Facebook ads suck sometimes. I mainly get ones about tightening my abs and reminding me that I'm '29 and still single'. Well you know what, Facebook? I'd rather be single than married to someone and trolling the service below...
Now this is real nice.
This ad is massively offensive, mainly in that it entirely equates 'the wrong woman' with 'the wrong-sized woman' (not to mention that, judging by the wedding photo in the ad, the wife LOOKED LIKE THAT WHEN HE MARRIED HER).
But let's talk about the website - ashleymadison.com, which describes itself as the world’s #1 Married Dating service specifically for ATTACHED men and women who are looking to have an Extra-marital Affair. Ummmmm... ick.
At the end of the day, I am a believer in live and let live when it comes to consenting adults. It just strikes me that the time and energy spent 'winking' at sexy marrieds on this site could be much better spent either:
a) talking to/shagging one's spouse
b) filing for divorce
The site's excellent press room features a ton of articles in support of the site, and while I certainly am not surprised this Canadian venture has become moderately successful (from 50,000 to 350,000 users over the last 5 years) it kind of seems like the refuge for the pathetic.
What happened to hotel bars, anyway?
This is so good.
Anyone with experience in the agency world will relate to this. Brilliant!
TURTLE POWER!
You will watch this video because:
a) you were with me when I was one toe over the line outside of the Astoria after the completely amazing Clips/Woodhands show, yelling this Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle theme line and having people call back the Turtle Power! part;
b) you've ever seen the original version;
c) you wish to finally settle the question of whether any words can sound soulful and sincere with the right delivery;
d) you deserve a mellow, turtle-powered jazz break (which, obviously, you do);
e) you are willing to indulge me in a musing on media;
Quod erat demonstrandum - you press play now.
0:54 to 1:20 will blow your mind and break your heart simultaneously
Friends, meet David Choi. He's a moderately talented aspiring singer from LA playing mainly acoustic covers of popular songs, and his own saccharine ballads. But what strikes me is that David Choi is so 2.0 it's 2.econd nature.
Witness davidchoimusic.com - re-launched recently, it includes a member's community, links to multiple networks (he has about 15,000 myspace friends) an active text blog, video blog and Twitter feed, a (currently empty) store and even a LIVE DAVID CAM. Yes, you read that right. He even accepted my friend request on Facebook within twelve minutes of sending.
Hidden Website Secret! You can softly caress David's pet hamster in real time by pressing control-shift-e repeatedly on his homepage!
I've recently the pleasure of hearing two of today's most relevant digital thought leaders speak: Chris Anderson at this year's Vidfest keynote, and Richard Edelman at our offices (full disclosure - both Vidfest and Richard Edelman are connected to my current place of employ.)
Both made speeches which included an identical statement: If you're under 25, you know this already.
The need for this sentence is interesting. It isn't necessarily generational, but the gap between those who are using the digital space and those who are learning from slideshows about it has never been more important.
Social media is so specifically about interaction, I wonder if it's possible to understand it without actually participating in it.
Long-time readers will remember that this site used to have a '10 reasons why this blog is better than your myspace page' sidebar. Then I registered an account for personal reasons. I loved it, and am now active there and on Facebook as well as peripherally on some other sites. Being open to new social networking ideas helps create smart strategies, organize life, and have a lot of fun.
But, if you're under 25, you knew that already.
You wish, Microsoft.
Memories of this video, which I blogged about earlier, but which definitely deserves a second look. The video was pulled for a while, but it's back, and.... uh... wow.
You likely know David Armano's exemplary blog 'Logic + Emotion', which is most definitely a go-to site for business and user interface design and all things 2.0.
The cowboy-hatted one grates my nerves a little sometimes, mainly due to his inability to take off his cowboy hat. I know, however, that the mark of a successful brand is often the nausea due to over-exposure I feel when I think of that hat, so go David.
In any case, the graphic above is a reminder that we need to be thoughtful and insightful in generating marketing programs in the digital space, and not just throw some buzzwords in a happy meal bag.
It's the anthem of the summer. It's the video of the year. It's the cutest robot ever.
Lupe Fiasco has been quietly ruling for a while, so stop sleeping and bear witness:
Praise due also to Jill Scott, who brings the vocals.
And this... is the weirdest commercial of the year. It's extremely disturbing and creepy, but hey - when you're trying to sell Slurpee's to kids, you do what you can. Noting, of course, that one of the more successful Slurpee flavours/promos in recent history was the Bloody Zit. Yeah. Maybe this works.
What, exactly, is he supposed to be drinking?
Okay now seriously.
How am I not supposed to feel like a techno-prescient oracle, considering the following:
1. I have long said that I would only get a cell-phone when a device was developed that met all of my portable digital needs:
- Phone
- Music
- PDA
- Web Browser/Email
- Nintendo Hand-held Gaming System
- long-lasting in highly-competitive tech industries, without majority market share
- highly entrepreneurial/innovative development model - track record of inventing revolutionary products (iPod, Wii, Macintosh 128K, GameBoy etc.)
- some high profile failures (GameCube, Macintosh TV)
- clean, minimalist design aesthetic, with tendencies toward 'cute' imagery
- etc. etc.
Why can't all advertising be this clean, engaging, compelling, fun and stylish?
This is Uniqlo's campaign for it's new series of coloured parkas. My sense is that they are a Japanese company, pretty similar to the Gap here in N.A., but daaaaaamn this is a nice series.
The accompanying interactive website is intuitive and a complete blast to play with.
They also did a series of in-store demos, like the one below.
Simple, eye-catching, cool, in-brand... awesome.
Let me count the ways:
1. Fashionable by nature? Did the agency phone that one in or what? Talk about thinking up a tagline while driving to the meeting.
2. Spiders. Gross.
3. Conceptually, what the hell does this have to do with the product? What does it even say? IT DOESN'T COMPUTE!
4. Spiders. My personal nemeses.
Gee, I can't imagine how this image would be alarming to users of this product
Holy crap - amazing and weird! I like it. A lot.
Uh...mazing.
I want one of those singing rabbits daddy! I want it NOOOOOWWWW!!!!
Hee hee! He pulls him out of a bag!
These are all TBWA/Chiat/Day productions. And, like... woah.
Hey, it's a cartoon that will be lost on 95% of the general public, and hi-LARIOUS to nerds in the design/advertising/branding world.
Perfect!
Holy crap! It's like Dilbert got a job at DDB!
Lots more similar funny on skydeckcartoons.com, where Tom Fishburne cartoons about branding, business, parenting, and a million other things I'll deny being into if we meet at a party.
Instead, you'll meet my alter-ego Muffy McBeav, a nightclubbing euro-skank with a badger-like love of cocaine, tanning beds and Lamborghini Gallardos.
I dare you. Watch these paper-cut-out-style animations of adorable kittens rocking out to classic hits, and deny that we're living in a wonderful age.
The kittens cover Emerge by Fischerspooner.
Chinchillas. DMX. Consider that this video, and the genus mammal, are likely the only links between these two creatures.
And the amazing continues - Joan Jett as played by a kitten. You know which song.
This is all the work of UK artist/experimenter Joel Veitch from rathergood.com. He also does commercial work [see below] much in the same vein, as well as some interesting experiments which can be seen on the site. He's also a member of the ska band 7 seconds of love. He also... what... can breathe underwater?
I'm not sure what they're selling... but I'll take three cases.
< billy-madison-voice>
Puma is better! I came out first and made sneakers cool!
Nike is better! I make your feet cushy and styled!
Adidas is better! I rocked Run-DMC!
</billy-madison-voice>
Okay, so the point is that designer sneakers have been around for ages, continue to stay current, and have a cultural significance very separate from their constructed brand personalities.
The Puma video below, a short film produced by Imperial Leisure, articulates this beautifully, don't you think?
Puma: Foot Cred
Okay, now for some random shoes of goodness. These are from solepedia.com, a site that is all over the latest and greatest.
Clockwise from top left:
MadFoot!'s Mad Professor denim sneaker; the amazing Vaughn Bode-inspired Pumas; Clot Air Max 1’s - designed for Kanye West and Edison Chen, for one show only. What?!?; Japanese movie star Kubotsuka Yosuke's signature New Balance; glow-in-the-dark Nikes
Why stop the thrill ride there? Check these fun shoe-related links for more hot leather action:
- Puma has a crazy addictive shoe customizing tool called Mongolian Shoe BBQ.
- Flight Club took first slot in the Dime magazine best boutique sneaker shop in the U.S. rankings. Their site is easy to get lost in.
- nicekicks.com is a sneaker blog. It is way current, with lots of eye candy.
So, if I wasn't so ignorant and self-taught in regards to design, I might have known how significant Polish poster art is. Instead, I just go to Internet University and slowly drag myself towards enlightenment. So check it:
The Society of Polish Applied Art, founded in 1902, opposed foreign influences and composed posters with traditional historic forms. These earliest posters revealed Polish folk art, and were characterized by decorative color patterns and a rhythmic flow of line. From the outset, critics in Paris , Vienna , and Munich recognized their distinctiveness. Their approach to design – lightness in conveying the subject, the free manner of associating theme and image – is shared by their successors a half-century later.
Between 1919 and 1939, Polish posters were enriched by a steady stream of progressive European art movements – Cubism, Constructivism, Futurism, and Surrealism. The artists included not only applied graphic designers, but also printmakers, painters, architects, sculptors, and cinematographers. Warsaw became the noted center of poster art in Poland .
After World War II Polish society gradually began to regard poster design as an art form equal in importance to painting. On the one hand there were political propaganda posters drawn from the Soviet influence, and on the other were posters on cultural topics, particularly films as people flocked to the movies. Movie posters that evolved were unlike most in that a scene was rarely shown. Instead the artists tried to capture the essence of the film or use a visual metaphor to sum up the impression of it. This trend caught on and spread to other fields. Posters became an outlet for individual artistic expression.
It's the new age of patronage.
Corporations are sponsoring amazing pieces of art, which have little/nothing to do with their product, in the hopes that they will be associated with the imagination/innovation that characterizes the piece.
We get more art. Artists get more money and artistic freedom. Television and advertising get more pretty.
I'm going to duct tape my cynical brain shut and call it a win-win.
So on that note, this is a completely amazing anime short, done for General Electric's Imagination at Work campaign. Enjoy!
It's a production of BBD and Green Dot Films, directed by Three Legged Legs, who include a great selection of production stills on their website.
Three Legged Legs have actually done many great little shorts - including the completely amazing one below, called Los Angeles Let's Be Friends
In the meantime: go samurai monster anime cuteness! Holla!
Packaging Girlhood is a great blog concerned with marketing aimed at girls. They just released their Best & Worst Marketing Campaigns of 2006 list, and it's a pretty good audit.
On the loser list, the disturbing Bratz Party Plane, which I'm sure all junior spoiled slutz enjoyed opening this holiday season. The whole Bratz line is particularly repulsive, not to mention their line of padded bras for six-year olds.
Accessories included: cup holders; nail polish applicator; smoothies; hair gel; crimper; make-up case; mascara.
Accessories they should have included: lapdance chair; tanning bed; wheel of appetite-suppressants; morning-after-pills; I'm an exotic dancer because daddy didn't love me t-shirt.
Grossest.
On to the winners list, my peeps at Nintendo get props for the game Super Princess Peach, which I enjoyed playing immensely this year, and which did have a fantastic commercial:
Go Pink Power!
Having said that, on a feminist level, I wasn't sure what to make of this game. Princess Peach's powers come from her emotions - anger turns her to fire, sadness makes her shoot tears, joy makes her fly etc. Isn't that reinforcing the stereotypes that girls are more emotional than logical, and that our uncontrollable feelings make us unreliable - one of the classic arguments against promoting women in the workplace?
Another winner, and a program I have been a big fan of for a while, is the Girl Scouts Girls Go Tech campaign. It's so critical to teach young girls that technology is cool, because, well, technology is hella cool! How great is this ad:
Baby's smarter than daddy!
Driving young girls less toward lame lip gloss crap, and more into awesome science and adventure crap, will make more Natalie Portmans, and less Tara Reids. And really, isn't that something we all want?
Seriously people. Think about the children.
There's also a great CBC Marketplace piece on this issue - Buying into Sexy.
Let's all make it a mission to make more nerd girls this millenium. Hear that pregnant moms-to-be? I'm looking at you, Willow and Nikki! Don't think Auntie Beckstar won't be popping in with her Lego Robotics kits!
Yes folks, I'm back.
I have a sweet post with all the photos of my amazing trip to Mexico, on the burner, but it's time to go to bed.
Still running a bit of a deficit from the INSANE (in truly the most literal sense of the word) New Year's party at the Biltmore. Details to follow.
In the meantime, enjoy this little spot from Europe. A good public warning, this one. You definitely don't want to be this guy.
"That's great Steve"
This thing is funny from first frame to last. It's a viral video about creating viral videos... don't think too hard about it, just watch.
So Giant Magazine has put together a long shortlist of the 50 Greatest Commercials of the 1980's. Awesome.
There are quite a few to get through, so I've pulled my six particular favourites here... enjoy!
Sadly, the My Buddy campaign, as I remember it, was used mainly to tormet less popular kids. Along the lines of 'Who are you going to the dance with? Your My Buddy?'
Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Nintendo + Terrible Product Rap?
On a 'creepy scale' from 1 to 10, this ad came in at 30, raped numbers one through four, and has the rest of them chained to its radiator.
Early cell-phone ad... You've got the whole world in your hand... which can only move about three feet from your car. And costs $800. See? They've been marketing to me 1988, and I still refuse to own a cellphone. I am the last unicorn.
The joke's on you, mustache dad. I'm not totally sure why a dad that smokes pot himself would be so aggro about his child's use, but hey - it was the 80's. Things didn't make sense.
Uh... hello? Shatner plus the Wonder Computer of the 1980's. And it was only $300. Take that Hundred Dollar Laptop crew.
