Blogs and Libel - or Damn, NKK!

• How uncreative is advertising? While watching cable this weekend, I caught the new TV commercials for Vonage ... which use the same exact song as the new Chevrolet Cobalt ... which also has the same music at Hotwire. But, Vonage's ad agency must have taken an extra stupid pill. Not only is it the same music as the Hotwire commercial, but the same mono-tone announcer.
  
  Kudos for the inability to create distinctive advertising. It's really too sad, because Vonage had an opportunity to present itself in a good light, but now, I hear the commercial and think Hotwire first, then the Cobalt ... and Vonage third.
  
  Plus, small problem: mainstream consumers have no idea what VoIP is, and the ad campaign should have been both educational and branding. Ofoto had the same issues when they launched their first ad campaign - they decided they didn't need to go with educational. Um, wrong.

• Battelle on publishing and advertising. I read this article from the Technology Review on Friday, and knew that there was something in there that was important.
  
  It just took me the weekend to figure out what it was.
  
  Advertising is cyclical. It's the one thing that amazes me about the rebirth of online advertising. It's hot again because companies have put the money back into the budget because the economy is chugging along. But, as soon as the economy goes South, online ad budgets will be the first to get hit (like PR).
  
  But, Battelle has a good point ... online advertising needs to change from a per-click model to publishers driving advertising, finding the best advertising for the content. It's an ingenious idea, that should be investigated more.

• Fool me twice ... . A pull quote from Gretchen Morgenstern's column on Sunday, that needs to be read by every person that might get caught up in the next round of the dot-com.
  
  THE FOOL ME TWICE AWARD To investors who chased momentum stocks into the heavens last year as if they'd never heard of the crash of 2000. Adding to the 1999 feel of things, penny stocks soared, funky pro forma figures resurfaced and formerly disgraced Internet analysts dusted off their pompoms. All we need now is for a Wall Street strategist to say, "It's different this time."