So true: relationships between the advertiser and the consumer

From BringTheLoveBack, found through the Muse blog.

Hm, I think this is also what the relationship between the customer and the agency is like sometimes.

Mobile advertising the shanghai way

Here I was, standing at shore of the Huangpu river, quietly overlooking Shanghai, when this came floating by.

Now, there are a lot of screens already all over the city: huge LED billboards on buildings, LCD screens in taxi's, plasma screen in subway stations, gyms and whatnot. You name it, they have a screen with advertising in or on it.

So when the whole city filled up, someone had the genius idea to throw a huge LED screen on a boat, put some ads on it and take it up and down the river. I guess this qualifies as "mobile" advertising. Or visual pollution if you happen to be in the mood to stroll by the water and take in the city views. Nothing is sacred any more.

We have come a long way since 1996

Since 1996,the WayBack Machine site has been archiving about 85 billion web pages. I've gone in and looked at the history of my site ... boy, have I come a long way too. :-)

Over at this site someone went in and looked as some big brand names like MacDonalds, CocaCola, Pepsi and Lego. It's "interesting" to see how primitve websites were back then in what we seen now as the stone age of the Internet (but which very exciting and cutting edge at the time.)

Wired on the iPhone history

Wired's report on the history of the iPhone and its impact on the US carrier market.
Read more here

Wildbeaming

It's all about getting people to notice you, so here is a nice video of how they did it by wildbeaming, a form of beamvertising. Pretty cool. Limited to cities though.

Video also available on YouTube

Flashback: The Double Life

For years, I've lived a double life.
In the day, I do my job - I ride the bus, roll up my sleeves with the hoi-polloi.
But at night, I live a life of exhilaration, of missed heartbeats and adrenalin.
And, if the truth be known, a life of dubious virtue.
I won't deny it - I've been engaged in violence, even indulged in it.
I've maimed and killed adversaries, and not merely in self-defence.
I've exhibited disregard for life, limb and property, and savoured every moment.
You may not think it, to look of me, but I have commanded armies, and conquered worlds.
And though in achieving these things I've set morality aside, I have no regrets.
For though I've led a double life, at least I can say - I've lived.

Yes, it's the immortal PlayStation ad. Check it out on YouTube and look here for some analysis of it.

The Abilene paradox

The previous post on the Asoh defense led me to another real gem, the Abilene paradox.

Where I work, they have something called "disagree and commit". It's a good principle if it works, and when there is ample time to discuss, as this post explains. It tends to get a bit scary when the discussion bit is omitted (by fear of displeasing management or whatever the reason may be), and people end up with the Abilene paradox. This is a paradox in which a group of people collectively decide on a course of action that is counter to the preferences of any of the individuals in the group. It involves a common breakdown of group communication in which each member mistakenly believes that their own preferences are counter to the group's and do not raise objections. Scary, isn't it? The paradox is usually inllustrated by the below story:

"On a hot afternoon visiting in Coleman, Texas, the family is comfortably playing dominoes on a porch, until the father-in-law suggests that they take a trip to Abilene [53 miles north] for dinner. The wife says, "Sounds like a great idea." The husband, despite having reservations because the drive is long and hot, thinks that his preferences must be out-of-step with the group and says, "Sounds good to me. I just hope your mother wants to go." The mother-in-law then says, "Of course I want to go. I haven't been to Abilene in a long time."

The drive is hot, dusty, and long. When they arrive at the cafeteria, the food is as bad. They arrive back home four hours later, exhausted.

One of them dishonestly says, "It was a great trip, wasn't it." The mother-in-law says that, actually, she would rather have stayed home, but went along since the other three were so enthusiastic. The husband says, "I wasn't delighted to be doing what we were doing. I only went to satisfy the rest of you." The wife says, "I just went along to keep you happy. I would have had to be crazy to want to go out in the heat like that." The father-in-law then says that he only suggested it because he thought the others might be bored.

The group sits back, perplexed that they together decided to take a trip which none of them wanted. They each would have preferred to sit comfortably, but did not admit to it when they still had time to enjoy the afternoon."

Sounds familiar?

The Asoh Defense

The Asoh Defense is real simple:
If at first you don't succeed ... just admit it. "Yup, my fault, I f***ed up."
Not something you ever really here in the corporate world, do you?

Click here for the story behind the Asoh defense.

The part where they link it to the organizations really hits home. In a lot of a corporate cultures, the reality is more that of "crime and punishment"; something goes wrong and the great game of “Scape Goat” starts where everyone runs and hides while trying to find someone to be "it".


Through MetaFilter.

Was the Matrix wrong?

Troed made an interesting comment yesterday: statistically there is a high probability that we are all avatars. Welcome to our self-chosen Matrix... Read all about the debate on the simulation argument website

The site is a debate about the possibility that we may be living in a simulation. A brief introduction is in order. The paper on the site argues that at least one of the following propositions is true:

i. It is possible that a civilization could create a computer simulation which contains individuals with artificial intelligence.

ii. Such a civilization would likely run many – say billions – of these simulations (just for fun; for research, etc.)

iii. A simulated individual inside the simulation wouldn’t know that it’s inside a simulation – it’s just going about its daily business in what it considers the “real world”.

Then the ultimate question is – if one accepts that points 1-2-3 are at least possible, which of the following is more likely?

a. We are the one civilization out there in the universe that will eventually develop the ability to run AI simulations? Or,

b. We are one of the billions of simulations that has run? (Remember point iii.)

While you're at it, take some time to read the simulated reality wiki.

I did get a funny feeling when reading Troeds post on the Matrix ... I don't think I would want to spend my life in a pod, no matter how good the reality. I think I'd end up taking the red pill. But then again ... how would I know? (Remember point iii.)

WiFi Positioning systems

Today I came across Skyhook's Wi-Fi Positioning System (WPS). It' s a "location platform" that uses the native 802.11 radio in your PC (or even your smartphone) to deliver accurate positioning.

After installing the Loki plugin from the loki.com site (actually a product of Skyhook Wireless), my laptop is now able to find its position thanks to a triangulation using WiFi access points around me (provided that the region has been mapped by Skyhook), and I can use it for driving directions or finding businesses in my surroundings. No hardware needed, just a plugin for the browser. And ... it works indoors and outdoors, handy when you're sitting in an office or a hotel room and trying to find your way around.

Skyhook calls it a "metro-area positioning system" that leverages Wi-Fi instead of satellites or cell towers to deliver precise location data supporting the growing market for location-based services.

Halo 3 Science of Play

For all those (other) Halo fans out there, here is an insight on how Bungie Studios is working on the testing of Halo 3. Well worth a read.

We have come a long way. I wonder if they ever did game testing like this on PacMan?

Source: Wired

The 12 kinds of ads

Apparently, there are (only?) 12 kinds of ads in the world.

That is, according to Donald Gunn, once a creative director for the advertising agency Leo Burnett.

An excerpt from the article in Slate:

"Though his position implied expertise, Gunn felt he was often just throwing darts—relying on inspiration and luck (instead of proven formulas) to make great ads. So, he decided to inject some analytical rigor into the process: He took a yearlong sabbatical, studied the best TV ads he could find, and looked for elemental patterns.

After much research, Gunn determined that nearly all good ads fall into one of 12 categories—or "master formats," in his words. At last year's Clio Awards, I saw Gunn give a lecture about these formats (using ads mostly from the '70s and '80s as examples), and I was fascinated by his theory. I soon found myself categorizing every ad I saw on TV. It was a revelation: The curtain had been pulled back on all those sly sales tactics at the heart of persuasive advertising."

Polar Rose versus IDPS (IDentity Protection System)

Everybody puts their pictures online. Picasa, flickr, you just name them. But what if your friend puts a picture with YOU on it online? Cue the IDPS (IDentity Protection System), a sticker you wear that "tells" a camera taking a snapshot of you to blur out your face.
(Found at the YaHoo Design week.)

If it works, this may be a good thing, because at the other side of the spectrum, there is Polar Rose, a browser plugin that lets you discover who is in any public photo. They're in beta right now, but just imagine someone having a picture of you, and then using Polar Rose to find pictures of you all over the internet (even the ones you don't know of, and/or don't want others to know about).

While we're on the subject of news and blogging. I came across some articles on CNN about blogging related to the war in Iraq.

The question of course is ... can these blogs be trusted as a source of news? Both sides seem to be actively blogging about the war. There's the case of a much-talked-about blog from a guy called "Salam Pax", claiming to be a 29-year-old architect living in Baghdad ( "Salam" and "Pax" both mean peace in Arabic and Latin respectively, in case you're interested). Pax is blogging about the bombing, life in Bagdad and his family's reactions to it all ... the only thing is, how do we know this is for real? It probably is, but how would we know for sure? If you're interested, go visit his blog on his blogspot or just do a search on google for "Salam Pax".

Another interesting part of the article is about the bloggers that work for the big news companies themselves, like CNN for example. Quoting from the article: "CNN Correspondent Kevin Sites was chronicling his experiences in Iraq until last Friday. According to his Web site, he is "Pausing the war blog, for now." A CNN spokesman told The New York Times the company believed the blog was a distraction from his reporting duties.'" Well, so much for blogging the news. I guess he had to stop it because CNN wasn't getting any advertising dollars for his blogs. Hey, it's the tough laws of economics. ;-)

Another interesting one is "soldier blogging". Have a look at sites like www.blogsofwar.com, www.sgtstryker.com, www.rooba.net/will and www.lt-smash.us ... interesting alternative news sources. Well, if you can call it news of course, but hey, someone's venting an opinion (let's hope it's not the dog). Seems they're even faster than CNN sometimes. Betcha CNN doesn't like that ... maybe they'll have to stop doing it too, start fighting some more and get CNN advertising dollars?