How far is the day when my digital camera has an always-on connection, recognizes the picture I am about to take, compares it to the highest ranked most similar photo in an online photo repository such as Flickr, looks at the EXIF data, and suggests an angle and settings that would produce the best, according to the prevailing social tastes, picture?
For objects and landmarks that are frequently photographed from every possible angle, like the Eiffel Tower, this day can't be too far at all.
Or is there an app for that already?
Cardboard Record Player As Direct Mail Piece
Grey Canada took an obscure ancient device called Cardtalk -- a foldable record player made of cardboard -- and brought it back to life as a direct mail piece for Griffiths Gibson and Ramsay Productions. Jealous? Then head over to our retromedia department, there's still plenty of forgotten goodness left around. May we recommend carboard records on cereal boxes, ad games on vinyl disks, and paper ringtones.
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Technology Behind Wired's iPad Magazine App
Cult of Mac wondered last month about how Wired would be able to pull off its sleek magazine app for iPad built with Adobe Air, which, like Flash, doesn't work on Apple's i-devices.
The answer: with the Adobe CS5's packager that publishes your stuff as native iPhone/iPad apps.
Funny, though. This month's Wired has a cover story about how tablets will change everything featuring this (not family-friendly) quote from Fake Steve Jobs: "Do you really think saving newspapers is just a matter of putting your old crap on a new device? Because from what I can see, The New York Times sucks just as bad on a Kindle as it does on paper. That, in fact, is the real problem with The New York Times: It sucks, and everyone knows it, except, apparently, the dumb fucks who write for The New York Times, which is, oddly enough, the heart of the problem."
My question about all the publications with their lofty plans to replicate and enhance the printed page experience on iPad and other tablets -- who's gonna do it? As in, if you are cutting your headcounts, who is going to produce, lay out, and code all that additional custom-built awesomeness designed for readership that is a fraction of the regular print circulation?
Guess we'll see soon enough.
The answer: with the Adobe CS5's packager that publishes your stuff as native iPhone/iPad apps.
Funny, though. This month's Wired has a cover story about how tablets will change everything featuring this (not family-friendly) quote from Fake Steve Jobs: "Do you really think saving newspapers is just a matter of putting your old crap on a new device? Because from what I can see, The New York Times sucks just as bad on a Kindle as it does on paper. That, in fact, is the real problem with The New York Times: It sucks, and everyone knows it, except, apparently, the dumb fucks who write for The New York Times, which is, oddly enough, the heart of the problem."
My question about all the publications with their lofty plans to replicate and enhance the printed page experience on iPad and other tablets -- who's gonna do it? As in, if you are cutting your headcounts, who is going to produce, lay out, and code all that additional custom-built awesomeness designed for readership that is a fraction of the regular print circulation?
Guess we'll see soon enough.
Spam Serialized
Maybe this is, like, email marketing 101 (and if so, please leave a comment), but the introductory series of four emails American Airlines sends to its new frequent flier members struck me as unusual. Wonder what it does to open rates.
P.S. It wasn't technically spam -- I consciously subscribed for AA's mailings -- but these guys are very prolific writers.
Timing Visibility of Display Ads on a Page
This is pretty nifty. An ad network called World Web Network
Try the demo and see for yourself: it detects when you are below your screen's fold and can't see the banners.
I don't know if this has any real application in ad sales -- it matters little how "visible" the ad is if the average fixation (dwell) time for a banner is about one second --but I see it being useful in page content analysis. Too bad the tech is proprietary.
Correction: The technology was created by Alenty, not WWN who licenses it from the creators.
Nikon: Say Cheese To Zoom In
Nikon has launched a site to showcase the touchscreen on a new Coolpix camera and it lets you scroll and zoom through image galleries by moving fingers in front of your webcam -- a gestural interface of sorts. Only it's a bit wonky (or maybe it's my cam), and if you position your mouth inside the "zoom" circle, you can zoom in by smiling and zoom out by pursing your lips. I bet it's a feature and not a bug, too.
Busted: Another "Consumer-Generated Ad" Myth
Exhale, Madison Avenue. Uninitiated content-generating user masses are yet to create a winning Super Bowl spot.
In its predictable "Do-It-Yourself Super Ads" piece, NY Times writes about the effectiveness of home-brewed Super Bowl spots:
"Be afraid, Madison Avenue. Be very afraid. That seems to be the message in the aftermath of the crowded, frenetic advertising bowl that took place inside Super Bowl XLIV on Sunday. Among those commercials consistently deemed most effective, memorable and talked-about, many were created or suggested by consumers — or produced internally by the sponsors — rather than the work of agency professionals."
Exhibit A: Doritos' "House Rules". Exhibit B: Doritos' "Underdog". According to the paper, both spots did well in a variety of surveys and polls. The obligatory soundbite illustrates the teaching moment: "Consumers seem to know best what other consumers will like to watch in the "unique" ad environment of the Super Bowl."
And they probably do. Only the paper fails to mention that Joshua Svoboda, the 24-year-old guy who reportedly created "Underdog" for $200 and ended up with $600K in prize money works as a creative director. A guy who works with him at 5 Point Productions had won another Doritos' contest in 2007. Which is not to say that the dudes didn't do a great job but, you know, the story would've been that much stronger if it were the other Joshua Svoboda, an electrical engineer.
And the guy who did "House Rules"? He is a "writer, director, producer & editor" in Hollywood.
The two Herbert brothers who won Doritos' "Crash the Super Bowl" contest the year before had been "building their Transit Films business".
The five finalists in 2007 were a short-film director, a musician, the same Herbert brothers, the same 5 Point Productions, and an aspiring filmmaker Billy Federighi who also had won a similar contest by Converse that ran the previous year and who was subsequently contracted by Leo Burnett. (In 2008, the contest ran in a different format with Doritos looking for a music performer.)
The winner of Heinz's 2008 "UGC" contest - a director, producer, photographer and editor. Amazon's 2009 contest winner - a pro photographer (awesome work, too). This list goes on.
There are a lot of things agencies should be worrying about -- like, what happens if clients start budgeting $200 for spot production after reading the Times. Or that there's a lot of great talent outside of the usual ad hubs hungry for a piece of the pie. Or that they aren't hiring these guys as freelancers or contractors. But the whole "random consumers are taking over Mad Ave" myth isn't one of them.
Flashback: in a 2007 story on the same subject, a different Times reporter wrote: "Ad agencies and brand marketers are still doing much of the legwork. Heinz and Doritos spent months planning their user-generated contests, hiring lawyers to vet them and designing advertisements to promote them. Then they assigned employees to wade through entries."
In its predictable "Do-It-Yourself Super Ads" piece, NY Times writes about the effectiveness of home-brewed Super Bowl spots:
"Be afraid, Madison Avenue. Be very afraid. That seems to be the message in the aftermath of the crowded, frenetic advertising bowl that took place inside Super Bowl XLIV on Sunday. Among those commercials consistently deemed most effective, memorable and talked-about, many were created or suggested by consumers — or produced internally by the sponsors — rather than the work of agency professionals."
Exhibit A: Doritos' "House Rules". Exhibit B: Doritos' "Underdog". According to the paper, both spots did well in a variety of surveys and polls. The obligatory soundbite illustrates the teaching moment: "Consumers seem to know best what other consumers will like to watch in the "unique" ad environment of the Super Bowl."
And they probably do. Only the paper fails to mention that Joshua Svoboda, the 24-year-old guy who reportedly created "Underdog" for $200 and ended up with $600K in prize money works as a creative director. A guy who works with him at 5 Point Productions had won another Doritos' contest in 2007. Which is not to say that the dudes didn't do a great job but, you know, the story would've been that much stronger if it were the other Joshua Svoboda, an electrical engineer.
And the guy who did "House Rules"? He is a "writer, director, producer & editor" in Hollywood.
The two Herbert brothers who won Doritos' "Crash the Super Bowl" contest the year before had been "building their Transit Films business".
The five finalists in 2007 were a short-film director, a musician, the same Herbert brothers, the same 5 Point Productions, and an aspiring filmmaker Billy Federighi who also had won a similar contest by Converse that ran the previous year and who was subsequently contracted by Leo Burnett. (In 2008, the contest ran in a different format with Doritos looking for a music performer.)
The winner of Heinz's 2008 "UGC" contest - a director, producer, photographer and editor. Amazon's 2009 contest winner - a pro photographer (awesome work, too). This list goes on.
There are a lot of things agencies should be worrying about -- like, what happens if clients start budgeting $200 for spot production after reading the Times. Or that there's a lot of great talent outside of the usual ad hubs hungry for a piece of the pie. Or that they aren't hiring these guys as freelancers or contractors. But the whole "random consumers are taking over Mad Ave" myth isn't one of them.
Flashback: in a 2007 story on the same subject, a different Times reporter wrote: "Ad agencies and brand marketers are still doing much of the legwork. Heinz and Doritos spent months planning their user-generated contests, hiring lawyers to vet them and designing advertisements to promote them. Then they assigned employees to wade through entries."
An Ad From Hell In Site's Source Code
Hats off to whoever came up with this: an ad for the Dante's Inferno game (launches today) done in ASCII and hidden in Digg's source code. Similar images were also placed on a few other sites. Each ad contains a password; collect all of them and enter them at hellisnigh.com (currently down) for something -- which obviously can't be very good for the humankind -- to happen.
- via, via
Get a Free iPad (or Nine) Here
There's no point in this post other than general amusement, but I saw my first "testers wanted" banner ad today and got inspired to gather screenshots of nine different sites promising a free - FREE! - iPad after you buy a bunch of other stuff. Look, the top one uses a totally fake mock-up of the device (but throws in a FedEx cargo plane).
Jerzify Your Avatarized Self
Too meta. See what your Na'vi Avatar would look like as a cast member of Jersey Shore at Jerzify Yourself.
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