Category: Advertising

Maposaurus = Good Commercial

Posted on

I was reading through the reviews of the commerical from the Super Bowl today and was shocked to see that everyone hated Garmin’s Maposaurus. Are you serious? It was fantastic. Similar to the (much better) Muse’s music video Knights of Cydonia it was retro and really good

What did the commerical have? Let’s see:

  • pencil-thin mustache
  • nuclear power plant being destroyed
  • laser beams
  • transformative belt-buckles
  • carnage

How can you go wrong?

Check it out for yourself:

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=Kxrj3OQcXJY]

Beer for All Types of People

Posted on

My sister recently discovered that she might be allergic to wheat.  No bread at all, no pizza, no pasta, and even worse: no beer.

While looking into what possible options might be for her, i discovered (and then also saw here) a company called Long Tail Libations.  Apparently Anheuser-Busch has created it as a division to create and market niche products.  There is a great book called The Long Tail that came out in 2006 that talks about the fundamental shift of the marketplace from blockbusters to niche products as a result of the “infinite shelf” of the Internet. Bud recognized this shift and created this new division.

As a result they have gone from 26 brands in 1997 to 80 brands in 2007.  The new brands cover all sorts of crazy niches such as a beers with a safe grain for those allergic to wheat (Redbridge), a beer with caffeine (Bud Extra), a bock beer (ZiegenBock), a stout (Bare Knuckle), and some organic ales (Stone Mill  and Wild Hop)

Redbridge Redbridge
Redbridge is a rich, hearty, full-bodied lager brewed with sorghum (a safe grain for those allergic to wheat or gluten), water, yeast, imported Hallertau and domestic Cascade hops and corn. The result is a rich, full-bodied lager with a moderately hoppy taste. No wheat or barley is used to make the beer.
 
Bud Extra
Bud Extra takes beer to a new level – combining the drinkability and broad appeal of beer with caffeine, ginseng and guarana, Bud Extra is a beer remixed. Well-balanced beer with unique aromas of blackberry, raspberry and cherry, Bud Extra offers a lightly sweet and tart taste – with a “wow” factor in the finish.
Bare Knuckle Stout
Traditionally brewed using a blend of roasted barley, pale and caramel malts, Bare Knuckle Stout is balanced with robust hopping to provide a rich and flavorful stout, with a smooth and creamy head.
Anheuser World Lager
Rolled out in May 2003, Anheuser World Lager is a classic pilsner beer with a distinctive hop note and full-malt flavor – an import-style beer made in the United States.
ZiegenBock
An easy-drinking, American-Style bock beer, available only in Texas, since 1995.
Stone Mill Pale Ale
Stone Mill Pale Ale has the perfect balance of maltiness and hop bouquet resulting in a classic, fruity pale ale. Stone Mill Pale Ale is brewed with organic ingredients in a certified organic brewery.
Wild Hop Lager
Wild Hop Lager is a classic, European-style lager. It has a signature body with Cascade hop aroma and hints of caramel sweetness. It is brewed using organic ingredients in an organic brewery.

The world is going to niches. When you can get 1000 channels of TV for all types of people, it makes sense that you can get all types of beer too.  At least with the non-wheat Redbridge lager it’ll help my sisters weekends that much more fun

Stephen King & Experiencing Something Real

Posted on

In Newsweek this week, there’s an article by the horror writer Stephen King. I’ve always like Mr. King, especially his non-horror writings. In Newsweek, he lists things he wants to happen before he dies. They are:

  1. To live to see George W. Bush tried for crimes against humanity.
  2. To fly in space – orbital would be fine – and to write about it.
  3. To see “American Idol” canceled.

This is an interesting list. This is a list about experiencing things that are geniune and not being sold a bad of good, not about being marketed to.

Bush is a marketing act. Many politicians are like this, but Bush has taken it to another level. He repeats phrases and has his entire PR staff do nothing but parrot his statements. Like an idiotic beer commercial, Bush believes we’re morons and need to be spoken to as morons. He’s used this practice to bring us into war. He justifies everything with blanket statements like “Failure is not an option – we’ll be victorious” without addressing the fact that most people don’t even want to be involved.

Going into space would be amazing and truly “out of this world.” Humans were not meant to leave Earth and getting out of the atmosphere and looking back on the little blue ball would be a beautiful and authentic experience. This is not marketing, not hype, not based on buzz or what the blogosphere or Hozack is saying. This has nothing to do with what society wants us to desire like low-cutting jeans, an iPod or Beyonce – this is just something that is objectively awesome.

American Idol is a fascinating show. It is promoted in every nook of America. It takes regular people, makes them sing popular songs on national TV, chooses the person that is most marketable (based on viewer feedback), signs them to a very restrictive contract and then promotes the hell out of them for people to buy it. It is a cash cow. It is the perfect marketing engine. But it isn’t real. These “Idols” don’t write their own stuff, they don’t acheive their own success and are really just pawns for corporate bigwigs who are looking for something to sell.

All of King’s statements make sense to me. The first is a pretty hard-hitting statement. I mean we are all upset with Iraq and Bush’s performance, but this goes beyond that. It is an attack of politics. The 3rd is attack on american culture. And the 2nd is a desire to get away from both of those to a place that is untouched and pure – at least before Fox gets there and puts up some celestial billboards.

What would your top 3 be?

Michel Gondry is More Man Than All of Us

Posted on

I loved the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I thought it was one of the more underrated films of the past 5 years. Michel Gondry, the director and co-writer (with Charlie Kaufman) has also done some fantastic music videos. Basically, i think he’s awesome. However, that did not prepare me for this video (below) where he solves a rubix cube. Oh, he doesn’t just solve it. Oh no, that would be too simple. He solves it with his feet! That’s right, check it:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiQXgmVVGNA&eurl=]

If you haven’t seen any of Michel’s other stuff, even his shorter stuff, you should head over to YouTube and check it out. Even his commercials are pretty cool. Here’s a Smirnoff ad:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1UeNGELFSc]

ED and Pronto Condoms

Posted on

I wish the words “erectile dysfunction” never existed. I wish even more that there weren’t a billion commercials a day (and during football games) reminding us that some dudes can’t get it up. Even more than that, i wish that i didn’t have a bunch of questions about these drugs actually work. Such as: if you take a pill and it “works” and you’re successful in your attempt to bed someone, does it go away or are you left “hanging” all day. Are you able to carry 2 cups of coffee and your donuts all morning? Also, it kind of makes me sick how all the people in the commercials have a little devilish grin on their faces, like they know they are 1 pill away from getting on board the sex train. Again, i wish this wasn’t part of my life and i usually don’t think about it

Something on the internet – that world of tubes – reminded me of this problem today. It’s the 1-second condom made by Pronto Condoms. It’s for those people who can’t stay in the mood for the 3 extra seconds required to put a condom on. I have no idea who these people are, but apparently now there is a solution. There’s an informative video here in case you don’t believe me.

Can you imagine working for this company and each day you spend trying to figure out how to best market and make a condom even easier

Why Google Buying YouTube Is A Good Idea

Posted on

Yesterday, someone sent me an email about the Google/YouTube deal with the note “seems like an absurd amount of money.” Well, i think it was a good deal for Google. Here’s why:

  1. YouTube has critical mass which is VERY hard to get
  2. YouTube (like Google Video) is a complete browser-based system which fits in with google’s long-term scheme of providing a browser suite (mail, calendar, tv, etc.) on low cost computers to undercut Windows and Apple and dominate the world.
  3. 10% of all google traffic goes to youTube and they are the number 2 destination people go to (#1 is MySpace). Earlier Google did a strategic deal with MySpace so now the top 2 places people go to from Google are to google-friend sites
  4. This further underscores that the actual technology is no longer the most important asset in the web 2.0 world. Revver, JumpCut and even AOL Video have better technologies but YouTube has users and users are what matter. TagWorld, CyWorld, Bebo, Faces.com, and Multiply are all better than MySpace in that they look better, they have more and better features but MySpace has critical mass
  5. Page views equal cash and YouTube has a lot of them. Because they haven’t fully monetized them yet doesn’t mean they won’t. They needed a partner with an ad serving system and relationships with advertisers – Google’s the best at both. In fact, Scoble was wondering what it would have been like if Microsoft had bought YouTube – and it all comes back to who has the relationships with the advertisers. Google’s #1 business is advertising and now they added a major piece of page inventory and now dominate web video inventory too (YouTube is 48% of all web video).
  6. 1.5 Billion is a good price in my mind. People said 1/2 a billion was too much for MySpace. Less than a year later, MySpace got $900 million from Google so it could power the search on the site. There’s clearly money to be made here and 1.5 B isn’t too much in my mind.

What do you think?

If I Was Apple, What I Would Do To Protect iTunes

Posted on

itunesrocks.JPG

Apple has a great monopoly on both the fulfillment and playback of digital music. ITunes is a great player, the iTunes Music Store is the most comprehensive music store available online, and the iPod is the best, most badass player on the market. However, competitors are coming on strong. Microsoft announced the Zune project, Sony is releasing new players (article), and smaller players like the Music Gremlin are doing some cool and innovative stuff.

So, what should apple do to protect this mighty lead? They should give aways as many iTunes tracks as possible! Seriously, like it is halloween or a homecoming parade they should throw tracks away like candy. And, like the clever company they afacebook.jpgre, that’s exactly what they are doing. Last week they announced that they are giving away tracks to college kids with a deal with thefacebook to give away 10 million tracks (btw: facebook is the 7th most trafficed site in the US). And yesterday Apple annouced a deal with Coke which said in the press release, “Coke will link its website to the iTunes site and give away millions of free music downloads and hundreds of iPod digital music players”

cokeapple.jpgWhy is this a good idea? Because every track that a user gets from iTunes keeps them attached to the Apple world. If you have hundreds of tracks that only work in iTunes and iPods, you’re not very likely to buy or use anything else but if you have only mp3’s from CD’s, eMusic, or “found” online it’s pretty easy to go somewhere else. So, to ensure that nobody switches in the future, Apple should lock everyone in with iTunes tracks. Personally, i’m keeping

AOL's State of the Union

Posted on

Time Warner just announced their quarterly numbers. Although TW profits went up, AOL subscribers continue to drop down to 19 million. Just a few years ago they were over 35 million and now they’ve shed around 16 MILLION members. Why is this? Could it be that all the areas they were once dominant in they are now not even second tier? In this new world of social media and collective intelligence AOL is nowhere to be found. As a former employee (2000-2004) at both AOLTW Corporate and AOL Broadband i’ve seen some things. Here’s my take:

  • Social Networking & Blogging. Currently being dominated by MySpace, thefacebook, and others such as Friendster, yahoo 360, etc.. AOL plans to launch something with AIM soon (AIMspace), but i’d say they are about 3 years too late. Why would anyone switch from MySpace to AIM? Tied in closely with this is blogging. So many people, novices and professionals are looking for a place to put their thoughts, rants, and memories. So, while Google is buying Blogger and Yahoo is partnering with Moveable Type, AOL is sticking with their AOL Journals which is very limited in custimization, doesn’t have RSS, and can’t be hosted. I think they either need to get serious or get kill it.
  • Music Services. There are several viable music services out there. For the moment, let’s ignore the fact that everyone and their mother is using iTunes. What else is there? There are music subscription services such as Rhapsody, Yahoo Music, Napster, MusicNet, and eMusic (description of each below). AOL has rested on MusicNet for the past 4 years and last year bought up MusicNow for around $10 million. They had roughly 250k-300k MusicNet subs and i doubt they have anything close to that with MusicNow. At least with MusicNow they are building in community features (i think with MusicStrands), but does it tie into the AIM social network – doubtful. Does it tie in to AIM? Probably not. Is it featured on AOL anywhere? No, not really. When you’re this far behind, the best thing you can do is call in the community. This is what Yahoo’s done with the YME. They know they’re behind in terms of features and functionality, so they made a robust plug-in architecture so the rest of the world can help them catch up. This is why i think Yahoo will be the biggest player after Apple.
    • Rhapsody has been around the longest, is the most web-based and gotten in bed with MS. They have some interesting radio features but for the most part is somewhat klunky. It will be interesting to see what happens with this once MS gets their paws all over it. Supposedly, all MSN music will be powered by Rhapsody.
    • Yahoo Music (with Yahoo Music Unlimited) is slick. As i mentioned above, iIt has some great API’s and ties in well with Y! Messenger. The subscription service is cheap ($60 a year). Unfortunately it has very little subs, but that could change if the WMA issue gets better.
    • Napster is getting better and better, but still has relatively few social aspects. It has a good library and great branding but not much else.
    • eMusic is differentiated with an mp3 library. It’s not all-you-can-eat but it is ipod-compatible which makes a HUGE difference in this world 45 million iPods. They don’t have any mainstream artists but have almost all the indie artists.
    • MusicNet has the largest subscription library but it is simply a fulfillment engine. It powers services such as Virgin, Cdigix, and even Yahoo!. But there is no community here.
  • Advertising. This is when i realized that AOL will always be the JV squad in the internet game. Yahoo was serious about music and went out and bought MusicMatch for $500 million in 2003 and Launch Music (good article) for $12 million in 2001. AOL waited 4 more years then invested $10 million for a MusicNow library. Then advertising emerged as a viable and powerful revenue stream, Yahoo! spent 1.6 billion on Overture and AOL spent a few hundred million on Advertising.com – forever relegating them to minor league ball. Not that they’re doing incredibly poorly, but will they approach anything like Google’s Adsense? The old AOL would have bought whoever it needed to stay on top.
  • Mail. AOL’s golden nugget is the screenname. Users won’t switch because they don’t want to lose their email address and they pay $24 bucks a month for it. Meanwhile Gmail comes out with (basically) unlimited storage – for FREE. Then Yahoo and Hotmail counter with equal storage. Gmail and Yahoo continue to make their services better and better with slick javascript (gmail is the AJAX gold standard) and the new Yahoo Mail Beta is supposedly amazing. What is AOL doing? They make mail the most click-intensive application ever. You need 3 seperate windows to just send a message. And to make it even worse, your mail still expires after 28 days. Wtf? When will they wake up and realize that on a scale of 1-10, AOL is batting about a 3. Let’s break mail down even more:
    • Authentication. AOL requires you to sign on each time you come to it’s site. Sounds reasonable. However if you go to check your mail multiple times a day, it gets annoying. Neither Yahoo nor Gmail makes you do that. Even if you check “remember me” – it doesn’t.
    • Session Time. Gmail lets you stay signed in all day (and actually b/c of this launched a slick app – check out my future post). AOL signs you out after 15-20 minutes. Why are they making it such a pain to read your mail? Should services try to delight the customer?
    • Inbox. Time to bring in some AJAX. The interface is slow and ugly.
    • Integration with other services. No AIM, no real precense, no easy to access address, nothing.
  • Video. This is one space where AOL is doing ok. If you look at the types of video becoming available on the web from amateur (caught-on-tape) on one end to amateur narrative films (iFilm) in the middle to professional content on the other end. AOL is focussing directly on the far end of professional content only. They have deals with many major players to stream the video (NFL, CNN, E!, NBA, WB, etc.) however they make it hard to find the video or to use it anywhere outside of AOL. Their new hi-Q initiative using Kontiki is very interesting because it downloads and dramatically improves up the quality of the video, but the there isn’t much content available in Hi-Q yet – it’s currently only trailers and music videos. My question is where’s the focus on short video clips? There’s an explosion of content coming from short clips such as SNL’s Lazy Sunday that is being distributed through YouTube, Veoh, and now MySpace. This is where the eyeballs are. This is what users are passing around and looking for on the internet. However, AOL is focused on bring TV to the small internet screen. IP might be a delivery mechanism for that someday, but eventually it’ll be viewed on a big screen. I’m much more optimistic about Tivo/Netflix or MS Media Center applications. They have made some big investments in video search. But i don’t know any users to use video search. Basically there are only a few players that host a lot of video (YouTube, Google, and iTunes) and users go to them and search. If something isn’t there, they’ll check one of the others.
  • Instant Messaging. AOL just released Triton, a much needed upgrade over the AIM application that hadn’t been changed for over 4 years. It is still cluttered with Ads, doesn’t integrate blogs or music. Also, check this out: there’s an AOL address book, but now there’s also an AIM address book (powered by Plaxo). And, to make their AOL Mail even more insignificant, there’s now AIM mail which is the exact same thing, but for free. How could you not expect users to be confused when you can’t even integrate AIM with AOL? I’ve started using Yahoo Messenger lately and found it to be just as full featured but with less bugs and easier to use. Google Talk is simplier and easier to use too. Obviously all the users are on AIM so that’s going to be the dominant player for years to come, but it’s horrible how they’ve failed to extend the AIM platform – no API’s, no major improvements, and increasing more cluttered with shameful attempts to suck cash out of it (games, voice, ads, etc.)

This is a long synopsis of a large multi-faceted company but it pains me to see how each step of the way they continue to build creative and useful applications to benefit their members.

Thoughts?