Radar Waves

uh oh: yahoo ad insertion sftwr fails to catch tasteless juxtaposition

Catching up on my boingboing (been busy finishing the dissertation and moderating a panel at the millenials conference). came across a creepy item about a real-life andromeda strain scenario, in which peruvians near a recent meteor strike came down with a strange illness - perfect for my not-so-unique combination of technogeekery, hypochondria, and paranoid dystopian apocalyptic visions.

so i checked out the article on yahoo! news, and was astonished to see the netflix ad inserted into the page, which overpowers the actual (boring) photo that accompanies the story. in the netflix ad, ghoulish, decomposed faces grin and snarl menacingly from the frame. they look exactly like they've been hit with an interstellar flesh-eating zombie virus.

maybe there should be some editorial oversight over ad placement, after all...

Lucas sees the light(saber) -- allows Star Wars mash-ups

George Lucas, the man who screamed like a wounded wookie when the Phantom Edit first introduced JarJar-free prequelosity to millions of online nerds, has come around, kind of.

Lucasfilm, which is in the middle of a hype cycle centered around the original film's thirtieth birthday extravaganza, has announced that this time around, fans are being invited to mash-up, remix, and even eff with the official storyline and timeline, using 250 officially sanctioned video clips from all six feature-length films. They're partnering with online video editing site Eyespot.com to do it, which should provide Web 2.0 legitimacy to the plan, plus a huge boost in subscriber numbers for the video site.

Of course, Lucas isn't exactly uploading the master keys to the Death Star; for one thing, Eyespot will use some kind of pattern recognition software to censor out any user-generated clips that contain "nudity, pornography, and the like" (seems like a pretty conveniently broad stricture). Also, remixers will have zero stake in their work; Eyespot and Lucasfilm will divvy up the proceeds from streaming advertisements served to viewers. And don't even think about the possibility of either the source materials or the products being released under a Creative Commons license...

...But all in all, we like this. We are happy. We might even make an all-Jar-Jar-all-the-time edit, if it's not deemed obscene.

Mash-ups... They're not just for kids any more!

YouTube star and octogenarian sweetheart Sue Teller has posted a "how-to" video for making musical mash-ups. We're not sure what to make of this; has configurable culture gone from bleeding-edge to the granny set without passing Go or collecting $200? Or is Mrs. Teller simply living proof that when change happens, it happens in beautiful and unpredictable ways? Either way, we're delighted to finally hear "Flight of the Bumblebee" with a hip-hop backbeat -- the way it was meant to be heard.

Our only beef with the video: there's a conspicuously open laptop next to her turntables, but she doesn't seem to be using it to generate any sounds...

BTW, there's good reason to believe this is stealth marketing by Pepsico for the Mountain Dew brand. If so, we applaud it all the more.

Junk Food Ads Spoil Kids'...Minds

It sems like every few years a group of concerned parents or (as in the case) doctors, send out the call to restrict children's advertising on television.  So far, the industry has (barely) self-regulated, and this will likely continue, despite congressional turnover next month. in this latest call for regulation: "The group is demanding that TV ads on kids' shows be halved and that junk-food ads be banned during shows viewed predominately by those under age 8. It is also requesting that alcohol ads be limited to product pictures and text and erectile-dysfunction ads be limited to after 10 p.m." ok, childhood obesity and its attendant health problems are reaching epidemic proportions - one that directly impacts the work of pediatricians. I'm not sure I personally agree with the limitations on alcohol and erectile dysfunction ads and its tougher to understand the impact these ads have on children's health - it starts to veer uncomfortably close to censorship. What seems to be missing from this latest round is any recognition on the impact of product placement in TV that is not specifically targeted towards children but is immensely popular with them. case in point: American Idol. I defy you to find a child dedicated to that show who can't immediately identify the 3 major sponsors. If the purpose of the proposal was not to directly affect policy but to increase the discourse around children's advertising (as I suspect it was), then the American Academy of Pediatrics has sorely missed a critical issue.

Bluths move to a new model home: MSN Video

How did the folks at Google lose this bidding war? Our favorite prematurely canceled television show, Arrested Development, has been revived -- sort of. In a (probably fruitless) effort to compete with GooTube, MSN Video has acquired the rights to distribute the show online, to showcase its new-n-improved™  Web video player. The first five episodes are now available, and all 53 will be rolled out within a year.

This is almost as smart an idea as the Zune is stupid. Arrested Development, with its rabid online fan base, is the perfect asset for Microsoft to lure geeky Firefoxers such as ourselves to its IE-only video site. And they seem to be making money, to boot -- each episode is punctuated by two interstitial video ads (a/k/a "commercials"). No skipping allowed. The one I muted was for a Chase credit card.

And I have to give credit where it's due -- unlike many other Web video players (Motherload, anybody?), this thing actually works -- provided you have the latest IE, WMP and Flash plug-ins installed. Once the DRM gets hacked so I can skip the ads, maybe I'll actually use it.

The best holiday ad I've seen so far

As soon as Halloween ends, the holiday season begins (does anyone else remember when it didn't really begin until Black Friday?) the intensity of the marketing push is hard to escape - and its inevitable that many of the ads begin to look exactly the same. its the luxury car commercial syndrome - can you ever really tell one from the other?

that's why its so refreshing to see this ad - unfortunately, its for british brand marks & spencer, so we're unlikely to see the 60sec+ ad on a TV in the US anytime soon. which is a shame, because it so effectively references a couple of trends that are hot right now:

1. bond. james bond. who isn't looking forward to the new bond movie? the ad piggybacks on the current hype without explicitly using any copyrighted bond materials. its an effective homage, without infringement. plus, is that Twiggy or Ernst Stavro Blofeld I see petting a cat in the ad? definitely twiggy.   
2. Recontextualization. by now we're used to the latest starlet/celebutard/PYT covering "classics."  So it feels pretty refreshing to hear Dame Shirley Bassey (yes, she's a Dame now) taking on Pink's "Let's Get this Party Started." M&S should release this as a single immediately. seriously. I would even pay $.99 to download it from itunes.
3. Nostalgia. m&s isn't the first company to evoke a sense of nostalgia to market more effectively. they just do it better - its not always easy to bring on "older" models and still revitalize a brand, but that is exactly what they did when they hired Twiggy last year. and she has a cameo in this ad as well. Too often brands are caught in the always-elusive hunt for youth and glamour. Younger demographics are a moving target, and probably the most fickle marketers have ever had the challenge of pursusing. M&S not only walks the fine line between targeting young consumers and still appealing to their core audience, they plié, twirl and dance across that line.
4. the future. an ice hotel, snow mobiles, the aarnio eerio ball chair: it all adds up to a very stylish vision of the future. and a glamorous one. a really effective visual rendition of the holiday season we haven't really seen before (unless you count superman secret ice palace).

all these elements add up to one of the better holiday ads this season. and of course, all made possibly here in the US by YouTube.

plus, how cute is that white coat in the beginning of the ad? love it.

More good news from the majors

Universal Music today announced the launch of SpiralFrog (WTF?), an online, on-demand music service to launch in December. Normally, I shudder at the thought of labels trying to distribute directly -- both because they're totally inept at it and because the last thing the music industry needs is more vertical integration.

However, in this case, I'm feeling a trifle more sanguine because it's not a retail site -- the model is free and ad-supported.

Clearly there are a lot of caveats here:

• UMG hasn't managed to pull any other majors in yet, and consumers won't bite if they can't get their favorite acts.
• There's no way that advertising can replace retail as a source of revenue for labels or other rightsholders -- the U.S. music biz is just about equal to total U.S. online ad spending, according to the latest figures I've seen. But that's OK -- ad dollars are still better than the big fat zero labels get from radio, P2P, and most other free distribution mechanisms.
  
• Then, there's the iPod problem. Kids won't download anything they can't put on their iPods, and let me tell ya -- Zunes just won't cut it. And the chance of SpiralFrog licensing Fairplay is about as high as the chance of iTunes licensing MagicGate.

Anyway, the caveats are my stock-in-trade, but like I said, I like this anyway. The whole music industry is starting to talk loco -- and I really, really like it. Let's just say that SpiralFrog isn't necessarily promising as a business proposition, but it's extremely encouraging as a sign of the changing strategy and mindset inside the American music industry.

How much did they pay to license that song?

Bad news for all those big brand marketers who have spent millions to secure the rights to add major label music to their TV ad campaigns, in the hopes of riding those sonic coattails.

I just taught the first installment of my USC Annenberg course, "Music as Communication," for the fall semester. One of the ways in which I introduced the course's themes to the students was playing songs for them and asking them to name the product the song advertised on TV. In a class of about 25 college students pre-selected to have an interest in music and communication, here were the results:

• Chemical Brothers - Galvanize (Budweiser): ZERO brand recognition
• Spoon - I Turn My Camera On (Jaguar): ZERO brand recognition
• Kelly Clarkson - Go (Ford): about 1/3 of students in the class

Sheesh. Even I know what the Chemical Brothers song advertises, and I don't even watch TV. In part, these results show the waning influence of television programming and advertising in the media consumption (and production) habits of today's youth. But maybe it also shows that young people's relationship to music is becoming more fluid, complex, and self-determined; the kids know the songs and the brands, they just don't identify the one with the other. Or maybe the commercials just sucked.

Strangest of all -- I played the new R&B hit "Me & U" by Cassie, released about two weeks ago, as part of a different section of the class on genre and race/gender/SES interpellation. Even though the song has yet to be used on television in conjunction with any commercial products (other than Cassie herself), several students in the class immediately identified Cassie's audience as Volkswagon Jetta-driving females.

So in other words, this song which hasn't been used in a TV commercial yet was more successful at evoking a specific make and model than songs which have appeared in car commercials in recent months.

Go figure. VW's agency should definitely get on the stick with this one.

Imposible es nada: Castro wears Adidas

Under-the-weather Cuban dictator Fidel Castro wears Adidas. Karl Marx must be turning in his bargain-brand coffin.

I'll let Marissa weigh in on whether this is good or bad branding -- for either party.

Why does Popeye's need to pimp?

A few weeks ago we looked at sony's misstep in its outdoor advertising in the netherlands, which extended far beyond europe, even prompting condemnation here in California from activists for its racial content. at the time, we predicted an increase in controversial advertising as cultural context simultaneously becomes more AND less important as all advertising becomes global advertising. not sure if this supports our theory, but rudy points us to a local campaign for popeye's (second item) that exploits the 'pimping' mythology of the urban ghetto. the description of the ad almost reads as an SNL-type parody. surely the marketers at popeye's are smarter than this - they aren't so desperately in need of street cred that they need to exploit such a base, misogynist stereotype - are they? as rudy explains:

If fucking Popeye's Chicken is going to make this a normal part of their marketing (will one be able to Pimp-Size their meal? Can I get that lemonade in a chalice? Where is my change bitch?), then something needs to be done about it. Someone raised in a ghetto can reasonably say "where I grew up, we idolized all the hustlers, the pimps, the pushers...they were the ones with the fine cars, fly threads, foxy ladies, and diamond encrusted canes, and that's what we all wanted." Popeye's Chicken, on the other hand, cannot.

Hopefully rudy or some other enterprising person will put this ad online so, like the sony ad, its reach will go global, as well as the (hopefully) resulting shaming of popeyes.