Blogfonk interviewed me in Fonk for Thoughts: Åsk Wäppling 2004.

BlogFonk: Who is Åsk Wäppling?
Wäppling: A geeky art director, mother of the adlist since '97, a turtle and many many cats. Collector of old Vespas, old computers, old TV-sets and new ideas. Born in northern Sweden, I proudly carry on the Viking tradition of globe trotting around the world. ;-)

BlogFonk: Do you love your work? Why?
Wäppling: Yes. I love solving problems, creating, inventing and advertising as a craft - sometimes too much. That's when one has to step back and realize that much of the population won't care that much about the specific word chosen to describe a diaper baby, or the printing quality of a poster. But I do.

BlogFonk: What is Adland all about?
Wäppling: When I first started it back in '96, it was a place to rant about twin ads and share some advertising books and advertising links. I soon realized by the feedback that many people had a rant or two in them, questions and network needs. So I built a CMS system in 2000 (these days you might call it a blog) where anyone could network in the forums, post news and adrants on the front page and watch commercials until their eyes become square. Since what happens on Mad Ave affects networked agencies everywhere else and the web is worldwide, so is our news. Adland is that fabled land where the creative and not-so creative advertising lives, and anyone in the industry can become a citizen.

BlogFonk: Do you think weblogs, which follow advertising trends, have added value towards ad agencies?
Wäppling: I think all weblogs have something to give depending on how you use them.
You can research how people really feel about your brand on people's journals, you can use targeted weblogs to spread specific news about your agency. Let the strategy-oriented weblogs know about your change of tactics, send in your latest work to us, alert adverblog to your latest new media campaign, leak out viral-ads via blogs and ad-blogs and so on.
I wouldn't be surprised if keeping track of the 'right' blogs for certain releases will become part of the press-package at agencies, if it isn't already.

BlogFonk: Is there difference in mentality of creatives in the countries you've worked?
Wäppling: Not really, creatives fit certain stereotypes wherever you go. There's the 'work-smart-not-hard' guy who clocks off at 5 to pick his kids up from school, the never-stop-working types who scribble on napkins at bars until the wee hours, the cynical whiners, the hacks and rip-off artists, the 'good-enough' creatives who never put up a fight for anything with the motto 'pick your battles', and the utterly crazy creatives who passionately come up with one groundbreaking idea after another can be found in every country. The only thing that really changes is the language (including the visual) which they speak. Every single country has someone who says: 'This country is not so ad-literate, we can't do that ad here. Maybe that ad would fly in [insert other supposedly more ad-literate country here].' Seriously.

Every country I have looked for work in has at least one agency head that says with a straight face: 'We do very Danish/Swedish/Dutch/French advertising here.' Seems they forget that creatives can sell expensive cars to rich old men, even though they themselves bike, tampons to women, even though they are men, and diapers to mothers, even though they are childless. It's our job to communicate to people in various 'cultures' - be it a national one, or a target groups culture. We research and get on with it, cultural insight doesn't have to come from being born within it, but can come from observing it with an open mind.

BlogFonk: What are the latest important developments you've noticed in advertising?
Wäppling: The web. Still not mastered by most agencies, still the wild west of new 'media'. Banners die and virals spread - intentional or not. Some forget that the web is made of people, and people aren't that easy to control, so the web is still the cutting edge battlefield where ideas die or take on a life of their own - and I hope it will never be 'tamed'. It's not one 'media', it's a million.

Another development to keep an eye on is the ad-creep, 'fake' blogs and websites, ad-bots on IM, people chatting you up at bars to sell X mineral water or showing off their camera-phone, ads on money, public city walls, in urinals and everywhere else, and how people are reacting to it. It's not just the anarchist hippies that are hating advertising intrusion into everything and everywhere, soccer-moms and average Joe are getting in to it too. If we aren't careful, soon every pitch in any context will sound like Viagra-spam to people and they will stop listening completely.

Targeting your advertising message is top priority today, don't just use the new media because 'it's there'. Clamping down on SPAM should have been our industries top priority in '95 - it's nearly killed the great invention of email, with so many blacklists and barriers in place. Do we really want to make people stop talking to strangers in 2008 because 'it's probably just a spam-pitch' as well? The industry does have a responsibility - to itself. Or as a friend always says: 'Don't shit where you eat!'

BlogFonk: Which project/work for a client are you most proud of?
Wäppling: Oh dear, I can only pick one? Two compete for attention in my mind. The first was when Marcel, a tattoo artist client, came with a simple brief 'make me famous'. We graffitied the whole city with the tag 'At least Tattoos are permanent' signed Marcel, using temporary red spray [which really was temporary unlike other such campaigns] back in '98.
Marcel had the police visit him twice, which amused him, and he demonstrated with a bucket of water that the tags did come off with rain. Later we ran posters where the image slowly vanished.

Ink-magazines all over the world picked up on this campaign and soon Marcel has an entire wall full of clippings, feeling very famous indeed. He crowned the clipping wall with an Epica diploma, and was so happy about the results that he wanted to ink me right then and there. He did. It was just great to see him so happy about his newfound notoriety.

In a similar vein, I did get a 'thank you' card from UNICEF after an ad I made pulled in nearly three million Danish kronor to help children in Afghanistan, better results than any other ad. They were so pleased with it. Talk about warm fuzzy feeling inside, better than any award.

BlogFonk: If you'd be given the chance to do something over again, what would that be?
Wäppling: Like every AD, I want to kern fonts or fix something for just 'five more minutes', but in life I have no regrets.

[thinks very hard for a minute]. Okay, I'd release the clutch slower when I was driving my 1964 Vespa Popolino down the street, so I wouldn't jump-crash into that shop-window. That hurt, and the scooter never really did recover.

BlogFonk: Finally, what is your motto, your 'Fonk for Thoughts' (inspriration to be creative)?
Wäppling: You can sing it: 'Inside out... Upside down, round and round.' Start by looking at anything from the opposite view, or inside out - turn the problem around.

Newsdirekt in Denmark celebrated when we passed 35,000 members. You can find the article in the waybackmachine here.

The world's largest online community of advertisers, ad-rag.com, has around 35,000 members. The site is managed by Swede Åsk Wäppling from Copenhagen, and it has always been her goal to keep the community funded by membership and not advertising. It has succeeded.

ad-rag.com has become the preferred virtual venue for advertisers worldwide. The archives contain more than 17,000 commercials, extensive news channels, forums and networking opportunities. 13 million people use the site in their work and leisure. More and more people come daily.

It is free to register as a user, but if you want unlimited access to all commercials, it costs two euros a month, says Åsk Wäppling, who from the center of Copenhagen spends most of his time servicing users and maintaining the servers.

“You just donate for the time you use the system. All revenue goes to the vast amounts of bandwidth, development and hardware. It works, and I think the many advertisers who populate the site appreciate an "advertising-free" breathing hole, "says Åsk Wäppling, who started the site in 1996 in San Francisco.

One of the big hits on the site is the complete archive of commercials for the American Super Bowl of the past 30 years. It does not exist anywhere else and attracts millions of users during the main season.

The many committed users are responsible for keeping a large news flow going. In this way, ad-rag.com has become a widely used alternative to the traditional industry media available internationally for the advertising and marketing industry.

Caffeinegoddess found ads for Garfield the movie on bananas when she went shopping the other day.

"This is nothing new. The Milk Board was putting "Got Milk" stickers on bananas years ago. But it seems a bit odd to put ads for this movie on the banana peels. My first thought was that they were trying to target the kids who might have banana in or with their morning cereal. But then the more I thought about it, it's really targeting the parents more, since most kids get the banana already peeled, especially if it's going in their cereal."

As far as cool advertising space goes, I like the idea of new advertising spaces, but I think this execution is lacking. Kids do like stickers though, and bananas, so maybe that was the whole idea here.

I'm not sure what it does really, all I know is that I want it.

The Vestax Faderboard is a keyboard-like sampling / modular instrument that operates exclusively on faders. The idea originally invented by Shing02 using a digital multi-track recorder and a mixer, the faderboard was presented to, and developed up by Vestax over a course of two years in a collaborative effort with Korg. For specs, go to the links page or read the tech review below.

faderboard specs on vestax.com (in japanese)

main features:
The faderboard is developed by Vestax and powered by Korg. Vestax provides the hardware, while the sound engine and effects unit come form Korg (specifically, the chips built in the Electribe Series).

* 10 upfaders, designed to trigger notes / hits (3 step curve / octave switch)
* 1 cross fader (curve / reverse switch)
* 30 internal tones (half note = +/- 100 cent tuning)
* 10 internal drum kits (BPM setting 20 - 999)
* root key assign / # button (12 half steps)
* 6 scale presets (major, minor, arabic, gypsy, blue note)
* midi out triggering capability (midi notes 35 - 64)
* 12 internal effects
* sampling capability (30 secs, 16bit mono)
* sample start / end slider (reversible)
* smartmedia / on-board storage (10 banks)
* .wav compatible via smartmedia
* phono / line / mic input
* panel color: first run in red only

OK, I'll admit it. We just love the word "MetaFilterati". And "kibitzing". And plain old being Adcritic's snarky overseas cousin. You can find the post under this Waybackmachine link.

If you simply scratch the surface, it feels like Ad Critic's snarky overseas cousin has been kibitzing with a healthy dose of MetaFilterati. Dig past the digital dermis and it's apparent that there's a lot more to Adland than archived commercials and communal media schmear. Say, thanks for the reminder, Åsk.

David Hiltbrand wrote about the "long, lavish events that target jaded consumers" June 20, 2004 and got a quote from us, the "international ad critic" from Adland.

Congratulations to the 2004 Best Blog winners, and thanks to the 826 tough judges who carefully evaluated 29-nominated blogs to pick them.

Best group weblog on the general topic of marketing and advertising

Winner: AdLand
https://ad-rag.com

Honorable Mention: MarketingVOX
https://www.marketingvox.com/

How the Best Blogs were chosen:

In April 2004, we asked MarketingSherpa's 173,000 readers (who are mainly marketing execs at medium-large businesses and the agencies who serve them) to nominate their favorite blogs on the subjects of marketing, advertising, and PR.

It's awfully easy to start a blog on an impulse, but equally difficult to keep the effort up posting consistently over the long-term. So we cut nominated blogs that had been started after January 1st, 2004 (you guys can try again next year.) A total of 29 blogs qualified for the next round.

Next, we invited all MarketingSherpa readers to vote for the best Blogs in the six categories listed above, plus a write-in category where they could put any blog's name. We included hotlinks to every blog so folks could check them out prior to voting.

We also allowed nominated blogs to post links to the voting form for their own readers, however we asked all voters to evaluate every nominee in a category and not just one single blog. (Which worked out fine.) However, MarketingSherpa staff were not allowed to vote, or influence results in any way.

Voters were asked to rate each blog in a category by one of three designations - "Excellent", "Not bad", and "Blah". To make sure everyone understood what was expected from an "excellent" vote, we included the following instructions:

1. Personality:

Is there a clear personality? Do you feel like you know the writer(s)? Is there a feeling of intimacy that may be missing from mainstream media?

2. Usefulness:

Is the information either darned useful or very enjoyable to read? Did it make you think, or laugh, or click? Are there handy links to other places?

3. Writing style:

Is it a sales pitch badly disguised as a blog? Is it a long-winded column instead of a snappy, slightly-informal blog? Is it just news briefs without analysis or insight?

4. Usability & design:

Is the typeface easy to read? Can you find links to archives? Is the writing concise and skimmable? Are graphics limited to what's useful or fun?

5. Would you revisit?:

Is it useful or engaging enough for you to visit it again someday? Or will you forget it the minute after you vote?

On June 2nd, we closed the voting form in order to tabulate winners. 826 people had cast votes. Roughly 35% of votes appeared to come from links from the nominated blogs. Interestingly, these voters swelled our numbers but didn't appear to change the overall results. So, the same blogs almost certainly would have won even if only MarketingSherpa readers had voted.

Also interestingly, in several categories, the blog that was probably the best known to voters prior to voting, did not end up being the winner. So, fame didn't make a big difference.

We did see some evidence of attempts to sway results in our write-in category, where several particular blogs were nominated in a rush of votes all at about the same time, and then never mentioned again. (The voting form did not allow duplicate entries per computer, but people with multiple computers or persuadable friends got around that a bit.)

However, our chosen write-in winner appeared entirely genuine, as it not only had the most write-ins, but also was repeatedly named throughout the entire 32-day voting period.

What did winners get anyway?

Aside from fame, hotlinks, and glory, winners received an award icon they can put on their Blogs (if they choose) to impress visitors. They will also receive a lovely MarketingSherpa Best Blog 2004 t-shirt to wear all summer and make their neighbors jealous while mowing the lawn.

Again, our thanks to everyone who helped make our Readers' Choice Blog Awards successful. Get your voting cap ready for next year!
Links: MarketingSherpa, on Adland.

Jim from Coudal suggested that my jewelboxing might look like this. Sexy! So I had to buy some jewelboxings.. you understand that don't you?

This is what my ascii log looked like back then.