First of all, when you don’t allow embedding of YouTube videos something or someone powerful kills/maims/injures something cute. Glad I got that out of the way, so now you have to surf on over to YouTube and watch this nicely done video that has Don Draper from “Mad Men” presenting Facebook’s new Timeline to a roomful of Ad Execs.
The ‘shut up, Pete’ comment on one of the pictures made me laugh right out loud.
People’s opinons on Google and the goodness or evilness of the tech monolith seem to be as deeply ingrained and as passionately espoused as views on religion, politics, or which flavor of M&M is the best (pretzel, of course). A long time ago, I accepted the fact that I divvied my e-soul into three parts and gave those parts to Apple, Amazon, and Google. I’m okay with that.
Even so, reading Google doesn’t get people, it sells them was kind of unsettling and a little thrilling (like reading 1984). The GigaOm post covers a talk Don Norman, the author of The Design of Everyday Things gave at a conference last week where he discussed Google quite a bit, including this piece about the controversy surrounding the use of real names on Google+:
“Real names, they say, turn out to be the names on your driver’s license and your passport and your credit cards so that they can track you. Are you happy to be a product?”
While I don’t agree with everything Norman has to say, it’s thought-provoking and it’s good to have your thoughts provoked every once in awhile. It keeps you sharp, and as marketing grows ever more individualized one has to be sharp.
Are you in the mood for a quick stroll down memory lane? Do you have the patience for one of those annoying one item per page posts? If so, click on over to Flavorwire’s The Bizarre Stories Behind Your Favorite Brand Mascots. While not exactly bizarre, the backgrounds are pretty interesting especially the story behind the accidental creation of the California Raisins. Oh, and the Hamburglar one is good because he used to be a strange character creepily called the “Lone Jogger.” Weird.
Sadly, they didn’t get the scoop on the best mascot, the Trix rabbit.
If you are at all interested in the history of advertising and its luminaries, you simply must check out AdWeek’s package on Ogilvy at 100 complete with a nifty comic, and a must-see David Ogilvy: Essentials which contains everything you need to know in just four minutes and includes this bit of brilliance:
“Tell the truth, but make the truth fascinating. You know you can’t bore people into buying your product. You can only interest them in buying it,” David Ogilvy.
Last time Macy’s congratulated the Phillies before the World Series was over. Today, they congratulated the Miami Heat on winning the NBA Championship. Only the Heat didn’t win, and you’d know that if you read the headline to the story directly above the ad.
(Spotted on Ad Freak)
A boatload of congratulations and mad props to our pals at Sevnthsin whose JCPenney Weekly Deals mobile apps were named an official honoree for the 2011 Webby Awards! Being an honoree is quite the achievement. Of the 8000 submissions to the Webby Awards fewer than 15% are recognized with the Official Honoree designation.
Also, we have to thank them for the shout out. We’re happy we could help them on their way to nabbing such a great honor.
From Nieman Journalism Labs comes a most excellent post “The Geico Gecko meets The AOL Way: Are display advertisers too obsessed with click-through rates?“
Before you give an answer go give the post a read (and don’t get all tl;dr, reading long stuff is good for your brain). It’s some smart, interesting stuff. The post is loaded with all kinds of stats including this one:
“To show the short-sightedness of such metrics, Battelle cited a comScore study that found in 2009 that 4 percent of Internet users drive a whopping 67 percent of all advertising clicks. Do we really want to target our ads, he asked rhetorically, to such a small user base — the online equivalent to those who respond to late-night infomercials?”
Of course they don’t mention if the late-night informercial is the one for the Time-Life Power Ballads collection, because only the most cold-hearted, dead inside people can resist that.
While scrolling through this gallery of 85 vintage computer ads. I wasn’t struck by the odd celebrity endorsements (who decided wrestler King Kong Bundy, Bill Cosy, or Dom Deluise appealed to computer users?), as much as the jargon on this ad. Propellerhead? It took me much longer than I care to admit to make the connection to those old beanies. We can all agree that nerd sounds much better than propellerhead, right?
The New Hacker’s Dictionary confirms that indeed, hackers were sometimes called propellerheads. Who knew?
This is why your clients are always asking about Facebook.
The World Is Obsessed With Facebook from Alex Trimpe on Vimeo.
In case you missed yesterday’s big game (either on purpose or on accident), here’s everything you need to know:
If all that bores you or you really don’t care, here’s a song about a space unicorn.
