Viral Effort Says 'Save The Text Save The Words'
There's an Italian viral effort floating around called Save the Text Save the Words. Could it be a promotion for Heroes? We have no idea. There's a video on YouTube that features a guy named H725 who claims to be from the year 2059 and says text and all written words have disappeared. He's returned to ask our help in saving the text which he says began to disappear this September 27. He says a person or organization he refers to as Bright.ly started it all and he's returned to hunt the entity down and eliminate it.
H725 returned from the future with a screen-like device that allows him to show the progression of words disappearing. He uses the device in the video to show the missing letters of words. One commenter to the original post on the campaign's (well, what else are we gonna call it?) blog posits its got to do with advertisers usurping language and even mentions the Mike Judge film Idiocracy in which the future has been completely dumbed down by technology and the erosion of culture. Whether or not that has anything to do with this we know not.
There's an interesting link of the top left of the blog that takes you to a page that displays a Times Square-like image and if you hold your mouse down over the picture, you will see the words disappear.
The tipster who sent this in to us thinks it might be from a telephone or monitor maker. We're not feeling that. The Save the Text Save the Words site is registered to a freelance producer in Italy by the name of Marco Gianstefani. Whether or not that has anything to do with this we know not.
The effort also includes a Flickr page on which images with missing text can be found. And, oddly, when clicking the link on the blog to get the the Flickr page the url in the browser remains savethetextsavethewords.com. Very interestingly, the Flickr page has a photo pool that encourages people to find and upload images that include text. Maybe Flickr is trying to boost usage and increase membership?
Flickr promo? Movie promo? Heroes promo? TV or computer monitor maker promo? Specialty glass maker? We're not sure but we have a feeling by September 27 all will be known. Whatever it is, it's weird.
Hmm. Bright. Text. Words. Gotta be some sort of new high tech monitor that reduces glare an makes it easier to see words on the screen. Or something like that. Or nothing like that at all. OK. We're done. We're tired of this.
UPDATE; Yeesh. It's just another Joost. Or at least that's all I can get out of the new, cryptic web presentation.
Comments
Kucinich2008 is a friend on the YouTube page. 'Heroes' fan? Intrigued observer? Or perhaps it has something to do with literacy and education. Ok, you got me. I'll play along. I'm in advertising, how can I not?
This is great. Looks like a promo to push SMS to me. Virgin?
You seen this yet?
http://www.savethetextsavethewords.com/immagini/futurglass.html
Save the text save the words campaign is over... now http://www.bright.ly is online and it's all more clear!
I'm still confused. Are you an agency that will take advantage of new technologies or are you a technology vendor that will enable this v-internet video thing you talk about. So which is it or is it neither?
Hello Steve, i'm not directly part of Bright.ly team, although i like the project.
I have worked as consultant for Save the text save the word campaing.