Vampire fantasy is inescapable. Today, confronted by an onslaught of particularly annoying advertising, I got to thinking about the real bloodsuckers and why we are so poorly equipped to resist them.
Yes, real vampires exist and they are way more annoying than the sparkly kind and far less sexy than the interviewed kind, but don't worry, they are equally as needy!
Edward: I have to tell you something. The reason why you are one dimensional, is because I stole your personality from you while you were busy updating your iPod apps in chem lab this morning. sorry.
Bella: That's OK, I never really had that much stake in it to begin with. Can we make out now?
So, while Ed and Bella do that, we can talk about the latest Yahoo! brand campaign.
This ad in particular, has me fired up
Now the internet has a personality. Yours.
On the one hand I applaud it's honesty. Openly stating that your brand has nothing to offer is pretty bold. And it's true. YOU are the product that many media companies now sell to each other. If they can't convince millions of us use their service, they got nothing. Currently, these businesses trade us services and tools for personal data and this works pretty well. But as a long term business plan? How long can this value proposition hold up?
As long as they can convince us that we are the center of the YOUniverse. And so, vampires they must become.
I saw Jonathan Zittrain give this Minds For Sale, talk at the Digital Labor conference last month. He goes through examples of the many ethically questionable deals businesses are making with individuals online all the time. I am interested specifically, in the exploitation of individuals personalities/identities but he essentially covers the same issues and frameworks. Well worth a watch plus Zittrain keeps it entertaining.
Also, it's not because they are vampires that you want to suck face with them, its because they are 16, you creepy pedophiles!
and that's another reason why yahoo lost the battle to google.
Back to your opening statement... I'm 100% sick of Vampire propaganda (meaning anything referring to Twilight). Why was I in staples the night the new Twilight movie opened, and teeniboppers who worked there kept telling me to go see it (growl).
Posted by: Bags | December 01, 2009 at 01:59 AM