In the wake of various television networks' inability to deal with YouTube, The Onion had some fun things to say about Viacom's thoughts on YouTube "stealing" its viewers.
TVNewser points to a CNN item detailing how Jeff Koinange, an Africa correspondent, was robbed outside of CNN's Johannesburg offices this weekend. [via Netscape]
Sometimes it kind of bugs me that I link to the free articles in the WSJ so much, but maybe it shows how valuable of a publication that newspaper is. In any case, here's the latest. Sarah Ellison and Dennis Berman have the lowdown on what is up with Tribune Co., and they inform that the company might not get sold to an outside bidder after all, and is looking to put the sand back in its own sandbox.
All in all, that isn't to say that nothing will be broken out, as the Journal reports that some portions, including broadcast, could be "spun off" to enable focused management of the print division. For Tribune's sake, that will hopefully include its long-term Internet and mobile interests, because we know how profitable print can be these days.
I was too lazy to source it myself so I Googled it, okay!
Taking a page out of the slacker handbook this week is apparently The Australian's Frank Devine, who finds that sources are much more easy to get quotes from when you just Google the topic you are looking for, make a few key changes to the exact quotations and information that someone else acquired, and print them in your own article. Some people say that journalists are getting information and topics to write about from blogs, and I don't doubt it, since it works most of the time in the other direction - but I think this is just a bit silly. What follows below comes to me via a colleague of mine, who figured it was right up my alley and thought it wise that more people are made aware of it.
Way back on January 19, Arabisto.com contributor Rima Abdelkader published this item entitled "FOX TV Show '24' Angers Arab/Muslim Fans in the United States and Abroad," featuring comments from New York-based law student and Arab-American Sawsan Zaky, who expressed horror towards FOX's hit show because of how it showed Muslims in America - and that's just part of the quality story that Abdelkader had put together. Here's where Devine fits in. Seems that he thought the same about the work from the Arabisto site, and used slightly altered quotes in this commentary, published on Feburary 2 under the hed of "There's no villainy in reflecting the truth about terrorists." It seems that Sawsan Zaky is either the most quoted person from the Arab-American community when it comes to 24, or his quote is just really really good and it's no big deal if we tweak a few words here and there. Devine also did a really good job of sourcing information about Dr. Jack Shaheen, who told Abdelkader about his research on film and television and its portrayal of Muslims - but never spoke with the Australian staffer.
As it turns out, Crikey's Jane Nethercote was able to get in touch with Devine, something that the folks at Arabisto unfortunately weren't able to do when they wrote about how this all went down, in an item by Nadia Gergis on Feburary 2. Devine apparently told Crikey that he found Abdelkader's item in Google, and used it "as a reference" because it was "among the more up to date." How quaint.
In my eyes, this is just as lazy as people who use Wikipedia as a flat out source, rather than a strong starting point that has excellent links to original, [we hope] reputable sources of information. I mean, if you read it on the Internet, it must be true, right? Frank Devine may be penning under the world of being a columnist, but after being editor at the Chicago Sun-Times and executive editor of the New York Posttwo decades ago, you'd think he would know better. It's not so hard to say "In fact, one outspoken blogger found out firsthand from Arab-Americans in the New York City area that..." in your column, now is it?
Another tsk, tsk is the least of Frank Devine's worries at this point, and I seriously hope that I've done my part to spread this story on this side of the globe.
Chris Thilk just pinged me to let me know about Nikki Finke's post about how Cartoon Network boss Jim Samples has walked the plank after the whole Mooninites / Boston / Adult Swim ish.
As Portland Press Herald staffer Justin Ellis quotes local graphic designer Sean Wilkinson as saying, "I think we should give our government officials courses in pop culture instead of letting them go home and watch Tivo'd "Mad Money" and "Hannity and Colmes" all night." Seriously. Not that I'm condoning obnoxious behavior by businesses, but the fact that this signage was all over other major cities for like a week kind of says something.
Steve Hall @ Adrants does the still RSS and permalink-less Matt Drudge (could anyone else have become more irrelevant to the bloggerati?) one better and prints, permanently, Samples' resignation letter, or what we believe it is, at least.
[ed: in IM, Thilk says that "This isn't so much falling on a sword as falling on the Lite Brite." Props to Hasbro for making that comment possible]
and you had Seth Godin blog Super Bowl ads because...
I'm not sure I need to say much more. I was just over at the incredibly annoying to read superadfreak blog featuring a host of top marketing folks, and it seems that Seth Godin had so much to say that he just couldn't contain himself, and quit at 9pm after four "updates."
I'm sorry, but didn't we know that this was the sort of thing that Seth Godin would say in the first place? What was the point of doing that exercise? I'm not trying to be rude towards Seth at all, trust me. I'm just curious as to whether we couldn't have just paid attention to what Seth had to say on his own blog in the morning.
Anyway. Back to the annoying part. Was it so hard to have people have individual posts for their "updates" rather than one update every so often to each of their individual first posts? I don't want to have to keep looking at a refresh of when so-and-so updated last, I want to see the thread on a blog, naturally, not like something else that is happening to fit into a blog. C'mon, guys. Tim Nudd and the rest of the adfreak crew know better than that, so what happened?
As I see the ads, I keep finding more and more favorites, including a really good spot, "Happiness Factory," from Coca-Cola.
The ad really speaks for itself, but it looks to "take away" a little of the mystery as to what goes on inside a Coca-Cola machine once you insert your money and the bottle is working its way down to the slot. Obviously it's all animated, and we'll probably all spend hours upon hours trying to take apart what went on in there, because it's really done well, and is "celebratory" about what goes into every single Coca-Cola, a product which is produced on such a huge scale. The part that made me laugh out loud: when they assassinated the snowman and threw him into the grinder to create a bunch of snow blown through a fan at the bottle as it made its way out of the "factory." Three cheers from me.
So far, I'm very much enjoying CareerBuilder's spots, after the company chose to ditch the chipmanzees it had been featuring as "monkeys" in spots for awhile now. Comparing the business world to the "office jungle" is really smart, and the second spot that has run, "Promotion Pit" (you can see it as part of the series here) is just flat out hysterical. Aside from the whole "Lord of the Flies" concept that is in play here, the guy completely covered in stickynotes just slayed me.
Prince's sheet malfunction or we're just looking for something?
Okay, so the first time I saw Prince behind the sheet working his guitar, I didn't really notice anything out of line. Needless to say, what happened was enough to draw a phone call from my pal Cheryll to see if I had noticed anything particular about how he was doing that particular working of the guitar.
I mean, I'm sure he wasn't trying to be at all phallic with the axe or anything (well, it is Prince...), but I'll be surprised to not have something land in my inbox about this particular story. What do you think? Are we just looking for obnoxious things at this point?
After catching Angela Natividad's take on the GM spot featuring the suicidal robot who had a bad dream the night before, my thoughts have completely changed from moments ago when I gave Chevy and GM credit for the creativity behind it. Aside from the fact that it's probably a big deal to take a step to show a robot being "fired" from an auto assembly line, it was a great way to execute the need for quality, across the board, and that even the robots were "scared" about making sure it was always achieved.
You can see the spot here at the GM.com site, and it hasn't come up yet on IFILM that I can tell.
But what killed me was what Angela had linked to, which was this "promo" on YouTube:
Which, when you click on the link for the "user," robot2407, you'll land on this profile for, what appears to be, the robot who had a bit of a bad dream in the spot we saw during the game. I must have missed Steve's post about this from Friday while I was traveling out in St. Louis, because I would have absolutely slaughtered this the first time I mentioned it. I mean, the robot has this blog, which is like flat out empty, sans some repetitive posts. GM, please, tell us this wasn't you that did all of this? Pretty please? I won't go nuts on it too much at this point, as a few other people already have, including my pal Josh Hallett, who asks if it's a fake blog or not. Amusingly, this blogger gave GM credit for using YouTube, which I would agree with, too, if it didn't begin to look like GM was behind the blog as well.
If you happen to be searching out IFILM and wondering why the links on the ifilm.com/superbowl link (which is on the front page, btw) aren't updating with new ads, it seems they're having a publishing glitch, at least as far as I can tell. You can see the ads showing up more regularly here or by clicking on "Video Blog" underneath "2007 Super Bowl Ads" on that ifilm.com/superbowl page.
Ford and Chevrolet have taken two different tacks to advertising so far in the Super Bowl, with Ford focusing on the qualities of its F-Series trucks, and Chevrolet focusing on who the people are who love the cars.
Ford's ad, here:
I like the "split up" vehicle, all over the place, that is supposed to evoke a sort of respect for all the parts - moving or otherwise - that make up an F-Series truck. Considering the company is looking for the way forward (political comments aside), I think it's smart of them, fiscal responsibility and otherwise, that they ran something that wasn't goofy or out there. The only other thing I could have seen Ford doing at an event like this is leveraging its NASCAR interests to put together a big spot.
Moving over to Chevrolet, on the other hand, who focused on people - famous or otherwise - who like their Chevrolets, or at least drive them for sport. We're shown Mary J. Blige to open, Dale Earnhardt, Jr. to close, and a bevy of people in the middle, my favorite of which was rapper T.I. Check it out here:
Whatever that has to say about those two companies (though Chevrolet might have gotten some points back a little while later with an awesome spot featuring a robot from the assembly line, but we'll discuss that when we get to that point), you can definitely see that there at least appears to be some business focus or thought going into the advertising concept, rather than simply dropping more than two million bucks in CBS' bucket.
I'm actually a really big fan of how Toyota handled its "Tundra Stops on a Dime" advertisement this game. Considering the silliness of some of the other commercials in Toyota's stable of ads for its trucks, such as this one featuring the Loch Ness Monster spitting out a Tundra, you wouldn't think they would do something quite so truly product-savvy.
While that ad campaign features meteors hitting the truck and it surviving, among other things, this one did use some obnoxious behavior, but in a well-done way that showed the truck handling a serious bit of acceleration, not being squashed in a pair of giant closing doors and then stopping before falling into a canyon. Note: "Actual Demonstration" in the first two seconds of the ad. Aside from the fact that I had bad memories of the giant walls that closed to separate my high school gym into two gyms from one giant one, I thought it was pretty slick.
I'm also imagining that that spot would have looked absolutely awesome in high definition on a giant screen.
So while Chevrolet has tried to focus on the people and quality behind its products so far, and Ford has given us feature and product-specific info on its F-Series trucks, Toyota has done a little bit of quality and feature, while adding in some Hollywood fun to improve on the whole thing. It's not enough that Toyota is getting huge as far as autos sold in the U.S. and will be part of the Nextel Cup Series in NASCAR this season after a few years on the Craftsman Truck circuit, but now they're making serious headway into the advertising ballgame as well.
Phil Simms just made what has to be the best comment of the game so far when pointing out David Spade and the cast of CBS' "Rules of Engagement" sitting out in the rain at the Super Bowl, that if the "show was already a hit, they'd be in a suite."
I have got to say I *so* agree with Bob Sassone's comments about SalesGenie.com's advertisement in the first quarter. He asks if it's effective if people go to the site, and I guess technically he's right in saying that yes it is, but not if we're all going there to link to it and say how disastrous it was.
If you noticed, late in the pregame show, SalesGenie.com was placed strategically on the screens behind the CBS football crew, which means they dropped some serious coin on this particular game. If you want my opinion, they should probably stick to doing their jobs and maybe running an infomercial or two, because that was just embarrassing. Conceptually, it felt dorky and made me wonder if it was going to lead to something for hair regrowth or would be a total spoof of something.
Check out the early part of the spot, and the promo SalesGenie.com is running, here, or watch it below. And by the way, why would you have something like "forward to your mother-in-law" on your site? What, so people could torture their mothers-in-law, if they're not in sales?
Snickers has so far unleashed what I'm finding as the funniest spot of the Super Bowl so far, "Mechanics." It features two mechanics working under the hood of a car, and when one unwraps a Snickers and has it hanging out of his mouth, the other one leans over and starts eating the other end, "Lady & The Tramp"-style, when they just "accidentally" kiss. At that time, they decide they have to do something manly due to their situation. Now, you can vote on something that you think is the best ending - "chest hair," or three others. Whichever is chosen will be shown when Snickers runs its next spot during this year's Daytona 500 on FOX.
In case you're looking for it, here's the list of expected ads, their durations, and expected locations during the game, sorted by company. Earlier, GoDaddy updated people by letting them know that one of its spots had moved slightly in the sixth break, and will be shown later on in the game as well.
Something that is a common thread you'll see across the 'net, whether it be what bloggers are doing or content providers, portals, etc. are putting forth is rating the advertisements. AOL has its ad poll, YouTube is holding its "Supervote voting, USA Today's ad meter is well known as the "rule" that a lot of people follow in the coming days. What you'll notice this year is that it isn't as much of the individual being forced to get caps of the ads up on their own, like it was two years ago - on AdJab in 2005, that's what we ended up doing - but more and more advertisers, if not all of them, are making ads available in decent resolution to outside partners as well as their own sites. The site I'm the most critical of, honestly, is GoDaddy, which has people putting in security codes to view the ad. I know that probably helps them with measurement and whatnot, but it's annoying, kind of like trying to read Bob Parsons' blog. I don't want to have to click into every single post to read more than one line of text. Come on. Think you're progressive? No, you're growing pageviews.
But, back to business. AOL, looking to incent people - not just its traditional user base - to take part in the Ad Poll, has teamed up with Publisher's Clearing House, which is one of the official sponsors for this year's poll. Fans who vote on the spots will be able to register to win a $5,000 prize, and all entrants will also be entered to win PCH's $10 million sweepstakes that will be announced on Feburary 28, 2007.
Well, with AdJab having bit the bullet, and some of the folks from Weblogs, Inc. blogging some ads over at TV Squad, along with some other folks deciding they needed to get in the game, years after the rest of us found out that it was a great experience, I think I'm going to drop dime on my thoughts on the Super Bowl ads here on TMD, since this has always been the go-to place for the most part for big topic things that I'm thinking about. So keep your eyes peeled. I won't be writing everything up, some for conflict of interest reasons for work, and others because I actually want to watch the Super Bowl this year, which I haven't done for the most part for the last few years - and with good reason. So, without further ad, keep an eye out here.
Hey there, all. Just wanted to make a quick note to any of you who happened to show up here after reading about the demise of AdJab at Weblogs, Inc. / AOL. I'm sure I'll have more comments on this situation later on, but haven't digested the whole situation as of yet so I'd rather not get into it publicly at the moment, but let's just say that obviously Chris, myself, and the rest of the team weren't exactly psyched about it. I think that there are quite a few factors involved, and none of them, at least IMHO, have anything to do with the quality, quantity, or abilities of those involved from a writing perspective, based on how I know people reacted to the site as a whole.
In any case, I know I've been a big slacker on this blog and over at OTD, and really want to do something exciting with my original personal blog from back in the day, too, but have been *so* busy with work at MWW Group that time just hasn't been there like it used to, unfortunately. That said, what I think I'm going to make a conscious decision to do, though, is bring a lot of what I used to bring to the advertising table over here to TMD. That's not to say that I'm going to liveblog the Super Bowl advertisements, because frankly you completely miss the game if you try doing it as a duo, but you know the drill. At the same time, I think it's curious to have spent enough time blogging in a "professional" manner now as opposed to the personalness of it all that I had been a part of since 2000 in one way, shape, or form, and see how the business has evolved for a lot of people, and how some of the things I did three years ago are (or aren't) relevant anymore, and in a big way.
So, thanks for dropping by and I'll work on doing more than just keeping the lights on for you. In addition, keep your eyes on what's going on over at Baristanet, as there are some surprises that are coming your way that I'm involved with professionally, and more will come out soon on that note.
So, I'm sitting in Newark Airport waiting for my flight to St. Louis this morning, and giving Verizon's Broadband Access a whirl. I know a lot of folks who've used it in the past, and I wasn't sure if I'd be a fan or not, but I've got to say that it's pretty much as fast as the WiFi is, at least in this airport, and I really kind of like the option that if I were sitting in a car heading to or from the airport, that I could still be connected. Will write more later with any other feedback I have.
Otherwise, looking forward to seeing how absurdly cold it is going to be in St. Louis, but I'm guessing it'll be pretty much just like what we've got right now in NJ. More soon!
