Long Time, No Talk!

I have certainly been on hiatus from my blog for a good long time. But more on that to come later.

I was watching TV last night and LOL'ed at this ad. The message (though 100% silly and exaggerated) is completely true.




Stay tuned...I will post more about my hiatus and what's to come soon!

Kindest,

Jennifer

The New Low of Pop Music?

"I wrote a song about dental floss but did anyone's teeth get any cleaner?"
~Frank Zappa
(Response to Tipper Gore's supposition that music incites people toward certain behaviors)

Well, some parts are a bit...creepy

I have to say I feel bad for poor Rebecca Black. One second she's an innocent young teenage girl chasing dreams of pop stardom and the next she's the ridicule of the web-o-sphere.



I guess the song is fairly awful. And...so is the video to boot. Then again, it depends on how you look at it.

Rolling Stone has an interesting perspective, and it could just make sense. If Rebecca Black were to run with the viewpoint in the article, do you think she could turn it around?

Maybe she won't have to "turn it around." Apparently she's also now on the iTunes Top 100 list.

A co-worker aptly summarized the iTunes fact. "I would buy the song to play over and over again on Friday and annoy the hell out of my roommates." Fair point indeed.

With that, she's making a lot more money (or soon will be) than most of us combined. But she'll always be known as "that girl with the worst song ever."

So, is the song really all that stupid? I think not.

~J

I could just die...

"They say such nice things about people at their funerals that it makes me sad that I'm going to miss mine by just a few days."
~Garrison Keillor


You could just drop dead after winning!


This article, found via MSN.com this afternoon, details a very interesting radio contest in Germany.

Apparently, radio hosts held a contest where the person with the best epitaph wins a complete funeral, death insurance, or a lovely grave marker.

The idea? "Raise awareness of this difficult topic amongst young people."

May the best epitaph win.

~J

The Internets and Girl Scout Cookies: A Match Made in Samoa Heaven

"Are they made from real Girl Scouts?"
~Wednesday on the Addams Family

A far cry from the cookie sales of yesteryear...

This great article from Advertising Age discusses how Girl Scouts are more enterprising than ever. They're turning to digital technology to promote their wares.

If you are a slow adapter to digital technology, take note: The Internets aren't going anywhere. When Al Gore invented the internet...(ahem)....when the internet came into everyday life it could have been mistaken for a fad. Except fads, like Zubaz and Crystal Pepsi, go away.

Adapt...or perish. (Read that last line in an super-villan bad-guy voice and you'll get the full effect)

If Girl Scouts are making strides and selling cookies with digital technology, what could you be doing for your business?

Aside from buying cookies, ok? Yeesh.

Check out this video about the social media revolution that has already taken place. Convinced yet?

My real point here is that these girls get it. If your business isn't doing something in the digital realm (radio streaming spots, banner ads, Facebook pages, etc) you are falling behind. I'll spare you the R. Lee Ermey-style of bantering, but you're falling behind a bunch of little girls.

And now, just because, here's a video of a kitten riding a turtle to the tune of Ridin' Dirty by Chamillionaire. Evidence of The Internets and social media at work. And it's the best 25 seconds of your life, I promise.

The "Groove" Mentality: Not So Groovy?

"Advertising, like almost every profession, suffers from a groove mentality. We tend to listen only to ourselves, to see things only in familiar frames of reference. To grow, to be more effective, it is important to stop and ask 'Why am I doing what I am doing?'"

~Tony Schwartz, author of The Responsive Chord

As an advertiser, or prospective first-time advertiser, I think this quote is the sum of what the advertising equation aims to solve.

It is important to remember is the "why" of your advertising campaign.

With the advertising endeavors you take, how will you reach your "why?" Will you aim to do something that will make you stand out from the rest?

I find a lot of great information from Roy Williams' weekly e-newsletter, and today's post came as a result of what The Wizzo had to say in today's newsletter. Subscribe here and every Monday you'll be treated to advertising bliss.

~J

Super Bowl...or Super Flop?

"I'd run over Russ Grimm's mother to win the Superbowl, too."
~Raiders LB Matt Millen, Superbowl XVIII
(After hearing that Redskins OG Russ Grimm had said that he would run over his own mother to win the Superbowl)
Or...is Stupor-Bowl more fitting?

I watched the Superbowl on Sunday. I was unimpressed by everything but the game itself.

This comes as a shock to me, as I am the eternal optimist. I find something to like in everything, but for the second year in a row I was disenchanted by the joke that the Superbowl has become.

I have to give props that they chose a more relevant half-time act in the Black Eyed Peas, though I thought the performance by the Top-40 chart-busting group was completely lackluster. Note to Fergie: your voice is certainly not Ferga-licious live.

I guess we are starting to forget about the infamous "wardrobe malfunction" now that a current artist was featured.

Last year, a certain Snickers commercial is what I would whole-heartedly consider a success. It brought a gem like Betty White back into the fold, and America fell in love with her again (hello SNL!). This year's attempt, starring Roseanne Barr, was only ok. The best part was that she was knocked over by a log (IMHO). But...who was the other guy? I wasn't sure--I had never seen the guy before. A quick Google search yielded that it was Richard Lewis, a comedian that starred in Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Am I alone on this? Was anyone else wondering who the guy was? Perhaps that was the point.

I understand the power of the Superbowl. Are we trying to resurrect careers for people that are unknowns or, at best, C-List actors?

My final thought is that if these marketers are going to spend millions of dollars on ads to air during what was the most-watched televised event in history, I figure they could come up with something far more clever.

For the record, I did like something on the marketing front. And the game itself was a good one, too. I wouldn't want to you think I lost all my optimism.

For your viewing pleasure, this is my favorite Superbowl commercial of all time.



Now that's what I call a bonafide first-class Superbowl ad.

~J

Compact Cars and Mannequins=Mutual Exclusivity

"You're travelling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind; a journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of the imagination. That's the signpost up ahead--your next stop, The Twilight Zone."
~Intro to Season Two of The Twilight Zone, airing 1960-61

I remember....

When I was a kid my mom and I used to watch old episodes of The Twilight Zone together. I vividly remember one episode where the mannequins in the department store came to life at night after all the "living" people left for the day. For many years as a child I was terrified of mannequins. I could only imagine the debauchery they were up to after-hours, which could include leaving the confines of the department store to look in my bedroom window at night.

What if I were a mannequin like Marsha White? Who would take care of my horse?!

I suppose you could say I had an active imagination.

This memory came to me whilst logging on to YouTube this afternoon. I saw a campaign called "Compact Conspiracy" and had to check it out.

It was really pretty funny.

They made the entire campaign look as though there were a huge conspiracy theory surrounding compact cars. The only thing I missed were instructions to make your tin foil hat to prevent the compact car makers from hearing your thoughts.

The site was designed to look like a Blogger account or other basic blog site, including out-of-date graphics that fit well with the theme. If you've ever had the opportunity to look at hare-brained websites with lots of flashy, glitzy, seizure-inducing graphics ala MySpace, you'll immediately recognize what I mean. You know, MySpace. That other social networking site nobody uses anymore.

Check out the conspiracy for yourself here.

Turns out, it's a campaign to promote the new 2011 Hyundai Elantra. It took me a minute to figure out what on Earth was being promoted. The site did a great job of sucking me in to it's loopy content.

Another great attribute of this campaign is that Hyundai used YouTube to promote the unveiling on 2/6/11.

Love this idea. Here's to being creative, people!

Just for fun, here it is...