Thursday, January 12, 2006

Men's Vintage Clothing: Marketing - part 3

Today I present to you the "Grammar" slap we received this morning from Google AdWords. Yes. This is the same AD we got the smack for regarding our use of the alleged banned word FUNKED, which was later retracted.

This time it's for the use of the slang word "YA." Busted because of our grammer.

Imagine that shit. Us?


Here's a portion of what we received from the Google AdWords team:

AD TEXT:

Pimp Ya Hide, Man
Funked Up Retro 70's Disco Suits,
Men's Vintage Leisure Suits, Shirts
www.DressThatMan.com

Ad Status: Suspended - Pending Revision
Ad Issue(s): Grammar
~~~~~~~~~

SUGGESTIONS:
-> Ad Text: Your ad text includes phrases that do not meet our grammar requirements. I suggest making the following change(s):

Current: "Ya"
Replace with: "Your"

Restraining my desire to pepper the email with YA throughout - here's my response to the Google AdWords team this morning:

Hello there Google AdWords people!

Argh! Not this again... LOL!

The reason we use the word "YA" in our AD is because it is a term we use frequently on the DressThatMan.com ecommerce site - but.... it is also the name of our blog on Google's Blogger titled, "Pimp Ya Hide, Man!" at DressThatMan.net - we have not used the word "YA" to circumvent space issues on ADwords.

Please consider an exception to this ADwords campaign and reinstate the recently disapproved AD which was pulled on "grammer." The AD is a popular one and we have emails from customers in regard to the AD appealing to their sense of humor, so... it IS an effective campaign for us.

AD TEXT:
Pimp Ya Hide, Man
Funked Up Retro 70's Disco Suits,
Men's Vintage Leisure Suits, Shirts
www.DressThatMan.com

Also please note: On December 26th, 2005 I received the following from AdWords support - this was AFTER receiving a letter disapproving an ad we ran containing the word (which was supposedly banned but was being used by ebay in AdWords) - "FUNKED." Please note that in THIS approved ad below, the word "YA" appeared not once, but twice:

12/26/2005 - from Google adwords regarding the allegedly banned word "FUNKED"

Hello Sam,

Thank you for your email.

I've confirmed that you currently have no disapproved ads, and your ad text with:

Pimp Ya Hide, Man
We'll Funk Ya Up in 70s Disco Suits
Men's Vintage Leisure Suits, Shirts
www.DressThatMan.com

is approved and running on Google.

Our AdWords Specialists review ads that run on Google to ensure that they comply with our advertising policies. I apologize if the prior disapproval of your ad was made in error. However, after reviewing your ad again, our Specialists have found that your ad meets all our Editorial Guidelines and advertising policies.

In the interim, I go in and change the AdWords Ad to read:

Pimp Dat Azz, Man
Funked Up Retro 70's Disco Suits,
Men's Vintage Leisure Suits, Shirts
www.DressThatMan.com

Which, OF COURSE... we KNOW will be yanked before it ever goes live!

Whatever will be will be. Sans caffeination, we were slightly annoyed this morning to get the email, but... once we had our coffee we began to laugh. Because it doesn't matter THAT much. If it isn't allowed in the end , we'll come up with something else. We know we will. Because we have a CRACK azz creative team here at DressThatMan.com!


UPDATE from Google! January 17th, 2006

Hello Sam,

Thank you for your reply. I apologize for any confusion.

Our AdWords Specialists review ads that run on Google to ensure that they
comply with our advertising policies. I apologize if the prior disapproval
of your ad was made in error. However, after reviewing your ad again, our
Specialists have found that your ad meets all our Editorial Guidelines and
advertising policies.

I've confirmed that your ad is approved and running on Google.

Thank you, and I apologize for any inconvenience.

Therefore... the AD stands... as it was.

Much ado about nothing.

5 comments:

Gregg B. said...

Jesus! How petty is this? I would think that since the ad was approved previously by Google, that someone in the business is getting nit-picky and is looking for ways to complain about your company to Google. People are strange. But it happens all of the time. They really should mind their OWN BUSINESS instead of being preoccupied about yours. Although, DressThatMan.com has given them something to worry about. I think your site is tits over ass compared to the old standards out there. You guys have totally raised the bar.

Gregg

Cindy Eden said...

Agreed. The site kicks ass!

Anonymous said...

Im not sure why this happens but google pulls my ads out of te blue sometimes.

The dressthatman site is designed very nicely.Easy to get around and real good pictures.

Gregg has a point. Some of the so-called top vintage clothes sites became very stale over time. Crappy pics of wrinkly stuff, some with holes and stains, bad layout, same old same old. BORING. BLAH.

Without nameing who, who gives arats ass in hell if u have over 12,000 items when at least half of the shit u got should be burned? Its nothing to be brag about. I got a suit from them once for a party that had piss stained pants.Grosss.

Sometimes companies at the top get lazy over time. Then along comes repackaging and they fade out the same.

Whatever happens to your google ads I don't know.The dressthat man site is neato keen with good stuff as far as I can see. nothing to worry about there.Don't worry about the others.

DressThatMan.com said...

Thanks for the compliments on the site everyone! But... be nice ya'll. We aren't accusing any one specific company of anything. We have a niche market. We don't sell women's clothing on DressThatMan.com - but, we have plenty of women who are customers.

There are other great sites out there... and, maybe they aren't quite like ours, but - we admire some of their goods nonetheless. We're not into butting heads with people. We haven't got the time nor the inclination.

We have a job to do. And in order to do it the best we can, we're concentrating on the quality of our merchandise and customer service.

The AdWords thing ticked us off for a few minutes until it amused the hell out of us!

OK. Back to work...

Sam

John from the bar on the corner said...

Heres my Two cents. DressThatMan is a wonderfully designed website. I say that as a designer myself. Kudos to you on that :) Many of the others are boring and don't have the fun you are obviously having with it. I wear alot of vintage clothing myself so I am familiar with the other sites and it seems to me that lately they are trying to be "cooler" than they used to be by copying some of your style and sayings, espcially about the disco clothes. I can't be imagining it! As I said, I know these sites because I have bought from them before and I definitley see changes happening. The thing is that it isn't going to change anything.Keep up the great work guys!