Hasta La Creative!

You can’t escape the Obama ad spend now, Obama announced yesterday that he raised more than $150 million in September, obliterating previous fundraising records and giving him an enormous tactical advantage over Republican Sen. John McCain in the final weeks of the presidential campaign. So what doe she spend it on? Ads appearing in 18 Xbox games – something no presidential candidate has ever done before. Keep your eyes peeled when playing Guitar Hero 3, The Incredible Hulk, NASCAR 09, NBA Live 08, NFL Tour, and even Burnout Paradise, where this virtual Obama billboard can be seen.

“The 18-to-34-year-old male is the mainstream demographic for the hard-core video gamer,” said Van Baker, an analyst for Gartner Inc., a technology market research firm in San Jose, California. “They’re hard to get to because they don’t watch much TV and they don’t read a lot, so it’s a good venue to get that segment.”

– Reuters
Obama is not the kind of guy who would put all his eggs in one basket and only target the game-playing males who are too lazy to turn on the TV (much less vote). He’s also bought 30 minutes of airtime on CBS, NBC and Fox to pitch to voters on October 29, which might be another presidential candidate first.

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Google: No gambling ads! (unless we need to make more money, like right now)

When we asked Google about its gambling change of heart, it didn’t respond. But the company tells The FT it’s been reviewing that four-year-old gambling ad policy “to ensure it is as consistent as possible with local business practices.” According to James Cashmore – who describes himself as the company’s industry leader, entertainment and media – Google hopes that lifting the UK ban “will enhance the search experience for users and help advertisers connect with interested consumers.”

He did not mention that this would bring the company mountains of cash.

Aussies want less alcohol ads, as long as they can keep drinking. I keed.

YouTube will need at least two years to start making a meaningful contribution to parent Google Inc’s revenue says the Guardian, so come 2011, bo-yah people, flashy ads all over YouTube. Looking forward to it. People are waiting impatiently for YouTube to show some sort of profit;

“This has gone on long enough. It’s easy being the Web’s largest video repository when you’re giving it away,” said Colin Gillis, analyst at Canaccord Adams.

Other voice concerns of youtube’s basic idea is ‘wrong’ to advertise on – the youtube idea.

Experts say it isn’t easy to monetize a majority of the user-generated and sometimes pirated videos. “Major advertisers don’t want to advertise against the user-generated content that dominates on YouTube,” said Jeremy Allaire, chief executive of Brightcove, a Web video distributor for a range of businesses.

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Why do i keep reading that there’s too much art at the ongoing Biennale of Architecture in Venice? Why this rush to call ‘art’ anything that doesn’t match expectations? The projects i’ve seen in Venice last weekend shouldn’t be defined as art (at least not very good art), maybe some specialists wouldn’t even qualify them as ‘proper architecture’ but most of these works have the virtue to bring forward some relevant debates and concepts, either by proposing experimental alternatives to the brick and mortar approach or by attempting to broaden and renew the discourse on architecture. In many cases, the participants speculate on future architecture by taking a look back at the avant-garde of the ’60s, deliberately going back and forth, hoping that we’ll be smart enough not to stop -once again- at the ‘is this art?’ level.

The critiques are directed mostly at the projects of the architecture studios that fill the Corderie, a spectacular exhibition space located within the Arsenale, Venice historic naval yards. Built in 1303, restored in 1579 and 1585, this 6400 sqm surface used to host the manufacture of hawsers, cables and thick ropes.

Corderie, Arsenale. Courtesy: Fondazione La Biennale di Venezia

During the architecture biennale what you can see inside the Corderie looks indeed much more like installations than buildings, each of them answers Aaron Betsky’s -this year’s Curator of the Biennale- request to look beyond buildings in order to discuss and question architecture. In his view, ‘architecture is not building. Architecture must go beyond buildings because buildings are not enough. They are big and wasteful accumulations of natural resources that are difficult to adapt to the continually changing conditions of modern life.’

Here’s a first couple of ideas i particularly liked at the Corderie:

An Te Liu‘s Cloud is an eye-catching assembly of dozens of air purifying devices, the kind you kind find almost anywhere in the world. They filter, sterilize and purify the air, getting rid of what we regard as harmful: bacteria, allergen, dust, unpleasant smells. They respond to our modern desire to live in a highly hygienic and technology-controlled environment.

In his essay The Architecture of Well-Tempered Environment (1969), architecture critic Reyner Banham put the development of technologies (electricity, air conditioning) ahead of the classic account of structures, eventually asking the question ‘Why have buildings at all?’ Sophisticated technologies, in his view, would one day allow us to survive without the traditional forms of shelter which we have come to take for granted. Our world could become entirely controlled by ‘bubbles’, with our needs met through various systems and devices.

An Te Liu, Cloud

The Cloud’s air-conditioning appliances carve out their own invisible space in the exhibition space. Their trooping into an overhead armada evokes their sci-fi roots, reminding us that what we both desire and fear is a squeaky clean future.

Asymptote, Prototyping the Future: Three Houses for the Subconscious. Image from archiportale

Conceived and manufactured digitally, Asymptote‘s contribution to the biennale is Prototyping the Future: Three Houses for the Subconscious. Three round and elegant fiberglass objects is the output of a computer-based research on what buildings might look like if we were to put them through a wind tunnel testing, in the same manner as we do with cars and planes. The shape of the very static building would recall ideas of high velocity, acceleration and dynamism.

Asymptote’s work, like the one of many of this biennale participants, deliberately calls up the architectural experimentations of the period that went from the 1960s to the early 1980s, when the boundaries between architecture, engineering and art were fuzzier than they are today. Prototyping the Future explore buildings under a more emotional and visceral light.

The 11th Venice Architecture Biennale, Out There: Architecture Beyond Building, runs until November 23rd.

Viewers of two sporting events witnessed the fragility of live television over the weekend.

The fight over the Google-Yahoo partnership shows how much Microsoft has learned about working in Washington, and how much Google has yet to learn.

Hands off your keyboard. Can you name five female artists?

The internet and all manner of things digital has created a host of challenges and opportunities for CMOs and everyone else responsible for the care and feeding of brands.

Update – Obama has actually been named AdAge’s Marketer of the Year.

One of the most interesting things in following the US Election is the distinct advantage Barack Obama has been given by his campaign’s understanding of the web and social networking.

At the start of this whole 18 month long schebang, Obama and the Democrats announced they would opt-out of the traditional public financing model of election fundraising. This surprised some, but meant they were free to attract unlimited personal donations via their website and a constant barrage of email requests.

Its working. Today, the Democrats announced yet another record month in donations raised – $150 million. To give you an idea how much this is, in 2000, the two candidates raised in total “just” $350 million. Over the entire campaign.

And if you take a look at the efforts Obama has got going online, its not surprising:

On the front page of Obama’s website buttons to allow donations can’t be missed. McCain’s website has the same, but every single one of the videos on Obama’s YouTube channel links to a Google Donate button:

Not a difficult thing to implement. But when you see the kind of views Obama’s channel has (almost 100 million so far, compared to McCain’s with around 22 million) – that is some serious, potentially game-changing interface design. Why wouldn’t McCain have the same button on their videos?

On Obama’s website, folks can get involved, and campaign on his behalf, with drag and drop code that allows people to fund raise on their own site:

This effectively makes Democrat supporters agents of Obama’s campaign, spreading it on his behalf. Which is good for them, and good for Obama.

Whilst McCain during his campaign has used banners that have gone for a bit more of a negative approach (not to mention the design):

…Obama’s banners on the other hand offers some utility – a tax cut widget that allows people to see how much their tax bill would be under the Democrats:

Of course, Obama even has his own iPhone app

Not to mention the many probama memes all across the web. This is of course not the direct doing of the Obama campaign, but more proof they are connecting with people online:

Sarah Palin still uses Hotmail, Barack Obama is your new Bicycle, When Obama Wins, Palin as President, McCain free whitehouse, The Great Schlep, Things Younger than John McCain, Spelling Change and 30 Reasons to vote for Barack Obama.

McCain, for his side of the equation, has a game of space invaders and McCainSpace, which gave me the exact same feeling I had when my dad did an impromptu “rap” in front of my friends when I was 12. It looks awkward and probably won’t draw much of a crowd.

Its no surprise that McCain might have difficulty connecting with younger voters. His appeal is with conservative, traditionally older Americans. And he’s admitted on a number of occasions he doesn’t use email (due to war injuries I believe). But it just seems that the attempts he does make, are simply not as smart, from a media or engagement point of view. And the more we find out about who uses the web, the more we are surprised at the wide demographic that actually gets involved (retirees, housewives, etc). So there’s no excuse for both parties to be all over new media as a way of engaging with people.

Obama has hit a wide range of voters from every angle possible, and allowed people to feel like they’re actually involved in the campaign. The Democrats seems to be more acutely aware of how fragmented the voter audience has become over the past few years:

Here’s a few numbers also:

Barack Obama
YouTube Subscribers – 101,318
Friends – 23,817
MySpace friends – 711,524
Twitter followers – 99, 121

John McCain
YouTube Subscribers – 25, 322
Friends – Not stated
MySpace friends – 172,953
No official Twitter account

Will this all matter come November 4th? Who knows. US Elections involve countless factors and hundreds of much bigger, knife-edge topics that could prove decisive for one candidate one way or the other. We haven’t seen so far how big a role the web will play in swaying a campaign one way or the other (remember a short three elections ago where e-mail use was far from widespread). And TV campaigning is an area that still involves big media spends that will end up determining a lot of people’s vote. But if Obama does win, his campaign’s approach to the web certainly won’t have hurt. And will probably come to be a textbook approach to fighting an election online.

Head to Ectoplasmosis to see Nomination #46,326 for our AdLand Bad Ad Placement Awards.

Somebody’s going to get their hide tanned over this one.

Competition-based reality programs are showing their age, but are a proven way to keep costs down in a precarious economy.