I just heard, for the first time, an advertisement on the radio in which a local company called their new sale a "Bail Out!" claiming that they're helping the economy by saving consumers hundreds of dollars worth of money.

Anybody else encounter this language in advertising yet?

So, in just a couple of hours one link from a friend in graphicdesign got me as many hits as five days of advertising on Project Wonderful. Granted, the ad campaign cost me $5. But it was two to five hours a day of exposure on an average of 300 websites each day, targeted to a comic reading audience.

This is the difference between advertising and word of mouth. You don't get the word of mouth unless you get the first few people in the door, which is what you need advertising for, but it's where the real magic happens.

KGMI, our local news station, writes most of the commercials that they play as a service to their advertisers. Although that horrible Industrial Credit Union commercial I complained about last week may have been written by ICU, because they like to do things themselves (as I know from dealing with them for the Indy).

Well, the number of woefully sexist commercials on KGMI seems to be increasing. It's not like they're deliberately sexist, exactly, unless they are. They come off like those out of date Sunday comics, falling on cliches that are extremely out of date, like the wife asking the husband for cash and the checkbook.

Ugh.

Of course, the advertising industry is extremely sexist to begin with, marketing most everything primarily to women, particularly if the product is a luxury or clothing. Apparently women are the only creatures on the planet who like to treat themselves to indulgences and understand the meaning of the word "pamper." But, I suppose sadly I am used to those kinds of commercials. But waking up the old fashioned cliches really puts me in a bad mood.

That's the thing, when you start to emphasize traditional or specific sex roles it's not just unfair to one of the sexes. It's unfair to both. Like taking it to the extreme (where once it did lay), I'm the one who's supposed to be The Keeper of The Checkbook. And if I'm not because my wife just happens to be better at handling money than I am, am I then less of a man? In the old days, that would have been the case.

These are old lessons. Everyone on my friends list probably all understands. This post is for my conscience, and for Google, and hopefully for KGMI to get its butt out of the 50's.

The lesson for the new era of advertising is that I like to go to the spa, too, if I can afford it. A massage and a steam bath go a long way toward making better artwork. And since I'm home all day and doing the chores, I'm interested in the latest conveniences. And my wife is buying me an awesome skirt for my birthday.

I admit it, I'm a kept man.

Which of these two ads do you like best?

Here's the background:

The Whatcom Independent is published in a county that has two major competing papers (well, one of them is our competition, the other is seen as our competition but is really more complimentary).

The local daily is the biggest presence in the county, and just last weekend it expanded what it was printing, increasing the number of little add on publications that surround it and its number of pages. And even though it's done this, it still doesn't cover quite as much local news as we do in one issue (they do kinda overwhelm us on a weekly basis, but that may not be for long). They have the market and their column inches cost half again more as ours do, but with the size of their paper everything gets lost! So we want to take a jab at that.

The other weekly in town is primarily entertainment based, but sometimes aspires to news. However, the majority of news-like content in it is opinion based. Furthermore, as an incarnation of the ever reborn and old favorite Every Other Weekly/'Hamster, it is no longer owned by the people producing it. It's owned by two of the largest land holders in the county, one of them being Trillium Corp, which has a global history of pissing off various South American governments and peoples. Between Trillium and Bob Hall, the owners of that paper own the majority of Downtown Bellingham as well as huge swaths of Whatcom County forest and waterfront property. And so, of course we want to take a jab at that (along with the fact that the daily is owned by a company based out of state).

We are currently at 20 pages, include the T.V. times as well as obituaries, events, movie times, a crossword, four local feature comics, music listings, three pages of opinions, a beautiful full color center spread and comprehensive news articles that typically include at least three separate sources and have been rated at an 11th grade reading level. We've had six people call in the last week to tell us we're the only real paper in the county, which admittedly goes right to our heads!

So, without further adeau, two variations of the resultant house ad, to be published prominently on page three before being used as filler in other parts of the paper:



You can probably see what I'm trying to do with these.

Edit: The food one it is! But if you like the one with the office equipment and would like it to have a chance, you still have time to convince me. This goes to print on Wednesday.

I guess 20 clicks for their $4 that they ended up spending on the space wasn't sexy enough for them. The Squishable people left my big ad spot.

I can understand that, actually. It was fun having them there, and it did help me to drive more traffic to my site through advertising. But it's gonna take more than a day of heavy advertising for my comic to build up enough traffic to be worth that space.

Part of it is that I need to find my comic's groove again. That sweet spot where I'm writing about what I care about and it's funny. Problem is that I'm so exhausted and wiped out that the things I care about are kinda depressing. So I'm just writing about things that I think are funny. And because I don't care so much about them, the energy isn't as good as it could be.

But that's OK! Until I find that groove again (which I had at the very beginning of this endeavor), I can at least continue to work on my discipline! Part of work ethic, even for a writer or artist, is to be able to keep up a demanding schedule even when you feel like crap.

On the bright side, the little ads to the left are all full at the moment. Means that newcomers to the site have more webcomic related links to click on. That's important to me, and part of the whole purpose of the HFR website.