do 11 year olds really talk like sitcom writers now? i mean, it’s kinda funny… in a mildly disturbing sort of way. like one-liners are the next evolution of jr.’s “first words”…an eventually unmanageably annoying evolution, but, like the kids say… whatever.
check out these little Red “characters” (such as chill, grumpy, whatever, flirty) that were developed for beRed.com (now teens.aol.com) by ATTIK.
how to step up to the challenge of creating campaign elements that let kids know RED is the place for them?
when you show up at teens.aol.com, by the way, you’re greeted with a paparazzi shot of britney in a car with some guy obscured by the rear view mirror and big sunglasses, with the caption, “who’s that guy?run, guy we don’t know. run!”
so it’s nice at least that the messaging tone is consistent.
oh, chill also has a different aspect to his personality in other settings, like “why should i worry when my parents do it for me?” it’s like that fairy tale… you know, be Red and the seven obnoxious tween dwarfs? classic. originally these were developed as door hangers too:
now you can also find them as banners at profgilzot.com. (and while you’re doing that, check out the stunningly rock and roll SAT prep tutor illustrated there. seriously, like straight outta williamsburg.)
it’s undoubtedly great identity marketing: gotta speak to the audience on their own terms if you want to get across that your product is for them. unfortunately, why are those the terms? anyone remember all those post 9/11 predictions about “the death of irony”? yeah…. THERE was a trend forecast that was spot on, evidently.
tho… i guess i’m not helping any. but i mean, irony’s ok for adults, right? so maybe you should have to be over a certain age for us to allow ourselves to subject you to it?
you know, back in the day, people used to get dressed up to fly on an airplane? it wasn’t simply about getting from point a to point b, it was actually–before the concept even really existed in the kind of marketing sense it does today–an experience. same like when movie theaters were once movie “palaces” and likewise, banks were too. participating in this space-age activity of flight somehow commanded respect for the sheer wonder of human mastery over the laws of physics themselves.
now, the entire process of flying is like the biggest pain in the ass ever, ranging in degree of horror from irritating teeth cleaning to root canal without anesthesia. it may still be the safest way to travel, or whatever, but the whole experience is so fucking antiquated, it’s like…who cares? i mean… everything about it is a holdover from a bygone era, from those arm rests that still have ash trays built in, to the whole centralized process of having to get to an airport. somehow, in comparison to, for example, having to drive for three hours to get to the closest commercial airplane from santa barbara, even the NYC subway system is more progressive in terms of the decentralization of its accessibility.
and that’s all before i even bring up the T-E-R-R-O-R-I-S-M thing.
wasn’t the teleporter supposed to have already been invented by this point?
anyway, short of that, it’s nice to know that someone out there’s giving any kind of crap about addressing the fact that the air-travel experience that once upon a time carried as much weight as dressing up for sunday mass has essentially turned into the equivalent of taking a greyhoud in the sky.
thanks boeing, for–at least coming off like you’re–taking this issue seriously. we’ll see how well it flies (badumching).
maybe boeing should start its own airline? but they’re probably way too smart to think about dealing with all THAT noise.
** side note, speaking of antiquated, i’d just like to reiterate again, how ridiculous it is that all the brands and publications out there producing dynamic online content INSIST on chaining it down to their sites, without considering any way to let that shit move, by making sure it’s branded and embeddalbe. (i had to go looking for the video on youtube instead of being able to get the code right on the boeing site.**
perhaps it’s just typical to find SOMETHING to dislike about the business 2.0 article about how “burningman grows up” but i can’t help it!
i bet there’s probably even distinct camps of dislike about it, in fact.
camp #1 are the people who dislike that their special countercultural identity-defining ritual is being profiled somewhere so mainstream, and involves words like “brand” and “leverage.” you know it can’t be good for the “rebel” self-image to be confronted with the consideration of who might be reading about the mecca of the “radically self-expressed” alternative lifestyle when it’s written about glowingly on a url like money.cnn.com…
camp #2 might maybe be able to make an allowance for the market-speak as being superimposed by the writer vs. the being the normal vocabulary of the event’s organizers themselves, but this group is pissed that the strict ideology of anti-commercialism at all costs is being at all fucked with by the high priests themselves. how the hell are we supposed to follow the path to salvation from the “default world” if the compass arrow won’t stay pointed firmly in one direction? i mean, yeah, it’s just green businesses now, but this isn’t about green, goddamnit! it’s about black and white!
(yup: camp #1, and camp #2 link to the same place, curiously enough, and no: i didn’t make the reference “default world” up.)
ok, i take it back, not everyone’s irate. camp #3 actually probably doesn’t give a shit. camp #3 is just full of members of the creative class who’ve been using burningman as a giant dynamic gallery in which to get to exhibit their art and a great source of highly fun creative inspiration for years, and they’ll probably raise an eyebrow, sigh whatever, not even finish reading it to the end, and then get back to doing whatever it was they were doing before they got forwarded the article.
but i dislike it for different reasons. you know… i always get flack from my friends for paying attention to language too closely. like, one of the most annoying parts of any argument is when someone goes, “ok, you’re just picking on my word choice.” JUST picking on word choice! like as if words choose themselves, and mouths hiccup them up without any input on the process.
uh..yeah! i pick on fucking words alright, cuz you picked them. which makes us even. and the most irritating part about the whole article is marian goodell’s (one of the event’s main organizers) word choice when she says:
“This community is a dream for anyone looking at demographics. We have kids who work in coffee shops and we have billionaires. To ignore the value of our brand, the buying power it has, is silly. But it’s a ritual for these people, which is why it’s going to be hard for them seeing businesses out there.”
eeeuuchh!
i’ve written sponsorship proposals for LIB, and can very much sympathize with the trickiness of navigating the space between brand enticement (for the record, we’ve been targeting green companies to participate in our festival since ’06) and the management of non-commercial community expectations, but referring to the community that has sustained and nurtured your event, and that defines the buying power of your brand as “these people” or even as “them” is just…disingenuous, tacky, and… just…ugh, bad form!
Burning Man’s customers keep coming back to Black Rock precisely because it’s so far outside the scope of the corporate culture – and its incessant marketing – that most of them live with the other 51 weeks of the year.
i guess that’s the thing that gets camp #4 all up in arms–camp #4 is where i’m camped, at the intersection of “7:30” and “annoyed”– when there are corporate brands that treat their community with less distance, and more dignity (i by no means read that whole long discussion thread about the article, but the fact that it came as a total shock to the community is unmistakable) than this kind of language and closed-off attitude belie, then just what exactly is so special about the authenticity of an authentically disdainful counterculture “brand”? the article makes a big deal about how burningman has come back from the brink of bankruptcy like four times or something because the only way the event sustains itself is through selling admission tickets, and essentially nothing else to its communi–uh, i’m sorry, i mean, to “these people”–but in the end, you gotta wonder, is that (much like the anecdote that larry harvey, the event’s originator, didn’t have a bank account until like last year or whatever) actually part of a desire to make room for more intimate interactions than commercial transactions….
