 500th and 2,000th persons to register at AdJack.tv, but neither answered emails notifying them of their awards.
The winners were announced via personal email from AdJack founder/CEO David Boland. Winners sign a form giving AdJack permission to release their names on the website and to the news media.
“Maybe they thought it was a scam, or they just didn’t get the message,” Boland says. “Whatever the reason, they missed out on their cash awards.”
The winners may have failed to receive their good news because they registered fake email addresses, registered an address they seldom check, or the notifying email may have been caught in a spam filter. Members are warned when they register that a fake email address automatically nullifies any chance to win AdJack prizes.
“If someone registers a fake email address, the joke is on them if they come up with a winning sweeps number or another type of award that AdJack sometimes gives,” Boland warns. “There’s no way to get in touch with a person who gives fake information.”
The AdJack system has identified at least 20 fake email addresses in the system to date. “It doesn’t hurt AdJack; it just defeats the member at the get-go,” Boland explains.
“People use these devises to try to protect themselves from Internet crap. I understand that,” says the online entrepreneur who staunchly defends not only his, but his members’ privacy. “But if you get an email from AdJack telling you you’ve won something, it’s in your best interest to take a little leap of faith and just answer.”
To get around spam filters, Boland recommends that members add David@adjack.tv to their address books just in case some happy news comes their way. “I send the emails to winners, so if I show up in your inbox, the news is probably going to be good—or at least something members need to know.”… more
Ol’ Jack’s been taken to task this week for his opinions on what’s funny. Some folks have accused me of being a humorless fuddy-duddy. One guy guessed I’m actually an old feminist, and somebody else described me as “quaint” because I mentioned one of those notable moments from the infamous Sixties, the bra-burners’ rage. As I implied last week, it’s all a matter of taste.
So what’s funny? The Budweiser boys always make me laugh. Yeah, yeah, I know: “Cut the Cheese”:/ad/cheese is a Bud Light ad. I said it was funny, didn’t I? Even though I groaned as I laughed. I know folks who have watched the “Bud Genie”:/ad/bud-genie ad over and over, laughing every time.
Career Builder has put some clever stuff out there. “Firefly”:/ad/firefly and “Queen of Hearts”:/ad/heart may be on the dark side, but they make me laugh. “My Talking Stain”:/ad/talking-stain, “AllTel”:/ad/alice, and “FedEx Office”:/ad/fedex-office always raise a chuckle.
For wit, I’m loving ETrade’s “Banking Baby”:/ad/banking-baby and “Trading Baby”:/ad/trading-baby. And for sustained action, spot-on psychology, tight writing that adds up to two minutes of fun, check out Wilkinson Sword’s “Fight for Kisses”:/ad/kisses.
One I’ve watched several times to catch the details is “Horsin’ Around with Shaq”:/ad/shaq. Whoever wrote that crammed a lot of fun—not to mention insider jokes—into 60 seconds. Is it a coincidence that Old Man Gator is in last place?
One thing I like about doing this blog is I get to say what I think. You get to say what you think, too. So why don’t you? … more
Some of this past week’s ads put Ol’ Jack in a funk. I watched Wii versus Play Station and it made me glad I’m a mule, not a man. I could hardly bear to watch it the first time, but abject prurience brought me back again. I’m surprised the writer for this ad has not been arrested for crimes against blondes and fat women. Was all that bra burning in the Sixties for nothing?
Then I watched Coke Zero versus Coke. Our first CrackaJack winner Kate Usher says she enjoys watching ads even though some of them are just plain stupid. I wonder what she might have had in mind? I must say, I applaud the Coca Cola Corporation for its self-deprecating attitude, but I have to wonder, have these guys been drinking too much of the product?
You have to be in the mood for Cut the Cheese. I was all ready to say nay the first morning I watched it, but several days later on a Friday afternoon, I don’t know, maybe I’ve sunk low enough to appreciate the humor. I am now ready to give the writer an award of some kind. I’ll have to think about just what kind of award. Any suggestions?
And speaking of cheese, the treat to real California cheesiness was almost more than I could swallow. I think I would have liked it better if the cows hadn’t had such chirpy little voices and the bulls hadn’t sounded like they had been castrated. Some of my best friends are cows, I started to say, but when I watched it again, I had to jack down a bit and admit, it has a pretty good ending. I’d like to cast this one for the boob tube. Boob tube. What a concept.
I’ll be back later. … more
Kate Usher of Lower Burrell, Pennsylvania, has won the first AdJack sweepstakes prize, the $1,000 Crackajack.
She registered on Thursday, March 13 and the following day won with her first single submission.
“It’s amazing,” Usher says, “but what’s even more amazing is that I took advantage of the site’s option to change the numbers in my series. I had a 23 and I decided to change it to a four. The last number was a one, and I decided to change it to a three. The numbers didn’t look right to me. I went with my gut.”
The winning sequence of numbers was 24, 9, 8, 15, 4 and 3. The $1,000 CrackaJack prize requires a match of four out of the first five numbers in any sequence, plus a match of the final bonus number, which the site supplies. AdJack members who are logged on the site at the time of the Friday drawing are asked to submit numbers to form the winning sequence.
Site CEO David Boland says he expects to announce future winners much more quickly even when they are unaware of their good luck, as Kate was.… more
Bada boom. A resident of Lower Burrell, Pennsylvania, is the first winner of an AdJack sweepstakes prize.
The woman, whose name will be announced when she verifies her registration information, registered on Thursday, March 13 and the following day won the $1,000 Crackajack with a single entry.
AdJack CEO David Boland says he expects to announce future winners much more quickly even when they are unaware of their good luck. “We’re continually cross-checking and proving site systems during this beta phase,” Boland says. “We were ecstatic to discover this winning number in a systems review. We’ve been telling our members all along to expect an occasional glitch, but players can always be certain that they will be notified if they win. It will be sooner rather than later as we streamline our processes.”
AdJack records show the winner entered… more
