video games, hot chicks & draft/fcb

I’m not much of a gamer…I don’t even own a gaming system, though at times I have considered buying an old Nintendo off of eBay. I never had a Nintendo as a kid and figure that if I am going to start as may as well start where everyone else did and slowly move myself up through the Sega Genesis to N64, Playstation and then to Xbox 360 or Wii or something.

Or I could get a girlfriend.

Boom.

At any rate, when I came across DraftFCB’s new spot for EA’s Red Alert 3 I had to keep my lack of gaming knowledge in mind. Because I hadn’t the slightest idea of what the fuck was going on in the spot:

And then, unlike the Bob Garfield’s of the world who would have used his lack of understanding of this ad as an excuse to decry sexism or racism or stupidism or whateverism with the usual pompous prose and over-long column, I did some research into the game itself.

It did not make me change my mind about not being a gamer.

It did make me change my mind about the ad.

The whole music video-based trailer remix idea isn’t totally original, but it’s hard to ding DraftFCB for that…I mean, most ads follow a similar convention with the difference coming in a better idea of how to express the brand within said convention.

And I am inclined to like how they take advantage of this convention because, based on what I have learned about this game, the celebrities featured represent characters in the game saying phrases that someone who has already played the game would be familiar with. The music is apparently from the original game as well. And they threw in some scenes of the game being played for good measure.

Though, based on my ill-informed stereotypes, I imagine that the gamer-azzi who have played the first two versions of the game will march like lemmings to the store to purchase this third version and don’t need advertising to help them on their way, I imagine that this ad does a good job of getting them excited for its release…especially with the cues it takes from the original version. Sort of an insider wink at those who have been there from the beginning.

And people love insider winks. It makes them feel like they’re part of a group, which is even more intoxicating a feeling than heroin.

Or so I hear.

Also, I like the celebrity babe cameos (looking at you Jenny McCarthy and Kelly Hu!) because for those of us non-gamers out there who would otherwise be confused by this ad, we are instead distracted by all the smokin’ hot babes and the driving techno beat.

In the end it’s a pretty fun, interesting in an unchallenging kind of way, gets the current base of consumers excited for the game launch kind of spot that does what it’s supposed to do.

While also featuring hot babes.

Which makes it a winner in my book.

bob garfield wins friends and influences people

The Official Bob Garfield Boycott of the Daily (Ad) Biz, which Bob started after I called him out for failing to do even basic research before writing a typically sloppy critique of an ad campaign, has gone so well that my readership has more than tripled since then.

So I can only imagine what will happen to HighJive, blogger behind the excellent MultiCult Classics.

What started with a biting satire of Garfield’s deranged, over-the-top, beyond-the-original-valid-point attack on offensive messaging in advertising has broadened to include a spirited commentary on this whole situation.

Especially funny is the big-headed one declaring that he brought an end to offensive advertising:

“Yet one can’t help but wonder if Garfield considers himself successful in the Snickers scenario. It’s pretty likely, given his humungous ego. But take a closer look at the realities. For starters, the commercial was pulled after the Human Rights Campaign Foundation directly confronted Mars Inc. Word of the spot had already worked its way through the GLBT grapevine, even before Garfield addressed his letter to Wren. So it’s tough to say if Garfield played any role at all in the decision to yank the offensive message.”

Of course he did…he’s Bob Motherfucking Garfield. BMFG for short.

If he’s not being condescending toward a blogger, he’s declaring that he has righted a major wrong in the world.

Sometimes he even does both, as in his comment on HighJive’s post:

“Honestly, HJ. This is silly. I know you hate me, for reasons that still aren’t clear to me. But as I never “declared victory” in the Snickers situation — or anything like it — isn’t a bit ridiculous for you to prove that such a declaration is wrong? Bloggers use this strawman technique all the time, but you get the prize.”

Er, Bob, except that HighJive doesn’t hate you and actually, more than anyone, was arguing in support of your main principle just without the lack of research, clarity of thought and condescension toward those who aren’t J-school grads.

I am sick of pompous old media writers like Mr Garfield telling me that I love to hate them when in fact I hate to hate them.

Mr Garfield, in no way should you take any joy in being so wrong about something that throngs of people, even experts in the field you comment on, rise up as one to denounce you. This is not what it means to be a writer, no matter how proud of yourself you might be that you are a ‘contrarian.’

When your every column is followed by reams of emails, comments and blog posts about something you wrote that was wrong, you should not just shrug and rip them for being ‘bloggers’ and happily pat yourself on the back for ‘doing something right to get people that interested in you.’ No. Those emails, comments and blog posts mean that you were wrong. So wrong that people were driven to action to call you out for it. So wrong that you made people angry.

There is nothing respectable about being this wrong. Please stop doing this.

the power150 doesn’t like me and i don’t care

AdAge, the trade magazine with a happy knack for getting under my skin, has a blog ranking system, the Power 150. Once your blog is considered for this list that is so totally awesome and reliable that it lists Copyblogger as the third best media and marketing blog out there, it is ranked on criteria like inbound links and alexa traffic rate and the list creator’s personal ranking.

I know that the majority of people who come to my blog are here because they were looking for a certain picture of the Official Daily Biz Wishful Thinking Girlfriend and star of NBC’s The Office Jenna Fischer…and I know that traffic like that shouldn’t help my ranking. But…

1. There are still people (more than one figure, less than five figures of daily unique visitors) who read this blog for its actual content. Why, I do not know.

2. I can’t even get on the consideration list.

Apparently, all one has to do to get their blog into consideration for the list is to ask…and I say apparently because despite multiple emails to the guys who run it, I still haven’t gotten so much as a note back.

Now, people tell me that the guys are good guys but, I ask, what’s with not returning all those emails?

Because in the Politeness 101 class I had to take after calling my CD “Bozo the Clown” and then getting outed and having to atone for it, I learned that not returning multiple emails in even a perfunctory way is really pretty dickish.

I know that I may have posted once or twice about how I think that Bob Garfield is past his best and may have had a couple of posts on a resurgent Adweek hauling in AdAge and, yes, I may have even said that at this point if I get asked to be on the list I will “get all Groucho Marx on them about not wanting to be in a club that will have me.”

I like to think that I am blackballed which, if it is the case, makes this the Pirate Radio of blogs: hated by a major trade mag, reviled by the most famous ad critic in the world and steadfast in its refusal to place ads on the site because, dammit, it’s all about raw and authentic notes from the advertising underground.

With that, I will steal a classicly tasteless tagline from Pirate Radio in LA to sign off: The Daily (Ad) Biz – not as much fun as sex, but safer.

And this blog doesn’t belong in the Power150?

the cheetos kerfuffle & bob garfield

Apparently, there is a budding controversy about the Cheetos campaign by Goodby, Silverstein + Partners…Bob Garfield calls it irresponsible and there is even a thread at AOL that discusses just how bad a message it sends.

All of this is really weird because the Cheetos spots have been running for months now. I think that Garfield needed to get his readership up and, just how George Parker posts about Draft/FCB when he needs a boost, Garfield just needs to say something controversial.

Even though the controversy, if real, would have started in the spring.

At any rate, the creative is certainly sub-par:

I know that most kids’ parents don’t really want them snacking on Cheetos, but it’s hardly the choice that sticks it to the man. Just seems a real reach for the brand…and kinda mean-spirited and not that fun…not to mention the fact that a corporate CPG brand is the last place kids will go to for authentic counter-culture direction.

But socially irresponsible? And irresponsible enough that Senor Garfield is commenting on Adverganza about it?

Let’s break this down.

From Bob’s AdAge column: “RAoC stands for “Random Acts of Cheetos,” and the idea is to recruit users to perpetrate Cheetos-centric pranks against those who deserve comeuppance — like tossing a handful in somebody’s dryer load of whites at the Laundromat. Ha ha!”

You’re right, this is kind of a hacky joke…but let’s be honest and realize that kids in the target watch MTV and like Ben Stiller and aren’t actually known for their grasp of subtlety and dislike of slapstick.

One point to Goodby for speaking the target’s language.

As the (unbelievably amateurish) 20-something orangeunderground.com presenter says, pointing to an outsize Cheeto in a glass case, “The third rule of RAoC is to stick it to The Man, preferably with one of these.”

Get it? Alienated teenagers and young men chafe against authority. So frustrated and resentful are they about their humiliating powerlessness, they tend to lash out — or at least fantasize about lashing out — at the powers that be.

Again, I don’t think that the strategy or creative are particularly breakthrough but, knowing that you are going to call both a threat to the well being of the nation I am underwhelmed so far.

One point to Garfield for boring me to the point that I might accidentally agree with him before nodding off.

That would be mainly parents, teachers, principals and bosses, but anyone and anything will do — which explains the tens of thousands of mailboxes destroyed each year by baseball bats, with a trail of Mike’s Hard Lemonade bottles littered along the curb.

The perpetrators don’t necessarily harbor animus toward the U.S. Postal Service.

They just harbor animus in general.

Fact: This is already happening.

Fact: This has nothing to do with Cheetos and their new campaign.

Fact: This article is already annoyingly pulling what I call the “Bob Garfield Special” wherein Bob desperately scrambles to associate unrelated events, usually bad, with a brand and its new campaign, usually that he doesn’t like, even though the relationship is tangental and best and causal only if you are Bob Garfield and don’t bother to realize things like “kids are already destructive assholes and have been forever and, since they already do this stuff maybe a recently launched ad campaign is not the cause.”

Adolescent angst. This is powerful psychology and therefore fertile ground for someone wishing to cultivate that demographic. Ask any tattoo artist or death-metal performer or drug dealer or anyone else in the rebellion industry.

So…because adolescent angst plays a part in kids liking death metal and drugs as well as in liking Cheetos (and staying up too late and not doing their homework and driving too fast), apparently each of the the things kids with adolescent angst like are the same. You heard it here, folks, Bob Garfield just granted equivalence to Cheetos, staying up late and doing drugs.

This is intellectually lazy…this is the Bob Garfield Special.

But here’s a question: What should we think when a leading national advertiser borrows a marketing strategy from the drug trade?

Hmm, you mean like selling through a broker which is what most mid-sized CPG companies do?

Or do you mean decentralized distribution which is how Wal*Mart transformed logistics and basically did away with warehouses?

Maybe aggressive sampling efforts? Discounts when you buy in bulk?

What should we think?

Here’s an answer: It’s cynical and disgusting

And very profitable, based on the examples I gave at least.

There is another word for Random Acts of Cheetos: vandalism. The Cheetos Underground explicitly incites its shadowy network of crap eaters not only to perpetrate mischief but to document their petty crimes on video for the Cheetos website.

If one thinks that advertising drives people to do exactly what the ads say and that your basic over-the-top, take the situation to the extreme advertising will make people do what it says then yes, this is disgraceful.

If, however, you understand that people do not exactly what advertising says and that the brand positioning and the spots and purposely ridiculous then it’s quite a bit less than disgraceful.

Unless, of course, you want to manufacture a controversy so people read your column.

[Bob describes the spots, both of which are months old and both of which show people playing "pranks" on other people...neither are that funny mainly because the pranks aren't original and aren't good clean fun]

Can you see how this is all destined to lead to litigation? Or worse? Can you see how ethically bankrupt it is — Frito-Lay in the role of Ken Lay?

Another Bob Garfield Special! By throwing in the name of an ethical boogeyman Bob totally doesn’t have to make an actual argument because there is connection between the name of Cheetos’ parent company and Enron guy Ken Lay! Lock ‘em up because THAT is the final piece of evidence needed for indictment.

Take THAT bad guys! There’s a new sheriff in town.

…this campaign is mean-spirited and reckless and generally contemptible.

It’s the whole reckles and bad for society thing that I don’t really get…it’s mean-sprited, yes, but is hardly going to result in a wave of bad behavior by minors. Seriously, Bob, it’s not. You can unlock your door, put the safety on your shotgun and sleep soundly tonight. Things will be okay.

It’s bad advertising, not the death of Western civilization (even though you like totally made the connection with Ken Lay – BOOYAH!).

I would like to write columns like Senor Bob…the trick is to make some bombastic claim about how this campaign is totally awful and damaging to all of humanity and then not back it up and conclude weakly before veering off into…

You like crunchy snacks and want to join a real Orange Underground? Sweet. Boycott Cheetos and eat carrots.

Because THAT is the voice of rebellion.

more mistakes from the bearded one

Bob Garfield has an issue with doing basic research. I don’t know what his issue with it is, but every time I read one of his columns I find glaring and simple errors that could have been fixed had he bothered to, say, Google the subject.

For example, in his column today about the 72andsunny Guy Ritchie-shot spot for Nike, he says:

The video, like the soccer campaign itself, is tagged “Take it to the next level.” It’s a POV story — minus dialogue or narration — of a talented soccer player who somehow is plucked to play for England’s Arsenal. In the opening scene, from his last match as an amateur, he is awarded a penalty kick — which he drives over the defensive wall and bends like Beckham into the goal.

From that point on, all again through our faceless hero’s eyes, we see his career go to the next level, including women, autographs and eye-popping on-the-field action. This is all recorded via classically swooping, quick-cutting Ritchie camera work until the culmination of the guy’s transition to stardom: a penalty kick, in front of 40,000 roaring fans, exactly like the one he scored on his neighborhood pitch.

Maybe Bob is not a soccer fan. Maybe he is mailing it in these days. Maybe it was too challenging to take the 0.0043 seconds to find out that the situation in the spot is not actually a penalty kick, but rather a free kick and that there is a large difference between the two (roughly, penalty kick is to short field goal – almost guaranteed – as free kick is to two-point conversion – much more challenging and unlikely to succeed).

It’s a little embarrassing that a professional makes so many simple errors.

He writes only a single column a week! He has editors who read his stuff before it’s printed! This is his actual job! Yet he still makes mistakes.

This is a small one, granted, but the small mistakes are almost more irritating, especially as coming from a guy who consistently pokes holes in commercials for the slightest of flaws. The top drawer bloggers do a better job of getting the details right, not to mention the fact that they are more prolific and timely (the Nike spot was bandied about the blogs last week) more engaging and entertaining to boot.

Proper journalists who do the research and track down the stories are important insofar as most bloggers, who do this unprofessionally and don’t have the resources to, say, report from Cannes or track down bigwigs at BBDO for the story behind their new campaign, simple cannot replicate what they do. Print opinion writers, especially ones like Bob Garfield who write irregularly published, mistake-prone columns, are archaic.

Why wait all week for the single Garfield column about an ad that I’ve already read well-written critiques of (by actual advertising professionals who know what they are talking about) a week ago?

fire bob garfield is back

PSA Won’t Change Perennial Parental Bleacher Creatures

This just in: advertising won’t automatically make everyone in the target do what the advertiser wants!

In other news, I have been away from Garfield columns for too long…

Little League Effort Is a Well-Intentioned Swing for the Fences

Baseball is here, and what does that mean?

It means that the boys at Fire Joe Morgan are hilarious, it means that the Minnesota Twins are two seasons away from leaving the Metrodome and it means that the House of Biz softball team will start to play soon.

It means renewal. It means optimism. It means spitting. It means San Francisco is going to have a very bad six months.

Oh, right. Well, I guess it means those things too.

That’s because the Giants stink, substantially because their best hitter is a Giant no more, but an unsigned free agent, languishing at home with his all-time career home-run record and tattered reputation.

Bob, you really need to get the hang of this research thing. Last year, even with Barry Bonds, the San Francisco Giants were a pitiful 71-91 and finished a full 19 games out of first place.

I am pretty sure that they suck now, like they did last season, for reasons other than Barry Bonds.

Yeah, Barry Bonds, the most prolific slugger ever, can’t get a job because he’s been denounced as a cheater. Very good power to all fields. Very bad role model.

Is this an article about advertising or about baseball? Because if it’s about baseball I have a lot of thoughts about Bonds and his two-sizes to big head, more body armour than a U.S. Marine and general dickishness…I just won’t share them on my advertising blog. Because I write about advertising.

Baseball’s steroid scandal has robbed a generation of children of so many heroes. Bonds, Jose Canseco, Mark Maguire, Roger Clemens, Miguel Tejada — tainted by drug allegations all — have left a trail of disillusionment. Baseball may have long since ceased being the true national pastime, but it is still uniquely situated for role modeling. Every player’s approach — swing, delivery, batting stance — is distinct, and therefore prime for imitation by the kids who see it again and again over 162 games.

Advertising is about being quick and to the point. Advertising criticism, however, clearly is not.

But we digress.

Were you having trouble hitting your word count this week?

So if a kid can’t believe in Barry Bonds, then who?

Why, Dad, of course. He’s the instructor, the mentor, the No. 1 fan and the voice of encouragement in the stands.

Are we ever going to start talking about advertising?

Or (sigh) not. Because with spring comes another annual rite: the obnoxious Little League parent at a kids’ game, behaving like a jackass. He screams at the umpire. He hectors the other team. He second-guesses the coach. He berates his own child. And he can’t claim he was doped covertly.

He’s a dope all by himself.

Haha, good joke. That joke is the most fun that I’ve ever had with my pants on. It is way more enjoyable than Splash Mountain at Disneyland. I think I am going to re-read it again and again.

None of this is lost on the Little League itself, which is airing a PSA on ESPN designed to discourage Bleacher Rage.

Finally! We are going to talk about advertising!

That’s right folks, it took more paragraphs to lead in to the part about advertising than paragraphs about the advertising itself. In an article by an ad critic. Writing for Advertising Age.

A short but pointed 15 seconds, the spot from DCode, New York, focuses on a 10-year-old at the plate. From the stands, we hear the kid’s father chiming in, more or less perfunctorily, “Come on, son. Hit the ball.” The boy rolls his eyes and spins around to face his dad. Then he starts hollering:

“DAD, IS THAT THE BEST YOU CAN DO?! THAT’S PATHETIC. I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHY YOU BOTHER SHOWING UP! WHY CAN’T YOU BE MORE LIKE JIMMY’S DAD?! ALL THE OTHER PARENTS ARE GOING TO LAUGH AT YOU! YOU MAKE ME SICK!”

In my commentary on Garfield’s commentary I am going to say something about the advertising first: This is a really good spot.

Personally, I always wanted my Dad to be more like Jimmy’s Dad because Jimmy’s Dad always let Jimmy have soda and a hot dog after a game when I had to go home and have regular dinner. Jimmy also always had new gear and I had to wait for mine to wear out because my Dad said that it was fine. To top it all off, Jimmy’s Dad drove a Corvette and my Dad had a sensible car.

Later on I realized that Jimmy’s Dad was going through a mid-life crisis and otherwise kinda sucked.

Digression over. And in fewer words than Garfield’s.

The title cards punctuate the obvious: “Now you know how it feels. Just let them play.”

Well, yeah. And the turnabout does nicely sharpen the point, along the lines of the 45-year-old “Like father, like son” PSA, which showed a little boy mimicking his cigarette-smoking pop. With other role models performance-enhanced and reputation-diminished, more than ever we need Dad to set the right example. Could the prospect of creating pint-size douche bags be a moderating force?

Well, considering how it turns the situation on its head to illustrate just how out of line and ridiculous it is, not to mention the breakthrough “kid screaming at father” situation and well-written title card, I think that it just might drive awareness of the issue.

Which is what PSA spots are supposed to do.

Not likely. This spot is a game effort, but boorishness is not an affliction much sensitive to consciousness raising. In all of human history, this conversation has never taken place:

Person 1: “Don’t be a dick.”

Person 2: “My, have I been? My error. I shall endeavor in future not to shame myself.”

This conversation has never taken place because people haven’t said a sentence like “I shall endeavor in future not to shame myself” ever. Not even in freshman English papers about Jane Austen.

People behave like dicks not because they are uninformed, but because they are dicks.

They also behave like dicks because they know that they can get away with it without social approbation.

It used to be okay, decades ago, to use racial slurs in public…why is it not okay now? Because people were willing to step up and call out those who used them.

And they won’t be eradicated, least of all by advertising. Like daffodils and misplaced optimism and wads of spittle, they are perennials. They pop up every spring.

The children’s sports fan dicks do pop up every spring (what a weird visual…I blame Bob). The key for the continuing “bloom” is that rarely does anybody say anything.

No, advertising will not convince everyone it targets to do exactly what it says, but it is a start on the road of making it completely beyond the pale to act like this. These spots are beginning the process of making it unacceptable to act like this. These spots are making it easier for people to have a quiet word with offenders and shut them up. These spots are raising awareness of the problem…which is what they are supposed to do.

In Garfield’s view, this spot won’t make people immediately do what the ads want them to and is thus ineffective. He sounds like he is pitching Direct Marketing to a CMO.

bob garfield will be with us always

Bob Garfield writes marginally more often on his fake/satirical blog than he does on his real one, but at least the fake one is funny. Who doesn’t like the smell of satire in the morning? From yesterday’s post:

People think that I am just being crotchety because there is some gray in my beard. Not true: I am crotchety all the time. In fact, I’m not even old. I am an ageless automaton here on Earth to rid it of sub-par advertising.

Okay, okay, that’s not true. But you thought that it might be for a minute, didn’t you?

I did. The thought scared me very much.

gilly hicks sells sex to teens…as if they needed selling

It’s not often that the Daily (Ad) Biz has been in agreement with Bob Garfield as we have had our share of bad blood. However, when a man is right, he is right no matter what disagreements have come before.

I have to say that Garfield, in his review of Abercrombie’s new spinoff store Gilly Hicks, Sydney, is right.

The new brand, which sells underwear to teens and has nothing to do with Australia except for the “Down Under” reference that is probably funny to kids in high school, has created a lifestyle narrative that is, to quote Garfield, “You’re 16, and you are therefore a walking-talking hormone engine, so why not visit our website, declare yourself at least 18 and watch our semi-soft-porn vignette? There are nipples involved!”

Is Abercrombie all that different from other brands that use sex to sell? American Apparel and even PETA do it:

I feel a lot like my Mom for saying this, but even though sex sells and even though it really sells underwear to teens (because they are more willing than more to suspend disbelief – or more desperately flailing for anything to help them – and think that something like Gilly Hicks underwear or Axe body spray will make them more desirable), why is this something that we, as adults, are okay doing? We are selling teens on a lifestyle choice that has serious consequences.

To go back to Garfield, “the normalization of casual sex is simply a reflection of the real world, where increasingly anything goes down under. We can wince all we want, but this is one the culture has decided for us.”

That may be true that culture says its okay, but we are the advertisers. We are the planners and creatives and account people who make this work happen. It may be cool and edgy and fun from our hipster ivory towers and maybe we even live like our advertising – I know that a couple of guys in my office wish that they did – but I have serious reservations about selling a lifestyle with such terrible side effects for teens (a group that is uniquely ill-equipped to make good choices).

I am all about personal responsibility and the culture says that selling sex to teens is okay…but call me prude, I just don’t think that it’s right.

Not to mention that it is creatively unimaginative.

ad blogs are everything that is wrong with the universe ever

I haven’t posted much recently about Bob Garfield because this isn’t a Bob Garfield blog, it’s an advertising blog that has occasionally reserved a scathing assessment for the bearded one…but when AdPulp’s mild-mannered David Burn started in on Bob Garfield, I knew that I could hide behind the mountain of briefs and unfinished projects no longer.

Yep, it’s time to look at Bob’s recent article and bash it:

Lost Souls?

Trying to Explain the Difference Between Commentary and Vandalism

Whenever Bob starts to talk about other peoples’ souls, he is really talking about how upset he is that other people, specifically bloggers, disagree with him.

Why do people kill themselves? Schizophrenia. Depression. Despair. Agony. Shame. Who can say?

Nobody can say, but I know that Bob is going to try.

I didn’t know Paul Tilley, the DDB creative executive who committed suicide a week ago, and I would never presume to divine what was going on in his life, much less his head, when he jumped from a Chicago hotel room to his death. But I do know this: In his last days, whatever else was tormenting him, he was also under professional and personal attack from persons unknown — most of them, presumably, subordinates — who used the shield of internet anonymity to mercilessly disparage him.

I called it. Did you see that? I totally called it.

Bob thinks that blogs were either the cause or, in some, way correlated to Paul Tilley’s suicide.

A quick thought directed to you, Bob: maybe you could just leave Paul Tilley to rest in peace and not use him to further your anti-blog agenda. It is really unseemly to do something like this. Soulless, in fact

—
Skipping down past some trite phrases and adjective-laded invective against bloggers that is just too tiresome to comment on, but you can read here if you like, we get to:
—

Once again, I have no insight into what motivated Paul Tilley to take his own life; correlation is not causation.

Correlation may not be causation, but there is a reason that attorneys correlate events to try to prove guilt…and there is clearly a reason that you try to correlate blog posts with Paul Tilley’s death.

Hmm, I wonder what that reason would be?

Suicide is a dark, desperate, often unknowable act, and those who believe the man was essentially blogged to death believe so knowing virtually nothing about his non-professional life, much less his inner one.

After drawing a line between blog posts and Paul Tilley’s death Bob, like a lawyer withdrawing a question after a sustained objection, has already done his damage and now pretends that he never got his hands dirty.

But it is easy to see why his suicide has triggered such a backlash, with ad blogs at pains to account for their treatment of the man. I surely can’t but wonder whether the vicious public assaults on his competence and character — assaults destined for digital immortality — did not pain his tortured self at least as much as such things have pained me.

The vanity and self-absorption it must take for a person like you, a mere critic, to compare yourself to the Executive Creative Director of DDB Chicago, and that you have tried to compare the pain that a man who committed suicide felt with your own hurt feelings…it is utterly dumbfounding.

There are not words for how sad a person you are.

The ad bloggers (after, of course, offering gushing condolences to the grieving family) have been quick to dismiss such connections as asinine — and maybe they’re right.

I am among those bloggers who has dismissed such connections as asinine…because they are, not to mention that the belittle the life of a man. As for those bloggers that commented on Mr Tilley and then offered condolences to the family, maybe they meant the gushing condolences because as humans, they were able to understand the pain that Mr Tilley’s family must have been feeling no matter what they may have felt about Mr Tilley’s business practices.

But the bloggers are still evil, right?

But as Tilley’s worst detractors continue to use these blogs to posthumously slime the departed, the lords of the flies could do worse than to think about the loss of the human soul.

After an entire article bashing bloggers and correlating their posts with a man’s suicide in a limp attempt to further his anti-blog agenda, Bob finishes up by actually blaming the commenters on blogs, internal consistency of what he is saying be damned.

The good news: we’re all off the hook!

The bad news: we’re still soulless, evil bastards who ruin people’s lives and by the way need to control the comments section better.

It could be worse.

bob garfield has a new blog

A helpful reader has just informed me that this is not the only blog that is taking the piss out of everyone’s favorite ad critic…which is kind of nice. It’s like having another partner in crime. It is also fun trying to think of the movie allusion Bob Garfield will use next to slag off of the silly blogger who dares to question him.

My guess is that he’ll use Kill Bill, positioning himself as the “Black Mamba.” There is no reasoning behind this guess.

The blog in question is over at News Groper, a site that features satirical blogs by celebrities, politicians, etc. It’s funny across the board and, though Bob Garfield should be flattered to be in the company he is in, he will likely just be upset.

“Bob Garfield’s Blog” has just gotten started, and positions itself as a distinctly different offering: “Unlike the so-called official blog over at AdAge that I never post on, this one is the true mausoleum of my unfiltered thoughts and opinions.”

I can’t wait.