You can read how this started on Michael Calanan's Flickr account, and he is quite honest, giving his views, comments and updates on the site.  This user-generated commentary is great to read, as it engages the rest of the community around the issue and creates an interesting debate.

My dad, John Haysom is a very good photographer based in Dorset, and has had images even shown on the Meridian TV weather updates behind the presenters.  He recently mentioned to me someone had ripped one of his photos off his site, or one that he uploads too.  How bloody rude, even if they put a link back to his website.

So whilst this website has few images on it, mainly as I've been far to busy to get around to adding them, or have written the blog posts via my iPod Touch, I have a word of advice for advertisers;

"Don't be stealing photos off MyFaceTube, please ask for permission first and contact me.  Thank you."

1. The Irish comedian comparing the night was brilliant in the first half, notably the Dettol vs Yakult sketch, but lost his way after the travelling circus gag. Whilst the Arab Jew joke got a laugh at the end, you were out of your depth and it seemed a few shandies had taken it's toll after the interval. Shame really, as the new media advertising world was ironically well positioned at the beginning. BTW, I recognize you, but don't know you name. Sadly you were not promoted in the lavish programmes, so a shitty ROI for you I feel.

2. We are talking about the crème of digital advertising and personally immersing myself in digital, I expected much more. There were some obvious and well deserved winners; UPS Widget (Best Business to Business), Budget 'Compare The Meerkat' (Best Use of Social Media) and Pot Noodle's 'Tipping Pot' (Best Use of Viral Marketing). Just how many of the campaigns submitted actually got some visibility? You get the sense that smaller than WPP and the like agencies are much more aggressive into awards submissions and attendance to such a glamorous event in the digital diary of media jollies. I just didn't see many of the other submissions. I spend my working hours online, not just publisher specific to where I work, but I search, shop, bank. network, Social network and engage online at the very least.

3. Mobile Internet ran away with the awards. Not just 'Best Use of Mobile' but the prestigious 'Grand Prix' award, the best of the 24 winners on each category. Testament to Flirtomatic.com who have built a successful business using mobile Internet, but who can take on the big guns and come away as a category and overall winner. Maybe 2009 will be that year of mobile Internet.

4. The day that pop legend Michael Jackson died. What became a Chinese whisper in the basement level of London's notorious awards hosting venue, this rumour was confirmed by the very mechanic that had won the awards. The mobile Internet. Too late to phone a friend to confirm, dozens of people in black tie and slinky dresses searched the web for the latest news via their mobiles or wireless devices. Admittedly it wasn't people desperately trying to flirt and pull some bootie call at 2am, but use that mobile device with a specific need... Is it true?

So it's 3.25am and time for bed.

RIP Wacko Jacko. A life long fan and you will be seriously missed. I do hope I get refunded for my O2 tickets from Ticketmaster soon.

Secondly, a big congrats to Matt Dicks @ Flirtomatic.com on the NMA Awards. Lunch to be arranged as promised.

Firstly, what you witnessed on the advertisement is a skill called "Beer Pong". Some people refer it to "Extreme Beer Pong", merely down to the extreme execution of the tricks undertaken.

The skill is simply bouncing a ping pong ball off a surface and it successfully landing in a container. Generally the container is a glass, mug or beaker. This way the size is small enough for it to impress, but also so you can see it actually in the container, with no David Blaine influence going on.

Search YouTube for Beer Pong or preferably Extreme Beer Pong, and you will watch many videos and your lunch hour disappear in amazement. Click here to see some Extreme Beer Pong videos.

So some clever marketing person at either Phones4U or creative agency must have been told about this genius extreme sport or doesn't have any friends and suggested it themselves.

I have long admired the marketing of Phones 4U. Not always politically correct, pushing the boundaries on exploiting some disadvantageous user groups, the ads are pure comedy to watch.

The fact their latest advertising campaign is about having friends and benefiting from their mobile phone offers and tariffs, this ad is a perfect play on the "No" answer.

There you have it. Simple isn't it. I'm sure beer pongers, if you can call them that, would disagree. I do hope the lad in the television advert was briefed on how the final ad was going to be cut.

Certainly a major piss take, but a real classic. Well done Phones 4U, your marketing and creative agencies.

But do me a favour, get the video into YouTube for everyone to share and enjoy, and put on this blog post! People need to see that knuckle to knuckle appreciation at the end. Brilliant.

~edit

I've found the ad on YouTube, see below...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTfZfybA1jo

Genius marketing campaign. To play on peoples trust and honesty for a meal out, it was going to be unlikely that everyone would stitch the restaurant up. In fact, the managers report that the average meal was something like £17 compared to about £13.

Apart from the students who paid 1 pence each and a £5 tip was a bit tight, but then, you have to play the game and accept some will try it on.

Just imagine if you compared this to other products and services...

On eBay, people bid and pay for items at a price they want. Although you can argue, and I have been guilty of this, pay more than you actually want because you really want the product.

Train travel would open a huge debate. Nationally the commuters might have something to say for the over crowding, delays, breakdowns, etc. But for leisure travel, I would happily pay the advance rate super saver fares if it was normal price.

Air flights and holidays are so subjective to other variables, such as service, weather, quality of the hotel or punctuality of flights or leg room! If you could pay for flights on a CPMPLRI cost per thousand miles per leg room inch, I'd easily pay the extra cost fir the extra space.

Do I feel paying about prorata £500 per hour for British Gas to come to my house and fix the boiler? Well if my carbon monoxide monitor had not gone off at 2am and I had to evacuate the house for my own and family's safety, then it could be seen as expensive. But to have an engineer out same day, it's a price to pay for peace of mind.

How much would you pay for things?

So this range of benefits from is something that I might not get with other insurers, so I'm being persuaded that it's time for a "good deal better".  Well if I do stick this booklet into my important drawer, I'd better open it up again if I want to make use of some of these offers.  Many of the offers end 30th April 2009, so having 2 months to act upon this is a bit hit or miss, in my mind.

Direct Line's Complete Book of Offers include;

• Car Insurance - 12 months' car insurance for the price of 10
  • only new customers in their first year, ends 30th April 2009
• Van Insurance - 12 months' van insurance for the price of 10
  • only new customers in their first year, drivers over 21 with full licence for at least 1 year, ends 30th April 2009
• Home Insurance - 12 months' home insurance for the price of 10
  • only new customers buying contents cover, buildings cover or both, ends 30th April 2009
• Breakdown Cover - Cover starts from as little as £35 a year
• Home Response 24 - Cover for home emergencies with 15% online discount
• Pet Insurance - £1,000 worth of pet food to be won every week
  • ends 31st March 2009
• Travel Insurance - Save 25% when you buy online
  • ends 12th March 2009
• Life Cover - Cover from £6 a month
• Business Insurance - Guarantee to beat same cover elsewhere
  • if accept quote by 30th April 2009

With just a direct telephone number, which I guess is trackable, and the web address, I wonder what the ROI would be?  I guess you have to be in a position to want one of these products, as you're unlikely to want to take all of them.

Nice idea, but I think there are better ways of promoting these offers to people via the web.  What a lot of wasted paper going through letter boxes across the country.  Digital advertising is the answer, as it's better for the environment!

I only caught the last part of the programme, so will have to find it on Sky+ again and see if it is repeated. It would be worth watching again, only to marvel at some of the types of closing that was featured, such as the Ben Franklin Close - hadn't heard that one before, at least that phrase. I very much doubt car sales people are using that one.

Now being a sales professional, it's not about using one of the closes and making it so blatently obvious. I see it many times each week, whether it be people pitching me on the phone, in retail stores, or face to face. In fact, sometimes, I've commended the salesman on their trained technique, and said "nice alternative close, but the answer's still no". Sell me the FAB's, Features, Advantages and Benefits, not just the Features.

Now I'm not going to confess everything myself, that would give you an advantage, but let's just repeat a LinkedIn.com recommendation from a former colleague... "Not all Salesmen are evil".

Without sales people I'm sure people will be spending their entire life milling about not making any decisions, and there would be no advertising on the TV, in your magazine, on the tubes, on the internet, everywhere! And Marketing Managers and Directors would have pots of budget but no-one to spend it with.

Some might think that's a good thing. But let's take the Mega Jackpot for the National Lottery Euro Millions this Friday, with an estimated £85 million jackpot. Have you seen the advertising online and offline this week? I saw the posters in Tesco and jumped online and bought a few tickets.

Well, it's a lottery anyway, so click here to visit the National Lottery website and buy a ticket online. You have got to be in it, to win it! And for a jackpot of £85 million, that's a lot of money for one person to win.

ABC

Having worked for Ministry of Sound (MoS) over a year ago, selling the online advertising opportunities from display media, rich media banners, sponsorships, video advertising to ad funded content, I personally believe "advertising" could've saved MoS from this dreadful website closure, at least during the time that it's currently offline.

Last year, MoS decided to completely make over the website, and removed all advertising from the site.  It turned its attention to going back to what they know best.  Selling their music (both downloads and physical CDs), endless array of merchandise and tickets, together with promoting their own content, through MoS TV, Radio, Events, Club, etc.

The new website was long overdue.  The previous version was a mess of different templates, designs, platforms, e-commerce systems that didn't talk to each other, etc.  The new design was clean, very MoS, but all the advertising was gone and no opportunity for the likes of Nokia, O2, Vodafone, adidas, Nike, Smirnoff, Apple, etc,  to target their marketing to this youthful and very interactive audience.

The Daily Mail have quoted the CEO of parent company MSHK, Lohan Presencer,

Our website gets 250,000 visits a week but we've had to close it down. That means lost sales for tickets and downloads. We were given categorical assurances as recently as last Friday that Trinity was perfectly sound. Now we can't get hold of the money they owe us.

The website currently has a message on its website which says the following;

The Ministry of Sound Website is currently closed for maintenance and will re-open shortly.

We apologise for the inconvenience.

We're still selling tickets to the Ministry of Sound Club. Please click through on the links below for further details.

Imagine the opportunity for a brand to have 100% Share of Voice (SOV) on the homepage of www.ministryofsound.com?  I'm sure that the gossip and media exposure of this will cause a spike in traffic.

If the site is apparently getting 250,000 visitors a week, that's around 36,000 visitors a day (let's say).  If you sold this homepage to an advertiser for a 1 week roadblock, whilst you managed to sort out an alternative solution, you could sell this out for an attractive CPM / or tenancy.

Let's work out the maths. 

Site is down for a week, and you only monetise it through selling tickets on Ticketweb.  Incremental revenue for the week?  My guess, pretty little.

You lose all revenues from music downloads and MoS merchandise and CD's.  Impact, pretty big I'd imagine.

Offer a branded advertiser the opportunity to capitalise on the homepage for a week, maybe a huge ad format above the fold, it would offer huge click through rates to counter the disappointment of the site being down. 

Or, alternatively if I was in charge, I'd put up a video of Eric Prydz "Call on Me", one of the web's most sexiest and most viewed music video of all time, with an advertising pre-roll at the beginning.  Sell this ad for £50 CPM for 1 weeks exclusive inventory on the homepage, and you've got yourself just over £10,000 net revenue after agency discount to recoup against loss earnings due to the collapse of Trinity Street.

Unfortunately, Ministry of Sound don't do advertising on their website any more.  So it's a case of coulda, shoulda, woulda.  Shame really, because Advertising could have saved them, and turned around something that any publisher dreads when things go wrong - putting all your eggs in one basket, with no plan B.

So for your viewing pleasure, here is Eric Prydz's Call On Me dance track in the finest high quality.  Click video to enjoy.  Without the pre-roll.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-RJE6e5kSY