L’artiste Kim Byungkwan a imaginé en motion, avec beaucoup d’intelligence et énormément de talent, des représentations diverses de la Vénus de Milo, proposant ainsi avec Illusion Device de réinventer ce monument de la culture exposé au Musée du Louvre.
No one want to spend time hunting through the fridge for what they need. Now, thanks to LG’s Door-to-door fridge, you can avoid those particular moments when finding what you need is of utmost importance. Grab it fast and go.
A l’occasion de la commémoration du centenaire de la Première Guerre Mondiale, l’artiste Paul Cummins and le designer Tom Pipier ont réalisé « Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red », une oeuvre réunissant à la Tour de Londres 888 246 fleurs en céramique, soit le nombre de soldats décédés de l’Empire Britannique. Une oeuvre encore incomplète, les fleurs étant progressivement installées jusqu’au 11 novembre.
New media is the new buzzword that can mean everything and nothing. It goes largely undefined, but is used as if everyone knows exactly what it means. The term, itself, may even be mildly offensive to the veterans of traditional media. By declaring itself “new”, it is positioning as “old”, that which came before. This rather presumptuous nomenclature begs three questions, which we will consider in turn:
While addressing these questions, we will also keep an eye on the underlying issue of how new media effects media marketing going forward.
What Makes New Media New?
The term, new media, itself, is a marketing ploy. New media requires one to cast what came before it as old media. New media sounds better than old media. But if you say, traditional media, then anything else would be non-traditional media. Suddenly, it doesn’t sound quite as appealing. Therefore, it is in the best interest of those with new media content to market it as something completely different than what came before. Many are eager to get on the new media bandwagon without ever expressing what is new about what they are doing. Let’s see if we can do better.
To do this, we need to narrow our focus to one form of media, in this case, music. The end result of “old” media music was that a person would buy their favorite music in a form they could enjoy, and listen to it in a way that brought them the greatest emotional satisfaction. If they really enjoyed it, they would share it with a friend. There were ways they could enjoy it for free, or purchase it. The exact same thing can be said about new media music.
What’s radically different is how we get to the end result. The three major tent poles of the music industry are production, marketing, and distribution. This is actually applicable to all media. All of these aspects of the process have changed.
There was a time when production could only be done by big studios with deep pockets. Now, anyone with $1,000 worth of hardware and software can rival the big studios in production value. That means big studios are no longer the production gatekeepers of the music world.
Similarly, marketing on a massive scale could only be done by gatekeepers with deep pockets. The primary method of marketing was through radio play. If you were not played on the radio, you did not exist. Today, many music listeners do not even own a radio save the one that came in their car.
Distribution was the leg of the stool represented by the big music retailers. Companies like Tower Records and Sam Goody wielded a lot of power in determining which acts would be successful, and to what degree. Now, locked down retail distribution has been upstaged by more open Internet distribution and the question of how to distribute music has gotten trickier.
A big part of the shift in distribution is due to new types of licensing agreements. Traditionally, the draconian licenses were held by the studios. Performers rarely owned their own music, and had little say over how to distribute music in general. Today, companies like TuneCore provide artists with new types of licenses that give the artists much more control, and opens their work to a wider audience.
In summary, new media democratizes the media process.
Does New Media Compete with or Complement Traditional Media
The short answer is yes, and yes. It does both, the same way that any evolutionary process does. Internet-based entertainment is in fierce competition with traditional television and radio programming. Though, in the end, it is hard to tell why it should matter which box from which content is enjoyed. In the case of Netflix and Hulu, we are watching the same content presented by television, except on computers and devices without TV tuners. These days, cable and satellite providers have their own on-demand options. Just choose your delivery system. The media is the same.
The business models are also slowly converging. Netflix offers unlimited streaming for about $10 per month. Dish offers the same thing through their Blockbuster partnership. They can both be experienced on Internet-connected devices. While Netflix offers all content ad free. the same cannot be said for other new-media services like Hulu, which is loaded with ads.
Even podcasts have lengthy ad breaks that make users reach for the Fast-Forward button. TV shows are promoted on Podcasts, and apps are promoted on TV. They are competing. They are partners. There is no clear winner, and both may yet fall to something new just around the corner. The freedom TuneCore provides musicians might be offer a glimpse into that future.
Does New Media Require Different Marketing Strategies
Absolutely! There was a time when marketing was almost unnecessary for media. Marketing was just a matter of which media the gatekeepers would present. There were only a handful of stations, genres, and major artists. Elvis didn’t need to market. He just needed to show up.
Eliminating the gatekeeper means that almost anyone can produce media. That means that everyone has to try a lot harder to rise to the top and be heard over the noise. These days, you can’t just hand someone a pile of money, be played over the radio more times than everyone else, and succeed.
You have to appeal to a highly engaged niche. Generalists do not do well in a democratized system. There are no longer three genres of music but dozens, if not hundreds. Pick one and super serve it.
Finally, you have to elevate your game. Before, just getting in the door meant success. People would be forced to buy an album full of garbage because that was all that was on offer. Today, there are a lot more artists to choose from, and you can buy the songs you like while ignoring the rest. That means that you actually have to earn it. Your audience has more options than just you.
At the end of the day, new media is just a fusion of the current and the traditional. Tomorrow, it will all be old media.
The post New Media Requires New Marketing appeared first on AdPulp.
Patrick Gottsch, the chairman of the Rural Media Group, has become one of the most vocal critics of the proposed media consolidation.
Mr. Akers became chief executive in 1985, as smaller, less expensive computers started to undercut the company’s lucrative mainframe computer business.
If you were looking for someone to blame every time a pop-up ad mars your Web-browsing experience, here’s a guy who’d like to nominate himself—and offer his apologies.
Ethan Zuckerman, Internet pioneer and director of MIT’s Center for Civic Media, takes to the pages of The Atlantic in a lengthy essay titled The Internet’s Original Sin. In it, he delves into the myriad issues around something we all might generally take for granted: a free, ad-supported Web. He also owns up to having invented that odious pop-up format, which assaults your eyeballs when you least want it (i.e., anytime), while he was working at the early Web-hosting service Tripod.com in the 1990s. (Though, in a moment agency people might find empathetic, he also sort of pawns off the blame on an auto client, who didn’t want its ad appearing on the same page as explicit content.)
It’s worth reading the whole article if you’re up for reflecting on the current, sorry state of Web affairs. Zuckerman includes a lot of smart perspective on topics like meager digital revenues, the stupefying allure of click bait and blasé consumer attitudes about behavioral tracking, along with how all that ties in with broader financial systems—and why it came to be so in the first place. He also notes that the ad-supported Web was borne of good intentions, though as Fast Company points out, that’s a tricky line to walk, given that it was, on some level, always at least in part about making money.
Toward the end of his treatise, Zuckerman even begins delving into other possible revenue models, like subscriptions, micro-payments and crowdfunding—acknowledging the difficulty of finding solutions and allowing that regardless “there are bound to be unintended consequences.”
And at risk of being fatalistic, it’s hard to imagine alternatives gaining traction when the vast majority of consumers expect free content and don’t seem to mind becoming the product to get it. But you also have to credit Zuckerman for falling on his sword to help draw attention to the debate.
We’re still not sure we forgive him for pop-up ads, though.
Life in Thailand is pretty meaningful, judging by the heartrending commercials the country produces. Companies like TrueMove and Thai Life Insurance have been rolling out masterful long-form spots about the deeper meaning of existence for several years. And now, the latter returns with a lovely little story about the power of music.
The spot is about a boy who’s bullied, at first, for his clumsy attempts at playing guitar. As usual with these things, it’s best not to reveal too much about the plot beforehand. So, watch below—and shield your watery eyes from co-workers. Agency: Ogilvy & Mather.
Who turned out the lights?
Tim Hortons and JWT Toronto plunged customers at one of the coffee and donut chain’s Quebec locations into inky darkness for a prank introducing a new dark roast coffee blend.
When unwitting patrons arrived, they found the L’Île-Perrot store completely covered in black-out material, even the windows. Dark vehicles were parked out front to heighten the mystery. Those who ventured inside bumped into a dude wearing night-vision goggles, who led them to a counter where dark roast was served and the gag revealed.
Goggles Guy looks pretty creepy, and unlike the hammy, self-aware fright reactions we’ve seen in some “scary” ad pranks, the squeals of shock and surprise at Tim Hortons seem genuine. This is the client’s second large-scale, Twilight Zone-ish effort of late. In May, it meticulously recreated its first shop from 1964, interior and exterior, in minute detail (see below)—even bringing back the original employees as servers.
Both the time machine and darkness stunts have generated lots of attention (the latter is approaching 700,000 YouTube views in four days). Still, such shenanigans seem like an awful lot to digest before you’ve had your morning joe.
Advertising is easy. You can sell anything you want nowadays if you just pick up a camera, press record and then upload the results to the Internet. Music? No problem! Just get your friend to beatbox over the video. So simple.
What is not easy is getting people to go to malls. East Hills Mall in St. Joseph, Mo., needed some summer traffic in its glorious shopping paradise, so it made its own spot.
The commercial really has everything you need: actors, props, a soundtrack! I can’t think of anything else that would make it better. Take a look below.
Sure, some might call it the worst local commercial ever made. I call it perfect.
Earlier this year, Coca-Cola rolled out its first TV spot made completely with user-generated content. Now, it’s Miller Lite’s turn to shine the spotlight on its fans.
In May, the beer brand launched an #ItsMillerTime campaign, in which it used packaging, promoted tweets and its social channels to ask people for their best summer photos—with cameos by the retro-cool Miller Lite cans, of course.
The brand says nearly 180,000 photos were submitted. (It further claims that #ItsMillerTime has been the No. 2 branded hashtag on Twitter since May 7, trailing only Adidas’s #allin).
The brand liked seven of the fan photos in particular and featured them prominently in the new national TV spot below, which breaks early this week. (A few dozen shots more are compiled in a collage at the end of the ad, but only the seven get full-screen treatment.)
They’re all fun snapshots—not particularly compelling, but “relatable,” as they say. And as for the wedding couple—more power to you.
Advertisers may dominate the lion’s share of America’s billboards, but roadside signs seem to be an increasingly popular medium for artists as well.
A number of billboard installations have been popping up around the country, reports The New York Times. In Missouri, there’s the “I-70 Sign Show,” which seeks to spark political debate with images like a Mickalene Thomas piece on female sexuality.
In Cincinnati, the “Big Pictures” show aims to break up the daily routines of passersby with images like a toucan surrounded by Post-it notes, created by artist Sarah Cwynar. And along cross-country Interstate 10, “The Manifest Destiny Billboard Trip” has since last fall sought to call attention to issues concerning the history of westward expansion, with some 100 signs featuring the work of 10 artists.
Each example offers a bit more art theory and cultural critique than your average billboard. They’re also more modest in scope than the massive “Art Everywhere” initiative launched this summer, which has seen an advertising trade organization team up with a group of major museums to bring more than 50 crowd-curated paintings, including classics like Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks, to more than 50,000 outdoor ad spaces.
While the smaller works might not be as inventive as turning billboards into houses for the homeless, they are a nice change of pace from, say, Ashley Madison.
On Monday, we posted Miller Lite’s new national TV spot, featuring a handful of fan photos selected from some 180,000 gathered through the immensely successful #ItsMillerTime hashtag campaign.
Now, with impeccable timing, Newcastle is here to call bollocks on the whole idea.
The British brewer, known for its anti-marketing marketing, just launched its own hashtag campaign, #NewcastleAdAid, in which it’s also asking for fan snapshots—and promises to use the wonders of Photoshop to turn them into really shoddy-looking ads.
Why the sudden embrace of low-cost user-generated content? Because it blew its marketing budget on celebs for the Super Bowl and the Fourth of July.
“Newcastle recognized it needed more ‘engaging social content’ to keep all of its new followers interested, but this lazy branded content wasn’t going to make itself,” the brand tells AdFreak. “Newcastle definitely is not the first brand to ask fans to post photos on social media to ‘build a stronger community’ and whatnot, but Newcastle definitely is the best at turning those photos into into obvious, exaggerated, poorly executed ads.”
Here’s the pitch video from Droga5, running on Twitter and Facebook:
brightcove.createExperiences();
When Showtime invited Dan Cassaro to join a design “contest” he felt amounted to milking professionals for free work, he let the network—and the world—know how he felt about it.
The offer, made to a number of designers, involved promoting the Floyd Mayweather-Marcos Maidana boxing match on Sept. 13. Those who submitted designs for Showtime’s use “could be eligible for a chance to win a trip to Las Vegas and have your artwork displayed in the MGM Grand during fight week!,” the network told Cassaro in an email.
After sending an email response slathered in sarcasm (“I know that boxing matches in Las Vegas are extremely low-budget affairs”), Cassaro then posted the exchange to Twitter.
Here’s the screenshot of the conversation (click to expand):
In the week since, Cassaro’s tweet has become a viral rallying cry for creatives who feel besieged by expectations of free work. It has more than 5,000 retweets and 5,600 favorites, and has become one of the topic’s most electrifying moments since Mike Monteiro’s “Fuck You Pay Me” speech in 2011.
Showtime issued a response to BuzzFeed, saying the network is “a strong supporter of artists around the world. This contest, like many others, is entirely optional.”
We caught up with Cassaro to ask what it’s been like seeing his frustration go global.
AdFreak: Your tweet just keeps blowing up. A week later, it’s still being retweeted. What’s it been like watching it all unfold?
Dan Cassaro: It’s been pretty unreal. I would have double-checked my grammar if I knew this many people would see it.
Why did you go public with it? Clearly, you were frustrated. But after responding to Showtime, what made you say, “Screw it, I’m going to post this on Twitter”?
Partially I just wanted to do it as a joke. But I also wanted to let people know that while it’s good to say no to this kind of work, it’s even better to explain to everyone why this business model is unacceptable.
Why do you think it struck such a chord with designers and other creatives?
Because they all get these emails. And it’s not just designers. I received a ton of responses from writers, cartoonists, architects and people in other professions who get asked to work for free. I don’t know what it is. Maybe people think that if you went to art school you don’t understand money?
Were you concerned about calling out a brand like Showtime by posting the email? I’m guessing they won’t become a paying client anytime soon.
Who knows? Maybe they admire my pluck? Honestly, people valuing themselves and their work enough to say no to this kind of thing has more long-term value than any one job or one client.
Has Showtime responded directly to you?
They wrote me a short and very polite email. Honestly, it’s less about Showtime and more about these hack crowdsourcing campaigns that certain agencies are selling to them. There are lots of folks doing very cool things with user-generated content, but to ask professionals to compete against each other for potential “exposure” is completely different. It’s demeaning, and it lowers the value of everyone’s work.
Among your peers, clearly a vast majority of the response has been positive. Have any designers criticized you for how you handled it?
The response from designers has pretty much been all positive. Some guy on a boxing enthusiast forum called me a “slimy hipster,” though.
Do you think anything constructive will come out of this, for yourself or the industry?
I hope so. If nothing else, it’s good to get people talking about it.
A laughably bad commercial for the East Hills Mall in St. Jospeh, Mo.—which we wrote about yesterday—has gained a rather large following this week. A piece of ironic Internet treasure, it’s already well on its way to a million YouTube views.
Given the amount of Internet hoaxes, though, and the ad’s perfectly executed terrible-on-purpose quality, we wondered if it was real—and who was responsible for such a jewel.
Well, according to the report below by a local Fox affiliate, the spot is indeed authentic. In fact, it’s the work of local producer Chris Fleck. In the interview, he tells Fox he isn’t really surprised at the enormous popularity of his masterpiece.
“The whole time we pitched this idea, we said, ‘Maybe it would go viral.’ Boy, it did,” he says with a laugh.
This isn’t Fleck’s first time at the rodeo, either. He’s amassed a few thousand clicks on some other spots, including one with a rapping Mitsubishi dealer and another for a liquor store featuring a jockey riding a cooler.
His advertising philosophy is simple: “If you can entertain, and then slide the message in, you’ve accomplished your goal. I just love that it’s getting this much response. That’s what commercials do, you get response.”
Check out the mall ad, and a few of Fleck’s previous works, here:
Pinterest touts its newly unveiled messaging feature in this handsomely shot two-and-a-half minute video from production house Strike Anywhere.
The clip is Apple-esque, as are so many personal-tech ads these days, celebrating Pinterest’s heightened functionality as a means of enhancing everyday life. Using the new messaging system, people engage in pithy yet productive text conversations about pins showing canoes, casseroles and spaceships. This demonstrates Pinterest’s ability to help folks collaboratively plan outings, dinners and work projects. (Of course, it could also create fresh opportunities for advertisers.)
The music track, Kishi Bashi’s “Philosophize in It! Chemicalize With It!” is a fine choice. It’s uplifting and accessible, but doesn’t overpower the spot. It works here, and would work equally well in any number of recent ads for Apple, Samsung or Microsoft. In fact, this spot, while true to Pinterest’s vibe, is a good example of how ads for tech companies increasingly blur the picture, instead of putting their services into sharper focus.
But for Pinterest, building on earlier long-form ads, it represents a noticeable step toward being a major marketer in the social tech arena. Take a look below and see what you think.
If you ever hoped to pretend your phone were a fish or an aquatic plant, Sony would like to present its Xperia Z1S.
The brand, along with Wieden + Kennedy and development partners Motim and SoftFacade, is demonstrating the phone’s waterproof technology by developing apps designed to be used in and under the water.
A new feature on the phone uses ultrasound to sense when the phone is submerged. A handful of 30-second videos (directed by Sean Pecknold of Society) demonstrate the apps, which capitalize on that detection technology in ways unusual, somewhat amusing and mostly frivolous.
One of the apps is “Goldie,” an on-screen fish that flops around like it’s dying when you take the phone out of the water. Another is “Plantimal,” a modern cross between a Tomagotchi and a Grow Monster. There’s also “Rainy-oke” for, quite literally, singing in the rain, as proven by a drag queen performing Cyndi Lauper.
“Photo Lab” mimics the process of developing photos by hand, in an extra cutesy twist of the knife to a practice all but eradicated by the digital age. “Sink Sunk” offers perhaps the funniest and most practical application of the water detection technology: It’s a simple game for when you’re bored and cranky, hanging out in your kiddie pool.
That’s it, at least so far. The brand is making the source code for the feature available via Github, so other developers can play with different uses, too.
In the meantime, it’s a reasonably fun way for Sony to promote waterproofing, even though that feature is not unique to the smartphone manufacturer or model. And it fits well enough into the art-meets-engineering motif of the brand’s “Be Moved” platform, launched with W+K early this year—even if it does feel a little heavier on the engineering part.
The brand recommends you avoid submerging your phone for more than 30 minutes at a time, though. Just in case you were planning to take it on a nice long scuba dive.
Reggie Watts yodels, raps, hangs with woodland fauna, floats on a giant leaf and generally goofs around in a quartet of new videos from Greenpeace.
The environmental group is sending a message to certain tech giants about using sustainable energy sources. “Some of the Internet’s biggest and most innovative companies, such as Apple, Facebook and Google, are powering with modern, renewable energy,” Greenpeace rep Dave Pomerantz told BusinessGreen. “The #ClickClean movement expects the rest of the companies behind our online world, like Amazon and Twitter, to join them.”
No firms are named in the ads, which were created by The VIA Agency.
“We set out to develop a campaign that had humor at its core and that people would rally behind and share,” said Via executive producer Mary Hanifin. “Reggie’s unique brand of comedy, devoted following and ability to convey complex themes through humor made him a perfect fit.”
The comedian and musician has some experience with the clean-power issue, having contributed to a Climate Reality Project spot last year. For Greenpeace—fresh off its gorgeous ad attacking Lego for partnering with Shell—Watts sustains a tone that gives the material an offbeat, non-judgmental spark. He uses improvisation to amp up the scripts, and his silly, slightly subversive comic energy feels just right.
Via Fast Company.
Global design firm AKQA and ubiquitous shoe manufacturer Nike have collaborated on a full-size LED basketball court for Nike Rise, a program designed to train Chinese youth based on the techniques and practice drills of Kobe Bryant.
Called House of Mamba (a reference to Kobe’s Black Mamba nickname), the LED court guides and reacts to the players’ movements with an impressive range of visual displays, to the point where you wonder how the athletes aren’t distracted by it.
Nike Rise centered on a reality show where 30 Chinese teens trained with Kobe and LeBron James, and three of them will go on to the Nike World Basketball Festival next month.
Via DesignBoom.
It’s World Breastfeeding Month, but Anthropologie doesn’t want to see your boobs.
Ingrid Wiese Hesson claims she was unceremoniously escorted off an Anthropologie sales floor and into a stock-room bathroom for breastfeeding her baby. (Remind you of any ads?) Here’s the email she sent to the company, and then posted to Facebook:
I’m writing to share an unfortunate event that occurred at the Beverly Hills anthropologie location. As a long time Anthro member and loyalist, it seemed natural to do my first postpartum shopping outing at Anthroologie. Anxious to use my birthday discount, I brought my six week old infant along and we both smiled as I walked away from the register with $700 worth of Breastfeeding friendly clothing. But baby began to cry and I found a chair at the back of the store and sat down to feed him. Imagine my surprise when the manager Meredith approached, “I’m here to escort you to the ladies room where you can finish feeding your baby.” Shocked. I unlatched the infant, he began to cry, and we did the walk of shame to the stock room bathroom. There was nothing but a toilet in the room. “Sorry we don’t have a chair.” I left the store embarrassed and called back to talk to Meredith and verify what I had just experienced. “I thought you and the other customers would be more comfortable off the sales floor,” she explained. Please inform Meredith that CA law grants me the right to Breastfeed in public. As a store that caters to women, I would hope your staff would be more understanding. Meredith said, “we must be fair to all the customers, not just moms.” Meredith, moms are customers too. At least the many women that have already liked my Facebook post in the past hour seem to think so. Shame on you anthropologie.
Hesson’s story has been circulating through Facebook, Twitter and Instagram like wildfire. The Anthropologie manager’s actions were not just unwise, they were also in violation of Hesson’s legal rights. From the California Civil Code: “Notwithstanding any other provision of law, a mother may breastfeed her child in any location, public or private, except the private home or residence of another, where the mother and the child are otherwise authorized to be present.”
People have been tweeting and leaving messages on Anthropologie’s Facebook page, threatening to boycott. A nurse-in at the specific Beverly Hills Anthropologie was arranged:
@JayGordonMDFAAP Nurse-in tomorrow, Wednesday, at Beverly Hills Anthropologie from 3-4 pm. Woman was asked to nurse in the bathroom!
— Josh (@labicycleatty) August 20, 2014
Attention nursing moms: if you’re in Beverly Hills go nurse your baby at anthropologie. Ask for Meredith. RT and invite a nursing friend.
— Jessica Gottlieb (@JessicaGottlieb) August 20, 2014
Finally, Anthropologie responded with a somewhat vague PR cut-and-paste, saying:
We are disappointed to hear of the unfortunate experience that occurred in our Beverly Hills store. As a company comprised of hundreds of mothers, which seeks to put the customer first, we celebrate women in all of their life stages. Given our staff’s dedication to providing exceptional customer service, we welcome this as an opportunity to enhance our customer experience by providing further training and education for our staff. Our aim is that all women—all mothers—be comfortable in our stores and delight in their relationship with Anthropologie.
The craziest part? All of this has gone down in the past 23 hours. Technology is wild and impressive, but somehow people are still asking me to fax them documents? Weird.
Photo via Flickr.
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