Adcentered

Super Bowl XLI & Web 2.0

It's almost that time of year again. The Super Bowl is coming. This is one of those times of the year when creatives meet huge budgets.  It's a time to show off in front of hundreds of millions of viewers. Most of the ad slots are sold out. You can expect some of the usual suspects. Cadillac, Chevy, Anheuser-Busch, and Doritos. GoDaddy.com is becoming another regular.

The game will be played in Miami on February 4th. Former Miami Dolphins, Dan Marino and Don Shula will be honored at the game this year. The purple one, himself, Prince, is going to perform during half time. Notice the Miami logo above.

There seems to be several Super Bowl XLI logos floating around this year. Could that be the result of segmentation? One Game, One Dream, 35 logos? It's cool, I'm not complaining. I'm just pointing it out.

Remember the ".com" Super Bowl, when all those dotcoms were fighting for your attention, spending millions in borrowed cash only to fold a month later? Remember that? There's much hype about the new Internet boom, but so far it doesn't appear that successful Web 2.0 are flocking to spend on SBXLI. But, Keep an eye out. The right 2.0 idea with a Super Bowl budget could be a recipe for success. We'll see on February 4th.

Bad Player vs. Good Sport

I haven't posted in about a week. I took some time to chill with family and to get away from everything school related. I'm back, and hopefully better than ever.

What a crazy journey this first semester of Adcenter has been. I learned more about myself and other people and less about advertising. That's a good thing. I am also on academic probation. That is a good thing as well. I'm down but not out.

I was extremely busy this semester. I started this blog and posted the hell out of it. I competed in the Innovation Challenge and even made some good friends and contacts. I lived and I learned. In the process, I realized that there was a problem. That problem was "I", thats right, I'm the problem. I spent so much time focusing on me and what I wanted to accomplish that I may have neglected the team spirit that makes graduate school different. This was not the case with every team. I did alright most of the time. A large part of grading at Adcenter is teamwork and peer evaluations. However, I did  missed several opportunities to be a good team player and you can't miss stuff like that. Some lessons are learned the hard way. If you plan on applying to VCU Adcenter, check you ego at the door, play ball, and most importantly listen. Pay close attention to teachers, second year students, and your teams.

If you follow those easy steps, you will do great. If not you'll be kicked out or on academic probation. The real world of marketing and advertising is full of politics and scandals. Adcenter is no different. But the only person that can hold you back is yourself. Ain't no shame here. You earn what you get. I have to be a better player, even if the game isn't going my way. Be a good sport and don't get lost in the game, and most importantly LISTEN.

Cute Elephants Sell Cars

This is a warm little Renault ad made by Publicis Conseil, Paris.

Time Magazine's Person of the Year is You!

Congratulations You! The people that generate the content of the new information age are the winners. Everyone from bloggers to YouTube are winners. It appears that Time is giving much credit to Web 2.0 and everyone in it. I don't know how I feel about this. In a way I'm flattered, but it also feels like generic fortune cookie advice. I mean, I am only flattered because I am taking what they are telling me and applying it to my my life. Are you not person of the year if you are on the B side of the digital divide? I'm left with more questions than answers. If Time's goal was to inspire thinking, than it worked.

AOL Holiday Party 2006

Last night I worked as a bartender at the 2006 AOL Holiday Party. It was a pretty cool gig. It looks like AOL spent a ton of money this year. AOL rented out the entire Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center near Dulles International Airport. This is an extension of the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum. Approximately 4,500 guests attended the event.

Everything looked expensive. I served Jack and Cokes in a neon lit bar with an SR-71 Blackbird in the background. One of the Udvar-Hazy Center's main attractions is the Space Shuttle Enterprise. Like everything in the museum that night, It was lit up for the occasion. I had been meaning to go to this museum since it opened in late 2003, I'm glad I Finally made it.

Suicide Girls vs. Playboy

I was on Myspace, checking out some companies that advertise on it. The U.S. Marines are recruiting on Myspace, but so are their pin ups! That statement is true, depending on their taste. Suicide girls caters to a segment of the population that has been ignored my mainstream media.

Suicide Girls is a site dedicated to redefining what beauty is. They embrace the tattooed and pierced women, that are rarely advertised as beautiful. Suicide Girls is a revenue generating venture. They charge members a few bucks a month to look at photos and videos.

The positioning of SG is also in line with their image. They compare themselves to Playboy, which is interesting, because Playboy was underground and then evolved into the mainstream. In positioning it helps to define who you are competing against. This is a good example. From a marketing perspective, it makes sense to use Myspace, it makes sense to go after a smaller segment, and it makes sense to charge a small fee.

Coke Makes You Gay!

This ad was made by fellow VCU Adcenter students, Slate Donaldson, Michael Collier, Zoe Bell, Christina Chang. I love it. Tagg it on Advertagg.

Advertagg, My Little Digg Clone

What's Advertagg? It all started about 2 weeks ago when I decided to see what makes Digg.com so special. Digg is a social news sharing site where people vote or "digg" the stories they find most interesting. Digg recieves hundreds of thousands of hits per day. It was originally intended for technology and geek news, which it's still known for. Digg members are the first to get leaks about everything. I started posting on Digg and watched my web traffic go through the roof. Here is an example of one of my best days last week.

I did alright on Digg until I was unable to post blog entries anymore. I can link to everything else but my own site. That sucks! You see, Digg members police themselves and report "spam". Of course my entries are going to seem like spam,I write about advertising. It just came to light that over 50 of the top Digg users are on the payroll of a PR firm. I did a little research and found out that the "social news" trend is on the rise. Remember Netscape, they aren't just a search engine anymore, they are a social news engine. There is a also Spanish Digg clone called meneame.net.

I wasn't spamming on Digg, though I was promoting my site. I first started blogging in late August, as an experiment to look further into blogs and the "new" web. Posting on Digg was an experiment in Web 2.0. This leads me into Advertagg.com.

Advertagg.com is my social news experiment. I figure I can't get kicked out of my own network. Advertagg is about creativity, innovation, and communication. It is as much about advertising, marketing, and technology as it is about design and art. I also made sure to include a section for amatuer and student work. It's still in the works but, I just finished making the beta version thanks to Pligg, a site that designed shareware to create these types of networks.  I'm tired. So please, take a look, join, and post an article or two. I would like to remind you that I am not a programmer so this whole thing still needs work. I just started testing it today. Feedback is greatly appreciated and if there are any designers out there that can work with smarty codes and CSS, I could use a lil help. Good night!

TestTube & Innovation by Cooperation

Welcome to TestTube, our ideas "incubator." This is where YouTube engineers and developers test out recipes and concoctions that aren't quite fully baked and invite you to tell us how they're coming along. Your comments will help us improve and perfect the mixtures we're working on. So jump in, play around, and send your feedback directly to the brains behind the scenes.  It’s a little rough still. Though, it might just be my connection.Here’s a screenshot. It didn’t load perfect the first time.

I did not know that YouTube had an incubator, called TestTube (found it here). It’s a cool idea. Everyone seems to be talking about open innovation, and here’s a good example. TestTube allows users to be a part of the development process. This increased interaction with the brand makes people feel like they helped build something. The distance between bright engineers and the people they design for, should decrease in all industries. It’s reasonable to think that more consumer interaction will create over-segmentation. It shouldn’t. People online find like-minded people and create communities everyday. There’s an online community for anything you can imagine. If there isn’t, someone probably create it next week. Imagine what the auto industry would be like if they could receive, and process millions of consumer suggestions everyday? It’s hard to, but it is possible. What does all this ranting have to do with TestTube? Nothing, it’s about innovation led by cooperation.

LeWeb3 & Web 2.0

LeWeb3 is a huge conference taking place in Paris for two days. This conference is all about unleashing the power of Web 2.0. Web 2.0 is the second internet boom. Companies like Myspace.com, Youtube, Flickr, SixApart and others are part of this revolution. Blogs are also huge in Web 2.0. The conference will address many of the issues of Web 2.0, but the question on many people’s minds is making money. How can we make money in the “new internet”? While some will make money, others worry about creating a speculative bubble like the one that burst after the first boom. Check out some of the big name sponsors.

I have a vested interest in Web 2.0. I am a blogger, and I am currently working on a few Web 2.0 ideas. My goal is to build a brand using the skills that I have acquired in college and use them to harvest a successful brand and sell it to pay my student loans. My vision is shared by thousands of other people with all kinds of motives. There is opportunity in the air and I want a part of it. That seems to be the sentiment. Only a few companies are going to rise to be the next Facebook or Craigslist. I don’t want to think that far ahead. I just want to prove that I can build a successful brand. I mean, I am majoring in Creative Brand Management. LeWeb3 looks like it’s going to be a great event. 55% of the attendees are non-French and the event will be held in French. I'm tempted to make a bumper sticker that reads “I’d rather be at LeWeb3”, but that wouldn’t be very 2.0, now would it?