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USA Today has announced the winner of $1 million in free advertising in its contest to encourage creativity in print advertising: Google.
It’s hard to know why USA Today would’ve allowed Google to enter in the first place. Google has done more than anyone to destroy print media by outright stealing its revenue over the past 10 years, acting as little more than an electronic middle man that skims profits.
Moreover, it’s a smug, irritating move for Google to enter the contest at all — and they won it with a smug, self-congratulatory ad for Google Plus:
The winning ad, which ran in October, was simple. It reprinted a paragraph from a newspaper article reporting that the Dalai Lama had “scrapped plans” to attend the 80th birthday celebration of a fellow Nobel laureate, Desmond M. Tutu of South Africa, because his visa request was not granted.
The ad updated the article by crossing out words like “scrapped plans” and replacing them with “joined” and “via Hangout.”
Hey, the Dali Lama goes digital, how hip. What was the average age of the judges, about 75?
The two runner ups were Save the Children and an ad for a new toy, Nanoblock.
Larry Kramer, president and publisher at USA Today said “I was upset that agencies weren’t doing enough print creative and putting their best and brightest people on digital platforms…I’m worried the skill set is atrophying and wanted to do something to remind the world that print creative matters.”
Congratulations. He’s just proven that all your corporation has to do is loot the print world and strip it of its ability to hire competitive staff, and you, too, can come out on top.
8 Comments
The Googlization of Everything by Siva Vaidhyanathan is fairly sympathetic to google, but I was uncomfortable with his take on what they do. My view of them is their desire is similar to monsanto’s desire to control the food supply of the world.
On the plus side, digital doesn’t kill trees.
Digital does generate a large amount of Carbon Dioxide.
Craig’s List also contributed by killing the classified business.
Goggle needs to advertise? Having only read a USA Today that was left on a bench in an airport a decade ago, i doubt i will see the joyous ad to come. Goggle should pay it forward and help,i don’t know a rotorooter Co or something.
This is probably a good place to recommend duckduckgo.com (or ddg.gg) as a pretty decent search engine. I only use google occasionally anymore, duckduckgo is my default.
I tried them and they really weren’t as good as Google. Even Bing or Yahoo sucks compared to Google. I know they have long since forgotten their, “Don’t be evil” mantra long ago but, unfortunately, they are the best at what they do. :(
Not in terms of productivity per BTU.