::scr more on text ads

[Piers Cawley]

Simon Batistoni <simon@penseroso.com> writes:

> Having known people tangenitally related to advertising, I think
> that the people who devise these things are just too far removed
> from the consequences of their actions. They simply never sit down
> and say "would I be impressed if this website did that to me?" They
> impress the client with a flashy set of slides, some made-up numbers
> and a bit of patter, and that's all that matters. <sigh>

On one occasion when I was working for an ad agency, our sysadmin came
in from lunch spitting nails and breathing fire at some of the
'creatives'. It seems that, as he walked home from his lunch, he came
upon a sticker slapped onto a lamp post with a simple IP address
printed on it. An IP address which he recognized as being one of our
'test' machines currently being used to show a client a sample
website.

Except it turned out that the creatives had decided to publish the IP
address as some kind of viral marketing thing. The fact that the
machine they'd published the IP address of hadn't been fully hardened
and was under specced for any serious webserving hadn't escaped them,
it'd been pointed out to them when they proposed it and our BOFH had
told them in no uncertain terms not to be so fucking stupid. So they
did it anyway.

I'm still amazed that said BOFH is still putting up with the company.
If I were him I'd be off doing sysadmin/security work in the city,
where the traders are admittedly worse than the average ad agency
creative, but at least the banks pay you well for it.

-- 
Piers

   "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a language in
    possession of a rich syntax must be in need of a rewrite."
         -- Jane Austen?