As commercials uploaded to YouTube go, this is perfect.
No ad copy, no “take aways” – just something that gets your attention, and keeps you watching. At the end you get the company’s information, AND THAT’S ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW.
Look at the number of views this thing has gotten! It’s got 2,485 likes on YouTube… and as of this posting it’s two days old! You REALLY think your slick, in-house commercial with nothing but talk about your product is going to beat that!?!
If you’re like me, you think that the iPhone is actually pretty neat – but way too expensive for what you get. The reason I never went the iPhone route was because of the cost of the plans, the cost of the handset, and until a couple of years ago, because AT&T was the only carrier I could get one with.
iPod vs iPhone - would you pay nearly $3000 more just to make phone calls?
iPods turn out to be cheaper. A 32 GB iPhone and iPod retail at the same amount: $299. But the iPhone requires a 2-year contract for it to be $299. The handset without a contract is $799 – and without a phone contract, it’s useless. If you pay $100 a month for an iPhone contract, (which is about average,) your iPhone ends up costing you some $2700.
An iPod Touch, on the other hand, does everything an iPhone does except place calls and SMS messages. It can go online via Wifi, in exactly the same way an iPhone can. Wifi is almost always faster than a cellular data plan anyway, so you’d be doing this even with an iPhone whenever you could get away with it.
What’s more, you get access to the Apple app store just like you do with the iPhone.
Of course, you are going to need to take care of your phone issue separately. Since there are so many contract-free companies with cheap monthly talk plans, this is easily solved. In fact, if you’re more adventurous, you can get an inexpensive smart phone plan, jailbreak your iPod Touch, and tether the two together. Then you wouldn’t even need Wifi hotspots to take your iPod online – you’d just need your other phone to be nearby.
I do not understand why anyone pays so much for a phone just to play games or watch movies. It is an insane waste of money to pay so much for what is ostensibly a toy. But if you want to get on board with all of the development being done for the iPhone, this is a much cheaper option.
Posted in Uncategorized
I am loving these commercials for MSNBC.
They have the obvious appeal of showing what are normally talking heads giving their real opinions of today’s stories. More importantly, they combat the very popular Fox News onslaught, which has gone unanswered for so long.
It shows MSNBC has teeth, particularly if you didn’t already know it. You may know Rachael Maddow has a point of view every bit as vitriolic as Bill O’Reilly or Sean Hannity, but with the thought process behind that opinion.
Of course, if you have different political opinions, you won’t like these at all. But even if I wasn’t a raving pinko liberal, I’d appreciate the strategy of fighting the Right’s fire with their own fire.
The CES is this week – the toy fair for middle-aged men-children who want to find out what to ask Santa for next Christmas. Now, I’m not the kind to tell people they need to stop buying electronic baubles because of the sweat shops they come from. I also won’t bust on people for spending beyond their means during a recession. I don’t really think I should have to.
No, the reason for the title of this post is simple: By buying more phones, tablets, computers and accessories, you are sending a signal to manufacturers that they don’t need to make anything better in order to get your money.
Think about it: Every year, manufacturers come out with products that are largely the same as the ones they released last year. They push a version of Android that’s supposed to be slightly better than the one they sold you last year, or an iPhone that doesn’t have a broken antenna. And exactly how many versions of the Nintendo Gameboy need to be made until they decide they’ve gotten it right?
If you keep buying something new each year, you send a signal to manufacturers that they just need to put out something – anything – to get you to buy it.
If your phone is good enough, just keep it. Stop replacing the stuff you have if it isn’t broken. If enough people finally let manufacturers know they need to innovate something that is actually new before you give them their money, they won’t keep releasing products that don’t entirely work, need patches, or are just useless collections of molded plastic.
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged android, baubles, iphone, molded plastic, nintendo gameboy, sweat shops
If you’ve been on Wikipedia lately, you’ve no doubt seen the banner with the picture of co-founder Jimmy Wales asking for your help.
A lot of the time, we all skip past this. After the obnoxious explosion of banner ads in the early 2000s, most Internet surfers developed that extra muscle in their brain that helps them not see banners.
But today I clicked through, and I donated to the cause. That graphic on the right rail of my page shows I did. You should too.
Why? Because Wikipedia is an important source of (usually) unbiased information, a quick resource almost everyone has used at some time, that charges nothing and doesn’t ask you to buy, click or link back to. The idea that some day advertisers would be able to smear their logo feces all over the pages of Wikipedia obviously would make advertisers themselves drool.
The rest of us would likely suffer. Imagine a company with a massive ad buy on Wikipedia – which you know would be expensive, given the amount of traffic Wikipedia gets. Then a decidedly bad story breaks out in the news about said company, and the volunteer editors update this company’s page with that information, just as they would now.
Wouldn’t you imagine that company would put pressure on Wikipedia to remove those references? Perhaps they’d lobby to have their page locked down altogether? Would Wikipedia have the stones to tell this company to shove off? Actually, forget that – would they even have the financial ability for that? If they become dependent on advertiser money to keep doing what they do, everything would balance on ad revenue to keep from going under.
Donating makes sure they continue to have the funds to operate without having to answer to corporate interest. PBS and Public Radio like to lay claim to that, but they still have to mention the companies that give them “grants,” which, frankly, is its own form of advertising.
So I’m asking, if you’re reading this, for you to go to Wikipedia, click on the link to give a donation, and then actually do it. If you have Paypal, it will blow your mind how easy it is to do.
And before anyone starts blasting me about all of the other things I could ask you to donate to, I’ve given to the Haitian Relief Fund this year too. But that doesn’t have anything to do with the Internet. So bugger off.
Posted in Internet Technology
Twitter has yet again changed the way they display tweets. The layout they unveiled last year, where information on a tweet – attached picture, people who retweeted it, etc. – showed up in the right rail, now that appears beneath the tweet itself.
So what? Sites change their layouts in minor ways all the time. It’s only Twitter. Also, I said I wasn’t going to write about social media anymore.
The truth is, I’m not even writing about social media here. Social media, as we thought of it a few years ago, is already dead. (More on that anon.) Their layout change is really about making space for their new advertising system.
Twitter has been using the right side of their screen for sponsored accounts and tweets for about a year as well. When people had the ability to expand a tweet and viewing it and the exchange it created on the right side of the screen, it pushed advertisements off the screen.
This layout change can only be necessary to improve the visibility of their paying advertisers. If tweets are now expanded below instead of to the right, then all that space on the right can remain advertising space. Twitter isn’t losing impressions because of their layout, they’re losing impressions because so many people go elsewhere – Facebook and Google Plus, for instance.
Obviously, they can do whatever they want – it’s their site. But last year’s layout was, in my opinion, a smart way to make the site functional. This new way of doing things isn’t, so money is the only motivation that makes sense to me for changing it.
How THAT is going to keep me from using TweetDeck or something similar to manage my Twitter account, I do not know.
Posted in Social Media, Twitter
These are some of the things I’ve been hearing from people for the last 16 or so hours since Steve Jobs died.
I’ll keep adding to this as I continue to get more interesting (read as: weird) takes on the death of some guy I’ve never met:
“I wonder how long it will take until they discover he actually died last week, and they kept him in a freezer until AFTER the Apple Product Announcement? I mean, what are the chances of that?” – My Girlfriend
“I called in yesterday, and [co-worker] told me, ‘Steve is dead!’ And I thought, like, who’s Steve?” – Co-worker
“See, I think they found a way to graft his mind into the iOS system – so that when the next update comes out, Steve Jobs will be in every device, and will then be able to take over the world from beyond the grave!” – Okay, that one’s me.
“Apple will do fine, until they unveil iRadio or iStapler in a couple of years.” – Someone on G+
“What about Apple putting a Samsung Galaxy S2 into an iPhone case then calling it ’4S?’” Person on G+ responding to that last person on G+
“The reason the new phone is ’4S’ is so they can then say it’s the new iPhone – ‘for Steve.’ I don’t know if it is masterful, or skeevy.” – IT Guy
“It’s not that some famous person died. It’s that someone hugely successful died at only 56 that bums people out. Because if that’s possible for him, it means none of us are safe. We can each get our clock punched at any time.” – Me again.
“Yeah, but pancreatic cancer is a big deal. You don’t get to string your life along like that UNLESS you have Steve Jobs money in the bank.” – Co-worker
“Whatever you do, keep your mouth shut. You always end up saying something really crass when people die. The way Apple fanboys are, you’ll probably get lynched.” – My Girlfriend, before I left the house this morning
Posted in Uncategorized
I know I already posted about how I wouldn’t post about social media anymore. But I changed my mind. I’m just going to post about what interests me, if it happens to, because frankly I’m not making any money off of this blog anyway. I may as well enjoy myself.
That having been said, I’m going back to one of my favorite subjects today, Google. That is because today Google announced they are adding Snippets – or, “+Snippets, if we are to start correctly employing their attempt at owning addition – to Google Maps.
All you have to do is click on the “Share” button in your G+ toolbar when you’re on a map, and you get a number of options for storing or sending.
Now, if you’ve been wondering why Google Plus would have as much potential as Facebook in the social network arena, this is why.
You see, you probably already use Google Maps anyway. It’s likely you already use Google Search, Gmail and YouTube, right? So you’re reminded that there’s functionality you’re missing out on when you go to these things and don’t have a G+ account of your own.
We’re maybe another two or three years away from Google taking over creating the phone book. The nice thing is, before you call someone, you’ll be able to read their profile, look at satellite images of where they live, get reviews of them from co-workers, read where they like to eat…
Slowly but surely, Google is creating a stalker’s paradise, where no one will have privacy or be protected. Who else is looking forward to all those home invasions?
Here’s a great ad for the Samsung Galaxy S II. It’s great because it gets a lot of things done, quickly.
First, they manage to be offensive. That’s a good thing, because invariably you’ll get people who are easily offended to talk about it, and probably share it around. The end result of hysterical people is usually increased awareness – I’m sure Eminem sold a LOT more albums after all those Christians tried boycotting him in the early 00s.
Think the agency that created this isn’t aware of that? They have a paid placement for this video on YouTube, showing the frame with Jesus on a unicycle. It’s brilliant idiot baiting. Because this isn’t an American product yet – they are pushing it in the American market to let us know it’s coming. What better way to get some easy word-of-mouth than to get bunched up Americans bemoaning their ad?
More importantly, the offensiveness has a place in the ad. It isn’t just shocking for the sake of shocking, but works to show the clarity of their screen (even if it does look a little simulated) and at times creates a metaphor for what they want to say, like the Russian dancer “kicking ass.” We’ve had shock for the sake of shock so long, it’s no longer shocking. People actually demand a good reason for the shock given, or else they write it off as what it usually is – cynical pandering.
That isn’t what was done here, and I appreciate it. This moves fast, has a concept, and doesn’t trip over itself trying to be funny at the expense of their core message: “Our mobile product does a lot of stuff well, and looks neat.”
Posted in Advertising, Interactive Marketing
I’ve decided to stop posting about social media on this site. I obviously have nothing against social media itself, as I’ve crowed about it for years on this blog. Instead, I’m going to start posting more about marketing and advertising – the things you might want to know about once you have mastered all this new media.
Four years ago I started blogging for the advertising agency I worked for. They had two blogs – one for the agency proper, and one for the Interactive house. I was writing most of the posts, covering what was happening in Internet news and new media, but also in marketing, advertising, PR and traditional media.
When they told me to learn everything about what people were calling “social bookmarking,” that became a hot topic for both of our blogs. Our readers were hungry for information on the heretofore unheard of Twitter, MySpace, SecondLife… things that showed everyone the future was in progress.
That is no longer a problem, though. Just about anyone can get 1000 followers on Twitter, and once they do they usually use that as proof that they’re experts. There are so many bloggers writing about some arcane Facebook trick, there isn’t much of anything you can’t learn about Facebook with a quick Google search. And the number of stories telling you how you need a mobile app and QR code are legion.
However, there’s hardly anyone talking about communications, messaging, and how social media should be used to help your business. I see a lot of people showing their prowess at getting Likes and retweets and now +1, but then they fall short on how to turn these people into customers. It does not matter how neat all this new technology is if you can’t turn online fans into customers.
So there may still be some posts in the future about social, but from now on it will only be in the context of what you should say. I’ll also continue to post commercials I think do a good job of core messaging, and campaigns that work.
I think this is far more important than tips and tricks, and certainly a lot more enjoyable for me to write about.
Because if I have to write another post about how QR codes don’t work or how to get more Twitter followers, I’m going to pound nails into the floor with my forehead.
Posted in Advertising, Blogging, Marketing
