Dodge recently ran an ad that involved a chimp, and as you can expect, PETA got in a tizzy. PETA sent a wonderful letter to Dodge telling to pull the ad and even contacted the networks playing to ad. No good can come from this… or maybe it can.

Dodge responded by altering the ad, which to Dodge’s credit, made the ad even funnier and threw a little sarcasm at PETA. While I give huge kudos to Dodge for mocking PETA, this ad doesn’t change my opinion about buying a Dodge – just to be clear. It’s just great to see the brand personality Dodge is embracing. Below are links to the before and after videos.

Before PETA

After PETA

Parody is a difficult advertising angle. It requires reaching a target audience and that the audience recognizes the parody. This brings me to Hyundai and a recent Top Gear parody. While the ads are humorous, there is a disconnect. It requires the target audience of a Hyundai ix35 (known as the Tucson in the United States) watches Top Gear, a British only television that skews towards high performance supercars.

Despite the mismatch, I believe Hyundai is using this as viral marketing to reach an audience they normally can’t touch – the car fanatic audience. That audience typically won’t even place Hyundai on their list of future cars (excluding the Genesis Coupe). This parody gets Hyundai recognition for being a brand with personality – a trait that fanatics crave, which turns into word-of-mouth – the most powerful form of advertising.

The moral of the story is that is you are mismatching your target audience and parody audience, you better have a bigger plan in place. Hyundai – I commend thee.

As an added bonus, they also created a second ad that parodies the Stig, the masked race car driver on Top Gear.

What’s better than my fandom of the Playstation 3 and the Minnesota Twins? How about a Sony commercial promoting both of them! Watch it here. It is a great ad that is part of a Sony Playstation advertising campaign with tremendous versatility. It can be applied to so many topics. Well played Sony, well played.

Here is a list of some of the other Playstation ads that I love to watch over-and-over-and-over….

• Desperate Dad - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sq0chHj14jY&feature=fvw
• First Person Shooter – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QiwSCznhdPo
• Rumor Monger – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jlWcyE2E1s
• Aroma Therapy Candle – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkvAZ3dn-jQ

Is it weird that Toyota still stands by their tag-line “Moving Forward” in wake of the recalls? It seems completely absurd to hold onto an idea that supports unintended acceleration and the inability to brake in one statement. Perhaps it is because most of Toyota’s advertising agency is in-house and can’t see beyond their boundaries? Perhaps it provides them some cosmic motivation to move beyond the recalls? Either way it seems like an awkward tag-line.

Too often an Information Architect (IA) creates lorem ipsum wireframes and then directs copywriters and designers to manifest content out of thin air. Copywriters and designers then panic, project managers increase their therapy sessions, and customer expectations fall short. This is only great if your IA is evil incarnate and believes violating the Geneva Convention is something you do before breakfast. This atrocious process is known as content chaos, a land where projects run over budget and nobody knows what the hell is going on. A place we must avoid like Chernobyl because modern advertising agencies strive for efficiency, clients desire lower costs, and designers and copywriters need to eventually get a few hours of sleep.

IAs are in the unique position to solve the content chaos crisis if they obey one rule (sounds like one of those bad ads): lorem ipsum is the devil. I challenge IAs to use real content in their wireframes. Titles, summaries, links, copy, should all use real, honest-to-goodness content. While this might seem like a daunting task, it accomplishes so much and prevents more problems than a Toyota recall.

1. Gives customers something tangible when reviewing wireframes, especially since they need to have a severe case of the crazies if they actually enjoy pouring over wireframes. Using real copy helps them relate and can even generate the smallest indication of excitement.
2. Establishes a content inventory of what is available and what needs to be created.
3. Helps communicate the overall tone and goals of the website from the creative brief, as you interpret through website architecture, to designers, copywriters, and even developers.
4. Prevents lorem ipsum creative review syndrome. A problem that inflicts many creative presentations because designers usually transfer copy directly from wireframe to design. Which means clients see their future pride and joy with placeholder text. It’s like having a baby, naming them Lorem Ipsum Dolor as a placeholder, and then changing it just before they enroll in school. Not a good idea.

Copy is good. Integrating copy into wireframes? Better. I encourage all IAs to insert actual copy into their wireframes and not fall victim to pages and pages of lorem ipsum or giant square blocks that state “copy goes here”. It is a dangerous path that should be avoided for the sake of all the project managers, designers, copywriters, and developers that you hold dear.