Exhibitors Surprised by Positive Reactions at Jupiter’s Online Ad Forum; Avenue A Wins Top Tchotchke

Reviewed by: (Ms.) Hollis Thomases, President, Web
Ad.vantage, Inc. http://www.webadvantage.net

TONE: I'd say subdued. I think the market fall-out is
still being felt. Two themes that seemed to repeat
themselves is that branding is key and as more and more
time goes by, clutter is going to be an extremely critical
issue for advertisers and marketers to contend with. Also,
most attendees were in agreement that there was really not
a lot of new information being presented -- same ol', same
ol'.

CROWD: Mixed age-wise, though still leaning towards the
typically younger "Internet set." Lots of staff from
traditional agencies who are finally getting it!

CONTENT: One of the buzz words that certainly got over-
killed was "agnostic." It was used in such terms as
"marketing agnostic," "agnostic integrators," and "platform
agnostic."

Keynoter Keith Reinhard, Chairman & CEO of DDB Worldwide
had a good presentation, and I particularly liked his line
about computers being more like women than men (as earlier
analogies had referred): "Even the tiniest mistakes are
stored in long-term memory." He also played the Whazzup
commercial and an online parody he found of it featuring
D.C. Comics Superheroes. It was a real hoot, and the
audience roared.

EXHIBITORS: Feedback from the exhibitors in general was
excellent. They are having a really good show! They’re
surprised by the amount of interest and the right contact
people are here. I think it’s because the traditional
agencies staffers are finally taking the time to get
educated, and they have a lot of marketplace clout.

Juno wins my “loser” award. They had a do-nothing booth
and 3 chicks w/a bad attitude sitting behind a table.
Yuck!

The “most amusing” award, goes to Boston.com, who had some
poor fellow, in 89 degree heat, dressed up as a full-sized
furry red lobster. His mission was to hand out such
likable items as Win-A-Lobster-Dinner scratch-off cards and
nifty hard-covered, half-sized spiral bound notebooks.

TOP 5 BEST TCHOTCHKES:
1. Avenue A’s 2" retractable modem cord holders
2. Engage/AdKnowledge’s tubular, bead & liquid-filled
"water wigglies"
3. Unicast’s mini ball-in-maze pens
4. Brightstreet’s rubber duckies [a winner for two years!]
5. Engage’s mini-travel alarm clock-radios shaped like Sony
Disc Players

WEIRDEST TCHOTCHKE:
NetZero’s dissolving rice paper mint "films"

PARTIES: Wed. luncheon (if that counts as a party) at
Rosedale sucked. It was sponsored by L90 who had some
person on stage doing magic tricks, but he was also doing
his own shtick and it was horrible! He was like some
really loud, bombastic buffoon. The evening's party was a
bit better. At the Supper Club and sponsored by Engage, it
had a decent variety of hors d'oeuvres and buffet foods, a
good, lively crowd, and a pretty good band. I didn't see
anyone getting out of hand. [Ed.: Too bad.]

FASHION: Well, this is NYC -- there was a lot of black.
If this was SF, I think it'd have been a lot funkier.
Eeking through were a bunch of bold pinks (on women, of
course). I was surprised that it wasn't a completely
casual event -- more suits and ties than I expected.

Editorial Note: Yearning for more Jupiter coverage? We
think Masha Geller over at MediaPost did the best job
(aside from us that is), it’s not up on their site yet, but
Jeff over there personally promised us he’d send copies to
anyone who emailed him. Email Jeff@mediapost.com