Speak softly and carry a big gun

Funny how you can boil down an entire movie to a few lines. Following is the entire dialogue from an advertisement for "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo":

FIRST MALE VOICE (v.o.): I need a research assistant.

SECOND MALE VOICE (v.o.): I know an excellent one.

(onscreen) But she's different.

FIRST MAN: All right. In what way?

SECOND VOICE (v.o.): In every way. She's had a rough life. Can we not make it any rougher?

DANIEL CRAIG: Lisbeth, I want you to help me catch a killer of women.

LISBETH (v.o.): They say I'm insane.

ANOTHER MALE VOICE (v.o.): Why would you want to know about such an awful murder?

LISBETH (holding a huge gun): It interests me.

I know this is my second post in a row about this movie. It's not that I'm a fan of the franchise one way or another. It's just that the marketing... (holding a big gun) interests me. Later:Sounds like a good example of the trope Small Girl, Big Gun.

A grown man gets a hard-on at Taco Bell

From an interview on Forbes.com with Twitter Founder and CEO Jack Dorsey:

On Twitter, “all of that following, all of that interest expressed, is intent. It’s a signal that you like certain things,” Dorsey says. In “promoted tweets, promoted trends and promoted accounts… you actually see introductions to content, to accounts or to topics that are deeply meaningful to you, because you’ve already expressed interest, you’ve already curated your timeline. And it’s a delightful experience."

 
Seeing "Promoted" (i.e. bought and paid for by advertisers) tweets in your timeline is delightful? No. Personally I haven't clicked on a single "Promoted" tweet.

I got to that interview after reading this blog post on Percolate, the purpose of which I have not been able to figure out.

Dorsey talked about capturing intent, which has been a big buzzword around marketing Google’s search advertising was coined as an intent miner. As I wrote then:

Twitter’s value is not about intent, in the classic funnel definition, it’s much more about awareness and interest: About exposing you to new products and services you didn’t know you were interested in. 

So Twitter isn't about people communicating with each other, doing journalism, or providing them a platform for expression, according to these geeks. It's "about exposing you to new products and services you didn’t know you were interested in."

Oh really. Isn't that always what the advertising industry says? Commercials are educational because they teach consumers about new products and services? But that's what we have reviews for.

Here's how I inform myself about a new product or service, starting from the moment I become aware of it.

1. I hear about something while reading an article, usually in a print copy of a newspaper.
2. If I'm interested, I'll search for more information by searching for reviews of it.
3. If I'm approaching actually buying the thing, I will go to the company's website and look at the product specifications.

No advertising in it at all. And no tweets, either.

Just before the holiday, I spotted this jaw-dropping review of Taco Bell on a website usually devoted to survivalism and predictions of economic catastrophe. Is it possible that a rational adult could actually write something like:

Let's just start with the obvious thing: the food. It is, of course, wonderful and full of varied textures: crunchy shells, robust meat, cold and fresh lettuce, stringy cheese, and all the fatty stuff that we love because it both satisfies and gives us energy. It arrives quickly, and its ready to eat, mostly with your hands, which is really how we all want to eat.

... But there’s more going on than just fun food. The company obviously puts a great deal of thought into the ethos of the restaurants themselves. The decor gives us things to look at that we don't see anywhere else. The colors are all those we associate with the Southwest, but not in a conventional way. The shapes are geometric and modern, with a daring flare that delights the eye and fires up the imagination. 

The details around the place add to the sense of adventure, but you don’t take note of them individually unless you are looking closely. The backs of the chairs all have a bell shape cut out in the steel. The lighting is not mainly in the ceiling but rather comes from orange hanging glass lamps in the shape of cones, and I was trying to think where I had seen this before. Is it like the knave [sic] of a chapel in a monastery in a Spanish mission territory? Maybe that’s it. I’m unsure but it conjures up something different. 

Hold on here. Perhaps you have already realized this and I’m slow on the take, but the whole Taco Bell experience is suggestive of that Spanish mission sensibility. That’s why the buildings are shaped the way they are. And, obviously, that’s the whole meaning behind the bell, and why it adorns the front entrance of the place. It’s a church bell! It taps into something deep and lasting in our cultural sensibilities, something that shaped our ancestors and their communities, and presents it all anew in our times.

Are you fucking kidding me? This is like something a 16-year-old would write for English class, if he's really hopped up on Adderall that day. But the author is evidently an adult. And it's like three times as long as that!

Maybe that's the kind of person those advertisers are talking about. Wow.

Today's fake: figure in Japanese TV commercial is actually computer-generated

We're not talking about crowds enhanced by CGI, we're talking about a pictured pop singer who is actually computer generated using combinations of features from 61 other young women.

Only an early entrant in what I predict will be a brief flood of movies featuring computer-generated characters in live-action films, movies which will garner a little bit of interest before everyone realizes they completely suck. Then the technology will be absorbed by the porn industry and by television commercials. Because really, why pay people who just get sick and die, or have gag reflexes?

I also predict there will be a new term for the flow of jobs to computer-generated figures: not off-shoring or in-sourcing, but something else. I can't think of a good snappy term for it right now. It's too bad "virtual" has three syllables and takes a long time to say. I wonder what the Japanese call it.

Google advertising FAIL

This story in my Google Reader (from the 3 Quarks Daily website) and an advertisement from a trade school resulted in an unfortunate pairing:

Hey, it's pride week

This TV commercial from the outdoors equipment retailer REI has a nice little crypto-lesbo moment that's impossible to miss.

Not sure how else to interpret it than "You may be out biking with your 'boyfriend,' but it's the lady bikers you really have your eye on."

More on copywriting

Last Wednesday I mocked an advertisement that promised big money in the copywriting game. But I didn't really know what it was talking about.

That same day the New York Observer ran this piece about the career of someone who made money in the way they may have been thinking of:

Bryne Hobart learned the vagaries of Google rankings while working at Blue Fountain Media, one of the biggest SEO shops in New York. The 24-year-old college dropout had hoped for a career finance, but the market implosion of 2008 nixed that idea. Instead, he scored an internship writing copy at Blue Fountain, eventually working his way up to managing director of marketing. ...

In March, Mr. Hobart and Mr. Pierce formed their own company on the side, Digital Due Diligence. His first post, on Demand Media, drew tens of thousands of readers and was passed around internally at the content farm. Mr. Hobart began monitoring other companies that were relying on some of the shadier SEO strategies, and posting these findings online. The idea behind the business was to help hedge funds and venture capital firms assess the risk of investing in companies that relied heavily on search traffic.

Not surprisingly, Mr. Hobart's double game -- practicing SEO by day, exposing it by night -- soon proved unsustainable.

Then fun was had all around. This all just makes me realize I don't really understand SEO (search engine optimization, one of the dark, or at best grey, arts of the internet) and should read up on it. Dang, though, it's getting harder and harder to keep up.

World's greatest sad

While browsing the New York Times site, I was treated to a popup advertisement for something. In the 30-second ad, a teenage girl sitting in a bright bedroom typed the words "You're the World's Greatest Dad" into her smartphone. There followed several morphing animated scenes of a cartoon girl and her dad winning races, playing in the treehouse he'd built for her, and so on. At the end the ad goes back to "real life," showing the late-middle-aged father sitting alone in a dark book-lined study receiving the message on a laptop and apparently chuckling in pleasure.

But I thought, good God, look at this. Here's this girl texting her father. Clearly they're living apart now, in different houses. And he's sitting alone in this dark study -- it has to be his home, as he's wearing a lavender-colored v-neck sweater -- staring down at his laptop. He isn't working. This email from his daughter is basically the only thing he seems to have to occupy himself with. Is he chuckling at the end of the commercial, or crying?

Oh, and I missed noticing what product was being promoted.

Ostentation meets hype meets D&S

After some stranger followed my Twitter feed, I was led to this bizarre video in which the woman -- judging from the feed she works in promotions for some booze company -- is tutored by some aggressive British gent in the basics of enjoying some super-expensive whiskey. The British gent is so noisy, so controlling, so in-her-face that it's almost like watching a D&S scene. The woman's "What have I got myself into?" expression as the scene goes on and on is priceless.

technorati: live the lush life, whiskey

That's Jenny with an X

The appearance of Boing Boing's Xeni Jardin on the Rachel Maddow Show (thanks, @tara) educated me for the first time on, among other things: that the A-list (for the internet) celebrity's name is pronounced "zhenny zhardan," and that she seems to have excellent diction, even the traces of an East Coast posh accent.

It's a funny story and worth watching, and what a giant plug for BoingBoing. Of course Maddow's audience is likely already familiar with BoingBoing (the most-viewed blog in history) but such a feature can only serve to remind everyone that it's still relevant and not merely the repository of some writers' obsessions with squids, steampunk, and Disney World.

Triumph of the Bourgeoisie: a sturdy railing between you and the jungle

I was struck by this banner ad, which I saw on the site of the San Jose Mercury News:

Nice clean white people separated from the jungle by a sturdy wooden railing. They aren't sweating. They aren't in the sun. Their L.L. Bean sportswear is still perfectly pressed, dry and free of stains from grease, sunscreen or bug repellent. In fact, they might as well be watching a DVD of the Panamanian jungle from their condominium -- and why didn't they, instead of contributing to global warming by flying down there just so they can stay as far away from the jungle as possible?

Yes, I went to India two years ago -- and I stayed in the city, as opposed to a friend of mine who went a year later. He was never in the city, he boasted, but always out in the countryside, seeing the sites, whatever they are. I did not say: and every step of the way, your whole presence was an insult to the bitterly poor populace (and they are much poorer in the country than in the city), reminding them of the hopelessness of their lives.

I can't imagine traveling to a third world country just to lord it over the locals, who would be able to size me up at a glimpse and tell that my annual income is 10000% of theirs. So I don't understand the appeal of such trips to the American bourgeoisie (of which I am definitely a member; make no mistake, it's not like I'm trying to say that I'm not). What is it that they're going for? Scenery they can't see in the US? Cheap prices? To practice their language skills? I really don't get it. I hate the fucking jungle, I hate getting hot and sunburned, I hate sweating, I understand completely. My point is, why go at all?

So I won't be going to Panama (or anywhere else where the standard of living is below that of, say, Argentina) anytime if I can help it.

technorati: travel, third world

Bing tastes great! and gives you cancer

Am I the only person to look at the sample screens for Microsoft's new search engine and wonder, why do they have a big cigarette on their page?

technorati: bing, advertising, marketing

Sign of the apocalypse: Dentist chair TV's programming is Disney, ads

This definitely falls into the Kill Me First category: a new device you wear like eyeglasses allows you to watch television in the dentist's chair while being worked on. Sounds good, you say? The only programming is:
ð Disney programs
ð Dental health messages
ð Advertising.

It's paid, of course, by the latter.

Personally I'd rather listen to the drill.

technorati: advertising, television, technology

If being on hold weren't bad enough

A company is marketing the "wasted time" you spend on hold, delivering advertisements to you instead of hold music. It's bad enough to hear happy-voice promotions for the company you're calling while you wait on hold; I pity the customer service people who wind up on the receiving end of callers' wrath after listening to some unrelated advertisement.

This goes on the list of signs of the apocalypse, along with advertisements on the floors of supermarkets, on little TV screens in hotel elevators, and in the corner of TV screens while you're trying to watch the ballgame.

technorati: advertising

'The modern world is absolutely fascist'

From the point of view of mass propaganda and advertising, I think there's been nothing new since the time of Goebbels. Women must look like this, this and this. All who are not within these bounds must strive for them, or be losers. That's a completely fascist doctrine. I'm surprised there aren't people standing with rulers outside nightclubs and measuring the distance between people's ears. Probably they will be soon, and that will be right in this situation.

All of modern consumer society, without a doubt, is profoundly fascist. You can see this by Africa. People have problems finding drinking water. But you can always find Coca-Cola. How is this possible?

I studied the history of the Third Reich. I found incredible facts. It's clear that the Soviet Union of those years and Fascist Germany were twins. It's no secret for anyone. But the fact that in the contemporary situation, all of these speeches, all of these propaganda approaches, in one way or another serve as the template for the speeches of many politicians. The direct speech of Goebbels is incredibly modern, just change radio to television and no problem.

That's Russian novelist Sergei Minaev, profiled in the NYT today. The article is good, and there's also a Q and A sidebar, from which I drew the extended quote above.

In addition, I was struck by this quote:

I had a period when I was 24-28 years old. I was part of a heavy scene that began Friday evening and as a rule ended on Monday morning. This was about age 24-27. Now, I don't go out except for exceptional cases... Now, we get together at home and talk, the same format as in kitchens in the 1980s. That's much more pleasant because you're surrounded only by those people whom you like. There's none of that showing off. It's completely peaceful.

I was struck by the similarity of this depiction of life with the description of the life of a member of the Chinese intelligentsia of the 17th century in the latest New York Review of Books. From the article (not yet online) 'Ravished by Oranges' by Simon Leys, a review of "Return to Dragon Mountain: Memories of a Late Ming Man":

A great number of scholars gave up the idea of entering public life and opted instead for an existence devoted to the exclusive cultivation of art and letters in the privacy of their homes... Zhang Dai... designed exquisite pavilions and gardens; he gathered a huge library, collected antiques, and was a connoisseur of calligraphy and painting...

Here you have two men, separated by 450 years, who respond to the bankruptcy of public and political life in the same way -- by retreating to the domain of the home and forming a world built around friends, art and talk. I'm not saying it's the best solution, but an understandable one in the face of a morally and politically bankrupt society, one becoming increasingly fascist -- which is to compare Ming Dynasty China and modern Russia.

technorati: writers, novelists, Russian, advertising, marketing