This week, SXSW Interactive featured a keynote conversation with Limor Fried (Adafruit Industries) and Phil Torrone (MAKE Magazine). Hacking the DIY culture, Torrone and Fried discussed the techniques of tinkering with technology. With examples such as the Bacon Alarm Clock, skin-embedded RFID chips, and the recent Gummy Bear Chandelier, the panelists whetted the audience's palate with a selection of delicious DIY snacks.
Hacktivism culture has been spreading at a rapid rate as of late. Simply said, "People make weird and bizarre things," Torrone stated in response to the movement. Sharing "recipes" has now become commonplace among tinkering communities and unlike dating, you're not slapped if you show all your intimate parts too soon.
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We like to think of street art as advertising that pushes back. After all, even graffiti's got its own idea to sell.
Wooster Collective points us to some paste-on street art by Mike Newton, who says, "I noticed how the police would move the homeless from street to street, doorway to doorway around the town. This gave me the inspiration for my latest piece 'removing me won't solve the problem,' a kind of twist on the removal of graffiti."
A similar campaign we once conducted also involved reintroducing absent social pariahs to their natural environments. But we don't think our parents were super thrilled when we wandered into the kitchen wearing Mom's "Like a Virgin" outfit during Pops' business dinner. We bet it left a lasting impression, though.
Just because you have a job doesn't mean you should miss out on the fun and games of March Madness. With the wilting white collar worker in mind, Tribal DDB throws together a March Madness tourney toolkit on behalf of State Farm.
It makes one feel pathetic in its all-encompassing office splendour. Users hungry for the rush can download March Madness propaganda, create a little bobble-headed friend and play office hoops.
That's almost like being at a March Madness game ... except not.
Perhaps simply to tease or perhaps in reaction to complaints, an iPhone ad which appeared on the cube at Apple's Fifth Avenue store in New York didn't last long. No sooner did it go up Tuesday, it came down perhaps reacting to requests the cube be mostly ad free. Anyway, the anticipation mounts for a phone that, accoring to some, will be a lame replacement for what's already available.
Continuing what we started in New York on Nov 8, yesterday Adrants and BDI held the second Ad Industry Diversity Job Fair and Leadership Conference in San Francisco, hosted by the Academy of Art in conjunction with BIG. Local and nationwide entities including Google, Modem Media, Draft FCB, Dieste and T3 (The Think Tank), showed up to trade paper with giddy be-suited candidates.
The set of pews and the wide church like set-up served as a good backdrop for what could be both parts keynote and sermon.
Larry Harris, EVP and Director of Integrated Marketing at DraftFCB, made a straightforward delivery on topics we expected to rise to the surface: the disparity of diversity in our industry, the changing face of marketing in the face of new media (iPods, internet, mobile phones, chip-reading billboards) and the importance of knowing what you want before leaping into the wild blue yonder. He also told an awesome story about how he infiltrated agency execs by pretending to be a message boy. "They let you right in!" he exclaimed.
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Rather than trying to get people to remember a company's URL which isn't always the easiest thing to remember, several companies in Japan have started using what have been referred to as "search me" ads. The ads offer the visual of a search bar with a search term already filled in. People are urged to perform the search, either immediately on their phone or later on their computer.
If the terms are chosen properly and th proper search engine marketing accompany the effort, the approach just may work. There's only so much a single ad can convey but an ad they points people to a place where endless information can be conveyed would appear to be an effective approach.
Deep Focus gets behind the last hurrah for Ze Frank's The Show, which, after exactly a year in the running, airs its last episode on March 17 via Blip.tv, a video-sharing site. Dewar's is sponsoring their last week and the first two months of their archives.
The Show is an eclectic little vlog in which host Ze Frank talks politics and technology, and occasionally orhestrates projects, with his audience of "sports racers." We weren't big watchers but we enjoyed the humour and will be bummed to see it exit stage left.
For those who missed the bus, the show will be syndicated on iTunes.
A good illustration clarifies language or, properly rendered, can even replace words altogether. There's so much to be learned from a picture.
That's why we're so confused by this banner ad for AOL's PC protection solution.
So we've got three interconnected beads sliding out of this deeply concentric woman's head: a sludge splatter, Nancy Drew (or is it Carmen Sandiego? The plot thickens) and a signal tower. We're thinking radiation. We're thinking conspiracy. We're thinking female Dick Tracey chases down menacing toxic blob whose sending ear-splitting signals are reverberating across the sleepy town of Conglomoville.
We're thinking AOL should really have run this by a couple more people without the text.
In an effort to define its Hooters Casino Hotel as a destination for women and not just cleavage-ogling men, the Vegas casino has launched a new Advanced Results Marketing-created television campaign to convince women Hooters is female-friendly. Something's just not right about this. A couple on vacation in a hotel that is served by big breasted women in tight clothing is just a recipe for disaster. The guy half of the couple will suffer the wrath of his other half for his uncontrollable glimpses of the bouncing flesh passing by. The female half of the couple will suffer all manner of emotional inadequacy comparing herself to the unattainable perfectness of Hooters waitresses. The couple will leave after a big argument and never come back.
It might be wiser to just leave well enough alone. We can't imagine there being anything more annoying for a woman than to endure a couple days watching her man's tongue fall out of his mouth over and over again when his full attention should be on her. Oh, we over analyze. We're sure it'll be fun for all. But, ladies, youo might want to keep your man on a short leash.
More often than not the big media cat-chase for the elusive hot viral comes up short. This could be for a ton of reasons - the ideas are too contrived or simply out of touch with the demo.
LA-based Feed Company put together Social Video 101: a Primer, an example-ridden tutorial on why some Youtube "virals" work and others don't. Will your video start a conversation? Is it funny? Is it sexy? Is it something you'd share with your friends?
"Viral is video that you're prepared to share with your friends," says CEO Josh Felser of Grouper. "If you're not prepared to share it with your friends, it's not viral video."
We'd like to say this sounds like mostly common sense. The unfortunate truth is if it were, major media entities would be more successful than they have been, and to be fair they're getting better.
That's not to say we don't still have a lot to learn from the unlikely geniuses of Smosh, whose Pokemon theme song generated a bewildering wildfire fanbase. And when you've figured out why, you'll probably be holding the key to the secret of life.
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