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« Friday « June 26, 2009
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Digital: Get-Rich-Quick Ads Steal Google's Brand Equity
(Advertising Age)
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In a world of double-digit unemployment and old-line industries in mid-collapse, here's a sales pitch tailor-made for the times: Get Paid by Google.When you create systems that are almost totally automated, lots of well-meaning customers are going to do very well by using your system the right way, and so will scammers, spammers, and con men. But the online and search advertising industries are fundamentally flawed to begin with: generally they're based on traffic, which can be artificially generated in dozens of illegitimate ways. These industries invite all sorts of criminally-minded cretins who are extremely good at inventing ways to game the systems. Why? Because that's where the money is. At the same time, I have to note that this article appears in AdAge, one of the last bastions of the old advertising world, you know the one that's dying a slow death by millions of digital paper cuts, because they can't do things like provide their clients with the campaign analytics that a firm like Google can. Everyone wants to measure the effectiveness of their ads, but few can provide the numbers like Google and other online ad firms. It's not surprising that you'll find an anti-Google piece, here. Google is one of the biggest advertising operations on the planet today, but they don't even need to talk to AdAge, and they probably don't give two squirts about what AdAge thinks. Ha!
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« Saturday « June 20, 2009
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Squatters Own 80% of Twitter
(ShoeMoney blog)
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Quote: "[P]eople are blaming SEOs for this spamming twitter. I think they have the wrong angle one this. These accounts are not spamming. [T]hese accounts are just sitting idle. And have been idle for a long time."I'd agree. No one knows what to do with Twitter, but people want make sure they don't miss the big money boat, if it comes along, so those kinds of folks are essentially trying to lock up names.
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« Monday « June 8, 2009
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UP: Review (4.9/5)
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I don't use this word often, but UP was a delightful little film.
If one were to create a film that was the paragon of effective and highly-engaging storytelling, this Pixar gem would be the movie. As far as I'm concerned, in terms of narrative quality, this is about as close to perfect as you can get. A movie is a story told with pictures and sound, and with this instant classic, you get nothing but an entertaining, feel-good treat. When you factor in the sumptuous 3-D visual effects, UP is just, well, delightful. (There I go again.)
And in its near perfection, UP shows that a well-told story can be many things at the same time. It is:
- A love story
- An adventure tale
- A story about a dog
- A road trip movie
- A story about a boy looking for his father figure
- A buddy picture
- A comedy
- A drama
- A story about heroes
- A story about villains
- A coming of age story
- A getting-old story
...and a few more things too. These days, it's becoming increasingly rare to leave the cineplex feeling like you got your money's worth. UP may be the remedy to all of the bad movies you've suffered through so far in 2009.
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The Hangover: Review (4/5)
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Guy movies about rites passages - like graduating high school or college, winning the big game (and getting the girl), throwing the big party while your parents are gone, or celebrating your final days and hours of freedom as a bachelor, are common Hollywood fodder. And in that commonality there's nothing but stale formula for telling the same stories over and over and over again. The faces change, but the stories remains the same.
While I've grown to love flicks like Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Risky Business, and Bachelor Party, I've yet to see these kinds of stories retold in fresher ways in recent memory. Until this weekend. Somewhere between the puerile aesthetics of Superbad and the slightly more mature nuances of Sideways, we need to make room for The Hangover, a shot in the arm for guy movies.
It's a hilarious romp that doesn't take itself too seriously, and effectively succeeds at its simple goal: tell the story of a groom-to-be and his three friends as they paint Las Vegas red for his bachelor party. The innovation here - and yes, it's a gimmick, but it's a gimmick that works - is that the story is revealed as a comic detective caper. The four guys lift shotglasses of Jagermeister and toast the start of the bachelor party and get started ...and then we fade to black. In the next scene, three of the guys wake up in their trashed Vegas suite, with raging hangovers, and the fourth guy, the groom, is missing. The rest of the film becomes a hilarious odyssey as they try figure out what happened to their friend, and get him to the church on time, in less than 48 hours. It is a clever gimmick that gives the film a lot of energy: instead of going through another wild party, which we've seen before, we go on a journey with the guys as they piece together the night they experienced. There's nothing but laughter all along the way.
The Hangover is definitely worth the price of admission.
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« Monday « June 1, 2009
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LeBron leaves: a global icon's first mistake
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So LeBron James and his Cleveland Cavaliers team didn't get to the NBA finals this season, after much hype. Well, that's how it goes in sports. Win some. Lose some. Apparently, James was so miffed by the defeat that he left the floor without shaking the hands of his opponents, most significantly Dwight "Superman" Howard, another fast-rising star in the NBA's firmament. But he did even worse than that, he left the arena, skipping the league-mandated post-game press conference. Big mistake, especially for someone who's openly stated that he wants to become a "global icon" and the sporting world's first billion-dollar athlete. Stating the obvious, you have to take the losses graciously, because we all know, if he had won the game, he would have been there at the presser, front and center, flashing that billion-dollar smile and taking all of the questions. We'd all be witnesses to that. He'll turn 24 later this year, so he can be forgiven for this youthful mistake. As far as young athletes go, this gaffe pales in comparison to other things we've seen before. But if he's going to be the leader and corporate entity that he aspires to be, he's going to have to stick around, even when the chips are down and he's out of the money. His nickname is King James, but on Saturday night, he acted like more a pauper and a sore loser.
Related: James frustrated after Game 6 loss (ESPN.com)
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