Tuesday, November 08, 2005

ReciproAds Denied, Pirates Accused Of Resale Piracy 

Fave middle-of-nowhere, pirate-themed wine/beer bar and low-key freshfood gourmet hang-out The Lady Killigrew reports via monthly newsletter that their recent local-media ad campaign -- "in which we advertise for other things: other restaurants, bars, books, music, dentists - anything that impresses us and we feel deserves our and others love" -- will soon cease.

Serious bummer, here -- the ads, which showed a kind of relationship tree of local user-friendly services and hangouts, were always entertaining, and often informative. Alas, it turns out celebrating one's own local favorites as part of a network of cool stuff in one's own advertising is illegal. Snip from The Lady Killigrew newsletter:

The Valley Advocate recently got in touch with us...to tell us these ads were not appropriate; and that we would need to change them according to the rules of The Secondary Brokering of Ads (a rule concerning some shady (and confused) person buying an ad and then selling off the pieces). We are not selling off the pieces, we told them, we are trying to create a community and a network through advertising, rather than tear everybody else down and proclaim ourselves the best. They said they understood, but we would still have to change the ads. This made us sad. And while we are going to be slightly changing the ads over the next few weeks, we will also most likely be writing various letters explaining our situation and thoughts. Which are mainly this: so I could run an ad featuring a very busty, scantily clad blonde, but as soon as I run an ad praising my dentist, that's no good? And that's a sad state of affairs, crew. A sad state of affairs.

Pirates acting on purely positive and social intentions, spending their own cash to promote their faves (and incidentally make connections between themselves and other positive, mostly small-scale networked services and companies, thus illuminating their user base, and spreading the good cheer), accused of piracy? Isn't it ironic...

posted by boyhowdy | 11:10 AM |

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