the world according to schmogel.

Back in 8th or 9th grade we all learned the transitive property, you know:

if a = b and b = c then a = c

When you apply that to pop culture something strange happens. Take Daniel Radcliffe, Elijah Wood and The Mad Hatter. In the past, young Daniel and Elijah have been said to look similar. And today, after I saw the cover of entertainment weekly [and really any ad for Alice in Wonderland] it appears that once again young elijah has a few similarities to a lead character.

By applying the transitive property, we can only conclude that johnny depp is harry potter.

and that concludes today’s application of high school algebra in the real world.

before bra colors, scrabbulous, insulting celebrities (doppelganger week) and Farmville…facebook had [arguably] its first big trend– 25 Things. as a tribute, I dusted off my list:

25 things that may or may not be about me

[originally posted: Sunday, February 8, 2009]

1. My vision is really good. I have 20/80 vision, cat eyes and I can like see through things.

2. I invented air so every time you breathe you owe me 10 cents

3. I can breath so deep I can move furniture with my breathe, so I rearranged my whole house that way

4. I do promotional work for planters. I drive myself in a nut car. Mr peanut on wheels. The windshield is a monocle and the convertible is a top hat

5. I have a fever of 161

6. Benjamin button was based on me. I am going to die an old lady baby

7. I married oprah’s best friend gayle, Stedman and dr. oz, and our wedding was at harpo studios

8. I used to be a puppet. I was on fraggle rock

9. my two best friends are a tomato and liza minelli

10. The only time someone landed a punch to my face was my sister. Subsequently, it was also the only time I walked away from a fight. I probably would have killed her. Patience was/is not my thing.

11. I have an irrational fear of frogs

12. once when I went scuba diving, my boat was bitch slapped by a whale

13. my left knee is 15 years older than my right knee thanks to the ligament from a dead man

14. I like michael Bolton and have seen him in concert multiple times. And made at least one friend love him… “Girl from Impanema” sung by Michael Bolton, huh, R. Rod?

15. I have over 90 full wheaties boxes and one corn flakes… thanks phelps.

16. When I was younger I wanted to change my name to Samantha (inspired by who’s the boss), b/c I wanted a name that could be shortened.

17. I got kicked off the school bus in kindergarten. The bus is not a playground.

18. I used to go on midnight runs and fork lawns. With 100’s of plastic forks.

19. My tivo just turned 9. Happy birthday, tivo.

20. My favorite xmas tradition is watching sesame street xmas. So good. Oh that and the fact that every year my mom forgets to put one xmas decoration away and it stays out all year. most of the time it is a ceramic goose with santa riding it that gets hung. it doesn’t even make sense.

21. I have diagnosed myself with C.A.D.D. it stands for Competitive A.D.D. if there is a twinge of winning/competition involved I can pay attention for hours. If not, A.D.D. wins.

22. Top five movies in no order: High Fidelity, Fight Club, Labyrinth, Spaceballs, Power of One.

23. I have a very hard time throwing things out. I have a philosophy that large events in life you will always remember, but the little things that make up many moments in life, and who you are, sometimes needs a tangible cue.

24. Ketchup is the foulest food/condiment ever. Smell, texture, taste.

25. I have the sense of humor of a 12 year old boy. And that helps me avoid being serious and confrontations.

10 of these things are not true. Guess or watch

Comments:
Meghan Vogel:

I can only find 9 that aren’t true unless it’s something super lame like you actually have 89 wheaties boxes or your tivo just turned 8. maybe you think your fear of frogs is completely rational?

Erin Vogel:

oh wait… #26. attention to detail is not my thing either.

So toyota keeps putting out these contrived TV spots, hoping that we will believe that they stopped everything to fix their mistakes… it seemed honest, it seemed to be almost believable, that was until the congressional hearings.

You see, when big things happen they tend to hit the airwaves and internet very quickly. in this case, you have TV spots running that are contradictory to the under oath testimony. you can’t hide from the truth, but do you need draw attention to it with a high frequency tv campaign [good thing no one watches that anymore…]

Toyota president Akio Toyoda admitted greed got in the way and they grew too fast… and safety suffered. ‘sales volume over safety and quality’ [which makes me hate the corporate america that pays my bills a little bit…] that’s wasn’t the biggest shocker of the hearing…

apparently, a few witnesses, under oath have stated that even with the recall it may not be enough. and that’s after the tv spots tell us that ‘toyota engineers have rigorously tested the solutions for the recall’ and the ‘dealers are working to repair up to 50,000 a day with confidence.’ 50,000!? with confidence?!?! 50,000 a day is amazing, but what amazes me more is the with confidence part. meaning, if this is true, either:

1. they were lied to and told this will fix it
2. a copy writer was told to say something about how hard ‘we’ are working and get it on TV quickly and/or marketing/pr has no idea [or chooses to not want to know] the details that could come out during the hearings.

i wonder how quickly they can pull the TV spots? oh, and fix the shitty electrical work before more people die.

i am just going to stick with my ‘99 neon that runs via hamster- not a lick of electricity in my Putter.

wow. 11 years later, HSX is going to start using real money.

I had angelina jolie post hackers and pre-brangelina. I guess I should have kept ‘playing’.

and because I never delete things and have been in the same building for 10 years… here is a screenshot from an online media plan i did in 2001…

and yes, my memory is ridiculous and retains useless information like this. i may explain my theory why in a future post.

Lost, I am not pleased with you. It has nothing to do with the smoke monster, the seemingly random lines trying to connect stories, lack of Dharma in season 6, nor the 100 new characters in the final season. Nope, I am not pleased because of your 8 | 7c episodes you are running… you know the pop-up video, cliffs notes edition.

At one point, the thing that made you great was there were two ways to watch:

1. Watch for an hour every week. Great acting, interesting story, compelling enough to come back.

2. [the way i did it] Watch every week, spend a few hours looking at screen grabs, discussing the meaning of everything, watching interviews from comic con, spend the year breaks between episodes playing your reindeer games, joining the dharma initiative, and buying your limited edition products.

The second option, reward the loyal viewers–the ones who kept the hype going for this long. It gave the loyal viewers a deeper experience with the show.

Many brands are going to struggle with this, especially with this little thing called social marketing. Scale. Brands love it. When do you make the exclusive experiences open to everyone, and should you? I say, no. And this is the consumer me talking.

You don’t have to keep it locked [I let the easy ‘locke’ joke go, almost]. However, respecting early users, or at minimum make new users qualify in some way, needs to be honored. If you are going to offer a deeper experience, don’t slap the loyal [who, lucky you, are also vocal online nerds] in the face by letting everyone in on the secrets so easily. Shame on you, ABC, it makes it hard for me to want to get involved in ‘V’ or ‘Flash Forward’ in the same way. Fool me once…

As a tribute, I have created a few new logo suggestions for you [and this is coming from someone who got through school using cliffs notes]:

or

I am not a fan of the remake rumors. I am not a fan of Toyota holding out on the recall. And I am not really a fan of the casting in this series of ads.

However, I am a fan of the original movie and was [pleasantly] surprised to see Toyota use a screen grab of Falkor the Luck Dragon [from the never ending story] in their commercial.

Got a tweet from a pretty smart dude asking everyone to “nominate chicago for google’s fiber optic trial (read: really fast internet). because comcast can SUCK IT!!!”

So, go here and do it. If you need reasons why, here are mine- steal away.

Only text, no fun video, if someone makes one, I will resubmit my nomination, feel free to add to the list.

• Chicago is a very diverse, populated city. We can prove a test better than other cities due to scale.

• Yes, we hate ATT, but not already skewed in opinion like NY and San Fran. We are equally frustrated by everything.

• Forward thinking consumers/early adopters

• Large ad agency/marketing community – good/loud users

• Google has an office here and relationship with many companies

• A mix of businesses, colleges, artists- all with enough scale to test usage habits.

• our city government will probably work some shady deal to make it worth your while.

• oh, and comcast sucks and has an unfair monopoly and plays with bandwidth like it’s a game.

anymore?

Or, was this your plan all along? Your now famous super bowl ad, you refer to as joyride, I now refer to as joyride* [see, asterisks take a little away from it- huh?]

ads now running on TV, post super bowl no longer carry the ‘Built in the USA’ copy [lost dvr’ers check my work if you don’t believe me].

I would like to believe that i hold the power to influence your decisions, but i know TV doesn’t move in real time. So, that means you had strategically planned on using ‘Built in the USA*’ when 100MM people were watching, hoping that it combined with a sock monkey would help you connect with middle america viewers. But now, it’s not needed.

I am not a fan of this*

*nope, don’t like it.

I spent most of the Super Bowl believing Peyton had the Saints right where he wanted them and flipping to The Puppy Bowl on Animal Planet. However, I did manage to catch a majority of the ads. A few things I noticed, delivered in the form of a list:

1. Tackling old people is the new punch to the crotch.
Overheard in the brainstorm: “Get it? They tackle people in football, that makes it more relevant.” Here. Here. and Here. That last one probably should have ended with the tackle.

2. Animals using body parts like humans is the new talking animals.
Overheard in the brainstorm: “Talking animals are so cliche. Can’t we come up with something that uses animals… but let’s still have them do human things. People aren’t ready to completely abandon animal hybrids”
Here. Here. and this on overlaps with the observation below Here. and the reverse is here.

3. Small versions of otherwise larger things is apparently comedy gold.
Overheard in the brainstorm: “Have you heard of the trend of little people covering rock bands? no? really, youtube it”
Here. Here. Here. and [again] Here.

4. Movie references are good, even if they are movies from decades ago.
Overheard in the brainstorm: “Have you seen hang over, it’s like the most funniest movie ever. everyone will love it if we redo scenes. yeah, let’s do that”
Here. Here. Here. More about this one below.

5. and finally. shiny objects fooled us, well a lot of us. We see a sock monkey jet skiing, cousin itt’s cousin making ‘snow angels’, a robot doing the robot and a teddy bear in a hot tub we over look questionable choices. We even made the Kia commercial ‘good’ according the to internets. We didn’t notice the large font declaring ‘Built in the USA*” WTF?!?! Built in the USA [asterisk] – REALLY?? When or why is that ever a good idea? everything in the ad ended with an asterisk. Kia, you are not a drug company. If you can’t say it like it is, write new copy.

In the end. My favorite commercial was… does it matter?

Over the last few years, the last remaining sacred place for original, agency grown, highly anticipated, super expensive, self-proclaimed talk value, advertising has been compromised. The Super Bowl. Marketers, brands and agencies have turned over the ads– to the people.

We’ve all heard about it, read about it, wrote about it and talked about it. Consumer control. It’s played out in marketing campaigns in different ways:

1. Real people: use a real person with real stories in a campaign.
2. Real causes: align a brand with real causes that impact real lives and therefore showing real people.
3. Real voices: letting consumers influence products and marketing. Focus groups 3.2. Usually plays out in voting, discussions, idea submission.
4. The new celebrity: Align a marketing campaign with a real person and make them your voice. Usually said real person already has a following or credentials that make them interesting
5. Take it (crowd sourcing, idea sourcing, creative contest– whatever you want to call it today): Turn your brand over (enough of it) to real people, tell them what you want and see what they come up with. Because, really, it is just that easy to do our jobs.

The Super Bowl has become a place you can see all of this- there are no secrets (Google may be trying to prove me wrong). You can see the ads before hand, vote on which ad wins, vote on who will be in the ads, leak the ads, create your own ads, and on and on and on.

And gasp, some advertisers run old tv spots that they have been running for a year. In the past that could work. You have a captive audience, one looking forward to ads. You want everyone to see your ad, you throw it up, and even though it’s not new, people see it. And in some cases, it’s new to them.

Does all of this ruin the anticipation of the ads? Or, what 51% of viewers enjoy more than the game (according to USA Today/Nielsen Co. Survey). Did marketers ruin it? On purpose? Or will they look back and kick themselves? Or is the final dinosaur becoming extinct?

When does the Super Bowl become less valuable? If brands don’t hold true to the unspoken, elite club rule– spend money to make the ads new and something to talk about or people will stop watching them- does the marketer when or lose?

A few more years of advertisers testing other outlets and means to get content in front of people (small audiences, more often) and in their hands, the Super Bowl becomes just another football game. Just like the World Series, Stanley Cup, March Madness, Bowl games and any other awards based show. They will be able to demand a slight premium, but not Super Bowl premiums.

Don’t expect the NFL and networks to go quietly. They will create stunts, reasons to watch and may even try to demand only ‘new, never before seen content’ can air during the game (this probably won’t work). Networks need the ads to be good. They need people to be captivated the entire game. They expect the money and put a lot of hope into the lead out program- the first program after the Super Bowl.

Examples of lead out programs: Friends, X-Files, Simpsons, Survivor, Alias, Gery’s Anatomy, House. This year it will be Undercover Boss. Wait, isn’t this a show about real people working hard and the guy who doesn’t ‘get it’(the proverbial man) who has lost perspective on what real people need and want from his office in a big city? Well hell, maybe the networks are in on this too.

I guess we will see tomorrow morning. My guess, the headlines read “Meh. Nothing new- but it was cool how Miller High Life let the little guy into their ads” and/or “The big Super Bowl winner: Pepsi”