Sarah meet Twitter. Twitter, Sarah.

A novel use for Twitter: spreading sarcastic rumors about McCain's VP choice, Sarah Palin. Twitter is rapidly becoming one of the most experimental digital experiences: a source of personal broadcasting, a communication platform, a friend locate-er, a journalistic source, a marketing vehicle, a customer service desk, a message board, a podium for political debate, a stage for performance art and now a forum for political satire, all because of how simple, and how unregulated, the user experience is. With it's single existential question, Twitter can be anything to anyone.

This has been said before in many different forums but it bears repeating.

Palin Facts via Mashable

Method Acting

File that one under X-tremely good marketing.

US Weekly, you can use that as your sub-head.

Duchovny Enters Sex Rehab

Next: Your Church

Good works brands! You've successfully stormed the convention using guerrilla tactics! This is wonderful news. Surely, a boost in sales will arise. I love money.

Placing your brand at the Democratic Convention is the perfect marketing strategy--an essential part of any media plan. You'll create new brand ambassadors--no pun intended--who will certainly storm the streets shouting, "Obama is the change we need! Buy Qwest fiber optic Internet! But don't pour Coca-Cola on it! That's for the drinking!"

Take note brands who missed out. In four years, you too can slap your logo on the backs of the candidate. Or get even more creative, and run your bio-diesel car on bullshit campaign rhetoric. While in Denver, I think I even saw that cancer survivor who wrote Hillary on her bald head, sporting the AT&T logo like some Maori tattoo.

At least I think it was. I was to busy feeling sad that she was being used again as some sort of brand symbol.

I got over it quickly. After all, she's a brand ambassador. It gives her short life meaning. Kind of like religion, except in the end she'll have a 4G iPhone. Jesus phone saves!

Many among you might wonder why I'm so excited for the agencies who came up with this genius. Isn't corporate influence in government something that most people disdain? Duh. So, why not remind people of it ad infinitum? Soon it will become so commonplace to see the symbolic union of politics and corporation, we'll all accept it as just the way things are--and should be. This is America.

And if that doesn't work, there's always the Vatican. I hear the Pope loves money too.

NY Times

Kid Rock covers "Something So Right"

Anyone who loves PBR and rock-rappin' midgets is all right by me. So, as I usually do, I've got to agree with Kid Rock: there is definitely something to be said for artists withholding music from iTunes.

People do indeed want to be able to get there content anywhere; however, artists also have a right to create the content as they see fit. Think about it. By the logic of giving people the art they want however they want it, wherever they wanted, shouldn't the Mona Lisa also hang in the Flickr? It's no longer the Mona Lisa, it's a picture of it. Worse, what if were just her smile on Flickr? That's not the Mona Lisa, it's only a part. And that's what putting music up on iTunes allows for, people downloading a poor representation of a part of an album, legally.

I'm not saying any of Kid's oeuvre lives up to DaVinci standards. Clearly, it exceeds it. Red, white and Pabst Blue Ribbon--come on--brilliant. At the same time, let's remember that artists still have the right to create something as they want, and control how it's viewed or listened to or experienced. Isn't that one of the things that makes art art?

Techdirt

Anarchists hate Facebook

Well, it appears that the young anarchists who want you to destroy your TV also want you to destroy your Facebook page. I find it interesting how these cultural rejectors are not only rebelling against corporate controlled media, but also corporate mediated social interactions.

Anarchists always get the underlying meaning of this society's media, that is control. Their fight is against the authentic's regulatation by a state apparatus. That today also means Facebook.

TV once was the dominant destroyer of the authentic, by representing a particular lifestyle through the one-two punch of dominant narrative and advertising's manufactured desire. Today it's Facebook and the like destroying the authentic relationship of people by creating a false representation of the self, one that is regulated by the framework of its profiles and interactions rather than experiences.

Most people, of course, are not aware how this is taking place. Or maybe if they are, they don't feel the issues of virtual social networks are weighty enough to merit the destruction (myself included). The values of these networks simply outweigh the issue. Still it's good to see someone is criticizing them in sloppy Dunkin Donuts graffiti. What could be more anti-Facebook than that.

Anti-Advertising Agency

Convertainment

Another example of entertainment that takes the form of conversations between fans and the characters. A few folks are playing out the lives of the characters on Mad Men 24/7 through Twitter. After a brief dispute between AMC and the fans, it appears AMC have relented to let them continue to use the names of Don Draper, Peggy Olsen, Joan Holloway, among others from the hit cable series. Is this entertainment? Or entertaining? Definitely the former, the later is a matter of taste (I'd say more a curiosity) but it is interesting to see people adapting new media to storytelling. The networks should take note.


Don Draper on Twitter

Fans? Not so much.

When extreme fandom becomes performance art, is it still influential? Seems to me not so much.

Product Innovation Nightmares

Tooth Tunes is certainly one of the most bizarre product innovations I have seen in a long time. It is also one of the most bizarre advertisements I've seen with its oddly looped version of Kiss' "Rock n' Roll All Night," the reference to the Apple 1984 ads, the strange scientific diagrams meant to prove to us that "yes, this really works" and the dancing--oh the dancing.

Mostly, though, its an example of what happens when a planner hangs their hat on a single perceptual insight.

That insight: "to kids, brushing is thought of as a boring routine that feels like a punishment." I buy that as a point of truth. Kids do feel that way about brushing. Still I don't buy it as a provocative insight that can lead to a solution. And it didn't. It lead to a worthless product that plays two minutes of looped music, every morning, noon and night, for 6 months.

Sounds like more punishment to me.

True or False, the insight doesn't work because it's the wrong way to look at the issue of good brushing among children. Who cares what kids feel about doing it? What we should care about are the complex dynamics behind the outlying behavior: the cultural symbols and rituals that regulate individual performance towards obsession, in this case obsession with teeth. And that means asking: what's different about kids who brush v. those who don't; what's the root of the good behavior for those few who have had solid lifelong brushing habits; what do clean teeth symbolize for kids; when and why did humans start brushing their teeth? All of the above and then some.

Don't and you get . . . click play at your own risk.

Stephen Colbert explores branding

He's done it again. No one makes a comment more on the absolute ridiculousness of current advertising philosophies. Colbert's parody of sponsorship has long been a staple of his show, mostly with Doritos. In this video, Colbert again takes on the topic with Lucas Conley.

Conley's point is well taken. Companies need to stop focusing on applying lacquer to their products and stretching their brands into the "lifestyle" space; they need to start focusing on making better products.

Agencies hold some of the responsibility. It's no surprise though when you consider that the industry's genesis was the 19th century medicine show, a show who's sole purpose was to get people to buy worthless alcohol-elixirs by putting on a good roadshow. Little has changed over a hundred years later. The roadshow may have gotten more complex but it's philosophy still remains dominant in advertising.

What agencies need to do is evolve. They must find a way to foster innovation and provide something of value to those who engage with their advertisements. This does require a fundamental shift in how agencies do business, how they generate revenue, how they organize themselves, whom they hire, and fundamentally how they think. It's a big effort and truthfully, it's not a near-term necessity. Advertising is not in a change or die mode. But isn't changing the world important enough?

That's the opportunity. It's a good one.

Microsoft. Not cool.

Microsoft, why do you think you need to be "cool?" Worse, why do you think being cool means having Jerry Seinfeld be your spokesperson? Or even that having a celebrity spokesperson is cool? What is cool anyway? Beatniks? Or the word you say when you reach an agreement?

"How about tomorrow at seven for that important meeting? Cool?"

"Cool."

It's definitely not Justin Long. Sorry, Mac dude.

True cool is not claimable. Cool is an innate behavior. It's defiant anger through a detached stare. Calling yourself cool? Uncool. Being called cool? Uncool. Trying to act cool? Not so cool. Dropping out of college to code MS-DOS? Well, if you have to ask what jazz is . . .

So stop playing cool, Microsoft and start making products that break the rules. Then don't tell us about it. That wouldn't be cool.

MSNBC

More photographic inventions

When demonstrated last year, Photosynth looked to be the first community based photography tool. Constructing 3-D images from multiple geo-tagged photographs, it could leverage the millions upon millions of photos shared online to create a new photo, a panorama on steroids.

And it's now live.

Should be interesting to see if it truly lives up to the promise of the demo. If it does, photography could move from being a representation of your perspective to ours.

Photosynth goes live

Photography is Magic

We've all smiled before the camera to represent our perpetual enjoyment of everything to the archive.We've heard the story about "privative" societies that believe photography can capture the soul. Some have likely seen the pictures of 19th century funerary photography, people posing (quite literally) with dead people as a means to preserve their spirits. Now, with the proliferation of affordable digital photo-retouching technology, we're seeing photography become even more magic.
Where photography once had the power to create and possess the spirit of a moment, it now becomes a force that can also manifest spirits--for example, your Uncle Dick at your wedding, despite him being preoccupied with that 8-week wine-tasting course on your most special of days.

Our lives will never be the same. At least, how we remember our lives.

New York Times

This is England

This movie feels very much like America today. And it frightens me. Truly it is amazing how a group of people can transform from an empowering community to a fascist order, especially in times of economic disenfranchisement.

This is England

Pandora's Box

No one would argue that artists should work for free. And no one would argue that Pandora is a worthless music service for fans and artists. It can turn fans on to new music. It can help struggling artist's attract a larger fan base. However, one could argue that Pandora doesn't serve the music industry. It can't really make more money from their most profitable acts without those acts getting bigger royalty checks.

Getting paid for their work through online royalties, as the article points out, is primarily the concern of those artist's who actually support themselves completely doing their art. It's unlikely that indie band you've never heard of values the pennies they get from performing royalties v. the efficient promotional vehicle. Metallica on the other hand just might want those dollars.

Of course, the fans don't want to pay for their music. And the services, like Pandora, don't have a business model to make the industry money, pay the big artist's what they deserve and give exposure to the niche artists. It's possible there is no model that will ever address all of these desires. The industry, the artists, and the fans have very different needs and all of them deserve to be filled.

Washington Post

Walking Tours. Marching through a brand's history.

I've only lived in Portland, OR a short time, and this weekend our home was christened with our first visitor.

As anytime a friend and tourist comes to your city, you suddenly find yourself doing the tourist-y things. When I lived in New York City these tourist-y things might have included standing on line at the Statue of Liberty or your ears popping as you ascend to the observation deck on top of the Empire State Building. In Portland, I was at a loss. What was the equivalent? A walking tour exposing the subterranean history of Portland.

I had never really thought much about what all these tourist activities mean. Not why people wanted to participate. We do have this burning need to have a photograph in front of whatever represents the locus of our travels as a monument to our own adventurousness. What I began to think about is why are the people of a town compelled to give such a tour. Clearly it wasn't for money.

Our guide was what one would expect, a long-time local, a man fascinated with history, someone rather overweight with a microphone around his sweaty head. As most well-trained guides, he had his stories well-rehearsed. He was quite the raconteur. He engaged the audience with questions. He got excited by architecture. He even pulled a magnet out of his pocket to prove that, yes, these buildings were cast irons. He was giving the tour because he loved his city and he wanted to share it with us.

He also wanted to brand it for us. His stories were the vehicle. They constructed the city's brand in each word and street corner finger-point now stare at that building/monument/field.

Portland, a town where you'll find a number of cars with bumper stickers shouting "Keep Portland Weird," certainly likes to present itself as progressive, edgy, a bit fringe, arts-y, maverick, indie. The stories our guide chose helped to frame this impression for the "tourists" and implant these tales in their bodily experience, unpeeling the streets and buildings to reveal the seedy history as we all marched along. His stories were about racism turning into recognition of racism, sex scandal, shanghai-ing (the tour itself was billed as such), mayors who expose themselves in front of statues and get re-elected, prostitution and graft, crime--all stories that construct the history of a progressive, edgy, fringe-y, arts-y, maverick, indie city.

Not a bad brand to have in this post-cool, post-Bush world, at least for a certain market segment.

Portland Walking Tours

Bigfoot not real. Just pile of guts.

I was excited. Bigfoot: found. The famous performance artist, formerly known as Sasquatch, had been found dead in the woods (of course). Finally, his existence proven.

Instead it turns out Bigfoot, or the not Bigfoot, was just a pile of fur with some guts thrown on it for effect. Why would anyone do this? Perhaps that's a mystery greater than Bigfoot's presence itself.

Clearly there's a drive in our culture for people to believe in something beyond our control. One only needs to look at the plethora of reality shows on the paranormal--most of which, by the way, are terrible examples of the genre. Or the celebrity fascination with Kabbalah and Scientology. Or simply the pervasiveness of religiosity in our country: the rise of Mormonism with its magic underpants, the continued belief in the Revelation, all the hippie, new age, pseudo-spiritual bullshit. Bigfoot, like Nessie, the Yeti and others, falls into this realm of believing in something beyond our control and our understanding.

These beliefs themselves are understandable. It's likely even a piece of being human. Believing in something out of our control has existed for thousands and thousands of years. To this day it still exists, even in the supposed objective realm of science. Quantum theory for example, reflects this with its positing of the impossibility of objective empiricism. No doubt it is a piece of who we are.

The drive to feed those desires with fakir behavior is not easily understandable. Perhaps there is a drive among some to control the uncontrollable through the creation the myth of the uncontrollable. To them, Bigfoot is just a pile of guts and they're the only ones in on the secret. Nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah.

I wonder what the real Bigfoot would say. He would probably just hit them with a log and knock some sense into them; knock them back to reality: bigfoot doesn't exist.

Or does he?

I have faith in you Bigfoot.

NY Times