Here's something you may not know about me: I am the best at taking album cover photos. You know the kind I mean: weird, almost-lazily wandering photos that capture either ordinary moments, extraordinary things, or the ordinary made extraordinary. There's an art to it, to be sure, but I can't explain it to you any more than I can explain breathing without forgetting what "ATP" means. It's just a gift that one has, a kind of poetry that infuses the day. At the end of it all, all I know is that I have this rare and wondrous ability.
Unfortunately, so far my only clients have been indie bands.
Now, some of these bands are good, and some of these bands are bad, but you can't blame a guy for wanting to branch out. If Eminem, Jay-Z, or the Beatles want me to do some stuff for them, we will work us out a deal.
Click the "read more" link after this sentence to see my art come alive:
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Friday, August 19, 2011
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Fixing Bad Commercials: The Travelers Insurance Dog
So I want you to think of at least one problem with this advertisement. After you watch the two videos, click "read more" to see if you and I are on the same wavelength. If you thought of a different problem with it, or couldn't find very much wrong with it at all, that will be interesting because it's entirely possible that I am the only one who hates this commercial concept.
Anyway, the two videos:
And now the read more link:
Anyway, the two videos:
And now the read more link:
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Every Other Day
...is the new update schedule for this blog. I'm going to be a little busy for the next couple of weeks, so I thought it was better to shift to a schedule that would leave me a little room for error.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
It Came in the Mail: Hammacher Schlemmer Fall 2011
Okay, so if you guys don't know what Hammacher Schlemmer (hereafter "HS") is, then this post will certainly let you know. Also, if you have dial-up, it will certainly put a strain on your modem, because hella pictures.
I should also note that I have not "sold out." Hammacher Schlemmer has no idea of my existence and even if they did, I don't get the traffic that would be beneficial to them. I just like talking about catalogs today.
I haven't had much experience with this catalog before, despite getting several catalogs, and I was very excited and interested when it arrived because of a couple things.
It claims to be America's oldest catalog. Short version: it's like SkyMall with class and slightly less silliness. But that doesn't really begin to describe how perfectly odd this catalog is. It's the sort of magical odd that you don't usually think the world has left anymore, but indeed it does, and it is here. Nothing about this catalog makes exactly perfect sense. It's sort of just to the side of perfect. Some products it examines rigorously (more on that later) and holds to the highest standards. At times such as these it appears to be quite the classy catalog. Then other items pop in and make the whole thing look silly.
I mean, what? That's like a... huh?
It's this weird chimera of upper-crust offerings and more-credible-than-infomercial devices. There are going to be products that are very expensive. Products you never even thought you'd see in a catalog. It's going to blow your goddamn mind, bucko.
It does say "unexpected," after all.
So with that, let's dive in. We'll resurface together after you click "read more."
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Advertising: Improving Starbucks's "The Green Straw Delivers."
Warning for anyone who cares: this may be a really nitpicky post. Also it's about advertising. I have no idea whether you guys like these posts or not, but I think about this stuff a lot so, uh, welcome to this.
Writing about the World's (Maybe) Worst Commercial really got me thinking. It's easy to make fun of/be horrified at terrible commercials and bad ad campaigns, but it's not so easy to talk about pretty good ones. So I challenged myself to think of ways to maybe touch up some things.
Now, I'm not necessarily an expert here and this is just my opinion, so if my version isn't better to you, cool. But if mine's a little better, then I think ad agencies should really start asking me whether or not, say, putting talking babies in a commercial is a good idea (actually, no, they should always ask me that.)
So anyways. Starbucks has this new ad campaign going that looks a little something like this:
I had to touch it up a bit because apparently they're litigious. I don't know why they'd be litigious about me showing their advertisement (I guess maybe they've heard stories about the internet and are worried every blog is connected to Nazis or pornography), because it's in any Starbucks you go into, but better safe than sorry I guess.
There's two stories about this photo. One I'll tell now and the other I'll tell at the end of the post.
So, the campaign they're going with is pointing out a green straw, obviously hoping to start seeing more tweets like the ones that cluttered the Google results as I searched for an image of Starbucks's displays online (I was ultimately unsuccessful) along the lines of "MMM LOve that Frappachino! As soon as I see that green straw, I know it's time for DELCIOUS!" That's not an actual quote but it might have been and, if I were reading it, I never would have known. This is why sometimes I hate people: because I am disproportionately frustrated about representations that may or may not be indicative of society as a whole.
Anyway. I thought I was going to be successful when I added "twitpic" to the search, thinking maybe someone else wanted a photo of the display. I was sure I had arrived at the sweet, sweet altar of fulfillment when I turned up a tweet that went like this: "I've got a comback to the new Starbucks slogan "the green straw delivers" yeah to MY MOUTH!" It was by someone named beerwench. She turned out to have taken a photo of her own drink (why, I have no idea) and so yeah.
What's the point, you ask? Well, there's two lessons to be learned from this:
1. people be stupid
2. sometimes people notice the wrong thing about your advertisement
Speaking of hating it, I don't actually hate this slogan or campaign. I think it's weird to think of a drink as "handcrafted," but you know, different strokes for different people and all that. I do think, however, that it can be improved.
Right. So. Improvement. Well, clearly, they're hoping to get people to finally notice that Starbucks's straws are different colors than the usual straws you can find at restaurants. There's a couple things that disappoint me about this.
To start with, I thought the green straw was a nice, subliminal bit of branding. I didn't even ever really fully acknowledge it as branding until that ad pointed it out to me. The problem is that I feel it's a little counter-productive. It's hard to explain exactly, but I'll try. Meet me again after you click the "read more" link:
Writing about the World's (Maybe) Worst Commercial really got me thinking. It's easy to make fun of/be horrified at terrible commercials and bad ad campaigns, but it's not so easy to talk about pretty good ones. So I challenged myself to think of ways to maybe touch up some things.
Now, I'm not necessarily an expert here and this is just my opinion, so if my version isn't better to you, cool. But if mine's a little better, then I think ad agencies should really start asking me whether or not, say, putting talking babies in a commercial is a good idea (actually, no, they should always ask me that.)
So anyways. Starbucks has this new ad campaign going that looks a little something like this:
There's two stories about this photo. One I'll tell now and the other I'll tell at the end of the post.
So, the campaign they're going with is pointing out a green straw, obviously hoping to start seeing more tweets like the ones that cluttered the Google results as I searched for an image of Starbucks's displays online (I was ultimately unsuccessful) along the lines of "MMM LOve that Frappachino! As soon as I see that green straw, I know it's time for DELCIOUS!" That's not an actual quote but it might have been and, if I were reading it, I never would have known. This is why sometimes I hate people: because I am disproportionately frustrated about representations that may or may not be indicative of society as a whole.
Anyway. I thought I was going to be successful when I added "twitpic" to the search, thinking maybe someone else wanted a photo of the display. I was sure I had arrived at the sweet, sweet altar of fulfillment when I turned up a tweet that went like this: "I've got a comback to the new Starbucks slogan "the green straw delivers" yeah to MY MOUTH!" It was by someone named beerwench. She turned out to have taken a photo of her own drink (why, I have no idea) and so yeah.
What's the point, you ask? Well, there's two lessons to be learned from this:
1. people be stupid
2. sometimes people notice the wrong thing about your advertisement
Speaking of hating it, I don't actually hate this slogan or campaign. I think it's weird to think of a drink as "handcrafted," but you know, different strokes for different people and all that. I do think, however, that it can be improved.
Right. So. Improvement. Well, clearly, they're hoping to get people to finally notice that Starbucks's straws are different colors than the usual straws you can find at restaurants. There's a couple things that disappoint me about this.
To start with, I thought the green straw was a nice, subliminal bit of branding. I didn't even ever really fully acknowledge it as branding until that ad pointed it out to me. The problem is that I feel it's a little counter-productive. It's hard to explain exactly, but I'll try. Meet me again after you click the "read more" link:
Monday, August 8, 2011
One Last Delay
Okay, I had a post about Starbucks all worked out but someone informed me that they don't take kindly to posting anything with their logo on it online or something? Apparently it's not cool even if you're helping them out by offering superior ad campaigns. So now I have to fix that but I am way too tired tonight. I'll do it when I get back from a two-hour drive early tomorrow. I'm dedicated, I promise, I'm just also busy.
Sunday, August 7, 2011
Coming Attractions
I know I've been falling behind, I'm a little busy at the moment. There should be a new post sometime this afternoon, and then another one tomorrow.
Here is a sneak preview:
Here is a sneak preview:
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