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  1. St. Nick-of-Time Arrives December 26

    December 30, 2008  | Comments (3)

    Marcia Hartgrove of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma was one of two AdJack members who came up with winning numbers on Friday, December 26.  Plans for her half of the $1,000 CrackaJack came easy.

    “Talk about spreading Christmas love and cheer,” she wrote in an email message. “This is the ultimate!!  I heard about AdJack about eight months ago…from Online-Sweepstakes.com and have been entering ever since.  I have always tried to enter at least two or three times per week; however, within the last couple of months I have been entering almost everyday.  I really enjoy Adjack—it has made winning even more fun!  It’s really entertaining to view the new commercials and rate them.”

    Marcia says the money comes at a great time, as she and her husband juggle family responsibilities and do a delicate financial balancing act that includes trying to sell a house in Columbia, Missouri while establishing a new household in Oklahoma City.

    She thought she would have to forego a visit any time soon to her daughter and two grandchildren back in Missouri, but thanks to her CrackaJack win last Friday, she’s making new plans. … more

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  2. Knowing the Real Thing When You See It

    December 23, 2008  | Comments (1)

    Ever hummed “I’d Like to Buy the World a ….. “?

    One of the most famous and successful commercials in American advertising history started out in a fog, resulted from an all-nighter, and was initially an expensive flop.

    On February 18, 1971, Bill Backer, creative director on the Coke account for New York advertising agency McCann-Erickson, was on his way to London to write and arrange several radio commercials for Coca Cola. His team, Billy Davis, formerly of the Four Tops, and English songwriter Roger Cook, was waiting for him but a massive English fog over Heathrow forced Backer’s plane to land in Shannon, Ireland.  Angry travelers had to share rooms at the one available hotel or sleep at the airport.

    The next morning, Backer noticed a decidedly different mood in the airport coffee shop as folks gathered waiting for clearance to fly.  They were laughing and talking over bottles of Coca Cola. Backer recalls in his book, The Care and Feeding of Ideas, that at that moment, he began to see his product as more than a drink.  It occurred to him that the familiar words, “Let’s have a Coke” were really a way of saying, “Let’s keep each other company for a little while.” He says he realized it was being said all over the world, and he began to think of Coke as more than just a liquid refresher, but as a link between all people, a universal bond that allows people to enjoy each others’ company if only for a few minutes.

    When he finally reached London around midnight the next day, he insisted that Davis and Cook begin work immediately on his idea.  “I could see and hear a song that treated the whole world as if it were a person, a person the singer would like to help and get to know. I’m not sure how the lyric should start,” he said, “but I know the last line—I’d like to buy the world a Coke and keep it company.”

    They worked through the night, and the next day presented it to David Mackay, arranger for the New Seekers, with instructions to make the arrangement warm but not too cute.  On February 12, 1971, the commercial “I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke” was shipped to radio stations throughout the United States.  It flopped.  Bottlers hated it and refused to buy airtime for it. The public paid no attention.

    Undeterred, Backer persuaded McCann-Erickson that the message simply needed a visual element.  The company eventually approved more than $250,000 for filming, at that time one of the largest budgets ever devoted to a television commercial.  Art director Harvey Gabor proposed that the song be treated for TV as a “First United Chorus of the World.”

    The initial filming at the English Cliffs of Dover was a debacle. Several thousand British schoolchildren proved unmanageable on the one day during the shooting schedule that it didn’t rain.  They moved the production to Rome, where unprecedented rains fell day after day.  The entire production budget melted away.  Scrapping the cast of 1,200 kids, the producers pieced together 500 extras gathered from foreign embassies.  They spotted a British governess walking down the street pushing a baby carriage and recruited her for the female lead.

    After a tepid European response, the spot was released in the US in July, 1971. By November, viewers wrote more than a hundred thousand letters clamoring for the ad. They pummeled radio stations with requests to play the commercial.  The song was rewritten omitting references to Coke, and the New Seekers and Hillside Singers both scored hits on the pop charts with it. Recordings of the song and versions of the sheet music appeared in a variety of languages to fill a demand that has never ceased.

    We’re offering the 1984 winter holiday version of the commercial here, with our sincere best wishes for your great luck now and in 2009, and the hope that when you know you have a great idea, you won’t let a series of initial failures stop you.

    Happy Holidays.  See you here in 2009!

    Jack, speaking for the AdJack Crew… more

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  3. Beginner’s Luck

    December 19, 2008  | Comments (2)

    For the second time in his two-week history with AdJack, Kris Van Der Werff watched commercials during the week of December 12, submitted his numbers, and voila—won a tidy $1,000 for his efforts.

    His wife has been entering for about a month, since she learned about AdJack from a sweepstakes survey site.

    He doesn’t consider himself a true “sweeper,” since the only other game website he frequents is RewardTV.  An accountant, he works for a Las Vegas company that manufactures gaming equipment.  For fun, he and his wife like to go to concerts. … more

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  4. Let’s Don’t But Say We Did?

    December 18, 2008  | Comments (3)

    I’ve been entertaining myself lately by categorizing the responses on YouTube to GE’s 2005 commercial titled “Model Miners.” The commercial was uploaded on YouTube a couple years ago, and has since been viewed more than 75,000 times.  (And none of those viewers ever had a chance of winning a buck for their pleasure—or pain.  Tch, tch.)

    The commercial created quite a stir when it ran on TV.  Among those who were appalled was Josh Ozersky, who registered his disgust in the New York Times Arts section on July 3, 2005. He, like so many YouTube viewers, marveled at the use of Tennessee Ernie Ford’s 1955-56 hit version of “16 Tons” in an effort to “make coal sexy again.” Those are the words of General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt.  Coal, sexy?  Again?  I must say, they succeeded in making coal sexy once, if only for 30 seconds.

    As one whose not-too-distant relatives once labored in the mines, I can report that some bonds of affection were apparently formed.  The song my kin most often heard was
    “My sweetheart’s a mule in the mines
    I drive her without any lines
    all day I just sit, I chew and I spit
    all over my sweetheart’s behind.”

    I wonder if they even considered that song for the commercial?  Nah, probably not.

    So far, 62 people have weighed in on the Model Miners commercial in the comments section, some as recently as two weeks ago.  According to my quick survey, 23 comments registered satiric disgust; 21 were perfectly appalled by the commercial, nine took off on tangents in the discussion, four completely missed the point, two were apathetic, one indicated that his libido was aroused, and two seemed to accept the message that coal is cool.  Or hot, as it were.

    AdJack carries several of GE’s Ecomagination commercials because we think they’re engaging, but we notice that not much if anything has actually been accomplished toward making coal clean in the three years since the Model Miners spot came out.  Our CO2 problem is going from bad to worse.  Model Miners?  All we will say is we hope somebody comes up quick with a way to make coal clean. We don’t care if it’s sexy.… more

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