Monthly Archives: January 2007

“Which part didn’t you understand: The ‘buh’ or the ‘bye’?”

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In case you haven’t read it already, AdJab has been shut down, effective today, Jan. 31. You can read some remembrances by myself and some of the staff in our group One Final Jab post.

I started writing there in April or May of 2005 and met a great number of people who I came to respect greatly within the Weblogs, Inc. network. Not least among those is Tom Biro, whom I got to know well on AJ, eventually followed as lead editor on the site a few months ago and whom I now work for and blog with at MWW Group.

AdJab was a great outlet for the pure advertising side of my brain. While a lot of people unfortunately viewed it as a “consumer” facing blog I always had a different image of it. I thought the content I and the rest of the team were putting out was up there in terms of quality with any of the other big thinkers out there on the internets.

I don’t have much else to say that hasn’t already been said, but I would like to thank Joe Jaffe, Steve Hall, Mack Collier, Rebecca Lieb and the other commentors for their parting thoughts and well wishes. Couldn’t have done it without both the AJ team and these fellow members of the advertising blogging community.

On the plus side I’m going to have some exciting news to share with you all in the next day or so.

LOTD: January 31st

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  • Multi-tasking when it comes to media usage is reaching epic proportions. If you strung it all out end to end you’d have 43 hour days of media consumption. Yikes. (CT)
  • Floppy disks are about out of time as information storage devices. More and more PCs are being manufactured without them as USB drives, with their smaller size and higher capacity, become the device of choice. (CT)
  • Older Flickr users are pretty upset over the announcement that, come March 15th, you will need a Yahoo account to log into the photo-sharing site. Shakespeare warned us. (CT)

Chicago’s Picasso suits up as new Bears offensive lineman

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More columns coming soon

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If you’ve been missing some actual Movie Marketing Madness columns here on MMM you have no one but me to blame. There are some major changes going on in the life of your humble blogger and that, combined with the fact that the lion’s share of movies that come out in January aren’t really very good means that the columns just haven’t been a priority. After the end of the month I’m going to try to get back in a groove with them, though.

Quick Takes: 1/26/07

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  • Clyde gives his thoughts on Universal’s Second Life Smokin’ Aces Assassins Game.
  • Blood Diamond director Ed Zwick is upset over a campaign by the U.S. diamond industry that wants to encourage stars to wear diamonds to award shows by offering to donate money to African charities for every star who does so.
  • Over at AdJab I mention the expansion of in-theater ad networks, the ones that prepare those pre-show ad pods.
  • Speaking of theaters, John mentions that some Canadian theaters are looking to sell naming rights to the theaters themselves.
  • Adam at TV Squad says Comedy Central will be pimping the big-screen adaptation of “Reno 911” in February.
  • Shrek the Third has a new (and pointless) TV spot.
  • The Newsarama blog says Nicholas Cage will be telling the Daytona 500 drivers to start their engines just two days after Ghost Rider opens in theaters.
  • 300 has a special poster specifically promoting its release in IMAX theaters.
  • Check out where my buddy Clay Parker Jones writes his blog.
  • There’s a new poster for the Terrence Howard drama Pride that isn’t as cool as the first but still works.
  • Finally, this is just funny.

LOTD: January 26th

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I’ve been busy exploring ways to auction ad-space on my back side in order to raise money to go see the Bears play in the Super Bowl. Any takers? Hello? Is this thing on? –Chris

  • Wikipedia is adding “no follow” tags to the links on its pages, meaning those links aren’t getting the Google Juice they otherwise would.
  • I’m inclined to think that companies have the right to edit factually incorrect Wikipedia entries but the fact that Microsoft went and paid outside bloggers to do so makes me think they felt they were doing something wrong. Microsoft has said it tried going through usual channels but kept being shut out, leading to it employing this tactic. Unfortunately, as Arrington says, there is a fundamental flaw with Wikipedia’s system that is starting to become more and more obvious.
  • The National Institute of Health has also been found to have edited its own Wikipedia entry, bringing it head to head with those who question its science.
  • I honestly can’t believe we’re still talking about LonelyGirl15.
  • As PR people I think we should be ashamed of ourselves everytime we read something like this saying that journalists aren’t hooked into RSS.
  • MySpace makes itself useful by announcing it will begin distributing Amber Alerts.
  • David just about nails the stages of Second Life adoption.
  • Marketing in Second Life could lead to big bucks according to at least one person.
  • The LA Times is enacting a bunch of ideas aimed at making integrating more deeply the online and offline worlds that exist at the paper.
  • When you think, logically, that politics is largely just marketing, it makes sense that it too is becoming a conversation.
  • Mack weighs in on on the reemergence of the “social media is dead” meme.
  • The Washington Post has added a number of outside blogs to its web offerings in an attempt to give it some cred.
  • It’s the people who are already in Second Life who are the most enthusiastic about the world’s future.
  • The new media savviness of the Super Bowl-bound Chicago Bears gets examined by Steve Johnson.
  • Google might be planning a virtual world of its very own.
  • Yahoo has shut down discussion on its news stories because of concerns that too few people were dominating the discussion.

Thursday Funnies

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Just because sometimes you need to laugh so hard the scotch you’ve been drinking by the gallon comes spurting out your nose.

  • This is funny because it’s at least partially true.
  • You have one little fire (that destroys a huge chunk of the city) and everybody keeps bringing it up.
  • My buddy Rick Klau is going to begin measuring time in terms of “24” episodes. Very similar to the AdJab unit of monetary measure, which is in items from the Wendy’s $1 menu.

LOTD Jan. 23rd: Music marketing madness edition

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There’s been a bunch of news about the future of the retail music industry that all sort of goes together so I wanted to put it into one place:

  • Record companies are eyeing moving toward open-format MP3s for digital downloads within the next year or so as opposed to all the DRMed files in incompatible formats that are polluting the system now.
  • According to eMarketer, the number of digital music sales nearly doubled in 2006 over 2005 numbers. Those numbers still don’t make up for the drop in physical CD sales, but imagine if the tracks were in the above-mentioned MP3 format.
  • Mark Glaser makes a lot of good points, chief among them that the $15 price-point for a physical CD has been around for a while now and is largely artificial at this point.
  • Mack is talking about SnoCap’s MyStore, a new venture from Napster founder Shawn Fanning. The service would enable artists to sell their music directly to the audience as MP3s.
  • Music videos from Sony BMG Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group artists will have Google AdSense’s video ads attached to them.
  • A new service called Ruckus will be offering free music to college students. The bummer is that it’s going to be distributed in Microsoft’s PlaysForSure format, meaning it won’t even play on Microsoft’s own Zune player not to mention iPods.

Quick Takes: 1/23/07

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  • Suzuki is working on a car whose roof flips up to turn into a 40-inch movie screen. The projection system can also be used to display the movie on a building wall or other flat surface. I’m betting the MPAA will have a collective stroke over this since it sounds too good from a consumer side.
  • Despite the fact that people have signaled their desire to experience smaller films that are more relevant to them, Hollywood continues to aim for a large audience.
  • Kirk Skodis is apparently completely rocking the Assassins game Universal setup in Second Life in connection with Smokin’ Aces.
  • Deborah Netburn tries to give equal voice to the comedy writers and others who like NBC’s “Studio 60” in an attempt to convince Aaron Sorkin to retract the contract he probably put out on her.
  • J.D. shows off the girl who makes him a lucky guy.
  • Patrick Goldstein once again tackles the subject of consumer control over the media industry and once again produces a must read whether this is old news or if you’re just getting used to this new world.
  • Warner Bros. is rereleasing The Departed now that it’s garnered a bunch of Oscar nods.
  • Speaking of Oscar, Craig has the full list of this morning’s nominees.
  • Special Ops Media, an agency I hear from often, has been named AOR for Tribeca Enterprises, the group that runs the Tribeca Film Festival.

If he keeps saying it loudly enough it might just come true

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I thought about leaving this as an additional comment but decided to post it here instead.

Steve,
If you’re going to go around saying that social media is no mo’ or that the phrase should be dropped from the lexicon, then first talk about what you’re doing within Edelman as a thought leader. That would start with maybe addressing the irony of you saying that at the same time that your agency positions itself as being so savvy because it distributes press releases in both old media and “social media” formats.

–Chris