Hey, guys, remember the halcyon days of January, 2000, when a bunch of dot com companies dropped scads of money on commercials that would run during the Super Bowl? One current-day dot com seems unwilling to wait until this year's big game, instead launching an ad campaign to run during the World Series. Will that strategy pay off better in 2015 than it did 15 years ago?

This time around, the commercial-buyer is Twitter, which had a hefty round of layoffs two weeks ago and yesterday announced slower-than-expected growth and lowered revenue predictions for next quarter. The ad, which ran during last night's World Series game, is part of an “integrated marketing campaign” that Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced on Tuesday's earnings call. Here it is:

According to The Verge, the ad is entitled "Post-Season," and is intended "to let targeted segments of potential users see the stuff that's on Twitter every day." Which you'd think those folks might have already considered, but whatever!

The ad was created by TBWA\Chiat\Day, the ad agency that, according to Ad Week, created those Airbnb ads we all liked so much! (You know the ones I'm talking about.) So, I guess, it sure could be worse?

That same agency was also behind Apple's ground-breaking "1984" ad, which aired during that year's Super Bowl, thus bringing us back to Super Bowl XXXIV. I had forgotten that the St. Louis Rams battled the Tennessee Titans in the 2000 game, but I sure did remember that during the event, 19 online startups bought ads, and eight of those crashed and burned shortly thereafter. (Guess who made one of that game's most infamous ads, for Pets.com? TBWA\Chiat\Day, again! They're the Forrest Gump of tech advertising!)

Of course, the World Series isn't the Super Bowl, and their ad rates prove it: According to Advertising Age, "the going rate for a 30-second commercial in the World Series is around $545,000 a pop." Compare that to the $5 million-for-30-seconds Forbes reports Super Bowl 50 will ask, and a World Series ad seems like a bargain. (In case you're curious, rates for ads that play during the broadcast of high-rated comedy or drama series vary greatly, from $155,727 for a spot during The Simpsons to $521,794 during Empire, reports Variety.)

Though Twitter ran a TV ad during a NASCAR event in 2012, that was a one-off, making this the company's first full-on TV campaign. Though Twitter declined to tell The Verge how much they'd spent on the ad, they did say that they expect them to air "regularly in prime time," giving us all something new through which to fast-forward.

Previously: Twitter Stock Takes Another Dip After Earnings Call, And Square's Numbers Aren't Great Either

In honor of tomorrow's SF Artisan Fragrance Salon—as well as Barbara Herman, author of Scent and Subversion: Decoding a Century of Provocative Perfume and vintage perfume blogger at YesterdaysPerfume.com, and her upcoming SF appearance—I came across a gaggle of perfume ads that require your immediate attention. (One in particular, so horrific, we tacked it on the end to show you how far we've come. Brace yourselves.)

10. Dune by Dior (1991)
Dune arrived in the early '90s soon after Poison's bombastic domination of the '80s. If you've never enjoyed Dune, you really should. It's a bizarre but beautiful scent. ("Unsmiling from top to bottom...drained of life, flesh-toned in the creepy way of artificial limbs, not real ones," is how Luca Turin deliriously describes the five-star fragrance in Perfumes: the A-Z Guide) The ads for the (now-rare) scent, though, are so simple and so European. The perfect palate cleanser.

9. Coty Wild Musk (1983)
So bad it's bad, this ad for Coty Wild Musk proved why cocaine was a helluva drug in the '80s.

8. Opium by YSL (1986)
Linda Evangelista can do no wrong, even while appearing in an inadvertently pro-sex slavery ad for YSL's Opium. Fabulous. (The campaign, however, was not without controversy: this particular ad, featuring a jonesing Evangelista on a drug run, offended the American-Chinese community and was banned in Australia. Classic Linda.)

7. Gio by Armani (1992)
Awful fragrance (which continued the trend of bad water scents, ones that continue to dominate your Marina boyfriend's chest), but this as was directed by David Lynch (during his Madonna days) and, of course, means it deserves a place on the list.

6. Rive Gauche by YSL (1979)
While '70s end with "the girl so contemporary, she's having too much fun to marry..."

5. Beautiful by Estee Lauder (1980)
...and the '80s begin with her staunch white wedding.

4. White Diamonds (1987)
"These have always brought me luck." Indeed. The fragrance—one of the first celebrity fragrances, for better or for worse (but mainly worse)—was a smash hit.

3. Chanel No. 5 (1978)
"This unexpectedly poignant Chanel No. 5 commercial hints at something kind of radical: that perfume might in fact be a personal, private, aesthetic experience for women," Barbara Herman notes on YesterdaysPerfume.com. "This flies in the face of the majority of perfume ads that suggest that perfume is created to help women drive men wild...I'd say that Deneuve's description of her relationship to perfume is what comes closest to how niche perfume lovers experience scents. " (The same could be said for some men too!)

2. Compulsion by Calvin Clean: SNL's parody of Calvin Klein's Obsession
Wonderful sendup of this famous excessively arty ad.

1. Kazumi Kurigami's Parco
Required viewing for all human beings. In a word, genius. In five words, Faye Dunaway eating an egg.

SHAME: Love's Baby Soft (1975)
Trigger warning: Love's Baby Soft's ad is downright disgusting and frightening. View at your own peril. Appalling.

Thanks goes out to Barbara Herman for her inspiring work on YesterdaysPerfume.com. You can hear Herman read at Opera Plaza Books, Inc. on March 27. And be sure to check out the SF Artisan Fragrance Salon happening this Saturday at Fort Mason.

Right after hitting one billion active users this week, the eight-year-old social media company has released its first commercial spot. The message their ad agency Wieden + Kennedy came up with? Chairs are like Facebook.

So Facebook is like a chair. (Because of how sometimes it's really comfortable and you don't want to get up, we assume.) It is also like a bridge and an airplane. (Because of how it occasionally makes you want to fling yourself off of it.) Most importantly, Facebook is a mirror to the heavens, showing us just how vast and dark the universe is. We would definitely feel pretty insignificant right about now if we didn't have so many Facebook friends to share this inspiring viral advertisement with.

[Facebook]
Hat tip: SFEgotist

Neighbors around Divisadero, the Panhandle and Alamo Square got front row seats to a much tamer version of Bay to Breakers today. What looked the city's marquee running/drinking event come six months early was, in fact, a film shoot for a new Adidas commercial with a San Francisco backdrop.

Although we were admonished by a production assistant stuffing his face with craft services sandwiches for taking photos of the shoot, we managed to capture this scene in which a gaggle of curiously dressed joggers rounds a corner at Grove and Scott streets adjacent to Alamo Square. Judging by the (ahem) outrageous costumes and whacky neon outfits among the runners/actors in attendance, the shoe company is definitely attempting to channel some of the quirky, free-spirited Bay to Breakers vibe. We didn't spot anyone peeing in an alleyway though. The production was kind enough to provide very clean-looking portapotties.

by Evan James

Apparently it is no longer possible to watch even two hours of vitally important teen television dramas on the CW without being bombarded by iPhone commercials, all of which are set to cutting edge music that signals in an increasingly smug way just how thoroughly Apple knows what you think is cool, sometimes even before you do. If you haven’t seen the newest batch of these commercials yet, all of which revolve around “solving life’s dilemmas,” their neurotic, self-satisfied, bugaboo-conjuring voiceovers go a little something like this:

I. The “What’s That Strange Music?” Dilemma

You know when you don’t know what song is playing, and it’s driving you crazy? With the Shazam app from the app store, you just hold your phone up to the song like a strung-out control freak every time you hear a sound you don’t recognize. Your heart will race as every passing note plunges you deeper into a paroxysm of hellish musical ambiguity, and in seconds, you’ll know who sings it, where to get it, and whether or not it actually qualifies as music under our authority, all while speeding down the highway at seventy miles per hour.

That’s the iPhone: saving you from three minutes of the unknown, one app at a time.

II. The Restaurant Roulette Dilemma

You know that age-old dilemma: where shall we eat tonight? With the Urbanspoon app from the app store, you can spend the next five minutes standing on the street corner fondling your phone, finding restaurants that are across the street from you. Instead of asking somebody, planning ahead, or taking the enormous risk of wandering into a nearby restaurant, you can shake your phone like a maniac until it tells you where to go, how to get there, and whether to order the pork chop or the steak. Yeah, that sounds good.

That’s the iPhone: showing you who wears the pants in the family, one app at a time.

Born Riccardo DiGuglielmo, Wilson changed his name while working as an actor in efforts to avoid typecasting as an Italian-American. Little did he know that he would be typecast as America's favorite, um, cleanup enthusiast.

Emigrating to the U.S. from England as wee lad, he went on to star in over 500 -- 500?! -- Charmin commercials. His acting and squeeze-shunning abilities landed him a free lifetime supply of toilet paper from Procter & Gamble as well a place in American po(o)p culture. (Heh.) Sure, he played the alcoholic on several episodes of Bewitched, and did bit parts on Hogan's Heroes and The Bob Newhart Show, but in the world of TP commercial acting, he was a star.

Although the Associated Press tarnishes this man's good name by labeling him a "closeted squeezer," we refuse to believe such a thing. He was simply led astray by overzealous shoppers. And we salute you, Mr. Wilson cum Whipple. Toilet paper commercials have gotten excessively crass for us over the years. Images of cartoon bears with flecks of paper on their behinds and euphemistic blue-colored water tearing apart brands that are more fragile are much too revealing for us. Back when such things like urination and bowel movements weren't discussed, much less admitted to having as a bodily function, we had Mr. Whipple to conceal it all for us. He didn't remind us what toilet paper was used for; he let us know what it wasn't meant for: molesting. RIP, Mr. Whipple.

Another one of our favorites (though in a completely different genre,) The Crystal Method dropped their first album in August 1997. Ten years and four studio albums later, we have been inundated with The Crystal Method on TV shows (CSI, Bones, House and others), movies, video games and even commercials. Last week, they re-released their first CD, Vegas, The Deluxe Edition completely remastered. There is a bonus re-mix CD that features remixes by Paul Oakenfold, live versions and a couple of videos.