BrandBrains

There are some of us that believe that good television advertising is an art form (myself included), so my peers won’t find these stats surprising at all. Others may cringe.

According to a new study by the Retail Advertising and Marketing Association (RAMA), a division of the National Retail Federation, many consumers rank the commercials as the most important part of the Super Bowl - 34.5 million consumers (15.7% of viewers).

(via AdPulp)

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You thought forehead advertising was interesting?

A “27 year old auburn-haired lass” in Glasgow, Scotland is taking one of her most attractive, uh, assets and turning into cash. The woman is auctioning the use of her cleavage for advertising to the highest bidder.

Here’s the text of the eBay auction:

Hi there. Like myself, and many others across the world, you’ve probably noticed a man on eBay is renting his forehead for 30 days, so you can put your logo on it. Well, now, you can do so in the UK.

No longer restricted to USA based advertising, you can now rent my CLEAVAGE for a period of 15 days, during which I will display your company logo, slogan or web-site address in the form of a temporary tattoo you will supply to me. I should probably give you some information on the whereabouts of this living billboard.

I currently live in the town of Greenock in west of Scotland. I’m often to be found in Glasgow or Edinburgh as well. I’m a 27 year old auburn-haired lass. I’m an ample size 42GG, and I usually wear low-cut tops. I am renting the top part of my cleavage (the part which is legal to display) for you to put your company’s logo upon.

During the 15 days, I can have photos taken of me, with your logo, in front of any of the popular landmarks in Glasgow, or our nation’s capital. The other auction, based in the US, has generated massive media interest around the world, and this auction will likely also generate such attention from UK media. Imagine the possibilities of getting your company logo displayed, FOR FREE on national media.

All I ask in return is that you supply the temporary tattoo, and that your logo be no larger than 9 inches wide, and 5 inches tall. Also, I cannot advertise any sectarian, or racial logos, slogans or URL’s which point to such sites. Also, if the content is of an ‘adult’ nature, it must be censored to ensure that it is legal to display in a public area. Logo content is at our discretion.

At the end of the 15 days, prints of the photos, (which can be e-mailed to you during the period) will be posted to you as a permanent souvenir. Don’t miss out on this massive novel media opportunity. If there are any questions or comment’s, please feel free to e-mail me at “wizard_drongo@yahoo.co.uk”.

Thank you for reading, and Happy Bidding!

You can find the original eBay auction here. I have a feeling that eBay will take it down sooner than might be expected, so I created a PDF, found here.

The cost for this international advertising opportunity? 422 pounds (almost $796 U.S. dollars). Not surprisingly, the winning bidder is an online casino.

What does this say about the future of advertising? Branding? Media? Are we going to see full-body wraps, a la Free Cars?

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Microsoft has officially opened the schema to their Office File Formats. This is huge news.

Of course, not as big as you think.

See, they’re not opening the format out of sheer altruism and kindness (surprised?) but to begin to comply with purchasing requirements outlined by certain government organizations.

A Techworld story cites the state (commonwealth?) of Massachusetts’ policy:

Massachusetts has already instituted a software purchasing policy designed to increase competition between open source and proprietary software, and is planning to extend its policy to particular formats. Microsoft formats are likely to be included in the list of “open formats” supported by the policy, Eric Kriss, Massachusetts’ secretary of administration and finance, told attendees at a Friday meeting of the Massachusetts Software Council.

So now, the data contained in unstructured documents can be shared more easily. That said, from an end user’s perspective the ability to share data between Microsoft and other office-compatible applications is not really the problem - applications like Open Office do a pretty good job of allowing people to read and edit MS Office docs. The sticky problem for users is the ability to maintain the formatting of documents.

For instance, Open Office does a decent job of opening Word and PowerPoint documents, but the formatting gets all funky (a technical term), requiring the user to reformat the entire document before printing. And that reformatting may not look acceptable when opened again in the equivalent Microsoft application.

But, like web browsers, developers can now spend their time on the rendering and formatting engines rather than trying to simultaneously figure out the data structure and then render the correct formatting. At least it’s a step in the right direction.

(via Scoble)

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From Dictionary.com:

meme n.

A unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another.

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Eric Freeman over at Creating Passionate Users reviews Malcolm Gladwell’s new book Blink.

His thoughtful comments indicate that he wasn’t as impressed with this new book as he was Gladwell’s The Tipping Point. However, he does give it “3 out of 5 brains.”

This book is on my list (actually, it’s pretty close to the top) but I’m just waiting to see if Audible offers it in the next couple of months before I buy the CD version of the audiobook.

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Inevitably, for every meme, there’s an anti-meme. And yet another capitalist opportunity. Behold Exhibit A: The “Bloggers Suck” T-shirt.

For $16 (free shipping in the U.S.) you can proclaim your disdain for the blogging community.

I found this in a Google Adwords AdSense ad on Adpulp.

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In pop culture, Adam Curry is most notably known as a former MTV VJ from the 80’s. Those of us that were a part of the early Internet industry also know that Adam founded, grew and sold OnRamp - a web development consultancy.

Since then, he’s been a poster boy (poster man?) for the blogging revolution. In addition to blogging, Adam’s on to the Next Big Thing: Podcasting (a phrase that he coined, actually a phrase coined by Ben Hammersley in an article for The Guardian in February 2004) (Thanks for pointing that out, Cori.). You can hear Adam every day in his Daily Source Code Podcast.

Last year, he and Dave Winer launched iPodder.org, a site that enables people to automatically download and listen to Podcasts.

Later this year Adam will formally launch a podcasting network. From a Fortune article:

Later this winter Curry and partners plan to launch a podcasting network, offering an edited selection of the web’s best dispatches and tools for neophytes to create their own casts. Just as blogs have challenged mainstream media, Curry predicts that podcasts will take on radio and satellite. “With podcasting, people can tune out the world and listen to whatever they choose,” says Curry. “In a way we’re really looking at the dismantling of the monoculture,” he says. Guess it’s a good thing he’s not at MTV anymore.

(via Steve Rubel’s Micropersuasion)

Is Adam going to supplant broadcast radio, Internet radio or mass media in general? Probably not. But with 4.5 million iPods sold in Q4 2004 alone (not even counting all the other MP3 players on the market) there’s definitely an audience that’s hungry for quality, on-the-go content.

My guess is that coupled with the power of the blogosphere, it’ll probably spread like wildfire - providing it’s easy to download-and-go. Simplicity and automation will play a big part in this.

Even Geeks (and quasi-geeks like me) are going to need the time-saving convenience of automation. I mean, I just don’t have the time to wait around for a queue of Podcasts to download and copy to my iPod, then pack up my Powerbook each and every morning.

That’s where applications like iPodderX come in (Mac). I couldn’t find a Windows app, but I’m sure there’s one in development.

Update: Steve just told me that the primary Podcasting app on Windows is iPodder.

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Here’s a perfect use of real-time blogging.

On the day of the Super Bowl, all 59 of the commercials that air during the event will get cheered, jeered and just plain dissected. Given that the only reason I watch the Super Bowl is to see the ads, I’ll definitely be a participant in this blogging event. (Although not an official panelist.)

(via Kevin Dugan’s blog)

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There’s no doubt that the iPod is hot. It was everywhere this holiday season and just when you thought the excitement might wane, along comes the iPod Shuffle to stir things up again.

Feeding the hype was Apple’s award-winning ad campaign featuring the silouhettes of tres chic iPod users on one of 5 solid colorful backgrounds. They’re unmistakable. (So unmistakeable that Apple, in it’s usual litigious fashion, sent “Cease and Desist” letters to those using variations of it in commercial applications.)

Perpetuating this meme even further is PodaPic.

Send them any photo and they’ll “Pod it” by creating a silouhette of the subject and placing it on one of the 5 Apple-selected colorful backgrounds. They’ll even include a caption, if you like.

The cost for the privelege of starring in your own private iPod ad? $3.99.

Or for $6.99, they’ll produce and deliver 5 photos, one with every color background. (For the Photoshop-aware among you, you know that this part is pure profit - once you’ve masked the subject, changing the background layer takes miliseconds to do.)

Are people buying them? Consider this: after the launch of the iPod Shuffle, PodaPic began offering photos in the “iPod Shuffle style” which uses a graphic “shuffle” element. I would guess that if demand weren’t strong, they wouldn’t bother to invest in extending the service further.

I’ll admit it: I bought one.

Here’s a picture of my two-year old son, enjoying his first ice cream cone this past September while we were on vacation in Long Beach Island.

I have it as part of my rotating desktop patterns and the rotating pictures screensaver on my Powerbook. It’s an interesting conversation starter.

Just for sh*ts and giggles, I’m going to order one of myself, one of my wife and one of our cocker spaniel, too. I’ll put them in a four-pane picture frame and give it to my wife as a cute (yet hopelessly pop-culture-inspired) Valentine’s Day trinket.

Every person who has received one of these picures “just had to know” where I got it, so they could get one themselves.

This type of viral marketing has got to be a huge driver of sales, but I think they should capitalize on spreading the meme even further. Some quick ideas could include:

• e-cards: enabling customers to create and send e-cards to friends and family using their newly “Podded” pic.
• Newsletter: send anyone who might be interested - existing customers or casual site visitors - a newsletter with the best pics of the week. Ask customers to opt-in to having their pictures appear in the newsletter. They already have this on their site - adapting it for a newsletter should be trivial.
• “Pod” celebrities: create and distribute “Podded” pictures of all types of newsworthy individuals using news photos or other freely available images.

The opportunities are endless.

Spread a meme! Make money…

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MacDevCenter.com has a How-To article on Podcasting, by Glenn Fleishman. Yes, as the site name implies, the article is Mac-centric, but it’s a good tutorial nonethless. (via TUAW)

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