To: Potential Advertisers
From: The Inmate
Re: Advertising with The Corporate Asylum or
Why Most(if not all) Companies Will Not Advertise on This Site
Advertising serves not so much to advertise products as to promote consumption as a way of life.
Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism
I am not against advertising. I am, however, against the type of advertising that is prevalent in our culture. Much of it is untrue and insulting. It promotes materialism as the source of meaning and contentment. Often advertisers elicit emotions then offer solutions that in reality offer no resolution to the emotion that the viewer has experienced.
That said, there is a kind of advertising that I like to see and that I would like to promote on The Corporate Asylum: truthful advertising. Truth. Not image, but reality. I would be happy to display advertising that is truthful and happy to take money from truthful advertisers.
Being truthful does not mean advertising has to be boring or uncreative. My vision for advertising on The Corporate Asylum is that it be both truthful and creative. I want readers of this site to enjoy reading the advertising almost as much as they enjoy reading everything else on this site.
Therefore, the following guidelines will be strictly enforced by The Corporate Asylum for anyone who wishes to advertise here.
Format:
Absolutely no pop-up ads. None. Pop-up ads are the most annoying things that the internet has yet produced. We do not want the deep thoughts of our readers to be interrupted by trivialities.
No animated ads. We define an animated ad as anything that has movement in it(i.e. flashing letters, words that scroll by, talking people, moving people, video clips . . . you get the idea).
No banner ads.
No pornography ads.
No ads with sound. Our readers can read, they do not need to be read to.
No company logos. You are probably very proud of your logo, you probably spent thousands of dollars and thousands of hours deciding just what type of logo would attract the most people to your product. You probably paid these thousands of dollars to people who have a vested interest in convincing you of this latter fact, something that is difficult to prove, which makes that fact not a fact at all but something more akin to conjecture or a theory or a lie.
Ads will appear at the BOTTOM of web pages, just below The Corporate Asylum's copyright text. No ad will ever supersede the text of any given web page. Ever. No exceptions. None.
Text will be black. Text will be the same size as that of this sentence. Bold print will not be allowed.
All ads will be preceded by this text:
The Following is a Paid Advertisement. These People Most Likely Want You to Send Them Money. Read at Your Own Risk. The Corporate Asylum Cannot be Held Responsible for Your Lack of Self-Control
All ads will be followed by this text:
This is the End of the Advertisement. If You are Reading this, Congratulations! You Have Escaped. You May Now Proceed Safely. Text:
Ads will consist solely of text and a link to the advertiser's site.
--Text that will not be allowed:No outrageous claims will be allowed. Hence, phrases such as "We are the biggest" or "We are the greatest"or "We are the best" will send your ad proposal into the abyss of cyberspace.--Text that will be allowed:Typical advertising logic will not be allowed(i.e. blatant untruths, faulty comparisons, erroneous conclusions, etc.). It appears that most advertising firms work in a moral vacuum, therefore it will most likely be necessary for The Inmate to attempt to explain to the advertiser why their text qualifies as "typical advertising logic." The Inmate will happily do this.
The name of the company.
A simple statement that explains the service the advertiser provides. For example: "We sell books" or "We loan money."
Text that entertains. Text that will make our readers laugh. Text that makes fun of the company that it is advertising. Comic self-deprecation, humor, satire, substantial thoughts or ideas will all be considered appropriate advertising text for The Corporate Asylum. If your company is so tight-laced that it cannot make fun of itself, then probably The Corporate Asylum is not the place for you to spend your advertising dollars. Be creative. If you can do the above and get in some dig about corporate culture, employers or employees and actually have some worthwhile thought about work or life contained within all that, The Inmate shall marvel at your ingenuity, but still charge you to advertise.
There is no minimum or maximum length to your advertisement. If it is good and you can sustain that goodness in a long, long, long text, then do so.
More information about your advertisement:
Near the top of the web page on which your advertisement appears the following text will be linked to your advertisement:
warning: advertisement appears at the bottom of this pageThere will also be a web page that lists all advertisers with links to their web pages and pages where their advertisements appear on The Corporate Asylum.
When a new advertiser signs on with The Corporate Asylum their debut will be announced on the Home Page with much hoopla and fanfare.
So, if The Corporate Asylum decided to advertise on its own web site the simplest ad possible would look like this:
The Following is a Paid Advertisement. These People Most Likely Want You to Send Them Money. Read at Your Own Risk. The Corporate Asylum Cannot be Held Responsible for Your Lack of Self-Control
The Corporate Asylum
Satire and Commentary for Discerning Employees
www.corporateasylum.com
This is the End of the Advertisement. If You are Reading this, Congratulations! You Have Escaped. You May Now Proceed Safely.
Cost:
Awards:
At the end of each year readers will vote for their favorite advertiser and that advertiser will receive a congratulatory phone call from The Inmate and one month of free advertising on one Corporate Asylum web page(the one the ad appeared on) and, of course, a cool certificate, not suitable for framing, commemorating that grand achievement.
Two Final Notes:
The Inmate decides if your ad will appear on The Corporate Asylum and may suggest changes or additions or deletions. Anything that these guidelines do not cover will be decided upon
by The Inmate, whose decisions are final and irrefutable.These guidelines were posted in 2000 and since that time we have had no advertisers and no inquiries about advertising. We have, however, had one individual who said if his magazine was published in the English language(It's a German magazine published in Germany) he would advertise with us.
I look forward to hearing from you.The Inmate
Contact The Inmate
work cited:
Lasch, Christopher, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, N.Y., 1978, pg. 72.
©2000 The Corporate Asylum . . . www.corporateasylum.com
More Misc. Essays | Home | Back to Top | Contact The Inmate
http://www.corporateasylum.com/acceptancespeeches.html
Copyright 1999-2004 The Corporate Asylum all rights reserved
Web Design by Sweet Thursday Web Development(Contact Me) / Last Revised June 20, 2004