Yesterday I posted a movie and some commentary on the ethics of manipulating photos. Now there is a viral video from diet.com talking about the same thing, but with a diet and body image slant.
I haven’t actually listened to the whole thing, as I am supposed to be working. Some of the tricks remind me of some things that I saw on the ‘Watch Us Lose’ table on the front page of Kimkins over the last year or so. Of course some of Heidi’s pictures needed nothing more complicated than a slight vertical stretch to help recreate past weight loss success.
I have actually taken a course in Teaching English as a Foreign Language. I chose my title based on my experience. People who are learning English as adults generally love idioms. This post is mostly a shout out to a school with a very cool advertising campaign. I first saw this video on something called The Pop Culture Translator. This thing is a promotional tool for the Canadian College of English Language.
I was just checking out one of many online businesses that claim to operate on Christian principles. I am skeptical but respectful of this practice. Basically, I consider it a branding decision and the degree to which it is ethical is entirely dependent on how well they follow through with that promise. Actual churches don’t always measure up, so it is highly probable that many ‘Christian’ businesses register fairly high on the hypocrisy meter.
This particular Christian business seemed okay and what caught my eye was that they felt it was necessary to have a front page disclaimer related to advertising. The most prominent advertising was coming from Google.
Many webmasters and bloggers put contextual ads on their sites and take a buyer beware approach. These ads are so ubiquitous that we tend to feel zero responsibility for their content. Maybe we are wrong.
Actually, I don’t have one for this blog. I just noticed that the site is down because of an electrical fire where its server are housed.
Yesterday, I was helping to hook the printer up to my son’s PC because he had a big project to print off. I had just started the BBQ 10 minutes before that and my son chose the exact right moment to say that he smelled something burning.
I was obsessing about politics and I saw some derogatory term that I didn’t understand. I went over to the urban dictionary. None of the ‘definitions’ for my term were remotely plausible, darn kids.
The image above has been transformed for the purposes of satire (I put the text version of air quotes in all by myself).
Scientology is paying for advertisement on YouTube. YouTube is owned by Google. Google has been criticized in the past for its cooperation with China. Tom Cruise pumped money into China while making Mission Impossible III. Supposedly scientology is committed to making human rights a reality around the World. That must be why their most famous member injected $10 million into a totalitarian country that is the most famous human rights abuser.
The music industry has changed a lot as the information age has come to fruition. 25 years ago, this Florida band would not be have music available to everybody on the planet free of charge on Myspace. 25 years ago, you probably would not hear about a band like Megaphone outside of their local market. I say ‘probably’ because there was always that faint hope of getting a major record deal and cashing in/selling out. The silver lining in today’s music industry is the death of the power ballad. Band’s like Megaphone are not being pressured by suits to record a sappy song that makes them feel like cutting off their own air supply. Rock on, dudes.
You can, at your own discretion, buy Megaphone music online.
I used to work for a Fair Trade Coffee company. I think labeling is vitally important to that business because they had to effectively differentiate the product from all the conventional coffee on the shelf. Since part of the branding was environmental responsibility, packaging decisions had to preclude any of the wasteful, gimmicky stuff. When I worked there, they were opting for unlabeled bags from a large domestic manufacturer. They then had a local printer mass produce self adhesive labels in huge quantity and they contracted a workshop that employs mentally disabled people to put labels on bags on a weekly as needed basis.
Labelworldusa.com can make your Wine Label or other label in large quantity. If it makes more sense for you to print your own, they have solutions of various capacities for that as well. They have design services and they know about branding.
I like the idea of insert labels made with FDA approved food safe inks. They allow for more flexibility with your food packaging decisions.
The seven figure sales at Kimkins.com were due in no small part to the favorable coverage in Woman’s World Magazine. This publication has huge circulation, and the print versions will often sit in waiting rooms and salons enjoying months or years of repeated perusal. People seeking to expose the Kimkins fraud did not get very far in trying to convince Woman’s World to make any kind of reversal or apology. We personally received no answers to our questions last year and instead got a cease and desist order. In response to the letter, I made changes to the cover image that I was using to make it arguably transformative. There was no follow up from the magazine. I didn’t send any further correspondence to them. Many, many interested people did.
After a long wait, the magazine has finally apologized in detail, on their website. A print apology is also forthcoming. I thank them for it.
Advertisers spend well over a million dollars to get a 30 second spot on the Superbowl broadcast. That seems crazy, but part of the ROI for these firms is the fact that the ads become a sort of celebrity and reach way beyond to actual television time slot. This year, people will be watching these things on their phones. They will be watching official and also unauthorized uploads of the commercials on YouTube. Here is a sneak peek at one of the ads by Pepsi MAX…
It is a parody of the never gets oldWhat is Love thing from SNL. The video has commentary and behind the scenes stuff as well and features recording artists like Busta Rymes, Missy and LL Cool J. The track used for this commercial is by Enigma Haddaway.
PlayPhone.com has a What is Love ringtone that you can download directly to your phone. Join the herd and put this on your phone to remind people of the Pepsi commercial when they are sitting around the office next week in a sleep deprived stupor. I think songs that are immediately recognizable in the first few bars make the best ringtones. I took a class a while back with a woman who seemed to change her ringtone everyday. Her phone seemed to ring in class every day, too. Thankfully the ring tones were very entertaining. I think people are more forgiving of unexpected ringtone interruptions when they are funny.
Some of the ringtones available from PlayPhone.com are pretty funny. They have PowerPuff Girls ringtones and the Squirrel Boy theme. I am going to think back and try to make a short list of ringtones that I DON’T like. Let’s see, there’s Celine Dion ballads, songbird noises, Star Wars music, old fashioned land line rings, screams and last but not least the sound of a woman’s voice yelling ‘Answer the Damn Phone!!!’
