While statistics are easy to play with and manipulate to suit a particular argument, this video from Did You Know 3.0 offers up some stunning stats.
To the tune of Fat Boy Slim's Right Here Right Now, we are told tidbits such as the top ten in-demand jobs in 2010 did not exist in 2004; by age 28, people will have had 10-14 different jobs; one out of eight couples who married last year met online; if MySpace were a country it'd be the 5th largest; Bermuda has the deepest broadband penetration; the number of text messages sent and received each day exceeds the total population of the planet; the mount of information generated this year will exceed all that was generated of the past 5,000 years; an NTT fiber optic cable is capable of pushing through 2,660 CDs in one second; by 2013 supercomputers will exceed the computational capabilities of the human brain; by 2049, a $1,000 computer will exceed the computational capabilities of the entire human species.
Hmm. So maybe by 2013 contextual advertising will finally become "intelligent" enough to stop placing ads for turpentine next to stories about girls who drank the stuff to induce an abortion?
In an all out effort to accost, uh, make the public aware of its new logo and celebrate the "next generation's" apparent positive outlook for the coming year, Pepsi has unleashed itself upon Times Square with a week-long promotional extravaganza.
This past weekend, Pepsi, with street teams and a Times Square billboard takeover, featured its new Refresh Everything message of hope, optimism and a world made perfect through the rose colored glasses of advertising. A new television commercial, Wordplay, also made its debut.
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On Christmas day, One Laptop Per Child brought back the voice (if not the body) of Yoko Ono's beloved John Lennon.
OLPC's mission is to bring cheap, sturdy laptops to the world's poorest children. So paint your sympathetic face on as a freshly conviction-laden (if nasal) Lennon compares giving a child a laptop to the vision he shared through his music. At the end, the Walrus himself appears, piped in from the great beyond through a kid computer with Shrek ears.
Negroponte ought to learn from his profitable peers. Resuscitating a dead guy -- particularly one whose yearning for peace has been used to sell everything from diapers to ice cream -- never works in your favor, no matter how noble the intentions. In fact, it's about as disturbing as watching a demented technophile play puppeteer with a decomposing marionette.
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Were we to honor an advertising agency for creating the best holiday card of 2008, that distinction would go to Cleveland-based agency Brokaw which we once described as a place which "just drips with wit."
In a nod to the toilet bowl in which the advertising industry now swims, Brokaw created a "holiday card" that's reflective of the harsh economic climate but, at the same time, offers up a ray of hope replete with a wink and a smirk.
While three pieces of popcorn aren't going to solve the industry's woes, we applaud Brokaw's positive spirit and "cost-effective" creativity.
