Here’s a revelation: Somehow watching “Oprah” makes people want to eat. The few times I’ve been home early enough to watch the show, it never makes me wanna make a b-line for the fridge, especially when Dr. Oz is on talking about bowel movements or someone is griping about crash diets, but Oprah’s stellar star power and popularity has once again facilitated the way for a major brand to make money, and then fail miserably in the actual follow-through.
This time for KFC.
On last week’s show, Oprah announced that she’d be featuring coupons on her website for free KFC grilled chicken dinners. Her website was flooded with phat consumers, just waiting to get their hands on a golden, fried ticket. (p.s. KFC’s official website also has printable coupons)
Long story short KFC had to end the promotion after they realized they’d have to hire competent people to cook the chicken to meet the demand they were faced with. Ok, I made second part of that sentence up, but really, I can’t be that far off from the truth here.
Have you noticed that all the songs in Apple products (iPod, Mac..)commercials sound exactly the same? Is this what one might call Branding? Or is it Over Branding?
And also, my Mac does need to be restarted at times, and while I appreciate it’s quality, it still gets stuck here and there!!!
And the Barack shows up- A real Rock Star… A surprise behind curtain number 2! WHAT A SHOW… What a circus…
A very sad joke. Joe Biden practiced the first rule in advertising, and made more too-good-to-be-true promises the enthusiastic crowd of blind believers at the DNC.
The entire world will be amazed by the beauty of China, and exited with the beginning of the Olympics. I won’t. Not that I don’t like sports, nor was I born yesterday to this cynical-material world, but every day we discover more and more about how the Chinese government managed to pull this production on the backs of it’s poor people, the less I’m inclined to actually watch the games. NBC, who paid $894 million for the US broadcast rights, will show the Olympics no meter what. Here and there, we’ll see an item on the news that gently criticize the Chinese actions, but it disappears between Matt Lauer reporting for the Today Show, and Billy Bush getting a foot massage for $25 in Beijing.
Money talks, as the Chinese and we know, so what are a few million people whose homes were demolished in favor of a shiny stadium? Or a few millions more who are left to starve because they are not allowed to water their rice fields, comparing to Coca-Cola TV commercial?
So, I’m not so exited about the games. Maybe I’ll watch it a little bit, but no more than that.
Whenever your spouse starts a sentence with: “This may not be a big deal for you, but….” you will pay attention. So when my dear wife told me on Friday night that “This may not be a big deal for you” I was listening, and then came the relieving second half: “But I really want to watch Mad Men’s season premiere on Sunday.” So we watched it.
Mad Men is a good show, about the advertising world in the early 60’s. We watched the entire first season over one especially boring weekend On Demand. This is the best way to get addicted to a series. After 10 episodes, you got to know the characters and the plot so good, that you feel as if you were a part of the story. Anyway, addicted or not, unfortunately, it seems that Mad Men is going in the same path as many other promising shows, and turning itself into a slow Nothing-is-really-happening-here soap opera. It’s a little disappointing, but hey, we will only follow the show until the Football season begins!
That’s right folks. Actor Gary Busey, whose last decent film happened sometime way back in the early 80s, and whose most recent credits include drunken rampages on the set of Inside Edition, has his very own series of video shorts (courtesy of GotVMail which must subscribe to the take the most random celebrity-of-the-day and create a series of promos around it aka School of Geico car insurance advertising)
GotVMail heeds us, almost daringly, to “Go inside the entrepreneurial mind of Gary Busey,” but the ramblings of Busey’s inner most thoughts as witnessed on many of these videos feel more like the output/regurgitation of a 5-year-old suffering from ADHD trying to tell mommy and daddy exactly what he/she did in school that day in between back-to-back episodes of iCarly.
Case in point:
Gary Busey has a hobby. He likes to create “Busey-isms.” Here’s two examples of a Busey-ism. Now=No Other Way, Team=Together Everyone Achieves More. You too can craft your own vernacular, according to GB. Just take your last name and make it an “ism.” Extra credit to those who last name starts with “Cynic,” “Bullshit.” By the way I think I just created my very first Busey-ism. Is WTF already taken?
Remember the 5 Ws (Who, What, When, Where, Why)? Gary Busey wants you to think outside the box and turn your favorite interrogatives into…Interrogatives? No, we’re not kidding. This particular video had to be the brainchild of at least 4 hours of direct inhalation. Pott-o-meter says: 8. In case you missed it, POTT=Potentially Over The Top
Never ask your family for money because you have to pay them back. Just lean on the bank or get Wesley Snipes’ accountant. If all else fails, hit the kids up from the lemonade stand. You know the ones who’ve been standing in sweltering heat all day just to make a .10 profit?
Busey does a phat WC Fields’ impression and coincidentally doesn’t like lame I’m too sick to go to school/work excuses especially ones that start with, “I got salmonella thrown right square in the face.”
While Busey is no business brainiac, his Yogi Berra, dumbed-down approach to business might be an asset to GotVMail’s marketing strategy in terms of visibiiity of their brand in the marketplace. However with soaring rates for plans starting at $10/mo for 50 minutes of VOIP, GotVMail will need more than Busey’s bravado and clever topspin to remain competitive with companies like AOL and Cisco.
Akin to Quizno’s infamous gerbil fiasco commercial ploy a few years ago, whether you’re aligning your company brand with gerbils or rats, either way, you’re bound to build buzz, but that only lasts for so long before you’re consumers start to look elsewhere.
The “Sex & The City” PR machine is working so hard on promoting their film that it almost makes you forget how much of a shitty show it was, especially towards the end. And who has time to watch four middle-age women, strutting around acting like shallow and vacuous teenage girls, chasing 20-year-old dudes? Haven’t we had enough? Why won’t you watch “Indiana Jones” instead? At least Harrison Ford ages with grace…
There’s a new M Night Shyamalan movie coming out mid June called “The Happening,” with Mark Wahlberg. Looks promising, we’ll check it out soon.
OK, so here is the story: About a year ago we got robbed. That’s a long and sad story, involving an insurance company that gladly took our money when we got the policy, but for various reasons would not pay for our stolen stuff. But let’s not talk about it now. The kind thief who visited our apartment that night did not steal our DVD, but in order to make sure he has the right equipment for the things he did stole, he took away our remote controls, all of them.
So after a few months of running to the TV stand to pause, stop, or fast forward (and after we moved from that place thank God,) and since the device wasn’t doing a great job playing movies, we decided it’s time to get a new one. When we got to the store we had three options: To get a standard DVD (a known brand cost about $50 back then,) a Blue Ray machine (About $350,) or for $75 we could get an HD-DVD device. We got the last one. Both were new technologies, both offered amazing quality. Back then we couldn’t tell which one will dominate the market. Now we know. A couple of days ago, Toshiba announced that it will abandon its HD-DVD format. Now we learn that Amazon.com will stop selling HD-DVD and will side with Blue-Ray. Cnet News reports that Peter Faricy, Amazon’s vice president of movies and music, said in a statement from the company: “The high-definition landscape is rapidly changing, and consumers are looking for guidance on how to make the best high-definition buying decisions, our customers have clearly voiced their support for the Blue-ray format.”
Also, the presence of the format in the popular Sony Playstation 3 game console, and Blockbuster early siding with it, put a lot of weight on the preference to go Blue.
I’m not too sorry for buying the DVD I have now, I prefer it this way on buying a Blue-Ray and then the HD-DVD would come on top. Then I would have lost a lot more… I will buy a Blue-Ray DVD, but not today.
After finally getting my Wii and spending the past few days manically hooked on Wii Tennis and upping my all-time score to “professional,” I’ve decided that I now need to focus my energies on something a bit more tangible and likely to give equal amounts of attainable bliss: Shopping.
But…For those of you who know me, I hate shopping. I hate spending money. I hate crowds and I hate holidays that feed off of consumer greed and guilt. Now that the holiday season is officially over (well, the songs are off the radio anyways), and people are rushing back to stores to return and exchange gifts, I’ve decided to let a few days blow over, have some of the carte madness disperse a bit, and slowly get back out there and take advantage of some of these sales. In order to be successfully proactive in my shopping, I’ve decided to start with the essentials so as to eliminate all the unnecessary headache I usually attach to malls and people. Hopefully by me revealing the most common myths, you too can be enlightened and on your way to an even jollier 2008.
1) Myth # 1: Holiday season is over post-Christmas.
I lied in the previous paragraph when I said the holiday season was in fact officially over. If big name dept. stores like Kohl’s and Macy’s can be burning the midnight oil and opening at 6 AM the day after Christmas, you know there has to be an audience for this. Yeah and that audience would be the very same people that actually spend the day after Thanksgiving at strip malls, revving up on Starbucks lattes at 4 AM just to kick them out of that Tryptophan-state and anointing holiday-like status to a day of shopping. Canucks aside, who does that?
2) Myth # 2: Exhibit Kindness & Goodwill to Thy Neighbor
Ok, so this rule might apply to your literal neighbor, but don’t start getting all figurative on this one. If you see a Wii in Target or Best Buy, grab that puppy. Don’t do that polite thing when it comes to the things you want or you’ll never get anything in return - besides a lot of bitching and moaning when you come home empty-handed or realize you should have fought a little harder to stay in line to return that damn vase you have no use for but didn’t want to start rough-housing it with the old lady with the walker. Does she really need that walker is what you should really be asking yourself…
3) Myth # 3: People don’t like to Shop Online
Bullocks! Did you know that in England and Scotland, online sales pre-empted retail sales? Did you care?
4) Myth # 4: Giftcards are the Natural Remedy for a Fledgling Economy
Retailers are banking on giftcards pulling them out of this season’s sales slump? Yeah, good luck with that..
5) Myth # 5: Wii is Purely a State of Mii
And the most sought after product of the greed-fueled, consumer driven holiday season?
The Nintendo Wii was the most sought-after product, with the Transformers Ultimate Bumblebee a close second, according to Yahoo Shopping.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I got some Wii ass to cook.
After a week of holding out hope of buying a Wii anytime in the near future, I’m spent. I know from my quest that I am not alone. Hell, I’ve run into a lot of the same moms desperately hoping to appease their whiny kids by waking up at ungodly hours and schlepping out to the nearest Best Buy, Target, Walmart, Circuit City and any other promised mecca just to secure within their tiny, tight grips a new Nintendo Wii bundle for a mere $250. Having wasted my Sunday morning high-tailing it to every electronics/technology superstore around and being met with the same bemused reaction ad infinitum from every salesperson, I’ve started to catch a bit of the anti-Wii. There’s only so much flaunting and teasing one company and one product, for that matter, should be allowed. With the new Playstation 3 valued anywhere from $400-$500 and XBox 360 at $350, game consoles are the hottest ticket around this holiday season and they don’t come cheap.
But not coming at all?
Conspiracy theorists and other people with way too much time on their hands aside, I’m not of the mindset that Nintendo is holding out on us, more that they simply haven’t manufactured enough Wiis to fill the supply end of their high demand. The fact that the search for the Wii has borne the brunt of every late night talk show (if there wasn’t a writer’s strike) and DJ’s AM joke doesn’t discourage me. If anything, it compels me to push on in my search. The reality being no one relishes healthy competition more than myself. I get that glazed, demonic look in my eyes and march to the possessed beat of a win-at-all-cost drum. But there is no winning with the Wii.
I’m self-defeated at the moment. Angry at Wii, at Bill Gates for his damn Xbox 360 (completely unrelated). Incapable to discerning if I even want the Wii so much anymore, or I just can’t stand to not finish something once I set my mind to it. I may be feeling anti-Wiiish at present, but much like the initial hurdle of running from mile 7 to mile 8 when training for a marathon, this might be more of a mental obstacle than anything else. I might wake up tomorrow with renewed hope, but for now I’ll stick with the odds of the Patriots beating the Steelers this evening. Those are odds which will more likely play out in my favor.
As if social networking sites weren’t over-populated enough (hint of sarcasm) in the webosphere, TechCrunch just posted an insightful piece on the lesser-known, but deep-pocketed Web 2.0 sites that are worth noting. Among those profiled, the Palo Alto-based Ning, which visually reads a lot like Vox, but with a less hipster targeted demographic and helps members with guided instruction make their way through the sinuous road of social networking, and New York City’s KickApps, which plays for the more seasoned web guru i.e. developer and supplies users with applications to build communities/networking platforms on their own sites. Absent from the list was Spock, a cleverly named social networking site, which Irina Slutsky of PodTech invited me to see the other day. Read More…
Top models, beware. It’s nothing out of the ordinary when we see a movie star or an athlete advertising a product. But it’s not every day that a former leader and a Nobel Peace Prize winner becomes a model. In a campaign to promote the company’s luggage and travel accessories, Luis Vuitton, hired former Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev, the man and the map-like birthmark. Gorbachev will join Scarlett Johanssen, Catherine Deneuve Andre Agassi, and Steffi Graf who also model for the luxurious French company. Gorbachev’s first gig as a model was in a Pizza Hut commercial.
How to promote an unpopular sport, step by step, by the Los Angeles Galaxy. You got to hand it to the Los Angeles Galaxy. They sure know how to rock the world, literally. So how do you do it?
Step 1: Location! Location! Location! Hollywood is the only place to bring the Beckhams to, money, spotlight, cellebrities. We’ll get to that later.
Step 2: Find your man. Find the most famous soccer player in the world, who is also good at what he does, meaning a real fighter on the pitch with natural talent and proven experience.
Step 3: Open your pockets.When Real Madrid bought David Beckham from Manchester United they paid $33 million Euro for him. It took them only six months to cover this expense. So when the Galaxy pay him $250 millions for five years, they know what they are doing.
Step Four: Cherchez La Femme. One of the most important steps of all. You can love or hate Victoria Beckham, but she is an icon. You must not ignore her and her every caprice. Actually, she is the one you have to talk to even before you talk to David Beckham himself. I mean, it’s quit obvious who call the shots right? So how do you do it? First you hook her up with the hottest and most paparazzi-stalked couple around, and if Brangelina are not around Tom and Katie Cruise will do just fine. Then you put her in the spotlight. But remember it has to be in the middle of the spotlight. You make an NBC Victoria Beckham- Coming to America special, you put her in the Morning show, The Tonight Show, The Whatever show, and she is happy. And if Victoria is happy, everybody is happy.
The Fifth and last step is the introduction: I have seen many soccer players being introduced to the public by their new clubs. But I have to admit, I have never seen something like what I saw at the Home Depot Center, home of the Los Angeles Galaxy. It was as if David Beckham was getting a lifetime achievement award for something he hasn’t really done yet. Amazing.
And even before King David even touched a soccer ball in America, marketing wise, he already does to soccer what his idol Michael Jordan (That’s why he is wearing the number 23, not because of the Jim Carrey movie…) did to Basketball. Now everyone in America knows what the rest of the world knows for years, Who is David Beckham.
Here he comes, after a very long maybe to long wait, the iPhone is almost here. Introduced to the world in February, the anticipated gadget soon-to-be a must is expected to be in stores by June 29. It will only be available to Cingular\AT&T customers and the price will range from $500 for the 4GB model, to $600 for the 6GB model. Meanwhile, Apple came with a series of cool TV commercials about the iPhone’s features.
Once upon a time, if you wanted to promote your new album, you would go on a tour, kiss the radio station’s decision maker’s ass, and maybe if you were lucky you would find yourself on stage in a late night talk show. Today, there are so many other channels of communications that artists try their best to look as up-to-date as possible and to cover all bases in an attempt to reach their crowd.
What better way for an aging rockstar to do this than thru the use of mobile technology and a cup of Jo? David Bowie operating as Nokia’s Music Godfather, and Paul McCartney releasing a new album with Starbucks are only 2 examples. And now, according to Reuters, Prince, who is trying desperately to avoid being called Alter Kaker is giving away his new single “Guitar” to Verizon users, V Cast song ID feature, which identifies songs for listeners who hold their phone next to a speaker.
Once upon a time you could get away with decent PR and great music. Today I guess you just need stellar PR, the rest will follow.
It’s a frequent complaint of foreigners living in the U.S. or visiting from abroad (not to mention esteemed culture critics) that the U.S. doesn’t know how to draw the line between “important national news” and idol garbage.
Alec Baldwin’s custody battle and David Hasselhoff’s bad parenting headlines trumped the VA Tech massacre. And our nation’s preoccupation with the superficial, even at its follicular base has us more attuned to Britney Spears shaving off her hair or Sanjaya making a spectacle of his than the new elected Prime Minister of France.
Are we such an insular nation that “world” events that happen thousands of miles away don’t interest us? Is so, then how does this account for the VA Massacre coverage? Or the fact that I couldn’t recall the specifics of the the Oklahoma City bombing, but I’ll most likely always have Anna Nicole’s lawyer Larry Seidlin floating around in my conscious mind.
So what is it about vacuous, gratuitous aspects of culture that reel us in for the kill? Why does anyone (aside from Cameron Diaz) care that Paris Hilton gets prison time (why should i sign some ridiculous petition to “free” her) and why does it make the news that Hilton called upon Governor Schwarznegger to pardon her? Or better yet that she switched her attorney last minute.
I felt the same sense of apathy to the OJ trial (although to a lesser degree since he was accused of violently murdering his ex-wife and her lover and was a father of two very impressionable kids who just lost the mother that their father was on trial for killing) as I did the Michael Jackson trial (who was also potentially guilty of endangering [and sodomizing] youth). And then there’s the absurdly wacky Phil Spector ongoing nightmare of a celebrity spectacle that oddly fuses hair, celebrity, and the legal system.
Simply put, the cult of the celebrity and the media’s fascination with them will always take precedence in U.S. culture over life’s deeper, more pressing concerns especially when/if it interfaces with the legal system.
As the brilliant cultural commentator Nancy Giles astutely called out on “CBS Sunday Morning” this past week:
What is news? It’s all a blur, run into the ground, with war, politics and pop culture given the same value. It’s like pulling all-nighters to cram for exams. Sure, you’ll pass, but did anything really “stick?”
For some odd reason, even though I recall unsubscribing quite a few times, I’m still on the email list over at Savvy Miss-the website that claims it’s For Intellectually Curious, Fun-Loving Women.
Don’t get me wrong. Really I like to think I straddle the whole “fun-loving” and “intellectually curious” pretty well, though admittedly most often I find myself teetering in the “intellectually curious”/”analytical kvetch” category. The point in all this is that female categorizations or gender qualifications of any sort tend to lend themselves to stereotypes.
So today I look at my gmail inbox and see Quiz: Are You The Office Brat and the actual exercise is “Are You The Office Bitch” and I can’t help but find this subtle semantic substitute just a wee bit reproachful.
Inappropriate conduct explicitly aimed at female bloggers is populating all the social criticisms of today’s media and yet some site that claims it’s for me written by people like me is demanding that I classify myself in terms of stale archetypes: The Corporate Dominatrix, the Goddess (the spiritual you), the Governess (the schoolteacher and mentor), the Queen (the sovereign) or the Schoolgirl (the student and apprentice).
I’m still trying to figure out how many market research focus groups Savvy Miss commissioned to come up with these catch-all titles (kinda like how many Poles does it take to screw in a light bulb?), but I’m missing out on how all this doesn’t somehow undermine the plight of the female blogger. Thinking in terms of social schemas is easy and it’s convenient, but ultimately its cost can be greater than we’re willing to pay.
Besides, so what if I’m The Office Bitch. Does that mean that I don’t crave a good, hard spanking once in a while?
Ah. Silly Savvy Miss. Didn’t cha get the memo? Tricks are strictly FTB (for the boys).
“The View” is all about public announcements these days. How is it that a show whose premise is gossiping yentas unleashing every private, intimate detail fosters an environment of explicit candor? In short, why do people bother hiring publicists if they are just gonna go on “The View” and tell all? And what’s with all the announcements?
Last week Rosie O’Donnell made public her news that she was leaving the show. On Friday, Alec Baldwin said he wants out of his show and now Elizabeth Hasselbeck is expecting a child and wants the world to know she loves Rosie O’Donnell, even if the two represent ardently oppositional political camps.
Did we mention Hasselbeck’s pregnancy is another slated “announcement” on “The View” today?
I got to hand it to the guy. Donald Trump may not be the reliable, yet quirky businessman he’d like everyone to believe, but the man sure knows how to pimp himself for a piece of billboard. First he fights with Rosie O’Donnell, then being the busybody she is, Barbara Walters gets involved, and before you can say, “Joy Behar isn’t the only one who loathes Elizabeth Hasselbeck,” Trump is betting his luscious locks off to the fate of a wrestling match.
Trump’s hijinks i.e. the last-ditch pathetic attempts to gain some sort of attention/notoriety is playing itself out. Donald needs to know by now that no actually cares about business anymore. The economy sucks so we’d rather forget about money. And focus on food, dancing, and pretty shallow girls. Although we do find it very curious that billionaires like to shave each other’s heads (and who knows what else). The fact is maybe Trump isn’t quite ready to face the music yet. And maybe we’re not either because when it comes down to it, we really do want Umaga to win.
Here’s a revelation: Somehow watching “Oprah” makes people want to eat. The few times I’ve been home early enough to watch the show, it never makes me wanna make a b-line for the fridge, especially when Dr. Oz is on talking about bowel movements or someone is griping about crash diets, but Oprah’s stellar star power and popularity has once again facilitated the way for a major brand to make money, and then fail miserably in the actual follow-through.
The entire world will be amazed by the beauty of China, and exited with the beginning of the Olympics. I won’t. Not that I don’t like sports, nor was I born yesterday to this cynical-material world, but every day we discover more and more about how the Chinese government managed to pull this production on the backs of it’s poor people, the less I’m inclined to actually watch the games. NBC, who paid $894 million for the US broadcast rights, will show the Olympics no meter what. Here and there, we’ll see an item on the news that gently criticize the Chinese actions, but it disappears between Matt Lauer reporting for the Today Show, and Billy Bush getting a foot massage for $25 in Beijing.
Whenever your spouse starts a sentence with: “This may not be a big deal for you, but….” you will pay attention. So when my dear wife told me on Friday night that “This may not be a big deal for you” I was listening, and then came the relieving second half: “But I really want to watch 
That’s right folks. Actor Gary Busey, whose 
OK, so here is the story: About a year ago we got robbed. That’s a long and sad story, involving an insurance company that gladly took our money when we got the policy, but for various reasons would not pay for our stolen stuff. But let’s not talk about it now. The kind thief who visited our apartment that night did not steal our DVD, but in order to make sure he has the right equipment for the things he did stole, he took away our remote controls, all of them.
After finally getting my Wii and spending the past few days manically hooked on Wii Tennis and upping my all-time score to “professional,” I’ve decided that I now need to focus my energies on something a bit more tangible and likely to give equal amounts of attainable bliss: Shopping.
After a week of holding out hope of buying a Wii anytime in the near future, I’m spent. I know from my quest that I am not alone. Hell, I’ve run into a lot of the same moms desperately hoping to appease their whiny kids by waking up at ungodly hours and schlepping out to the nearest Best Buy, Target, Walmart, Circuit City and any other promised mecca just to secure within their tiny, tight grips a new Nintendo Wii bundle for a mere $250. Having wasted my Sunday morning high-tailing it to every electronics/technology superstore around and being met with the same bemused reaction ad infinitum from every salesperson, I’ve started to catch a bit of the anti-Wii. There’s only so much flaunting and teasing one company and one product, for that matter, should be allowed. With the new Playstation 3 valued anywhere from $400-$500 and XBox 360 at $350, game consoles are the hottest ticket around this holiday season and they don’t come cheap. 
As if social networking sites weren’t over-populated enough (hint of sarcasm) in the webosphere, 
Johanssen awaits Mikhail.
How to promote an unpopular sport, step by step, by the Los Angeles Galaxy. You got to hand it to the Los Angeles Galaxy. They sure know how to rock the world, literally. So how do you do it?
It’s a frequent complaint of foreigners living in the U.S. or visiting from abroad (not to mention 
For some odd reason, even though I recall unsubscribing quite a few times, I’m still on the email list over at 
“The View” is 
I got to hand it to the guy. Donald Trump may not be the 