Recently, a rat chewed through a couple of wires behind my television set. I lost my sound to the receiver. I was able to catch that rat and get my revenge, but it reminded me of how much I hate the wires. We get closer every day to the end of wires, dishes, cables, television tethers that keep us pulling out the set and figuring out the inputs and outputs. It is not fun.
Today, I felt like the end was really in site with the new Hulu Plus. Hulu Plus is the subscription service of formerly free Hulu. With the new wireless television sets, Hulu Plus, Roku, Netflix and a host of others will allow us to watch TV without much more than a plug. We can rent movies, watch television shows, buy movies, listen to books and cruise the net all at the same time. Not only that, I can also watch Hulu on my computer, iPhone or iPad.
Right now, I’m paying for cable, which is more than $150 a month. Hulu Plus and Roku together would run $20 a month unless you want to rent Amazon movies, which are $4 to $5 each. Eventually, everyone will figure out that it’s better to turn on a TV and have everything you need as long as you have a wireless connection. It’s cheaper, cooler, easier and just plain smarter. And someday, the channels you now get with DIRECTV or Cable will come without a DIRECTV guy or cable guy. It will all be in the TV and available through your wireless connection. Add wireless stereo receivers and speakers all in one big bundle and you never have to worry about wires again.
Maybe some of us will still keep paying for cable and satellite. We’ll just add Hulu Plus, Roku, Sony’s system and anything else that will give us enough options to make our couch time roll by in pixilated bliss. And we’ll watch a giant split-screen with a Netflix movie on one side, football on the other and a Hulu’d Office episode in the middle. If we’re lucky, we’ll see about five minutes of each since we’ll be trying to watch YouTube videos from the computers on our laps and make FaceTime calls from our iPhones at the same time.
If a hundred channels weren’t enough, why would 2,000 channels do it? It’s like the Gillette 5 Blade Razor. Three blades were good. Four blades were great. But if I only had one more blade, then I could be sure I was getting the best shave. Well, until they have six blades, that is. And seven, if I had seven blades.
If that’s the way it’s going to be, it’s just more for the rats to chew on. I long for the day when they have nothing but the plug and that small piece of cheese I leave on the sticky trap to gnaw at.
I don’t know why I am writing this right after having an award show win (four national ADDYs), but I am. I have no doubt it will curse us. So I am knocking on wood right now. To this point, the knocking-on-wood process has kept my planes from crashing, so it must be good for stuff like this too.
I hate award shows because of the mystery. The fact that I have been a judge in award shows and have seen what happens during the process makes it even worse. Judges will dismiss things that took months to produce in a matter of seconds. They say the work is derivative. They say it didn’t grab them. They say that it wasn’t polished. They want to award things with nice varnish over ideas because they know about different varnishes. They could see the strategy too much. The strategy was oozing from the work and obscuring anything that could possibly be of any value. It didn’t connect with them on an emotional level. It sucked.
Once a judge said to me that if it didn’t grab her, she immediately gave it a 0. Which means there weren’t any points for effort. I always give points for effort. I also know that giving points for effort will curse me someday. Knock on wood.
Here is what goes through my mind –
A spicy Thai salad can easily distract someone from judging excellent creative work. Admit it. Just the picture of one is almost luring you away from reading the rest of this post.
“Did they just take our money and the work never made it to the show? Did our DVD or Quicktime function properly? I know that they will try really hard to get it working, but that will frustrate the judges as well. A frustrated judge will not like our subtle genius. Is our work canceling our other work out? (That work can’t possibly be good because they also did that other awful work.) Did they see our work just before lunch when they were super hungry and thinking about a delicious Thai BBQ salad at spice level #7? I know it would be hard for me to concentrate while thinking about a delicious Thai salad at spice level #7. They all know each other. Are they just looking at each other’s work right there in the judging and slapping each other on the back and giving each other 100s? Why don’t I try and talk to more of them when I am at events? I can be social if I try really hard. They might like me. Of course that one magazine editor really doesn’t like me at all. Is she secretly running everything? Is it a conspiracy? Or is the work just derivative.”
Then I come back to my senses and realize that there is really good work out there and we do really good work ourselves. And judging isn’t an exact science. And maybe we should limit our entries. And that editor doesn’t hate me. She doesn’t necessarily like me either. She hasn’t taken out a restraining order and that is good.
But that’s what the mystery of award shows does to you. If I could watch and make sure the judges were looking at the work, I would feel better. I would also pick up some tips for next time. Maybe I would infuse some donut smell in the print pieces or subliminal pictures of kittens in the TV. Then, of course, I think, “Ad people don’t like kittens.”
And oh, I probably shouldn’t say anything about anyone else’s work on Twitter. Knock on wood.
We are competitive here. We want to win for our clients. We want to win for our agency. We want to win. And agencies that do well in award shows are doing great work. I have to like them.
We have done well this year. And I think one of the reasons is we don’t really just think advertising. Like any good agency, we think of work that will get attention by the way we run media, the PR factor and results. Vegas Bound, the program where we brought a small town in Texas to Vegas, has won a number of PR, media and interactive awards including the Gold Sabre and OMMA. We also won Mediaweek’s Media Plan of the Year for our Wynn client. And we’ve gotten a lot of recognition for our creative work as well, especially on our biggest client, LVCVA. So I am not unhappy. I just always feel like we should do much better.
I can’t tell you the perfect way to enter these award shows. I don’t know it. What I can tell you is that great work does win. And if you do great work, it won’t get past the judges. Unless, of course, they see it right before a really spicy Thai salad.
Recently, I read an article entitled, Stay or Go? The Lasting Effect of the Staycation. It centers mainly on the itemizing and scrutinizing of your vacation costs and the new habit of calculating return on investment (ROI) from the things you do on said vacation. In the worst part of the recession, travelers had pared down their vacations to only the most important things. And it claims that, as travelers add some things back, they will continue to scrutinize and add them back in order of highest ROI. Wow, that means that Americans learn from their experiences. They remember and adjust accordingly. It sounds right, but is it?
Michael Lewis’ book, The Big Short, chronicles the credit default swaps and the banking machine that almost brought down the entire world of finance and capitalism. However, it isn’t the first book that Mr. Lewis has written on the follies of Wall Street. I would venture to say it won’t be the last. I’m pretty sure there are creative financial wizards thinking up the new disaster right now. Will we be buying into something else we don’t understand in three or four years looking for that elusive return on investment? I’m thinking we will.
We forget things. Remember Vietnam? It’s part of our optimistic makeup. It’s what got us here in the first place. I know I really can’t afford a house ’cause I barely have a job, but I’m gonna buy it anyway. By the time the payments are due, I’ll be discovered by Spielberg, my ship will come in, a bag of money will fall on my head, an uncle will die and leave me his fortune, I’m due, my luck is going to change, I’ll pull myself up by the bootstraps, I’ll get that job at the nuclear reactor – so today sucks, but tomorrow, tomorrow, I love you, tomorrow, it’s only a day away. OK, I can’t make this first payment, but by next payment, I’ll be discovered by…
It’s the American dream. And the American dream has rules.
Rule 1: Everyone should be able to own a house.
Rule 2: Everyone should have hope for a more prosperous tomorrow.
Rule 3: There are only setbacks to the American dream. The actual dream does not end until you die. And even then, it lives on with a flag.
Rule 4: Everyone who is an American, and some who are not really Americans but work hard and happen to be in America, is entitled to live the American dream, even if they might not be legally American dreamers.
Rule 5: Everyone should be able to enjoy a vacation with their family where they waste money on pina coladas, expensive hotel rooms, room service, massages, crazy dinners and souvenirs because we’re not all rich and deserve at least a weekend where we feel like we’re rich.
6. Everyone should be able to start over at the end of the year with a Mulligan.
OK, those aren’t the real rules. We have this thing called the Constitution where there are rights and such that mean the same thing but it’s written in old-timey Jeffersonian. I know that Jefferson meant those rules, though. He would take trips to France where he would buy tons of wine from all the châteaux he visited. It was like a trip to Napa that took a year.
My point is that we want what we want. And, sometimes, the only way to get it is to forget. If you forget, you can do the things you want to do.
For instance, you can have it all for at least once a year. You can’t have it all if you remember the bad times and cut out anything that doesn’t have the right ROI. The very meaning of having it all is not worrying about ROI. That seems to be what vacations are for as well, forgetting stuff.
What’s the gangster say to the guy he loans money to, “Fuhgeddaboudit,” until he sends the guy to break his legs.
“Honey, what’s the ROI on that crab cake? Send it to me in triplicate with a side of mango salsa chutney so I don’t forget.”
Guest curator – Eunie Jung, Senior Art Director, R&R Partners
For Friday’s meeting, our new SAD showed us some fun stuff from around the Web.
Some fun sites:
I really like the new IBM campaign as The Mill speaks to the importance of harnessing data. Visually, the graphics were simple and consistent to the look and feel of the brand.
You gotta love origami. Awesome German short film, “papierkrieg,” by Matthias Bäuerle.
Beautiful campaign work for the launch of Colgate 360 Sonic Power associated with the baseline “333 blows a second.” Photography by James Day.
Buick is trying to do new things. Only on the online space can you experience the new design and beauty of the 2010 Buick lineup.
Gotta love UNIQLO. Not everything needs to be glossy.
You’ve all seen the commercial. It runs over and over again. It’s the only LG television commercial that’s running right now as far as I know. And the idea is really cool. I wanted to see this thing. So Tony and I head to the LG booth. We ask one of the people there to show us the Projector Phone. She says, “I’m not sure if we have that here or not. If it is here, it would be over there with the phones.” Tony and I go over there only to find that they have them connected to a wall with security wires. There is no way to get far enough from the wall to see how they work and no area to display the image on. A film crew was there for some German show and they wanted to see how it worked too. None of the LG people could find a projector phone that wasn’t connected to the wall. I can’t imagine the millions that were spent making and running that commercial. They should have had a whole room devoted to showing movies on the projector phone. This is a no-brainer. So LG, this was bad and an incredible missed opportunity.
Pump Speakers I don’t like the color and I have absolutely nothing to wear with them. And, oh, they’re speakers. Now I’ve seen speakers that look like a bust of Beethoven, speakers that look like a dog and speakers that look like shoes. I have seen it all. Please remove my eyes. These shoes would be ugly on a woman.
Pump Batteries This is the Yogen, www.yogenstore.com. It charges your iPhone by pulling the string over and over again. They call it the charger for life. They say it’s 100 percent green. It’s also great exercise. There’s only one problem. The minute you stop pulling the string there’s no more charge. Make these things so they can store a charge please. How hard is it to figure out that people don’t want to spend 30 minutes at a time pulling on this thing? Yogen, this is a good idea gone bad.
Wah Yung makes audio equipment. The booth pictured here was showing headphones. I use the word “showing” because that’s what they were doing. They weren’t connected to anything. And it didn’t look like anyone was interested in connecting any of them for me to listen to. Wah Yung makes a ton of equipment. But as a brand, they’re nonexistent especially at CES. And they had that same kind of bland look going as most of the booths from China. I don’t know why they keep going to CES. In the end, their efforts are both bad and ugly.
The Emperor
This is a chair for guys who think they’re Captain Kirk but in a gaming or business sense. It’s a true command center where the screens come down and surround you at the push of a button like the Cone of Silence in Get Smart. What kind of guy are you if you sit in this chair all day long? When will your laser beam destroy the White House? Will you shoot James Bond immediately or strap him to a table, put some special Wah Yung headphones on him and turn up the volume slowly until his head blows up or he escapes and kills you? Either way it’s bad although slightly cool.
iPhone TV
This one really made me angry. It’s an attachment that’s supposed to turn your iPhone into a TV. I immediately wanted to know what stations I could get. So I asked someone. She said, “You can pick up the local stations.” I said, “Like analog stations?” I said this knowing full well that there are no more analog stations. We live in an exciting digital world. She said, “No, they are digital.” To which I became even more confused. Was I going to have to carry a satellite dish around or connect to a cable box? So I asked, “Can I see it work?” She said, “No, it hasn’t quite been totally figured out yet.” This is bad and a tease from the folks at https://www.cydle.com/
Cydle M7 Mobile Internet Device
It was frozen and no one could unfreeze it. They teased me yet again after the iPhone TV thing. That’s cold and bad.
The Cue
The Cue had a great set up and looked like a really interesting reader. It’s connected to its own digital magazine and bookshop and also features stuff like e-mail, weather report, calendar, news, etc., within the device. However, the device was so slow that I immediately asked about the processor. The Cue guy said, “This isn’t the processor it will ship with in March. That processor will be faster than this one.” Then I asked how much. He said something like $700. Hmmmmmmmmmmm. This is where my thoughts started to go all over the place. Can I trust him about the processor? Do I even have $700. I might have to buy a new bike. That sounds like a lot of money. Where are Tony and I going to eat after this? Will I be paying for Tony and me to eat? And when I eventually came back to the moment, The Cue had finally downloaded the first page. Bad.
China
If China is taking over the world, it will be a very bland world. A world of washed-out pastels. And all the fonts will be the same. I don’t think I’m going to like it. I’m a colorful character.
Real-Time Recorder
This was actually a pretty nifty device. For idiots like me who can’t figure out how to digitize a DVD on their computer, you can get this thing. It makes a digital copy directly to your iPhone or computer from the DVD player. There is one catch. It does this in real time. That’s kind of bad. But this actually works and you can buy it now.
Casio People
Here’s just a taste of the world of CES. There are numerous beautiful people telling you about the new and exciting world of consumer electronics. I’m not going to say they’re bad. You have to judge for yourself.
The Organizer
I really don’t understand this one. It’s a pack for kids or kid-like adults so that your toothpaste and brush and stuff all have a pocket. And it hangs around your neck like it does around this future boy or whatever he
Arnie is unsure about the TV Hat ... does he have tunnel vision?
is. This did catch my attention. And I did spend time with it. But my final conclusion was pretty simple. I don’t want there to be a nuclear war where we come out of the shelters as small ugly green people even if we do have nice organizer packs hanging around our necks.
Porn Debate
This sign is sitting toward the back of the show almost as if it was accidentally transferred from the Adult Video Convention, which was going on down the street. There was no porn debate going on at CES. I couldn’t figure out what it meant. There was no petition to sign. Ron Jeremy was nowhere to be found. Most porn is pretty ugly and so is Ron. So I’m going with ugly.
TV Hat
This is me wearing a hat with an iPhone tucked in the front and a magnifying glass inside. It’s so you can watch movies on your iPhone. It’s a TV hat. It’s an interesting idea but I wouldn’t go anywhere with this person and neither should you.
Mink Man
Again, you be the judge. At least it’s not full-length.
Go to law school & specialize in online privacy... Facebook Sued In California Over Teen Endorsements http://flne.ws/25793379 on Fluent Newsabout 1 week agofrom web
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