After attending the Ypulse conference in San Francisco earlier this week, we've come to realize a few things about teens, tweens and the marketers who want them in their back pocket. Sometimes it seems like today's marketers are falling into the same potholes our predecessors did: trying to deconstruct cool, relying too heavily on surveys, and forgetting that before we're marketers, we're consumers. We've been consumers all our lives. That experience is our biggest trump card.
Another thing we don't realize is that generations of kids, teens and adults also fall for the same potholes their predecessors did. What we need to remember is, no matter what age we are, we all suffer from a bit of age elitism.
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OK, OK, we'll write about it. We didn't want to but people keep sending us links. It seems that Dell has, OMG, debuted a line of laptops that, OMG, are multi-colored. So fetch! After all, style is far more important than substance, right? Mother New York has crafted a Flaming Lips intoned commercial which goes all color happy on us with various scenes of people, their favorite colors, their endeavors and their choice of colored laptop. Yup, this is Dell's answer to cool.
The fact no one really cares how gum is made or has any interest in exploring the inside of a gum making plant hasn't deterred Stride gum from providing a detailed look into the bowels of their operation. There's game. There's videos. There's witty foolery. There's a battle of the bands. Us? We just like buying our gum at a regular grocery store and really, really don't want to know what nasty chemicals probably goes into the stuff.
Starbucks Gossip pulls this quote from a BusinessWeek piece: "Once the undisputed king of premium brew, Starbucks is suddenly besieged by tough competitors" - the toughest of which is McDonald's.
McDonald's? That's a far cry from yuppie-ville. Just goes to show that no matter how much care you put into picking the best swatches and prettiest cafe art, in the end you've still got the Golden Arches to reckon with - the dowdy Wal-Mart of fast food.
What, did you think the world was a romantic place?
Need more cynicism in your life? Try some Bill Maher. This season the HBO Store gets big pharma on our asses with a storefront of bottles, creams and tonics of all sizes - branded with celebrity.
Seeking snickers? Swoop some up, right next to the P. Diddy bottles.
What uncannily logical placement. Whenever we need a snicker, it generally helps to find Diddy on TV. He's always doing zany things, like running New York, screaming at divas or standing on top of floats. His antics add froth to our otherwise dull celebrity-consuming lives.
The :30 ad isn't necessarily dead. For an online show called The Burg, Draftfcb, NY and the Lifelong Friendship Society (we have no idea) have put together these series of "hipster tips" ads for the Motorola RIZR.
Smart call on ads that help hipsters. If the RIZR is anything like its vacuous cousins RAZR and Q, it's probably only got looks going for it. But bloody Marys at brunch? That's so Baby Boomer. Don't hipsters drink Fat Tires?
Check the ads out here. The narrator sounds like a senile Christopher Walken, with some Dr. Strangelove thrown in. Hey, strange love can be hip.
While it might have been a bit less than imaginative to begin Mad Men focusing so heavily on the impending doom of tobacco marketers, the AMC debut was quite good in our eyes and illustrates things haven't changed since "the good 'ol days." In an early scene talking with his boss about pitching a Jewish department store account and how it would be nice to have someone Jewish in the pitch, series's star Don Draper, played by Jon Hamm, offers, "you want me to run down to the deli and grab somebody."
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Acknowledging China's recent statement nearly half of pregnant teens met their impregnator online, George Simpson notes several other not so great things about the internet such as Narcicism Gigantus, Video or the "delusional condition leading the infected to believe that their stupid skateboard trick or baby upsetting her food dish or dog farts deserve a worldwide audience." And Infantile Anger Syndrome symptomized by "vitriolic anonymous postings to message boards and community forums using racist or scatological language that, if said out loud in a crowd, would result in enthusiastic resurrection of ancient art of stoning to death."
And our Favorite, Jargonamania (which, unfortunately, has been around well prior to the internet), defined as "an attempt to hide lack of knowledge by using words that everyone else does even if you aren't exactly sure what they mean, such as "long tail," "granular," "monetize," and, god forbid, "engagement." Check them all out here. You will be guilty of at least three.
Usually we think it's really cool when an ad appropriates some every day object to deliver its message, but in the case of coffee and steaming manholes, the collaboration is less than savory.
The text on this one-year-old Folger's ad reads, "Hey, City That Never Sleeps. Wake up. Folgers."
Dude, can you imagine walking over that manhole and going, "WTF is that damp dirty mist that's just accosted me? Oh wow, it is a giant cup of Folger's coffee." The very thought drives us straight into the arms of Starbucks.
Well, no, not even. Maybe Jamba Juice. The thought of coffee a la manhole just puts us off the whole idea.
[Ed: Pardon this story. Our co-Editor just woke up from a year long nap and forgot to restart her RSS reader. She was roundly chastised in our daily coffee klatch this morning and she promises not to nap so long ever again.]
There's always that queezy feeling when you reach for the bar of soap in the shower and it's got hair on it that isn't yours. Wieden + Kennedy has exploited that fear in a new commercial or Old Spice which offers up an alternative to hairy soap. See it here.
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