(or, Things to Do in Dullsville When You’re Dead)
Has anyone else seen the new eBay eXpress commercials? They started playing during football recently, and the only reason I noticed was because the dry, sucking sound of utter dullness coming from the television was actually so much MORE powerful than regular old football dullness that the vaccum of it’s suckiness was able to reach out, rip the book, laundry, dishes, (whatever I’m using to block out football) right out of my hands, grab me by the collar and drag my ass within three inches of the monitor.
Me: “What. the hell. is THAT?”
Trav: “Some…dude? Talking…? You’re gonna be in the way when the game comes back on.”
Is it just me? Does anyone else think these ads are about as dry as paint?
Forget about the stunning lack of character for a moment, where the hell’s the message? Every time I see it I can’t help but imagine the pitch meeting for the ads, but the whole fantasy falls apart when I get to the eBay execs who must have bought into it, because I just can’t imagine someone that completely vapid. How do you get to a position like that being as obviously clueless as one must have been to say “YES. That’s IT. This concept represents eBay PERFECTLY. What’s that? You need a hundred bazillion dollars to shoot? Where do I sign?”
You did hear eBay’s trying to claim rights to the word, ‘it’‘, right? I think it’s becoming painfully obvious somebody let the monkeys loose at Corporate, and they’re taking over. I can hear them now:
“EEEEE! EEEE! EEEEEBay! EEEEEEEBAAAAAY!”
Davy Jones’ concert at eBay Live ’06 makes SO MUCH MORE sense now.
Back to the god-awful commercials. What is the message? According to this article, the whole idea is ‘to be new’. Ok. How does that make people want to go to eBay Express? Or even know what it is? Sure, they know it’s eBay, but how is it different? And why should they care? I’m not saying they shouldn’t, or that eBay eXpress isn’t a really good idea. It is. But how is anyone supposed to get anything out of house of mirrors crap like this?
Ugh.
The whole thing reminds me of a college history professor who maintained the rise and fall of empires tracked in exact relation to the amount of realism in its art. For example, at the beginning of the Roman empire, art was pretty rough. Then it got more and more realistic as the empire became stronger. As it reached it’s peak and started to decline, their art became more abstract again, more ‘modern’.
And then everything went straight to hell.
Related Links
eBay Kicks off ‘eBay Express’ Marketing Campaign Today
eBay: Down But Not Out – With eBay’s stock price down over 50 percent in the last 20 months, with fees and seller defections rising and sell-through rates and prices realized down, with a perceived company arrogance and indifference to user problems, an increasingly heard call from eBay sellers is, “Bring us the head of Meg Whitman” and the rest of top management. Does this signal the beginning of the end for the Internet’s most dynamic success story?
eBay Express Upgrades Shopping Cart – eBay has upgraded its new eBay Express fixed-price marketplace. Unlike eBay, eBay Express uses a shopping cart that allows shoppers to buy multiple items from different sellers in one transaction and pay using either PayPal or a credit card. When the service launched in the Spring, there was a limit on how many different sellers one transaction could encompass. Now, shoppers can buy items from up to ten different sellers in one transaction; previously, there was a five-merchant limit. eBay did not publicly announce the upgrade, but notified AuctionBytes after it ran an article on Thursday about eBay Express and other online marketplaces entitled, “Shopping Online with eBay Express, Amazon, Overstock and Google Checkout”
Martin Wu Resigns From eBay Eachnet – eBay (EBAY) Eachnet announced that CEO Martin Shixiong Wu, who has worked for just a year, will resign from his position and instead work as a consultant for the company.
Things to Keep an Eye On:
MonsterCommerce
New “Auction Inspector” Software Finds Niche Markets in eBay for Sellers
Google’s latest could be aimed at eBay listings – Google Inc. plans to introduce a new shopping feature in time for the holiday season, an analyst noted Friday, which sets the stage for an even bigger clash with eBay Inc. and other online-commerce companies. In a report for Bear Stearns clients, analyst Robert Peck described a new feature that’s based on Google Base, a feature Google launched last October that lets people freely list items for sale.
© 2006, jules.maas. All rights reserved.
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Rose – yeah, all those previous campaigns flashed before my eyes (especially the ultra-community oriented, ‘Power of All of Us’) when I saw the new one and asked myself, “Where’d the personality go?”
It makes me wonder, are they purposely distancing themselves from the community?
Because it kindof feels like it.
That girl KICKS ASS! I would like to buy her a drink. In fact, I’d like to make her a giant gold medal that reads:
“The Kahones Award: for having the balls to at least call delusional executives on clearly stupid decisions, even if they’re going to ignore you.”
I would put glitter on it and make it at least the size of a fist, so girlfriend can wear it the next time Carol’s in town trying to show off her bling.
My thinking when I saw the painful express ad previews – exactly. I thought they were dull, absent-minded, and purposeless. My follow up thought was “now why does eBay feel the need to open up new ‘sites’ when they’re obviously not fixing the old ones which remain buggy, broken, and more money sucking than a vacuum turned on high.
Gone are the days of the “catchy” themes – Get it now, Get it fast (w/the infamous lamp commercial); Do it eBay (sung to the tune of “my way”); Find “it” on eBay (the it in all types of forms)- that made us laugh (who was that masked advertising company behind these anyway?!?), groan, and yet still want to be part of the eBay community.
Much like the bombed-out sensless commercials where the Daimler-Chrysler pitch man is the CEO, these stink almost as much as the doggy poo I am required to pickup daily as I walk my dog (which, by the way, is by far more entertaining.)
You would be proud to know that a girl stood up in the recent all hands meeting and asked Wendy about the commercials. Specifically about how bad they are and why did we allow such crap to be on the TV