Remember when all the numbered lists (top 10, three reasons) started to make blogs tiresome? When ubiquitous @s made Twitter overwhelming to scroll? When getting friended by your boss first made Facebook awkward (long before your grandma logged on)?
Those little fault lines were true moments of user design. Examples of what happens when we the people change how we use the tools of social. These growing pains shape the next generation of what that destination will be and who will stay to use it (while others wander away).
Pinterest is at its first fault line.
Its early adopters were cooks, designers and fashionistas. They posted beautiful garments, quirky finds, mouth-watering creations. These were people who loved the look of a thing. Who embraced the idea that a picture alone could inspire.
Some are harmless, trite successories. A few are long, winding infographics. Some are recycled quotes from long-lost artists. But, far too many are didactic little blurbs, randomly assigned a font and punctuated with bangers or single-word affirmations (truth, yes, amen, or simply a :).
A few recently popular examples repinned in my stream:
At some point, Pinterest became something between a doodled notebook cover and a scrapbooking store. Or, it created a new way we share affinity - a way we can vote for the philosophy about life/gender/parenting we feel most connected to. A new kind of like-minded microblogging that celebrates visceral reactions to both images and ideas.
It's an interesting, learn-worthy trend. But, not a shift I personally love. Perhaps I am too quickly nostalgic (in fact, it's possible that I'm reminicsing typing this even now), but I miss the pictures on Pinterest ...
Super fact from our friends at Eli LIlly: You could bring a revolutionary new drug to market for the price of 371 Super Bowl ads. (Presumably you could cure yellow toenails, too)
Not quite 371 ads tonight, but there definitely seemed to be more advertising than atheletics in this game. Here's the run down:
The best:
Honda Come on, what 80s survivor did not love every moment of this Ferris Bueller knock off?? And so much the better that the grown-up Broderick starred. (Extra delight for that giant panda bear at the end). I'm pretty sure I heard the BF giggle at this one...
Hyundai I'm a big fan of Hyundai's entire sponsorship of this game. From the kick off plugs that thanked the 45,000 employees in the U.S. (that's right- that funny sounding company is peopled by Americans) to this high-energy spot. I know, I know, that theme song, right? But if there's one night you can guarantee the world is ready for a little Rocky it's tonight. I'm pretty sure you could actually get away with Queen in one of these pricey pods.
Best Buy In the months after we lost Steve Jobs, America could use a little innovation inspiration. From the range of addictive experiences these guys have created to the fun interaction with the flight attendants, this spot was as watchable as an eposide of Modern Family. (One note, though, women: we really have to start inventing more stuff. It's ridiculous how many middle-aged white dudes were in that ad)
Chrysler Lump-in-the-throat worthy storytelling from one of the greatest chroniclers of the human experience making movies today: Clint Eastwood. Damn, that was good. And, extra props for the strategic buy (message matches placement).
Hear the roar of this engine. Our second half is about to begin ...
Toyota Massages, ice cream, baby time machines ... who wouldn't love this reinvented world?? I'm not sure it makes me want a Camry, but it did make me laugh out loud.
Budweiser This spot would have won #1 ranking, but as I post this, the video is still marked as "private" on both Bud's site and YouTube. Still, a sound track that features Flo Rida's #3-peaking single "Good Feeling" and The Cult's "She Sells Sanctuary" all whilst spanning time and culture throughout its history ... well, it deserves a mention (if not a functioning video link)
The worst:
Kia You know when you see an ad and immediately think you know everything there is to know about the ad team that created it? Yeah, that's this one ...
Old Navy Sometimes imitation is the funniest kind of advertising. Other times ... well, it's like those dull, tone-deaf years of SNL. Just sad and kind of embarrasing for everyone. This creepy cowboys looks like he stained his Dockers and he's way more sad than funny.
Pepsi This is really just a vote for the worst mashup of the night: Aretha Franklin's signature number (sung by that X Factor chic) + the set from a horrible night at Medieval Times + some seemingly random nods to Occupy = Ad Fail (or populism as schritzophrenic as John Edward's)
I'm guessing some of you are objecting to this review on footwear alone ... if there's one girl who should respect Elton John in those heels, it's this one. But, still ... great shoes can't solve everything.
Audi Vampires. Probably enough said right there. That's a lot of money to be spending on a declining pop culture artifact ... but then again, it is Audi. So, perhaps cleverly on brand after all.
Doritos: Putting an obnoxious, taunting preteen on television is as discordant, annoying and generally inhumane as using police sirens in radio ads or beep-beep-beeping alarms clocks, well, anywhere.
Special mentions and best-of awards:
Here's a little love for a few of the niche favorites:
Best mashup: Chevy + Twinkies + Barry Manilow + Biblical Frogs. That's some truck commercial for Silverado.
Best mashup (runner up): Great dog + Biggest-Loser-style makeover story + Star Wars + VW. I'm thinking George Lucas might have just gone ahead and bought VW at some point.
Most improved: Can you believe how fantastic the Coke bears look these days? I think they were line drawings when they first scooted on screen.
Best channeling of the middle school experience:Ew, seriously, gross. But this Geico spot was pretty cool.
Sexiest: Sorry guys, not that Victoria Secret model come Teleflora sleeze. I'm blushing for Beckham. Nicely done, H&M
Best pet: Certainly the toughest category. This used to be the night of those Budweiser ponies, but this year it's all man's best friend(s). My fave? The moonwalking french bull dog pimping Sketchers.
Bizarre things I don't understand and won't even type about any more:
GoDaddy spots
eTrade talking babies
Another reason to fear Fiat will never really come back: Yeah, just watch it.
The BF's favorite (he did put up with my typing all through the second half): That guy loves a single Seinfeld reference. Imagine how happy he was with, like, seventeen + a Soup Nazi cameo and squirrel wings?? Yeah, easy win with this one ... (P.S. strong preference for the non-alien version)
We live in a culture of many cultures. We're so broken up by endless media choices, closed social networks and virtually limitless options in music, food, entertainment and assorted stuff that what is uber popular in your group is likely virutally unnoticed by others. It's created a real challenge for advertisers because it demands a wholly new kind of thinking - one that shifts from looking for normal to identifying significant.
There's no middle in a culture of many culture - no bland demographic data that represents our audience. Instead, we need to look for interesting niches, micro audiences as likely to be united around an interest as an age group
To do that, we have to give up the belief that, say, all moms are like you are as a mom or all college students experience what you did in college or - most importantly - that advertisers like us are anything, anywhere, at all close to normal.
What about you? How "normal" are you? What do you have in common with the rest of America?
Grab a pencil and take this short quiz to see how good of a pulse you have on some of the most interesting, influential niches in American culture.
Answers and scoring after the jump.
Late last year, this became the fastest selling electronics device ever.
This favorite game app has over 88 million active monthly users, making it the most popular ever launched from a social network.
A special episode of what show about a teenage girl and her friends was the highest-rated (non-football) cable telecast of 2010?
How many pieces of content does the average Facebook user create each month?
What percent of Twitter users are African American?
One of the biggest gaming subcultures is built around this fantasy game that has been an institution for 23 years and has sold nearly 100 million copies.
Over 1300 of these have been built over the last few decades, each featuring huge stages, rock bands, jumbotron screens, and consistent weekly audiences of several thousand.
The most popular prime time television show last year had ____% the viewers the Cosby Show did in its heyday. (Bonus point if you can name the show).
This New York Times bestseller and nationally syndicated radio host (in 64 markets) is one of America’s favorite sources of relationship advice with titles like Act Like A Lady, Think Like A Man, which sold 2.5 million copies.
This fifth-ranking television network often beats out the CW for fourth place, thanks to its more consistent programming line and enthusiastic audience.
What would you guess is the average age someone first has an online presence?
In North America, Australia and Europe it's 6 months.
This probably isn't a surprise to the 30-somethings reading here. Our friends' and colleagues' blogs, profiles and Twitter feeds are clogged with icky anecdotes, cute photos and other artifcacts of parenting life. What may be a surprise is just how ubiqutous it is. We're not talking "mommy bloggers" here - we're talking parents. Almost all of them.
By 2 years old, 80% of kids can be found online.
Almost 1/4 of parents don't even wait for the birth day - they upload ultrasounds and other scans - creating an online life that predates the real world one.
Baby photos are definitely the addiction point. 70% of moms post them to share with friends and family.
But, some parents are a lot more planful about it. Just under 10% are actually creating email accounts for their babies.
It's an interesting trend because it's about a lot more than just an online baby book. It's the start of a digital dossier - one created for another human.
I love a pop up store, a taco truck, a breakthrough bit of outdoor. But, I'm an even bigger fan of the branded vending machine. They're iconic and quirky and an entirely accessible way to try a brand. Here are a few of my favorites:
I want one: Rollasole
Tell me this isn't the most brilliant marketing idea you've heard of lately - Rollasole sells their delightful little black and silver flats in small, medium and large in night clubs, train stations and airports around the UK and US for ~$10. They come rolled in a little box and are the perfect excuse to toss your heels in your carryon.
I would totally try it: Robot pizza
If I ever find myself in Milan's airport ... well, honestly, I'll be so packed with local cuisine that I'd never try this. But, if they put one in Atlanta, I'm totally in. This full service pizza vending machine kneads the dough, adds toppings and cooks up the pie for you in about 3 minutes.
How cool is this: Bicycle dispenser
In the Netherlands, you can rent a bike all day for $4 right at your closest bike machine. Brilliant design. Much more trial worthy than your average street vendor.
Why isn't this in Vegas: Gold to go
Why change your chips for cash when you could trade for a gold bar? In Abu Dhabi, Frankfurt and Milan, you can buy your gold a gram at a time - for as low as $50 (fluctuating with the market, of course)
I wish I would use it, but.... : Bananas on demand
I totally admire this move by Dole to offer good stuff on the go. If only I wasn't such a bad eater on the road ... something about an airport gives me tacit permission to eat things like butter-slathered pretzels, nachos and full-size bags of Combos. (Gross)
Growing up, my parents spent the last half of every summer in the basement. They fed tomatoes through a tortorous-looking grinder bolted to an old wooden table. They sliced corn off its cob. They blanched beans. Boiled enormous vats of water to seal mason jars. Twist-tied hundreds of bags of freezer-ready veg.
They had an organic farm (which to me just meant they fertilized things with cow poo - ew). And, they preserved summer (and all its full flavored authenticity) with all manner of cans and jams and pickeled things.
Of course at the time, my sister and I were not big fans. How many times can you eat corn on the cob in August? (answer: 31) What we didn't know: Pat and Dave were just ahead of their time. They'd be the coolest thing going in 2010.
I heard a fascinating interview about this new cool on Marketplace yesterday. Tess Vigeland was talking with Andrew Potter - the author of a new book called The Authenticity Hoax: How we got lost finding ourselves.
Potter says what we eat - and how we talk about it - is all part of how we see ourselves ... or, more importantly, how we want the world to see us.
The drive to authenticity (the most local food, an unspoiled vacation spot, reclaimed flooring, etc.) is a very public expression of what kind of person we are. It's a successor movement to the high-rolling days conspicuoous consumption.
As our nation got wealthier, it became less socially acceptable to show off overt displays of wealth or taste. According to Potter, we turned - over time - to "conspicuous authenticity," displays of consumption or experience that express how deep or spiritual or inolved we are. To return to the local food movement - The idea is that I'm not the kind of person who shops just to own something. I shop to sustain a local community that matters to me and my kin. (Kin :)
It's a trend that does create shakey economic ground. Any time you have "positional goods," they're valuable only to the extent to which other people can't really have them. To get the best local food, you have to have some inside knowledge, some connections, some know how. That status seeking element to authenticity is what makes us feel better, more unique. It also creates the in crowd, the posers, and all the other lunch tables we remember from school.
I should caution - Potter has an interesting positioning of his own. He's a "social critic" - meaning, I think, that he's a cultural faultfinder by his very job description. Some of what he says is a dark view of our everyday motivations. But, it's interesting to think that, say, the food we buy is less of a choice about health or diet and more of one about what kind of person we really are - deep in our mushy insides.
I love the intro to this idea subtitled Learn to love the rule breakers by Bill Jensen and Josh Klein:
The Problem: When a 12-year-old can gather information faster, process it more efficiently, reference more diverse professionals, and get volunteer guidance from better sources than you can at work, how can you pretend to be competitive? When the personal tools in your
mobile phone are more empowering than
what your company provides or approves for
your projects, how can you be saved from devastating
market forces?
Their point is that the tools we use in life have leapfrogged over the ones we use at work. And, some of the employees who stand out in your workplace have just learned how to hack together solutions using them.
Work Hackers aren't like the internet bad guys. They aren't stealing anything or breaking down password-protected walls. No, they're just working around the prescribed way of doing things. They're using open source and shareware and social networks to work faster, find new ideas and deliver deeper insight.
I'm a total work hacker. I knew that for sure when I was packing up during my last few days at Ologie. I was putting together an email about some of best go-to sources for pitches & proposals and I realized that none of them were the least bit usable in the way most people work. There were the Delicious libraries I pulled into a feed reader, the totally brilliant Exel + Wordle hack I went to for everything, the fake-making-an-ad-to-get-all-the-Facebook-demo-info-I-need "solution," the 3000 brilliant Twitter followers who seem to find anything I can't...
Hacking, it turns out, is not highly transferable.
But it is valuable. The new gen opportunity for companies is finding ways to translate how people really work into tools the entire company can use. One-size-fits-all Microsoft products aren't going to be enough. Ethnography + creative coding? That might do it.
"Bit.ly and Google both have the same purpose: deliver you to a useful website. That’s it. The difference is that one is performed by search queries (and) the other is initiated by a recommendation."
Social networking has fast been gaining ground on search. For a few days in December it actually beat it. Our wandering curiosity may be being replaced by an appreciation of good curating. After all, why would we dig around for the next great idea, beautiful thing, innovative stain fighter, first date, etc., when those things are being fed to us by our trusted network?
Anderson attributes social’s emerging supremecy to three things:
Faster news. Think where you went when you last heard office chatter of the latest breaking news (politicians philandering, planes plummenting, people perservering)? I went to Twitter. Most of the news sites are 30 minutes behind. Google just started time-based search. Those gossipy little follows of mine on Twitter always seem to have it first.
Better filter. You find the best stuff people have read on social; you find everything on search
Faster innovation. Social developers just seem more responsive to user needs and behaviors
What will happen to advertising when business fundamentally changes from rewarding problem solving to rewarding solution finding? When knowledge is too big and problems too discreet for any one business to own the answer or even the process to find the answer?
Getting new drugs to market is increasingly expensive and uncertain (for lots of reasons)
Drugs are getting increasingly personal (meaning we needs more types of drugs for increasingly smaller segments of humans)
The combined effect challenges the traditional large, fully integrated pharmaceutical company model. If they can’t guarantee blockbusters (think Viagra and Prozac), how do they continue to thrive?
The authors make a number of short-range recommendations to bridge the gap, but their long-term view is to an entirely new model. The winners, they say, will establish orchestrated drug-development networks. This is beyond individual company strategies to acquire and license pipeline innovations. It’s an industry-wide knowledge base centered around agreed-upon standards for digitally representing drug assets.
That probably got a little confusing, right? Inside any pharma company there’s a mass amount of research going on. Some of it leads to new drugs. Some of it to new questions. Some of it just sits there as an underdeveloped asset. Today, the way those companies store that data is idiosyncratic at best (lots of different systems) so there’s no easy way for them to compare or sell it to one another. Which means there’s a lot of duplication out there and a lot of unused ideas (or hints of ideas) sitting on the shelf.
The emergence of a fluid drug development network (where knowledge could be monetized and shared across players) has broad-ranging impact. Not only could smaller players broadcast their intellectual property, but importantly, “foundations or even patient groups could have drugs developed that targeted markets too small for the big players.” Yeah, the people who needed it could fish it out and pay for its development instead of waiting to become someone else’s priority.
How monumental would that be? Crowdsourcing groups of owners who through pooled funding could change – or even save – their own lives. This is the promise of the next era. Not more tweeting about what we had for dinner but more, higher-value sharing and tailored collaboration.
How will trends like this change advertising? What if we’d no longer be selling a product, but bringing together the people who will create it? Will agencies with category expertise have significant advantage? Or will a new industry crop up altogether? Exciting times.
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