tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-75489168509666231252024-02-08T08:49:12.850-05:00Adverting DisasterKevin Allen Jr. discusses modern advertising, commercial media, the graphic arts, and futurist thinking on how information is communicated.Kevin Allen Jr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02767340327370421229noreply@blogger.comBlogger39125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7548916850966623125.post-58704115618403734022011-09-01T10:09:00.001-04:002011-09-01T10:12:21.940-04:00After The FloodNot everyone gets to be a leader. Apple, Starbucks, western capitalism. These guys are leaders.
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<br />Microsoft used to be a leader, but now it's the butt of the joke, stuck behind the edge, forever catching up, forever imitating, aping the leaders. Same could be said for Motorola, Sega, and printed magazines (that last one stung a little, huh?). Once you've been categorized as an also-ran it's very hard to move your brand out of that category.
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<br />Sometimes there isn't a leader. Sometimes it's a closer race and everyone is neck and neck. In these instances it's almost harder to get ahead, to set yourself out from the pack. Opportunities to rev the engine come rarely and stay fleetingly.
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<br />This week, in the wake of hurricane Irene, someone got ahead: Allstate insurance.
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<br />Disasters are hard on insurance agencies, they have to write checks to a lot of policy holders (no company likes writing checks) and for customers whose damages aren't covered agencies are often forced to present a very negative brand experience. Expensive and ugly. Two words you never want to hear.
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<br />But Allstate really capitalized on Irene, and in an honorable, brand positive way. They pushed their 1-800-54-Storm hotline, a VERY streamlined claim reporting system that doesn't give you the run around or get bogged down with a lot of extraneous automated telephone option branching.
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<br />Additionally Allstate erected trailers and tents in Home Depot parking lots all over storm-affected areas where agents could rapidly file and process claims, report information to customers, and do some brand ambassadorship. Since the rains stopped policy holders have been showing up at these parking lot claims tents with flood-damaged furniture and got immediate person-to-person claim service.
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<br />They got the word out on this remarkable effort by doing a massive radio and cable media buy. People often scoff at radio in this modern socially enabled new media age, but in times of crisis (or just during everyday commutes) people listen to radio ads. And those ads sink in (by it's very nature audio is harder to ignore or "tune out" than tv or print ads). Smart placement on 'round-the-clock news stations insured that the people most concerned with the hurricane (read: it's likely victims) were sure to hear the message.
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<br />So what can other businesses in non-insurance industries learn from Allstate's example:
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<br />1 - plan for the best of the worst. Identify potential or likely future moments in the public perception where your brand can shine. Prepare for those moments, don't wait for them to happen to start designing responses. If you know when people are going to look to your brand you can get ready for your close-up
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<br />2 - commit to bold moves. It would have been easy for Allstate to have done the usual post disaster response. That would have been fine, but we wouldn't be talking about them unless they screwed up. All the work they did took money and careful planning and most difficultly a lot of people saying yes. Big, multi-pronged promotions need a lot of sign offs, it takes approval from "the boss*."
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<br />Your brand needs to be able to pull the trigger on big ideas when the chips are down. Otherwise you face the threat of forever being number two (or worse). Leaders take risks. The path to the winners circle is not an easy one, but if your smart and you plan carefully and your able to make bold moves when it matters most (and of course that's the scariest time to do so) your brand could make invaluable progress.
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<br />*note: in this case, and only in this case, "the boss" does not necessarily refer to Bruce Springsteen.Kevin Allen Jr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02767340327370421229noreply@blogger.com121tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7548916850966623125.post-40473757466517651922011-08-09T11:51:00.000-04:002011-08-09T11:52:01.759-04:00Clarissa Explains Cost-effective Marketing StrategyHey marketing strategists: why sink tons of money into demographic/media-buying research when you can just watch TV and dick around on the the Internet?
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<br />Could it actually be that easy? Can you really learn these very difficult lessons about where to allocate advertising dollars in this complicated modern media landscape by just doing the dumb stuff you do to kill time? Perhaps you can.
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<br />Between July 25th and 26th, for almost 48 solid hours, every trending topic on Twitter referred to the new Teen Nick “The 90’s Are All That” block of nostalgia programming. For those not familiar, think Nick at Nite, but instead of Dick Van Dyke and Leave it to Beaver, it’s the early 90’s shows from Nickelodeon: forgotten classics like Doug, Rocco’s Modern Life, and Legends of the Hidden Temple.
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<br />This unqualified takeover of the Twitter zeitgeist tells us something really interesting: that the people who are tuning into those shows are also very actively using twitter and–one can assume–other social networks as well.
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<br />So what?
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<br />So, if you're interested in attracting the 18-35 year old tech-savvy market, that’s a probably a good station/airtime block to sink some advertising dollars in to. And if you’re already buying time there and you aren’t also leveraging social media, you probably should be, as you can count on your audience being adept and frequent users.
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<br />The abundance and direction of social media in a marketing budget is something that keeps project managers and media strategists up at night. Having some direction like what kind of demographics are actively engaging with brands is the kind of solid gold data those folks pay gobs of money for. Just pay attention to the free indicators that exist in the world, and you might be able to save some of that research cash, freeing it up for bigger, more directed advertising budgets.
<br />Kevin Allen Jr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02767340327370421229noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7548916850966623125.post-28144297886290913592011-07-26T10:00:00.001-04:002011-07-26T10:31:32.937-04:00Closing the Big Box BookWhat if they threw a buyout and no one came? That’s what happened last week to Borders bookstores, and as a result the big box media chain has begun liquidating.<br /><br />Some will look at this event as a sign of the nation’s increasing economic woes, or as an indication of an empire in decline. Others will see this occasion as a symptom of advanced anti-intellectualism in America.<br /><br />I’m not convinced that either of those arguments really hold any water, but they do make for some great fear-mongering. <br /><br />In any free-market economy there are going to be losers and winners. Certainly, it’s startling when a large national retail chain becomes one of the losers, but the path of capitalism is littered with the detritus of fallen brands (Pan Am, Woolworth, Saturn, and Pennsylvania Railroad, to name a few). <br /><br />What does the bankruptcy of Borders say about our culture? I believe that as our people’s basic needs are being met by pervasive, omnipresent national brands, those people increasingly turn to their smaller local communities for specialized needs. <br /><br />The closure of Borders bookstores is indicative of the great wave of the shopping mall–that crested in the late 80’s–finally receding. For nearly the entire history of the world, shopping was a series of encounters with very specialized providers. You needed flour? You went to a mill. You needed meat? You went to Sam the butcher. To our modern eyes it was a drawn-out and exasperating process, but the business model of craftsman-as-sole manufacturer demanded it. In the 19th century, that started to change.* People began ordering unrelated products through catalogs. Eventually department stores were invented, and people started destination shopping--that is, going to one place for all their needs. We were just a short hop at that point from the mall and the death of the boutique.<br /><br />But then the Internet happened, and the whole idea of the “store” got all mucked up.** Anyone could sell anything (or any number of things) to anyone else, anywhere in the world. At first, this was novel and exciting, but eventually it became just another way to shop. We buy our Xmas presents on Amazon, we buy our music from iTunes, and we buy weird knitted garden gnome scarves from Etsy†. The Internet became the destination, and the individual websites were able to go back to the making-and-selling-one-type-of-thing-expertly model. <br /><br />This change in consumer attitude wasn’t the only thing that did in Borders (they bungled a lot, and made some dumb choices that were obviously wrong at the time), but it contributed. It’s something that other companies (or anyone who sells or buys anything) should examine, and see where they fit in in this new-market thinking.<br /><br />*Yeah, there were merchants who traded in a number of goods long before the then, but such variety was a rarefied thing. I say modern shopping happened after the Civil War.<br />**for the better, IMO.<br />†that’s what you use Etsy for too, right?Kevin Allen Jr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02767340327370421229noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7548916850966623125.post-35379094368509142092011-07-05T10:15:00.002-04:002011-07-05T10:19:00.768-04:00The Groupon HustleGroupon is bad for the American economy. <br /><br />Like really, really bad. For lots of reasons.<br /><br />Lately Groupon has been the belle of the ball. Last year the company increased its annual revenue an astounding 2241%. I wish there were uppercase numbers so I could type that figure in all caps. <br /><br />Because it’s important to understand how the big G pulls in all this cash, I’m going to summarize here how Groupon works; if the progressive coupon racket is old hat to you, feel free to skip ahead to the next paragraph. Essentially, Groupon sells coupons for local businesses' products at stupendously deep discounts (40-50% off is commonplace). The rub--and there's always a rub--is that a certain number of people have to purchase the coupon before it becomes valid. So if there's some deal that really interests you, it behooves you to tell all your friends and get them to buy in as well. There is no limit to the number of coupons available. Good deals on popular services in metropolitan areas routinely move thousands of vouchers. Groupon takes a cut of every voucher's sale price, usually around 50%.<br /><br />On the surface, and this of course is the way Groupon frames it, this setup is good for the participating businesses. Groupon has a ginourmous audience, and customers who weren't previously aware of your product will be made aware of it. Groupon is essentially a marketing and promotions engine. But all this comes at a huge cost; not only to the participating businesses, but to the larger economy in general. <br /><br />First and foremost, it’s very hard for businesses to absorb the deep discounts Groupon demands. Businesses often operate at a loss on the products they discount and 50% is a HUGE margin. These businesses are just hoping against hope to create some new trickles of revenue. <br /><br />Next, you have to face the fad factor. Groupon is the hot-shit thing in marketing right now. There is a great deal of peer pressure to be on the service. If you aren’t and your competitors are, what does that say about you to your customers? Honestly, no one is sure. It probably doesn’t say much of anything at all, but very few companies are willing to take that risk. <br /><br />Lastly you have the devaluation problem. When you give your customer a product at 50% off, they come to expect to pay that much for it. When they return to see your normal, non-Grouponed price points, they might feel the products aren’t worth that much. It’s nearly impossible to change a consumer's mind once they’ve decided a product's worth. Groupon devalues the products it promotes, and that’s about the most damaging thing you can do to a brand. <br /><br />The funny thing is, despite all the money Groupon’s taking it at the expense of local businesses, it’s not a very fiscally solvent company. See, for every dollar that Groupon makes, they spent $1.45 to get there. Apparently, having an army of salespeople cold-calling every business in the world takes a lot of up-front investment. Recently they raised nearly a billion dollars in venture capital, but almost that entire amount was sunk into repaying earlier investors. <br /><br />I’m not going to say Groupon is a sinking ship (the rats are still swarming the decks). Nor is it the wrong move for every business using it, but it is overvalued in our cultural mindspace, and at some point in the near future the other shoe is going to drop, and it’s going to be a hell of a thing when it does.Kevin Allen Jr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02767340327370421229noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7548916850966623125.post-30027693115351571832011-06-15T10:36:00.001-04:002011-06-15T10:43:09.615-04:00Anthony Wiener Would Make a Great Dungeon MasterWhen I say “Dungeon Master” I am not referring to any sort of S&M dominance play thing–although I'm not going to discount the representative from New York’s potential in that arena; for all I know he might be great at the job. He’s certainly got the abs for it. No; instead, I am referring to a far more deviant and misunderstood subculture: people who organize and play Dungeons & Dragons (and sundry other role-playing games). <br /><br />As we have all been made painfully aware, Anthony Wiener is good at sexting. And at its core, sexting (and its related hobbies--phone sex, etc.) is pretty much the same activity as table-top role playing.<br /><br />Allow me to unpack that a little. Consider for a moment the games of football* and basketball. These sports are very different on the surface, but the action of the participants is basically the same: people on a team work together to move a ball across the length of the play space, scoring points as they do so. The other team tries to stop this action or take the ball away from them. In the same way, RPGs and sexting are very similar: Participants improvise a story, are responsible for describing their character’s actions, and have some authority over the setting details and other participants' characters. <br /><br />The difference is principally that sexting is about, well, sex, and D&D is about adventure and magic and orcs (and stuff like that).** <br /><br />A secondary argument could be made that both of these activities have been lauded by their adherents as a bold future of human interaction, as amazing new ways of enabling people to become closer with each other. At the same time, both RPGs and sexting have been condemned by non-participants as everything from immoral to just plain weird. <br /><br />I’m not going to make a call on the validity or importance of either D&D or sexting. Both are activities that are just fine for consenting adults to participate in once safely out of sight of minors and puritans. That’s not really the point of this post.<br /><br />The point is that these two seemingly disparate things are actually both just acts of storytelling--one of the most basic elements of human communication, one that we are all naturally drawn to. Despite differences in how we approach it, it is something we all seek to participate in. <br /><br />*When I say football I mean the American sport with the not-round ball. That is, I explicitly do NOT mean soccer. <br />**Although--if you can stomach it--<a href="http://www.radaronline.com/photos/image/131380/2011/06/photos-rep-anthony-weiners-facebook-sexts-revealed">this Facebook exchange</a> shows that the congressman was trying to get into some superhero-fantasy play.Kevin Allen Jr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02767340327370421229noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7548916850966623125.post-56016771030397480002011-06-07T13:17:00.002-04:002011-06-07T13:25:25.955-04:00From the Gamestop to the GalleryAre video games are legit now? If so, what does that mean for the medium?<br /><br />The NEA has finally deigned to make video games <a href="http://arts.gov/grants/apply/AIM-presentation.html">eligible for grants</a>; The Smithsonian launched a <a href="http://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/archive/2012/games/">massive exhibition</a> chronicling the history (and art) of video games; Cory Arcangel got a very nice <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/05/30/110530fa_fact_scott">bit of press</a> in the New Yorker about his show “Pro Tools”; and <span style="font-style:italic;">L.A. Noire</span> got <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/17/arts/video-games/la-noire-by-rockstar-games-review.html">a stellar review</a> from the Times (the mere fact that the old Grey Lady has a video game review section is telling).<br /><br />It’s easy to look at games like L.A. Noire or Heavy Rain as art, because they can be readily compared to other things we’ve already deemed worthy of artistic merit (novels, films). Who could argue about the quality of Cain’s <span style="font-style:italic;">Double Indemnity</span> or Hitchcock’s <span style="font-style:italic;">Strangers on a Train</span>? So too is it easy to look at a work like <a href="http://thatgamecompany.com/games/flower/">Flower</a> or <a href="http://www.limbogame.org/">Limbo</a> or <a href="http://www.quelsolaar.com/love/screen_shots.html">Love</a> as works of art due to their pure visual majesty.<br /><br />While I’m sure there is no end in sight to the churn of abysmally dull murder-core games out there, it’s nice to see that the silver lining is getting a little wider, and that folks doing truly innovative things (in any medium) are getting the praise they deserve. Does this mean that the medium is an art form? Or are there simply bits of artistry within an expanding miasma of product? <br /><br />Video games are a commercial enterprise. They're meant to be purchased by consumers. How does that impact their artistic significance? It’s an interesting question; one I'm looking forward to seeing further thought on in the next few years.<br /><br />But what about Mario and Master Chief? These characters represent game franchises that have spawned numerous titles that sold bajillions of units. They'll forever go down in the annals of history as “great games.” But were they art?<br /><br />The right answer is: WHO CARES?<br /><br />The argument is totally needless. Their cultural impact is profound and lasting. Turning the art world’s eye to games is nice. It makes an argument for the medium's legitimacy to <a href="http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/04/video_games_can_never_be_art.html">stodgy old coots</a> who are rapidly becoming irrelevant and societally functionless.* But in the end, whether or not games are ART doesn’t matter; what matters is that they’re still relevant in our expanding entertainment culture. There’s no real question that they are.<br /><br /><br />*In all fairness Ebert kind of apologized for his dismissal of the gaming medium. But it was a pretty weak handjob of an apology, and it smacked of being more a PR move than a heartfelt reversal of attitude.Kevin Allen Jr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02767340327370421229noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7548916850966623125.post-92169125962634459582011-05-26T13:17:00.001-04:002011-05-26T13:29:16.327-04:00Putting Platforms on a PedestalIn the sunset of his career Luciano Pavarotti did something he had never done before: He released an album of pop songs. And despite being one of the greatest living tenors–a man with legions of fans the entire world over–that record didn't sell very well.<br /><br />Here's the thing: it wasn't a terrible record. Granted, it wasn't Lady Gaga or Tony Bennett, but it wasn't garbage, either. The fat guy could carry a tune. In the hands of an artist we'd never heard of before, it would have been an intriguing debut. So why didn’t it move units? Precisely because it was something ol’ Luciano had never done before. <br /><br />The adoring public knew Pavarotti as an opera singer, perhaps the best, so they weren't interested in him dabbling in other genres. When you're very good at one thing, it can be quite difficult for you to interest your customers in a new and separate offering. <br /><br />When was the last time you checked in on Facebook Places, the social media giant’s geolocation service? When was the last time you posted a comment on Ping? You know, Ping? The social network built into Apple’s iTunes? Or checked the weather by using your cable television’s widgets menu? For the vast majority of you, the answer is "never."<br /><br />We use foursquare for geolocation and we use Facebook for social networking, but swich that around and the equation doesn’t make sense to us. The roles are played as cast. Once somethings function has been established, it’s hard to alter the perception in consumers' minds that THAT’S WHAT IT DOES–even if it’s an added functionality. <br /><br />And yet we also live in a world of profound ADHD, omnipresent multitasking, and 100k+ app stores. So what gives? I believe there is a dichotomy in the consumer mind that separates things they purchase into two catagories: products and platforms. <br /><br />Products do one thing. We try to buy the best products we can, and when a market leader emerges, we celebrate it. A taco, for example, is a product.<br /><br />Platforms, on the other hand, serve a number of applications, and provide us an interface for gathering and using those applications. Platforms tend to not have as much longevity as a product, but they can make much bigger market booms. A taco truck is a platform.<br /><br />Occasionally, a product can transition into a platform. Google has made the transformation from a simple search engine into a rich platform of applications and product offerings. <br /><br />Facebook, on the other hand, has had mixed success. Zygna made a fortune by leveraging Facebook as a social gaming platform, but for every Zygna there are countless failed enterprises that never found their footing. <br /><br />Only a few years ago the very idea of comparing Google and Facebook as competitors would have been ridiculous. Lately, though, these brands (and others aspiring to their level) are seeking to transmogrify themselves into platform-based business models. It is a route fraught with peril.<br /><br />Frequently, trying to move into the platform space just dilutes your brand. There's nothing wrong with simply being a product. Products do just fine. Look at the Flip camcorder, the iPod, or Wikipedia; all are hugely popular products. They do one thing, and they do it exceedingly well.Kevin Allen Jr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02767340327370421229noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7548916850966623125.post-62350962583492098022011-05-15T19:15:00.007-04:002011-05-16T10:47:25.671-04:00Simultaneous Discovery on the OP-ED Page<div style="background-color: transparent; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><p class="p1"></p><p class="p1">What do pyramids, noodles, and calculus all have in common? </p><p class="p2">If you guessed that they are three beautiful and remarkable ancient technologies* that continue to have vast relevance in our society then I’m very pleased to have such a thoughtful and interesting person reading this blog. Sadly, that’s not the connection I’m looking for. </p><p class="p2">Pyramids, noodles, and calculus are three things that all came into this world by way of simultaneous discovery. That is, they were invented by a number of cultures and peoples completely separate of each other at about the same time. </p><p class="p1">Simultaneous discovery doesn’t happen exclusively in the concrete worlds of science and engineering; occasionally it manifests in the creative fields. A stunning example of this phenomenon was presented recently in the Op-Ed sections of three prominent national publications.</p><p class="p1">The death of Osama bin Laden is one of the biggest news stories of the year (in a year of very big news stories). As it was a rather polarizing event, it's only natural that opinion editors would dedicate some major real estate to the subject. Let’s take a look at some of the illustrations that were selected to appear in these journals:</p><p></p></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; white-space: normal; "><a href="http://kevinallenjr.com/blog/newyorkerobl.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img src="http://kevinallenjr.com/blog/newyorkerobl.jpg" border="0" alt="" style="cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 600px; " /></a></span><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; white-space: normal; "><a href="http://kevinallenjr.com/blog/nymagobl.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img src="http://kevinallenjr.com/blog/nymagobl.jpg" border="0" alt="" style="cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 568px; " /></a></span><br /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); white-space: normal; "><a href="http://kevinallenjr.com/blog/nytobl.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img src="http://kevinallenjr.com/blog/nytobl.jpg" border="0" alt="" style="cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 391px; " /></a></span><br /></span></span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 11pt; background-color: transparent;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"> <p class="p1"></p><p class="p1">Obviously there’s a strong similarity in these images. They're all really the same idea, just presented in slightly different ways: "erasing" bin Laden, be it with thinner or a hunk of pink rubber.</p><p class="p1">While the James Victore** piece was published first, I don’t suspect for a second that the other two images are copycats. Given the topical nature of the subject and the short production time that goes into making editorial art, I seriously doubt either Messrs Wright or Eksioglu had the chance to even see the <i>Times</i> piece before they submitted to their publishers. </p><p class="p3">This is just one of those fascinating moments of an idea being significant in its time; a moment of simultaneous discovery.</p><p class="p1">*Yeah, I'm going to count noodles as a “technology”; want to make something of it?</p><p class="p1">**Full disclosure: James Victore was sort of my mentor in college, although I don’t think that relationship colors my view of this work.</p><p></p></span></span></div>Kevin Allen Jr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02767340327370421229noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7548916850966623125.post-75207575026909791572011-05-10T11:13:00.002-04:002011-05-10T11:17:59.303-04:00Social Sworcery“To the mountain folk of The Caucasus he was known as ‘Logfella’ & he seemed cool.”<br /><br />That’s not the way most video games would choose to introduce you to a main character, but then, <span style="font-style: italic;">SuperBrothers’ Sword & Sworcery EP</span> isn’t most video games, and there's a very specific reason they chose that particular language. First, though, here's a quick explanation of what we’re going to be talking about:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">SuperBrothers’ Sword & Sworcery EP </span>is a 2-D adventure game (like <span style="font-style: italic;">The Legend of Zelda</span>, or <span style="font-style: italic;">The Secret of Monkey Island</span>), served to you on the iOS platform with gorgeous, brilliantly stylized 8bit-esque visuals, and a soundtrack so lovely it’s worth buying/<a href="http://jimguthrie.bandcamp.com/album/sword-sworcery-lp-the-ballad-of-the-space-babies">listening</a> to even if you have no intention of ever playing the game. Oh yeah, and the game is super-fun, and the interface is wonderfully intuitive. Essentially, the whole thing looks, and feels, and sounds quite like a dream coming out of my iPad.<br /><br />But even beyond all those praises, <span style="font-style: italic;">Sword & Sworcery</span> has a really clever trick up its sleeve; one that puts it right in our media/marketing/engagement crosshairs. When you examine any element (be it part of the landscape, a character, an object, or even an event) during the game, an activity that becomes a pretty common occurrence as you play, a short bit of descriptive text pops up offering you an explanation of what you’ve chosen to take a closer look at.<br /><br />So far, that seems pretty normal for a game of this sort, right? Here’s where it get’s really smart: Each of these little descriptions is an expertly worded tweet--a little nugget of story that will look smashing in your Twitter stream. Conveniently, each time these tweet-worthy explanations pop up you are (unobtrusively) given the option to tweet this message to your followers.<br /><br />And here’s why that’s really so smart:<br />First of all, it’s a seamlessly integrated feature. It doesn’t pull you from the game, and it doesn’t take you out of the app; it just posts it, and adds a few relevant hashtags like #lore or #sworcery. So you can keep on playing without really thinking about it.<br /><br />Secondly, it lets your friends and followers know you’re playing this game, gives them a sample of its flavor, and hopefully interests them in the game’s story. These people are already following your feed, so they have some frontloaded investment in your opinion. With very little effort, Sword & Sworcery has tapped directly into an influence network. Good job, guys, that’s the kind of thing that social media teams, PR wizards, and marketing agencies struggle ceaselessly to do.<br /><br />Lastly--and this one’s truly fascinating--it provides the game’s producers with real-time feedback on who’s playing the game, what kind of progress they’ve made, and which elements they found most interesting or engaging. All you have to do is search any one of the game’s hashtags to see what users are up to.<br /><br />Certainly, not everyone that plays the game elects to tweet the things they discovered throughout, and I imagine only the most pedantic of users tweet EVERYTHING they find. But that filtration process is important to the analytics. It creates real, usable data on which game content connects with players. Also, by comparing the number of people that tweeted any game message with the number of game purchases made, you can see what percentage of players are using your product and how far into it those players are getting. Look at their timestamps, and you can determine peak hours of play. Turn your eye to geotargeting data, and you know where your players live and play.<br /><br />These are the kinds of game analytics that are usually only available to HUGE budget online games. SuperBrothers has managed to glean that same information from Twitter without ever having to pay for servers, proprietary analysis software, or hosting and transmission costs. All they had to do was play smart.Kevin Allen Jr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02767340327370421229noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7548916850966623125.post-58771403790997822712011-05-03T10:07:00.003-04:002011-05-04T10:26:50.172-04:00The Terrible Trouble with Talking to TacosTaco Bell has a reputation for quality, or perhaps more accurately the complete and utter lack there of. But that’s fine. Taco Bell fills a market space that no one else really occupies: The super-cheap, super-fast taco. <br /><br />No sane person who eats at a Taco Bell has any illusions that they’re doing something healthy (<a href="http://www.drivethrudiet.com">drive through diet menu</a> notwithstanding). I have a friend who pseudo-affectionately refers to their product as “people dogfood.” It’s bad for us, and it’s delicious, and once in a while it’s a fine treat.<br /><br />But what do you do when even the low expectations of a Taco Bell meal aren’t met? What do you do when you get a couple of seriously soggy tacos? Like, somehow-dunked-in-mystery-liqued-and-then-wrapped-in-paper-bad. We’re talking about totally inedible tacos. Full stop. If you’re a friend of mine who also happens to be a social media engagement specialist you post about the experience on Taco Bell’s facebook wall. <br /><br />Companies (like Taco Bell) pay people (like my friend) an awful lot of money to monitor their social media channels for things like this. The idea being that if a customer has a negative experience with your product, you reach out to them, offer them an apology and perhaps a reparation (coupon, return info, etc.) and try to turn that experience around. Correcting a mistake –and admitting when you screw up– goes a long way towards retaining the loyalty of your customers. <br /><br />Instead of any of that, the Bell’s people simply deleted the “offending” comment. <br /><br />Avoiding behavior of this sort is like social media 101 (<a href="http://theblog-log.net/don%E2%80%99t-delete-that-negative-review/">1</a>, <a href="http://outspokenmedia.com/reputation-management/5-reasons-not-to-delete-negative-reviews/">2</a>, <a href="http://www.socialrabbit.net/2010/06/should-i-delete-negative-comments/">3</a>). By engaging with your customers you can mitigate their disappointment, and control the conversation. By ignoring them out-of-hand you only engender further frustration, often inspiring people to vocalize this frustration in places where you don’t have any controls on the conversation. In this case my friend broadcast her terrible taco time to all of her facebook and twitter followers, and now you’re reading a blog post about it. That’s a way bigger impact than a comment on the companies wall, wouldn’t you say?<br /><br />Social media is about conversations and personal engagement. That’s obvious when you’re tagging grandma in your birthday photos, but it can be less so when you’re dealing with a multi-national corporation’s social presence. The rules though, are the EXACT SAME. Be nice, not rude. Be confident, cool, and hospitable, not arrogant, dismissive, or passive aggressive.<br />You wouldn’t treat your grandma like a jerk, so why would you treat your customers that way?Kevin Allen Jr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02767340327370421229noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7548916850966623125.post-457320288516154042011-04-25T13:38:00.000-04:002011-04-25T13:40:33.688-04:00The Pizza That Cried Wolf: Backlash MarketingLet’s pretend that you run a pizza business. A big home-delivery organization, like Dominos or Papa John's. Let’s also--for the sake of this hypothesis--assume that all pizzas are created equal, and there’s no quality or taste-based reason to purchase one brand over another. While your competition is trying to figure out how to make money on a three-topping pizza for $10.99, you announce that you’re going to start selling three-topping pizzas for $5.99.<br /><br />How did you do it? You simply cut costs by doing away with the cardboard. No pizza box. The delivery guy just hands the customer a pie. His bare hands to theirs.<br /><br />Are you thinking now that maybe that isn’t the best business decision? That perhaps the cost-cutting measure isn’t worth the return? The best- case scenario sees consumers terribly burned by molten cheese and boiling sauce. The worst case is some Jabroni in an ‘02 Ford Taurus is getting his man-mitts all over somebody’s sad-ass dinner.<br /><br />So comes the inevitable backlash. Offices the pizza-eating world over are abuzz with the question, “Would you order a pizza that didn’t come in a box?” Sure. There are a few pretend tough guys who say they wouldn’t care, but really, we’re all pretty much universally disgusted by your company’s cost-saving strategy.<br /><br />A few day’s later--and this part is important--before you even sell a single pie sans box, you retreat on your position. You say that the cost savings isn’t worth it, that the allure of the $5.99 price point was too great, that you flew too close to the sun, that you're sorry, and that from now on all your pizzas will arrive in a standard cardboard box.<br /><br />In the hands of a company that doesn’t know what it’s doing this would be a bold and stupid move, one that would cost them dearly in the press. But to a savvy company in a very tight situation, this could be an example of Backlash Marketing (my term, feel free to spread it around).<br /><br />Backlash Marketing is the act of intentionally doing something publicly unpopular, so that the inevitable repercussions create a desirable byproduct.<br /><br />Your nasty raw-dogging pizza company is an allegory of the greatest Backlash Marketer of all: Ryanair. The Irish airline has, in the past, put out press releases claiming that its planes will be standing room only; that they will remove the lavatories from their aircraft; and that they will do away with the excessive luxury of a copilot (claiming that in the event of an emergency, a knowledgeable passenger could be pressed into service).<br /><br />Ryanair never actually intended to go through with any of these measures--many aren’t even legal--but by dropping these incendiary press releases it stirs up mud, gets people talking and, even if it’s in a semi-negative light, intrinsically links its brand to the idea of cost savings. It may look like burning the house down, but it's a very strategic, controlled burn.Kevin Allen Jr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02767340327370421229noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7548916850966623125.post-8128161152958607152011-04-19T09:37:00.002-04:002011-04-19T09:42:04.083-04:00Reading the Numbers on ReadingAre we reading as much as our parents did?<br /><br />Well, are we? It’s a question that keeps librarians and magazine publishers up at night with cold sweats. The off-the-cuff answer is no, we are not, given the nosedive book and newspaper sales have seen in the past decade. We are all far to distracted by social media to really read, right? I mean honestly, when was the last time you saw a kid under 18 reading a newspaper?<br /><br />But is that a fair assumption? Let’s take a look at some numbers:<br /><br />58% of the US maintains (ie, has and regularly checks into) a social media profile. Let’s drill that down to Facebook’s stats, shall we, as that’s by far the most popular active social network (and the one I have the most data for).<br /><br />• The average user has 130 friends and is connected to 80 pages/events<br />• 55 million status updates are made every day<br />• 35 million people update their status ever day. Ergo, a little more than half of the people making status updates do so less than once a day.<br /><br />That means that there are (very) roughly 204 new status updates in a person’s feed every day.<br /><br />Now there’s no data on the length of the average facebook status update; at least not that my crack research team* could find (if you troll up some hard numbers on that please leave me a comment, I’m very curious) but there is a hard and fast 420 character limit. If we assume that the median of that 420 character limit is roughly the length of an average status update, then we’re looking at 210 characters per update. I realize that I’m making a pretty big guess here and that these numbers are rather suspect. We’re estimating**, that’s the nature of the beast.<br /><br />Point of info: Facebook formerly limited it’s users to a 160 character update, but I think a reasonable conclusion can be drawn from their increasing the upper limit that many users were needing more room to explain themselves.<br /><br />So, 204 updates per day at 42 words per update (give or take) comes out to 8568 words in facebook status updates alone. That doesn’t even take into account comments on those updates. That’s roughly 30 pages of a novel or about 3-4 pages of your average newspaper.<br /><br />Actively using twitter? Using the same kind of math as we crunched above, the average user is reading 3000 words per day, or another 1-2 newspaper pages.<br /><br />And that's just barely scratching the surface. That's just what numbers are easy to crunch. Don't forget about all those texts we're sending, the blogs we're reading, the bottom-of-the-screen news crawls, the growing omnipresence of textual advertising.<br /><br />We are surrounded, inundated, subsumed in words. Are we reading more or less than our parents did? It's honestly a nearly impossible question to answer, but from where I stand we're probably breaking even. Is it all Hemmingway or Mailer or Woodward and Bernstein? No, but it never was, and it isn't all trash either.<br /><br />So fear not librarians, we're still reading, it's just how we're reading that's changed.<br /><br />~~~<br />*My research team in this case is myself and the social media engagement specialist at the ad agency I work for googling and trimming abstracts for valuable nuggets of Internet info when we should be doing real, paying work. All this for you, my adoring followers.<br /><br />**We are not, it should be noted, “ballparking.” Ballparking is for baseball players and stuffed shirts working at mid-90’s dot coms.Kevin Allen Jr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02767340327370421229noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7548916850966623125.post-23077492495361719812011-04-11T23:39:00.000-04:002011-04-11T13:07:22.527-04:00Who's ready for more?I'm going to get back into the swing of this blog. I make no promises that it will last forever, or that I won't miss a week here and there, but I'm going to try to keep good on it.<br /><br />Same idea as before, Kevin Allen Jr's opinions on media, marketing, and advertising culture. A little bit of business philosophy, a little bit of "hey check out this radical link! Cowabunga/awesome/dude!"<br /><br />Also there's gonna be some new stuff (still in the same vein as the old stuff) that I know I'm going to have a good time producing, and that I figure has an audience here. <br /><br />So welcome back, I'm glad you could come. <br /><br />PS - Tell your friends.Kevin Allen Jr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02767340327370421229noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7548916850966623125.post-40926585050632475412011-04-11T13:08:00.001-04:002011-04-11T13:08:52.436-04:00The Gamification Tide<a href="http://www.blogger.com/%E2%80%9Dhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamification%E2%80%9D">“Gamification”</a> is a word that’s getting bandied about quite a lot lately, generating a lot of buzz. To define it simply, gamification is the act of taking game mechanics (usually reward structures like achievements, leaderboards, or experience points) and glomming them onto non-game applications. <a href="http://gamification.co/">Some folks</a> see it as a way to solve social problems, and I totally respect that. But gamification has also been held up <a href="http://technorati.com/business/advertising/article/has-your-site-been-gamified/">by some</a> as the new hip thing that will save advertising in the internet age.<br /><br />Gamification starts with a powerful premise, that people are now more than ever engaged by gameplay, and that the language of that medium has become a common tongue. But gamification so often totally misses the point of that premise and assumes it’s the social technology powering games and not the actual act of play itself that appeals to people. It’s like assuming that people enjoy travel because they get to carry around suitcases.<br /><br /><img src="http://kevinallenjr.com/adverting/suitcases.gif" /><br /><br />When the advertising world gets into gamification it often leads to awkward, ugly, poorly implemented applications; concealing boring, mundane interactions with a thin veneer of joyful recreation.<br /><br />If you want to engage your audience with a game –and I realize this may be a revolutionary idea– maybe you ought to stop going through the motions and ACTUALLY MAKE A GAME. You obviously believe your target demographics are interested in them, so why are you faking them out?<br /><br />Advertising and marketing shouldn’t be trying its darnedest to interrupt our fun; be it with commercials, intrusive banner ads, or confusing us with the hope of a game and dashing our hopes with the same old lame banking application.* This isn’t an insurgency against consumers. You don’t need to install sleeper agents around every corner.<br /><br />So how do we do it right? Surely there is a lesson to be learned by taking the things we know work in one medium and applying them to another. One solution is particularly elegant: <br /><br />A company called Kiip (pronounced "keep") works sort of like a media buyer, placing promotional content into games (mobile and web). When a player reaches an achievement point in the game, a window pops up and offers to send them a real world reward; like a free a soft drink, or some make up, or any number of other targeted promotions (no strings attached, advertisers don't even get your email address).<br /><br />See what they did there? They took the aspects of games that interest people and they made advertising a part of that experience, instead of the other way around. Reverse gamification. A new, better spin on a not very old idea. Will it save advertising in the internet age. Who cares? It's better than what you're already doing, and that's a step in the right direction. <br /><br /><br /><br />*I’m looking at you PNC bank. A piggy bank isn’t a game, digitizing one and putting it on my iPhone isn’t going to change that fact.Kevin Allen Jr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02767340327370421229noreply@blogger.com48tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7548916850966623125.post-62832123832769062162009-07-16T11:41:00.003-04:002009-07-16T13:59:23.613-04:00The Wolf in Googly Clothing.Last week I <a href="http://advertingdisaster.blogspot.com/2009/07/little-healthy-and-secret-competition.html">talked a little about competition</a>. The article focused on the subtle usage of attack ads, and the nature of going after the competition. <br /><br />There are other ways, of course, to deal with your business competitors. Microsoft, in a bold gesture of "Can't-beat-'em? Join-em!" spirit, has decided to eschew competing with its rivals altogether and will instead now exclusively focus on imitating them. By mirroring the winning moves that challengers have made, ol' softy is hoping to win new customers and make over their image. <br /><br />The primary disguise Microsoft is wearing is that of Google. I could go into how bing.com is rapidly becoming the butt of a <a href="http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1915736">grand Internet joke comparing it to the great Google-y moogly</a>. I could mention that many consider the onomatopoeic name more likely an acronym for "But It's Not Google." Or I could just show you some logos...<br /><br />Below are the logos for Windows 7 (the product that is supposed to redeem the Vista disaster) and Google Wave (the product that is supposed to forever change the way everyone communicates on the internet). I should note that the only photoshoppery performed below was comping the two logos together and resizing them; no color shifting was used, nor were the background or shadows affected. <br /><br /><img src="http://kevinallenjr.com/blog/Googwin7.jpg">Kevin Allen Jr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02767340327370421229noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7548916850966623125.post-34544179415382886002009-07-06T10:59:00.000-04:002009-07-06T11:00:03.003-04:00A little healthy (and secret) competitionThe very fulcrum on which the lever of capitalism lifts is competition. Without competition there is little financial incentive for innovation, fair pricing, or customer friendly business practice –without debate, all good things. <br /><br />Competition also breeds another behavior in the american consumer space, that of negative advertising. It's rare in today's marketplace for one brand to strongly advertise against another. Subtle comparison, distracting wordplay, misdirection, and allusion are the order of the day. In spite of the active use of mudslinging in the political sector it is somehow considered uncouth in consumer advertising and outright inappropriate in B2B.<br /><br />[A quick editorial aside: I personally don't understand this phenomenon at all. Ad execs often grow to loath their competition, and in private will endlessly rag on the "the other guy." The fact that there is any modicum of restraint or illusion of proper manners in their marketing initiatives boggles the mind.]<br /><br />So when FedEx launched their new <a href="http://www.brownbailout.com/">brownbailout.com website</a> I was surprised. The site has the look and feel of a grassroots protest site, complete with loads of numbers, a "contact your senator" button, and way more informational content than you would usually find in a corporate microsite. All of this directed at calling out FedEx's biggest rival, UPS. <br /><br />They even go so far as to parody UPS' whiteboard commercials (complete with shoddy wigsmanship and mom-safe Ben Gibbard-esqu soundtrack). <br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/U-DT2ahgz5E&rel=0&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&feature=player_embedded&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/U-DT2ahgz5E&rel=0&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&feature=player_embedded&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />It's a bold move from FedEx, but don't think this means they've gone all rebel yell/fight the power on us yet. As far as I can tell they haven't done much advertising of this site, or of their political initiatives to resist UPS' lobbying. Keeping your negative ads on the downlow isn't exactly the same as never making them, but it's pretty close. <br /><br />Check out <a href="http://www.brownbailout.com/">brownbailout.com</a> and form your own opinion on the matter. FedEx clearly cares enough about this cause to bring it to your attention (and to break from convention), but not enough to risk turning off customers in a very delicate race for power. Is that a risk you would take?Kevin Allen Jr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02767340327370421229noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7548916850966623125.post-42427486011895258872009-06-24T15:00:00.004-04:002009-06-25T16:17:39.950-04:00The king acts up againI've spoken in the past about Burger King's <a href="http://advertingdisaster.blogspot.com/2009/04/question-of-audience-or-how-children.html">raunchy-ish approach to advertising</a>, but their newest ad takes the cake... or sandwich... or whatever:<br /><br /><img src="http://kevinallenjr.com/blog/cablehoagie.jpg"><br /><br />The King has come to be known for pushing the boundaries of innuendo. Their "<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DG9peSiis-M">big bucking chicken</a>" and "we're all full of sit" angus sandwich commercials used (semi)clever wordplay to get around modern draconian censorship laws.<br /><br />But this, this is just a blowjob in hoagie clothing. I don't want to say i expected better from Burger King, because I don't really, but I still feel let down. The whole thing is cheap and gross. It surely doesn't inspire me to go eat 7 inches of processed meat food product.Kevin Allen Jr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02767340327370421229noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7548916850966623125.post-71561503780217846002009-06-17T12:41:00.006-04:002009-06-19T15:15:55.278-04:00The music industry, as virginal as everLast week saw the fall of a giant. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/15/arts/music/15virgin.html?_r=2">The Union Square Virgin Megastore</a>, the last holdout of the big record stores in New York City, closed its doors forever. The death throes of the British colossus sent tremors through the entire record industry, an entity long suffering depleted sales and maligned image. <br /><br />I personally spent a lot of time in this store. In college I whiled away countless hours in the café reading comic books and not paying for anything. And that's the problem, really. Not simply that I was allowed to sit and read and not spend, but that I was ok with the whole consumption without purchase arrangement. Hell, I felt entitled to it.<br /><br />I've purchased music from iTunes. I've bought hundreds of CDs. But for every dollar I've spent on legitimate music media, I've probably illegally downloaded ten dollars worth without batting an eye. I never thought twice about what I was doing. What's worse, when I sit down and think about it, all the music I've "stolen," I don't care at all, not one bit. And almost no one else I know does either. <br /><br />And you know what? This is as it should be.<br /><br />I'm not going to wave some fight-the-power, 2600, "the information wants to be free" flag. That would be asinine and wrongheaded. The movement for dramatically cheaper music (and, while we're on the topic, cinema and TV) is a step in the right direction for consumer and producer alike. At present only the consumers are seeing real benefit, but even now that's changing. In the future, the consumer-producer relationship will be much more mutually beneficial.<br /><br />The history of music has been benchmarked not by new ways of delivering content, but by monetizing it. Paying performers to play in your ballroom, purchasing sheet music, picking up LPs at the five & dime, radio, payola, MTV… it's all been about salability. From promoting content to finding new ways to deliver it to the masses, much music technology innovation has sprung from a simple desire to move more units. <br /><br />That is, until the Internet came along, with its promise of free and accessible media for all. We all know the story of the democratization of intellectual property: And Usenet begat Napster, and Napster begat BitTorrent, ad infinitum, ad nauseam. A sea change has taken place in the retail world, one that has re-aligned exactly what it is we purchase as a public, and what we consider worthy of purchase. The Internet has rather simply made the following rule: If it's an object that I can touch in the real world, it's going to have a cost attached. If it only exists as data, either in human memory or a computer's, it should be free.<br /><br />But the internet has not made us into a culture of thieves; it just repositioned views on what should and should not be given away. Music, TV, newspapers, and film, we've decided, ought to be free (or extremely inexpensive). As producers increasingly come to terms with this we'll see them figure out new ways to get some return off us. The page is already starting to turn on the retail music industry...<br /><br />Just last week <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124507053748415027.html">Virgin announced it was launching an unlimited download music service in the UK</a>. Right on the heels of its megastore close out. Will it have the clout to take on iTunes? Will it ever compare to the estimated $50 million annual profits that the now-deceased Times Square megastore pulled in? Only time will tell.Kevin Allen Jr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02767340327370421229noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7548916850966623125.post-36243768151315210002009-06-09T16:42:00.003-04:002009-06-09T17:08:22.983-04:00Pinging Bing: The new kids's pretty but what difference does it make?Recently Microsoft launched it's new search engine,<a href="http://www.bing.com">Bing.com</a>. It's easy to say that Bing.com is a prettier search engine than plain old google. The large high-def photos (with fun-fact tags), the slick of-the-moment logo, an easy on the eyes grey background; Bing looks good. But does that really matter? <br /><br />Google--really the only competition worth talking about--is famous for its oversimplified layout. There's an input field, two buttons, and a logo, and that's about it. Sometimes (if Google deems a holiday worthy enough) the multicolored letter logo is "enhanced" with what I can only hesitate to call <i>pizazz</i>. <br /><br />This simplicity is emblematic of one of Google's core philosophies: easy-to-use products that work reliably. The great googley moogley doesn't want to bother you with a song and dance, it wants to get you to your search results RIGHT NOW. You don't have the time to be bothered, and the sooner you're clicking on links the more money Google's putting in its pocket. Google search is just a tool, the flagship product from a company that makes (internet) tools. <br /><br />That said, there's nothing distracting or wasteful about Bing's looks. The aesthetics are interesting, but they don't serve as much of a speedbump. If you find yourself exploring or surfing around you're either remarkably easy to distract or you weren't super interested in your search query (quarry?) to begin with. <br /><br />So why dress up your search page at all? And here is where I think Microsoft has taken some time to consider their tactics in the search-engine struggle. Sure, you want to define yourself as something other than Google. You can't simply imitate your competition whole cloth. But it's more than that. Google's homepage is easy to ignore. It drives you to the results, wasting no time on other content. <br /><br />But if Google seeks to be a tool, then Bing seeks to be a destination. There's just slightly more motivation to spend a second on that homepage, and that second could some day be turned into dollars. <br /><br />A subtle ad placement, an elegant sponsorship, even a cross-company promotion (quick jaunt on the X-box anyone?) gracefully implemented could spell a lot of clicks. Google would never be so garish as to clutter up their virginal homepage, but that's because it would be a galling distraction. Bing isn't subject to the same strictures. <br /><br />Bing has left the door open on big-money anchor ads. A door none of its competitors had the chutzpah, or sense, or inclination to prepare for. We'll see in the next year if they exploit it.Kevin Allen Jr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02767340327370421229noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7548916850966623125.post-74978356001655345192009-05-22T12:07:00.002-04:002009-05-22T12:39:04.112-04:00Reading the future: Part 2 of 2Last week in Part 1, I talked about the Espresso book machine: what it is, what it does, and its impact on the modern publishing industry. This week I'd like to suggest a new application for the Espresso that has the potential to dramatically change the print media landscape, as well as the nature of the user's relationship to the product. <br /><br />The Espresso book machine is currently an awkwardly functional item. If you are looking for a rare or out-of-print book, it's invaluable. However, if you're shopping for anything else in the book store, as most customers are, the Espresso is little more than a grossly over-priced inkjet that can't really help you. <br /><br />Outside of a perhaps woefully small niche, the book machine has little to offer in its current incarnation. But this is a first generation idea. Down the line, a few versions from now, if we're lucky, we'll see some innovative thinking. To see what is exciting in the future, though, I'm going to take a quick look back into the past. <br /><br />Consider the Ford Model T. The automobile was priced way beyond the average consumer's means. It lacked the support infrastructure it really required for optimal usage. It even had trouble driving on America's mostly unpaved roads. With all those factors considered, the Model T was a difficult machine to own. That said, the Model T was the harbinger of great things to come. Ford sought to fill a need in the consumer landscape that most thought was (at best) a luxury, or (at worst) a dangerous fancy of the wealthy. <br /><br />Ford filled this need with a complicated and innovative device, the bleeding edge of technology. In time, the little black buggy's descendants would become the most iconic of American tools, an irreplaceable device used everyday by most adult Americans. <br /><br />The Espresso book machine has the potential to fill this same roll in our culture. By simply re-aligning the focus of the device, its usefulness to the average consumer is multiplied exponentially.<br /><br />Imagine stepping into a book store, or a corner deli, or up to a sidewalk newsstand, and instead of grabbing a paper from the stack, you order one up built to your specifications. You don't read the Travel section because it gets you down every time you leaf through it, for example. Have no use for the classifieds right now? Wish you had some of your paper's online blog content in your print edition? With custom print-on-demand at point of sale you could add or subtract the sections of your choosing. Every customer could be the editor-in-chief of their own private international news organization.<br /><br />For years newspapers have been wondering how they can stay ahead of the 24-hour news cycle curve that the internet created. Today newspapers are out of date by the time they arrive in a reader's hands. By printing at point of sale from a networked device, the content is live and updated until the very moment a customer purchases it. <br /><br />Subscribing customers could be issued "smart swipe" (or RFID) cards that tell print-on-demand devices exactly which material to spit out. If you wanted to make a change to your daily read, you could update it online like your Netflix queue or your DVR program. <br /><br />By synching with your RSS, reader the device could recognize which blogs you've already read in the day, and save paper by not printing duplicate information. Or, alternately, it could print out the comment threads those blogs generate during the day for your evening review. <br /><br />...It sounds like a lot of wasted paper, though, doesn't it, printing out all those articles that you normally would just read on the screen? But consider in comparison the amount of unsold daily newspapers generated every day. By only printing the material consumers need we cut out an astounding quantity of unsold waste. <br /><br />Printing on demand at the point of sale has other benefits. Costs to publishers are reduced even further by cutting out expensive shipping from the equation. Fewer trucks on the road means lower fuel emissions, something everyone can benefit from even if they never touch one of these devices. <br /><br />By observing the content customers are purchasing and printing, advertisers can better tailor their messaging. If you're reading a host of content for new mothers, there's no sense in serving up ads for denture fixative. This level of demographic readership knowledge is the holy grail of print advertising. Couple real-time customer information with a google-esque pay-per-ad-served sales model and you've just re-engineered the newspaper business model into a streamlined modern engine.<br /><br />This revolution need not be limited to the daily rags, magazines, comic books, trade publications could all benefit from this technology. Imagine the ability to purchase academic journals, which are traditionally only available by expensive subscription, for sale on any street corner at a fraction of the current price. <br /><br />Complaining that internet technology is killing the publishing medium is like starving to death in a car because you didn't know how to turn the key and drive to the store. You have to leverage every tool available to you (and maybe invent some new ones) to stay ahead in the consumer market. Look at the things that aren't working, and figure out what good you CAN get out of them and what must be changed to make them work. <br /><br />The only thing that beats "free" in the rock, paper, scissors game of capitalism is "convenient," and "convenient" is about the only thing the Espresso book machine has going for it right now. As it stands right now, the Espresso is not the device that can save print media, but it may be prophet for a better time coming. And after a few years of development, who knows?Kevin Allen Jr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02767340327370421229noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7548916850966623125.post-50333137150726340732009-05-12T15:12:00.003-04:002009-05-15T13:11:52.872-04:00Reading the future: Part 1 of 2In the past year I've read a number of articles about the <a href="http://www.ondemandbooks.com/home.htm">Espresso Book Machine</a>. The item is essentially a vending machine that offers a selection of hundreds of thousands of popular books. It's able to perform this amazing feat by printing and binding the book as you purchase it. By printing on demand, the Espresso doesn't need to be a gigantic machine full of moldering stock no one wants. At the end of the day a worker can simply reload the machine with ink and paper, check to see what titles are selling well or poorly, and be done with it. It's a task more akin to putting toner in a xerox than stocking a bookshelf.<br /><br />Unfortunately, while the Espresso performs this amazing feat quickly, all told, it does so rather poorly. The end product is wholly black and white and lacks cover art. But at least the books are cheap… right? Well, not exactly. The price for one of these instant pulps is around $43.00 (American). The Dean Koontz paperback you might drop into your beach bag probably set you back 8-10 bucks, and it had cover art. <br /><br />But this article is not meant to condemn the drolly named Espresso; instead my intention is to peer into the future and see what impact this device might have in our culture. And, if people are paying attention to this technology and thinking along the same lines I am, the Espresso –or machines of its ilk– could metamorphose the consumer media landscape.<br /><br />The first place I heard talk of the Espresso was from comic author <a href="wikipedia">Warren Ellis</a> (Transmetropolitan, Planetary, X-men). He theorized that in the future, people would own devices like the Espresso in their homes, printing and binding books for personal use the same way you run off emails from Grandma or photos from vacations. He goes so far as to reference a thing called <a href="http://www.warrenellis.com/index.php?s=papernet">Papernet</a>; a sort of hard-copy Napster where authors and consumers trade book files and then create hard copies in their home offices. File > Print > Literature. <br /><br />Papernet is a lovely idea, but it's also oddly anachronistic. The baroque notion of utilizing bleeding-edge technology to do the work of an ancient form is quaint in its improbability. It would better fit in a steampunk setting than in our real world; it's a throwback to a combination of zeitgeist and technology that never was and never could have been. Ultimately people want one solution or the other: either print or screen reading. <br /><br />Debating whether or not one reading format will come to dominate the other is futile. I consider myself a futurist, but by no means do I think print is on its way out--but neither are the new organs of reading. It's obvious to all that digital content has toppled more than a few big-name newspapers. This doesn't mean, however, that you should believe any street-corner doomsayer proclaiming that by the end of this (or any) year you'll no longer be able to hear the crinkle of the sports section as you leaf through the morning gazette.<br /><br />In that big ladder-wrapped New York Times building scraping the sky of 42nd Street, there's an entire floor devoted to research and development. The news giant is thinking about and pouring dollars into new methods of news delivery. <a href="http://journal.davidbyrne.com/2007/12/12062007-embedd.html">David Byrne had a great article about his tour of the facility</a>. Making considerations for existing media devices and thinking about new ones (foldable screens!) is a big step in the right direction.<br /><br />Eventually the Espresso (and surely some copycat technologies) will find its legs and even its keel, but for now a fifty-dollar book just isn't a supportable model. What is? What can we expect this technology to mean for the the publishing market in years to come? Next week in Part 2 of this article we'll discuss all of that. Stay tuned.Kevin Allen Jr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02767340327370421229noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7548916850966623125.post-82976103354920191332009-05-03T21:22:00.005-04:002009-05-05T15:15:10.563-04:00Why medicine commercials are such bitter pillsSarah Haskins is a comedian and commentator for <a href="http://current.com/">Current TV</a>. For those who may be unfamiliar, Current is Al Gore's TV network of user-generated content. The network reads a little like Gideon Yago/Morely Safer slash porn with a strong liberal bend and a soundtrack by the kid in your dorm who has a Black Flag tattoo but wants to get it covered up with a Radiohead tattoo. I'm not saying it's a bad network; quite the opposite, in fact. The content is always interesting, often insightful, and usually really well produced. The weekly <a href="http://current.com/">"Target Women"</a> bit that Sarah Haskins offers up is an example of the network at its best. This week she commented on pharmaceutical advertising:<br /><br /><object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" id="ce_90012248" width="400" height="300" data="http://current.com/e/90012248/en_US"><param name="movie" value="http://current.com/e/90012248/en_US"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://current.com/e/90012248/en_US" width="400" height="300" wmode="transparent" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always"></embed></object><br /><br />Haskins presents a pretty interesting observation. Pharma advertising uses and reuses the same weak tropes. The commercials are mostly indistinguishable from one another. Pain relief, allergy medication, antidepressants; even while the products vary widly in application the commercials look to be cut from the same cloth. <br /><br />But why? Advertising fortunes are made on the backs of Big Pharma contracts. You would think that all that money would buy, if not creative innovation, at least some semblance of originality. Certainly, legal compliance and federal regulations place a lot of limits on advertisers. But even considering these stringent controls, how have we ended up with so many similar ads?<br /><br />I believe in many cases this startling resemblance is born of laziness. We all know what a pharma commercial looks like, because we've been watching the same one for years now. It's easy to produce this commercial and know that it's consumer-safe. It's the advertising equivalent of Jason Statham movies. Statham shows up in about three movies a year. His films are never blockbuster successes, but they always do all right at the box office. I dare you to clarify the differences between the Transporter, Cellular, War, Revolver, and Chaos (all Statham films, all pretty much about a tough-looking bald guy with a gun and an accent). <br /><br />Observe:<br /><img src="http://www.kevinallenjr.com/blog/statham.jpg"><br /><br />The safety of similarity is a cop-out answer. In the end, if you have a headache, there's very little difference between Advil and Tylenol. You would think drug manufacturers would be doing all they can to separate their images from each other, but I suspect their intention is quite the opposite. <br /><br />Modern pharmaceutical advertising is designed to make it difficult for the consumer to distinguish competing products from one another. By homogenizing the message, every ad you see becomes an ad for every product on the market. These spots aren't so much supposed to inform you of the benefits of a particular medicine as they are designed to remind you that you are sick, or that the potential exists for you to get sick, probably in the very near future.<br /><br />Now, I'm not suggesting some malevolent advertising conspiracy; that's a ridiculous line of thinking that won't get us anywhere. It is simply worth more to get customers into the drug store aisles looking at product than it is for the same consumers to be sitting on their couch forming opinions about products. No one buys Imodium in their living room. <br /><br />Consider the following scenario: You're at home after a tedious and perhaps stressful day at work. You are simply happy to have some time to relax at the end of the day. You may have some sinus pressure (or a stress headache, or minor indigestion, or whatever) but you're not even thinking about it, because you're just happy you get to watch Lost (or Current TV?) and eat some Háagen Dazs. A commercial comes on describing all the symptoms you weren't really thinking about but realizing now that you have. Now you're thinking about it, wondering if it's going to get worse. Like a cut in your mouth you can't stop playing with. Maybe you should just take something and stop worrying about it...Kevin Allen Jr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02767340327370421229noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7548916850966623125.post-30660024105256718412009-04-24T12:40:00.006-04:002009-04-28T15:47:55.735-04:00The best of the restLast week I promised you all a post examining some of the better commercials currently running on TV. I present three, although I'm going to cheat and only show you one that's actively airing on TV. I also present to you a commercial you may see only on the Internet or in an electronics store, and one you'll probably only ever see if you live in France.<br /><br /><b>1. Sending in the Clowns</b><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/lQ3D4CqHbJM&rel=0&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/lQ3D4CqHbJM&rel=0&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br />This bit for Phillips is meant to be shown on their TVs in stores, not over the internet, so imagine for a second that you're reading this blog on a 52" plasma (and that the recession never happened, and that a giant TV isn't a totally ridiculous purchase). In that fantasy world you probably don't have many concerns. One thing you should always be concerned with ––no matter how wealthy you are–– is a gang of clowns invading a hospital, and trying to kill everyone in it. Think about it. That would suck. Well Phillips has translated this nightmare vision into a three-minute ballet of destruction and carnage. This spot shows you the very bleeding edge of digital animation. After seeing this spot you will not understand how a person could watch <i>The Dark Knight</i> on a 19' CRT and live with themselves. And that fantasy world I talked about earlier? It may just appear a little more reasonable.<br /><br /><b>2. Dow and the Earth</b><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/i3byt7xMSCA&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/i3byt7xMSCA&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br />This actual TV spot for Dow is a pure concept piece. There's no product mentioned, just the company. Dow is an industrial giant that's <a href="http://www.amnestyusa.org/business-and-human-rights/dow-chemical/page.do?id=1101668">often slammed</a> for its environmental practices. This spot is designed to give you the warm fuzzies when you think about this multinational plastics behemoth. The fact that the spot actually manages to do that is pretty remarkable. The spot stays elegant and simple. It works the same angles that Disney's "Earth" does; reminding us we live on a big and beautiful planet. It sounds like a pretty simple idea, but whenever we are reminded of the width and breadth of the human experience on earth it stirs something inside of us. It's an instinctive human reaction, one that is perhaps too rarely tapped in advertising. <br /><br /><b>3. The Good Word</b><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/h3ul3q1PexA&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/h3ul3q1PexA&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br />Scrabble has sold 100 million boxes in its 61 years on this earth, but recently the brand's image has become a little dusty. The game is come to be associated with nerdy academic types and strange old people who know too many words. In atempt to right this dangerous course, Hasbro has commisioned 3 animated spots from <a href="http://www.wizz.fr/v2/index.php">Wizz</a>. They're beautiful. They're smart. They are exactly the kind of commercial that no one seems to think Americans are ready for (WHY!!!?). The ads only appear in France. <a href="http://www.wizz.fr/v2/site.php?l=uk">Check out the other 2 spots Wizz produced</a>.Kevin Allen Jr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02767340327370421229noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7548916850966623125.post-89598463338936589082009-04-23T21:20:00.009-04:002009-04-24T13:37:41.229-04:00La Crème de la CrapI recently <a href="http://advertingdisaster.blogspot.com/2009/04/question-of-audience-or-how-children.html"> made mention of a commercial</a> that, in the time since I wrote about it, has grown so aggressively annoying with its frequent appearances that I'm a little regretful I ever said anything nice about it. But what is said is said, and even when you've got administrative editing power you can't take back your words, or at least you shouldn't. <br /><br />So, instead of exacting my revenge on a poor helpless sponge and his royal burger friend, I'll instead spend some time discussing two other TV ads that have caused me endless consternation every time they interrupt my favorite shows. <br /><br />This first spot displays with comic awkwardness just what happens when a company gets so enraptured by self-image that it completely loses sight of its public persona. Watch what I mean:<br /><br /><object width="560" height="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/l8MTpaBUCpc&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/l8MTpaBUCpc&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="560" height="340"></embed></object><br /><br />I know Audi thinks that its "suburban commando SUV" is a whole 'nother animal from a Lexus "weekend warrior SUV." But as far as I can tell from this commercial, the only difference is the paint job. In an cultural atmosphere growing more concerned with the environment and more disdainful of needless consumption, this ad just feels grossly out of touch. Couple this with an awkward misuse of the term "identity theft" and the whole thing smacks of either poor translation or a completely wrongheaded advertising department. <br /><br />The other ad I'm going to lambaste today is one that's been bugging me for months. This ad is actually the only thing I have been asked on multiple occasions to blog about. It's garnered that much disgust. It's from Heineken. Check it out:<br /><br /><object width="560" height="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Y0LgJo9Do-8&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Y0LgJo9Do-8&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="560" height="340"></embed></object><br /><br />The problem here is a simple one: it's just not funny. It's a joke that wasn't funny 30 years ago. It wouldn't have been funny on a vaudeville stage. It's like someone told the ad team "comparing men and women is funny" and that was the extent of advertising research. The concept was never developed beyond the bar-napkin stage. Seriously, Heineken, how do you go from <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TH0fxwMsLfs">commercials that specifically engender a notion of academic and social superiority</a> to this brainless pap. This commercial appeals only to the lowest of the lowest common denominator. It's embarrassing. <br /><br />One of the founding principles of this blog was to offer not just criticism but also solutions to legitimate problems. The <i>Possible Disaster</i> series is focused entirely on the solutions. I've thought all week about how these commercials could be improved and I've regretfully concluded that the only possible solution is to scrap them whole cloth and start over. These are the unsalvageable failures, the unforgivable transgressions. These are the worst that today's television advertising has to offer. Bravo.<br /><br />Tune in next week for the exact opposite--the very best TV ads going right now--and why they work so well. For now, I need a shower for my eyes.Kevin Allen Jr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02767340327370421229noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7548916850966623125.post-23850540776104400702009-04-21T16:20:00.005-04:002009-04-22T11:32:19.423-04:00Personal Advertising: A Dilemma in 3.5 x 2 InchesBusiness cards--like sitcoms, vehicle upholstery, and fireworks displays--are a medium that is only noteworthy when a superlative example is offered. Under all other circumstances the great banal mediocrity of the form is not worthy of even as inauspicious a gesture as an under-viewed blog article. <br /><br />While I’m almost never one to argue the case for phoning in your design to a print company, the humble business card is one of those rare cases where it’s totally appropriate. To wit: far greater damage will be done by folks trying to “get creative” with their business cards than by printers following simple templates. <br /><br />The function of the business card is that of a thing left behind. It is the interface that a new acquaintance uses to contact you after a personal meeting. This may seem obvious, but it’s worth saying. People often lose sight of those facts and get bogged down trying to “make an impression” with their card. <br /><br />Watch the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoIvd3zzu4Y">business card scene from American Psycho</a> and consider why it’s funny. Certainly any send up of Wall Street decadence is good fun (especially these days), but the real punchline comes from how stunningly similar all the cards on the table are. Really, if you're going to nitpick the difference between "bone" and "pale nimbus" and you aren't a creative professional (or even if you are), you've probably gone too far and need to scale back your design process.<br /><br />Here's what you should put on your business card:<br /><blockquote>• Your name. <br />• A description of what you do so the people you give your card to know why they have it. This is often served by your job title, but it doesn't have to be.<br />• Your phone number. Just one if you can, two at most (a mobile and an office line). More numbers than that and people won't know which one to call. <br />• Your email address. Unless <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/uselection2008/johnmccain/2403704/John-McCain-technology-illiterate-doesnt-email-or-use-internet.html">you are John McCain</a>.<br />• If you have a website you want people to visit, go ahead and include the URL. But keep it brief, Spanky, and don't even think about landing a second address on there. <br /></blockquote><br /><br />Hmm... what else? We don't need your postal address. Ditto any other "alternate" info; give us one path to you, not more. No one needs to know your fax number on a business card. If someone needs to send you a fax you've moved beyond the "referencing business cards" phase of the relationship. Go ahead, spring for color, but remember: less is more. Keep the logo small, unobtrusive, and –unless you are Apple Computer in the 80's– one color. <br /><br />One more thing you really ought to avoid is any effect or gimmick that makes your card a nonstandard shape or texture. Lots of things are made to hold business cards. You may think that by making your card doubly long or half as wide you're bucking the norm and making a standout presentation, but in all honesty you're making your info harder to access, and a lot easier to throw out. You know those guys on street corners who hand out postcards for upcoming club shows? You ever notice that there's always a lot of postcards littered on the street around them? There's a good reason for that. <br /><br />Really the best advice I can give you regarding business cards is to do the opposite of whatever <a href="http://infotainer.com/infotainer/blog/home-page/">Joel Bauer</a> tells you.*<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/4YBxeDN4tbk&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/4YBxeDN4tbk&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />*Joel Bauer claims that the over the top personality he displays in this video is "acting," but i don't buy it. Anyone who is SELLING you self-improvement and business advice doesn't have your best interest at heart. Take a look at his website. Is that the kind of image you want to convey?Kevin Allen Jr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02767340327370421229noreply@blogger.com6