Humping The (new) Media Landscape

Your Personality Sucks

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.

Yahoo!: Single White Website (thanks to @dloher for that subtitle!)

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!

Marketer of the Year

Ad Age names Team Obama Marker of The Year.

Gotta say, I agree.
It's an impressive strategy in a very difficult environment - take notes, people!

The Obama iPhone app is a pretty microsite that includes all the tools any ad hoc Obama canvaser would need. Most notably there is a Call Friends link that lets you score Obama Points (note sure what they are redeemable for exactly? I guess, a better future for your children?) for calling friends numbers, identified from your phone book as being in key states.

Can I Call You Joe?

         The folksy talk of  "Main Street, USA" is in no way a surprising theme in presidential elections. Candidates of all stripes, determined to connect with average Americans, invoke a myriad of clichéd Americana even trotting out a middle-aged out-of-work so-and-so at every campaign stop, who happens to have an incredibly practiced personal narrative to share and a miscellaneous down home accent to go with it. These people serve as surrogates invoking a normalcy that presidential hopefuls can't have, as they have most likely spent their lives either in prep schools or working their less privileged asses off in order to attend a top law school, then in various state houses and then, ideally, getting to know how government actually works in Washington, DC.  They desperately need you, the populace, to identify with their carefully selected surrogates and they need you to do it quickly and definitively.  This concept has been taken to its most absurd turn with the current presidential race, as Governor Sarah Palin makes near constant references to “Joe-Six-Packs” and “Hockey Moms”. 

           Since I initially decided to write on this topic, the subject of a certain Joe so-and-so has ballooned to degree of absurdity beyond my wildest expectations. Something about hearing Governor Palin in the Vice-Presidential debate repeatedly calling out to her audience, the person watching her at home on the TV as “Joe Six-Pack”, struck me as very peculiar. First of all, it seemed an odd choice of words; essentially, calling ones audience by a derogatory name. But there was something else that made it feel even more inappropriate in this context. Why was this term was so familiar and yet wrong? Then I remembered, its a television industry term used to describe a marketing demographic. Use of this term betrays the humility it is meant to bestow on Governor Palin, because it is language of a marketing strategy rather than an actual down-home turn of phrase. Peggy Noonan described Palin’s entire performance as “an infomercial pitch for charm in politics” transparent yet effective. Noonan asks, at what point “shiny, happy populism becomes cheerful manipulation.”1  For me this indicated a fascinating breakdown of the communication structure, where the seams of this shiny, happy populism are ripped and the strategic manipulation beneath is revealed.

Click to read the rest of what I wrote on the subject

This is a link to a great interview with several demographics experts related to the election on Salon.

Alive in Bagdhad Reporter Killed

Ali Shafeya Al-Moussawi, an Iraqi correspondent for Alive in Baghdad was killed in his home during an Iraqi National Guard raid (link).

Shit. That's all I can say right now. I try to stay off the rss feeds over the weekend, so I was just going through looking for something for work tomorrow and I was deeply upset to come across this news.

For those who have never seen Alive in Baghdad , it is one of my favorite online video projects. Brian Conley and his team have created an entirely independent media system, working with journalists in Iraq, Syria, and Mexico who produce weekly video dispatches on a variety of subjects about life in their city. There is really nothing else like it. They have used the tools of the blogosphere to distribute content that filled a void in the actual media space. They create videos with journalistic integrity that also bring you the real individuals who are living in these communities of conflict. They have been cited by many mainstream media outlets as the future of journalism. I sure hope so.

Please take a minute to stop by the site watch some videos and show your support with donations and comments. Share the site with your friends and post about it on your blog.

Donations are being accepted by Small World News for the family of Ali Shafeya Al-Moussawi for funeral arrangements.

Your's, Mine, Ours and other copyfights!

Intellectual property is truly the core issue in the maturation of online media as a real sustainable place for MSM and independent

I have seen differences of opinion on this subject create a vast divide amongst people who should be working together.

Trademark Troll (aka Dick Troll! Best name ever!) has a post about the current issue between a certain rock band from the late 80's let's call them, Pungent Brown Garlic Flowers (PBGF) and the producers of a, very awesome new TV show that has the same name as one of PBGF's popular tunes. (full disclosure, I essentially work for the party being sued, but I am not required to say that said show is awesome, it just is. fact.) Here's what TT has to say:

"some brand owners overestimate the significance of the public's association with their brand. So what do such brand owners do? They try to assert total and everlasting control over every facet of their marketplace identity. In doing so they come off looking at best silly and at worst greedy."
(link)

Speechless

In support of striking WGA writers, top notch actors make silly videos and prove that they are indeed helpless without writers.

The cast of Ugly Betty really needs them, really.

You can see Laura Linney, Sean Penn and many more awesome actors, not talking on the the Speechless  Without Writers site.