Author: Andrea Monti

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Audi (Volkswagen) Ads and the Ignorance of Logic

Another (Volkswagen) Audi commercial, another interesting detail.

The TV ad for the Audi Quattro line broadcasted yesterday in Italy is based on creating a climax of even number, with the number “Quatttro” (four, in Italian) on the top of the ladder.

To obtain this effect, the copywriter of the Italian advertising agency thought of a line that reads something like “due sono le alternative” (two are the alternatives”) and then something about the uniqueness of the car. In other words, the script is based on this sequence: two (alternatives) to one and only car, the four (Quattro).

As much as this script looks tricky, it contains a logical fallacy: “alternative” include two options (either going right or left, fight or flight and so on) thus if the Audi script says there are two alternatives, it actually means four (different coupled) options.? To be? correct, the script should have said something like “there are two OPTIONS” instead.

No big deal at the end of the day: advertising, as a form of art, is entitled to be sloppy.

Carmaker, on the contrary, shouldn’t.

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Dieselgate Volkswagen’s Advertising Strategy: Thou Shalt Not Take the Name of the Brand Invain

Yesterday I’ve stumbled upon the first Volkswagen’s TV commercial of the after-Dieselgate scandal.

At first sight, there is nothing different from the previous campaign: a car, its technical specification, the unique selling proposition and, final, a company full-screen logo. But, as they say, the devil is in the details.

The commercial only mentioned the car model’s name without any reference to the word “Volkswagen” during the whole duration and, when the logo-moment came, neither the name of the car-maker nor the claim “Das Auto” went on screen.

Volkswagen’s strategy to limit the lose of its market share, thus, seems to be oblivion-inducing based. Let people forget about the cursed name for a long enough time, to come back when? Dieselgate would have been buried in the past and the brand name can shine again.

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Microsoft Blog Post on Safe Harbour. A Different Perspective

The collapse of the US-EU Safe Harbor: Solving the new privacy Rubik?s Cube is a post on the official Microsoft’s blog that is gaining momentum since it is possibly the first “cooled down” analysis of the EUCJ decision on Safe Harbour. Though well articulated, nevertheless, I think that the “hook” where the chain of reasoning hangs is weak.

I don’t think we should go for “global laws” because of the technological evolution.

“Global laws” means “Single Government” or, in other words, the end of democracy.

From a legal standpoint, the technological evolution is irrelevant because technology only affects the way things are done and not the right to do it.

You don’t need to amend the provision that punishes killing or manslaughtering everytime that somebody figure out some “creative” mode to put a R.I.P. stone over somebody else head. Or, dealing with the technological “evolution”, you don’t need a new provision to sanction hate speeches, personal life intrusions, libel and defamation, stalking and so on “just” because of the Internet. The illegal behaviours were already there before the computer era.

Furthermore, we all know that law is rather Lobbyists’s pressures, political mediation, economic and financial differences driven, than God-inspired.

Guess who would going to write this “Global Regulation”?

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Safe Harbour and the Shortsighted Data Protection Authorities

After the EU Commission met the industry (I was there on behalf of an European industry association) to hear the voice of the business, yesterday it met the Article29 working party (the EU gathering of the national Data Protection Authorities) to explore the possibility of of a short-term solution to avoid exposing thousand and thousand of innocent companies to investigations and fines for “infringing” the data protection directive after the Safe Harbour has been stricken down by the EU Court of justice.

The outcome of this meeting has been very simple: the Data Protection Authorities just couldn’t agree on the possibility of using standard model clauses or binding corporate rules as a viable Safe Harbour alternative, refused to agree on the fact that companies relying upon the Safe Harbour for about fifteen years are entitled to a grace period and feared of no being able to stop the data flow toward the US because of the lack of resources. To put it short: the industry has been left without certainties, victim of potential legal complains, but with no alternative but carry on its activities.

I don’t know if this folks at the Article29 actually live on Mother Earth or in Outer Space. Fact is that such kind of attitude – blindly following a (questionable) reading of the EU data protection directive – is a danger for the international economic system as well as for the safety of the citizens.