Archive for February, 2010
« Older Entries | Newer Entries »Best And Worst TV Commercials?
[ Comments Off ]Posted on February 13, 2010 by admin in Popular Media
Saturday, February 13th, 2010Is it a good commercial because you like it, or because it does the job it’s supposed to do?
As I mentioned recently, it’s odd that after years of dodging TV Commercials, now we go looking for them, and put them in best ads and worst ads collections. Especially around Superbowl time, many of us seem to end up in more casual conversations about commercials that end up in a YouTube search than we’d care to admit. Which highlights an interesting fact: most “best of” lists are really ratings of the commercial’s likeability, not whether or not it’s a “good” (i.e.: effective) commercial. Let’s ponder a few examples, and then I’ll offer up my own best & worst for your consideration. A commercial that often makes the “worst” lists is the one for that toenail infection product that you can’t remember the name of. I’d argue that it was actually a really good commercial; even if you don’t remember the brand name, I’d bet the next time you have a toenail infection, you’ll look for the product on the shelf. Along the same lines in terms of memorability, but lacking a likely customer conversion, is the this high speed Internet ad from 2007. Several friends mentioned this recently as a memorable ad, but even with only three likely choices, no-one could remember if it was an AT&T, Comcast, or Verizon ad. So if anything, it was only really promoting “high speed Internet”. On the other end of the spectrum, we have the Google Parisian Love ad. This one makes a lot of “best of” lists, but in my opinion is utterly ineffective. If you don’t already use Google, it’s probably because you’re loyal to your Yahoo or Bing homepage for whatever reason, and certainly aren’t going to turn around and go digging through your browser settings to change your homepage after seeing the ad. For me all it did was creep me out slightly. I think they should’ve kept going and shown searches for funeral homes with a catchy “Google: Cradle To Grave” pitch. Which highlights the next important factor: quality & impact vs placement. That romantic Google ad was placed in a Superbowl broadcast, of all places, which on the surface makes little sense. Historically, it was fairly easy to argue that placement was as – if not more – important than the quality or instant impact of an ad. With the continuing evolution of new media however, this becomes a much more complicated equation. Given the dynamic and interactive transaction most of us pursue when pondering a purchase, the broader reach and relationship-building of an ad campaign is really more important than the TV commercial itself. To illustrate, below are my two picks for worst and best campaigns to highlight what I’m talking about. First up is this spot for “First Else”: Read the rest of this entry »
The Kindness Economy
[ Comments Off ]Posted on February 12, 2010 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture
Friday, February 12th, 2010The new bestseller that you and I can write every day.
I’m currently putting the finishing touches on a short book based on the idea of The Kindness Economy. It started as a friendly joke with a few friends; we were comparing notes on how people seem to have slowly become ruder and more self-centered with every passing day over the past couple decades. Our idea was that if you make a little investment in being kinder ever day – hold a door, let someone go first, say excuse me – it would sort of make a deposit into the “Kindness Economy” that would help build up the “Kindess Supply”. This idea has helped me grow a little bit as a person, but it occurred to me after a while that maybe there was something to it. Over the past decade I’ve not only done a lot of work to try to improve myself as person, I’ve been learning a lot about how to and how not to run a business. One thing I noticed at some point was that there was a marked difference in the style of how business people of different ages seemed to approach running their business. At this point I’d put the marker around 55 years old and up, and it’s a simple difference: business people under that age right now are much more likely to be motivated more strictly by profit, and people over that age are much more likely to motivated by a deeper sense of value and community. I am of course speaking anecdotally and in broad strokes, but I’ve noticed that the “old school” model includes a lot more personal touches of “going the extra mile” by throwing in simple courtesies of service, and not treating customer care simply as a way of retaining disgruntled customers, but as a way of building new ones. It also includes the idea of building business that is of value not only to shareholders and investors, but also people like employees, customers, and the citizens of the community from which the business derives its revenue. I’m old enough myself to have watched the general sense of prosperity in America dwindle from a high point in the 60′s to the current sense of impending econopocalypse. Concurrent with this I’ve noticed this trend of people seeming less courteous as time passes, and I can’t help feeling that there’s some kind of connection. We could enter some broad sociological discourse at this point about how prosperity and courtesy in America were impacted by the Great Depression and the two World Wars, and how the generations of that era were forced into a sense of community and later thrived on the post war prosperity, but how about this time we skip the whole financial collapse and global conflict part, and just get back to being kinder for the sense of comfort and prosperity it brings all on its own? Read the rest of this entry »
Cool New Search Tools That Aren’t Google
[ Comments Off ]Posted on February 11, 2010 by admin in Technology
Thursday, February 11th, 2010Google still hasn’t found what I’m looking for, but fortunately there are lots of cool new search alternatives.
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Yesterday’s underwhelming launch of Google’s Buzz highlighted something that’s frustrated me for a couple of years, mostly since Google achieved search engine dominance. That “something” is the ability to search productively from a small variety of sources and get useful results; something Google has made it a little difficult to do, first by crushing the competition, later by failing to innovate in many ways, much like their predecessors. It would be idiotic of me to not give them credit for the ways in which they have innovated, especially web advertising (we’re using it all over this site!), but the fact is, the web is always evolving rapidly, and business models aren’t always keeping up. And Google’s ideas are generally focused on increasing Google’s revenue, not pure, user-centric innovation. Fortunately, we seem to be entering a new era of real search innovation; the only downside is that key players are going in so many directions that you almost need a search tool to find the right search tool. As an example, take a look at TheSearchEnginelist.com, one of the best-organized and largest lists you’ll find. Even this list omits a fairly large number of newer useful tools, which collectively take a rather diverse set of approaches to the problem. One approach is centered around the idea that you need help figuring out what you’re looking for in the first place. Like InstaFound.com, which tries to pick the “best of the best” from other engines and give you a single result, or Jamesoo, which assembles a newspaper-like results page from RSS feeds. But the former can also lead to the “worst of the worst”, and the latter can just be utterly irrelevant. Of these types of engines, WolframAlpha is pretty impressive, but not really geared toward daily use by the average person. There are also some cool new specialized search tools, especially when it comes to images and multimedia. TinEye and Gazopa both offer “similar image search”, which helps you find images based on existing images. Their predecessor Pixsta.com was acquired last year and put to work as the shopping site Empora, which demonstrates the value of this kind of search. There are also cool tools like Fizy (requires log in), which searches for song files and YouTube links based on simple song or artist input, and is REALLY FAST. It’s likely that all this innovation will lead to a few useful search tools rather than a single behemoth like Google. A couple of likely directions would be customizable aggregators like yourversion.com, or social search like Aardvark. Or as we’ve mentioned before, recommender engines. Along the way we’ll see lots of gimmicky approaches like Greenseng, a “green” search engine, or g8search, which is sort of like AdSense on steroids. And there are a few mysterious startups with dramatic homepages like RockMelt, which we touched on previously, or DiscoveryEngine, which apparently has an active crawler called DiscoBot but on their “about” page is only saying “We will sell no wine before its time”. There are in fact so many new tools that we’re going to revisit the topic in another piece soon. I personally use all three major search engines and a variety of aggregators to find stuff, but if YOU have any thoughts or tips, feel free to share them. Social search is where it’s at! Read the rest of this entry »
Valentine’s Day: Love Me, Love My Dog
[ Comments Off ]Posted on February 10, 2010 by admin in Holidays
Wednesday, February 10th, 2010Saying “I love you” is just another way of saying “Gitcher ass in that kitchen an’ fry me a egg, woman”
 Make your own candy heart over at Demotivators.com |
Given the potential stress and expense of Valentine’s Day and today’s science-based eHarmony approach to love, perhaps you won’t find it surprising that rather than lavish chocolates and roses on a lover, millions of people choose instead to show their love for themselves or their dog. And it seems that otherwise, two of the biggest beneficiaries of V-Day love are condom makers and flower shops. According to this article, sales of both spike in February, with roses enjoying a really special boost. Buy on the 15th, and the price drops from $109 to $59. But of the $17 billion dollars spent this Valentine’s day, $10.7 billion will be spent on greeting cards. Breaking this down by gender sort of explains the social networking pattern of men following women on line; of all these billions being spent, men will outspend women almost two to one: $163.37 to $84.72. With the average person spending $119.67. I bet you’re wondering when your partner is gonna even out the averages, right? So anyway, given this focus on self and commerce for Valentine’s day, we’re continuing our tradition of opportunistic holiday Amazon product linking. If you really love us, consider buying something via those links once in awhile! So, we’ve already covered the most amusing Valentine gifts we could find, but at the end were left with a little question: who the HELL ever thought of giving kitchenware as a VALENTINE gift? Yes, nothing says “Gitcher ass in that kitchen an’ fry me a egg, woman” like a Tovolo Heart Shaped Spatula
How I Became A Teabagging Dick Tuck
[ 2 Comments ]Posted on February 9, 2010 by admin in Politics
Tuesday, February 9th, 2010If you can’t beat ‘em, infiltrate ‘em.
 I don’t care WHERE you bring Glenn Beck, as long as it takes him further from ME. |
To me, voting these days seems more like a choice of execution method than a treasured civil right. Would I rather be shot with the antiquated but lethal and remarkably reliable Kalishnakov (The Republican Party) or with the the Humanitarian Magic Fairy Love Rifle that turns the target into a pretty and confused unicorn and brings peace, love, high speed trains, and broadband to all (The Democratic Party)? Which is why I always delight when an alternative pops up, if only for the variety. Of course, in the case of guys like Ross Perot or Ralph Nader, that “variety” can work against the voter’s intention by helping the worse of their two perceived evils to win, as happened in 1992 and 2000, and that’s one of the reasons I’m fascinated with the teabaggers. The first reason is of course their choice of name. Although polls have shown that a lot of Americans aren’t (or won’t admit that they are) familiar with the well-established slang term teabagging, there had to have been quite a few former frat boys amongst the party’s ranks who were well aware of the term. Another reason I’m fascinated with them is their utter ignorance of the fact that they’re really just Libertarians. Somewhere between deciding on their values and choosing someone to represent them, things got really confused though. Which is why it’s fun to mess with them. The other day I visited the web site of the Tennessee Tea Party Coalition to see if there was any sanity embedded in their angst-driven herding behavior. I didn’t find much; they make their confusion clear in the second sentence of their little manifesto by saying “We are non partisan, unabashedly conservative, and drama free“. On the other hand, they show a little cleverness by putting social networking and sharing tools to use with a Ning site, user polls, and and an Eventful.com badge for a Glenn Beck appearance. Which is where I had a little fun, and where I think I finally discovered my place in modern politics. First, the trivial fun, then I’ll explain my new role in politics. I noticed they had a poll that said “Do you think Tea Party Coalition will be a usefull tool?“, so, after leaving a comment that said “Do I think [the] Tea Party Coalition will be a usefull tool? No. But I think you all ARE a bunch of tools. And I think you should learn how to SPELL before you try to EDIT the existing tax code. That would be ‘usefull’!“, I noticed the poll had no block on voting twice, so in the time-honoured tradition of “vote early, vote often”, I shifted the numbers a bit by voting “No” 270 times to amuse myself while I was busy on a phone call. Then I noticed they were also trying to get Homosexual Nazi Blood Elf Glenn Beck to come to Tennessee. I’m all for getting Glenn Beck as far away from ME as possible, so I voted a few times for that as well. And this is when it dawned on me. I don’t support either major party across the board, and this has frustrated me for quite a while. So in the interest of sticking to some of my core values but still doing something that has impact, I’m going to become a Bipartisan Dick Tuck, and offer my campaign pranking services to both parties, but based entirely on whether the prank aligns with my values. See you at the reader poll! Read the rest of this entry »