Ernesto is coming

It's Lifefilter's 300th post and I am waiting for Ernesto to make up his mind..The eerie calm is hitting and South Beach is the quietest I have ever seen it. Who knows what I will wake up to tomorrow.


Iamhere

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Lifefilter in: Miami

Here in Miami on assignment. If you are in the hood say hi...

lifefilter@gmail.com

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Shepard Fairey Gives Us a Lesson in Phenomenology

An icon in his own right, Shepard Fairey is now on G4 talking about his philosophy and some of his latest happenings. There is a second part floating around the net somewhere, when today gets a little less crazy i will see if i can post it. Shepard is the genius behind OBEY, a now worldwide phenomena that started as a simple stencil on the street. No other brand has had success stemming from a street marketing campaign of this manner. The great thing is that Shepard is still a down to earth guy after all his success and times in jail. These days as Obey reaches the mainstream, people groan that it isn't cool, but that really doesn't take away how it has been a grassroots success. Many brands are siphoning his slogan too (hint: see sprite's newly hijacked tag) If you have a Shepard fact, feel free to post it in the comments below. Oh and i have the ONLY photo of Shepard's latest pasting from nyc. Posted in Williamsbury during this very signing, its not even up on Wooster yet. Just click on my Flickr link and its one of the most recent shots.
Obey The Link
Shepard fairey bombing nyc sounds off book signing 64 video
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Ad NOT part Deux: Smirnoff shows how not to do a viral ad

Influx while a little late to the game, generously agrees with Lifefilter in that Smirnoff's Tea Partay spot fails miserably (see Aug 4th post). So typically Lifefilter only praises good work and spends no time blatantly fingerpointing bad ones, but this needs a follow-up. Apparently there is no website nor Google keyword buys. In less than a month it has generated about half a million visitors but i think nowwhat.com is a more appropriate url. Influx says "a great idea can't exist in a vacuum, it needs other elements around it that add value and can generate sales and loyalty." Damn straight. Not to mention the idea is a blatant rip on lazy sunday. I guess we may never know how many sales were generated from this. We promise no more pub for this ill conceived child. Part III? Stay tuned....
Round and Round
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BPR parts fridge

My friend Gary is an amazingly talented A/V whiz capable of transferring blank black tape into magical commercials you find yourself watching again and again. Gary's family owns a parts shop in NY and he recently wrote, produced and filmed this spot for them. The quality is fantastic and you can see Gary's passion translated to life here on youtube. If you like it please pass it on to a friend. Its pretty funny and i think we all share this fellow's pain.

Save Me
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Success in 2006:Flickr & Youtube

Ed Cotton at Influx has a great post on why Youtube & Flickr have had enormous success. They epitomize brands in today's longtail environment that not only embrace community but have higher goals than pure capital. That in turns translates in sales. Sneaky huh? Ed has put together a couple insightful similarities. For the full article check out their site.
From Influx:
1. Do Something Better: Find a way or a better way for people to do something they want to do- in both these cases- it's sharing digital assets

2. Believe in What You Do: It's not about a money making/get rich quick scheme. You believe there's a better way and you are going to work it out. Success is a by-product of doing good.

3. Community is Everything: Listen to your community. This is not a one way conversation- there's on-going dialog relating to "policing", standards and ideas

4. Be Soulful: Even if you sell, like Flickr, don't sell your soul. The honest, no frills approach is right. Interestingly, while many thought the Yahoo purchase would lead to the the demise of Flickr, instead, they turned out to be much more of an influence on Yahoo than could have ever been predicted.

5. Be Authentic: These companies look like they have banned or never even heard of the phrases "brand strategy" and "marketing plan?. The lack of corporate polish adds to the feeling that there are real people behind the idea.

A lot of this reminds me of "young" companies hungry to make their mark and do things their way. Inevitably companies change over time, as capital increases often they lose their aggressiveness and need to innovate. Friendster the first social networking site is a blip compared to myspace these days, will Youtube be around in 5 years?

Pick Me
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MASS(ive) DIY

These days everyone is self-publishing content on everything from Youtube to your local skate movie. GM has just started Driver TV on Time Warner Cable. The channel is a virtual showroom of sorts for all of GM's brands, where potential buyers can shop cars in their living room. Cause you would never want to see it in person now..Driver TV’s opening screen, for example, features positions for up to four auto companies. Selecting it means viewers are whisked to a showroom displaying only GM vehicles. Viewers who ignore the GM come-on can enter the broader Driver TV content offering. This reminds me a lot of the DIY self branding commercials of real-estate or other people that sometimes populate the low ranking cable channels. In its Albany, Binghamton, Rochester and Syracuse, N.Y., systems, Time Warner has added a more traditional portal-style on-demand offering. There, the free service delivers viewers a broad menu of advertorial tips and how-to videos purchased by local advertisers and housed under the brand “Your Neighborhood Expert.” What i find more interesting is Time Warner's agility as a DIY platform. The internet has increasingly fragmented media. Today many of the top bloggers are those who effectively manipulate the medium to link to other sites, feeders, and spread a mass message across the fragmentation. DIY is on the rise no doubt. Corporate DIY might be too. Time Warner's platform is established and has a definitive audience. The ability to provide an efficient platform with relative ease of accessibility is crucial in the future (ala Youtube). On the corporate side companies might increasingly start to have their own media channels to wax poetic their brand message and products (ala GM). GM is hardly a DIYer, but its own channel of branded content is about as close as that can come to qualifying. How will the role of the agency change if brands can simply put their message on Youtube or Cable?

DUI
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Cool Hunting Summer 2006: 10 minutes of Ideas

I used to do quite a bit of cool hunting back at my last agency. NYC is the perfect town for it, and i quite never had as much fun sending out my interns to do the dirty work. Chuco/JWT has a nice cool hunting video which gives you the latest in under 10 minutes. And i didn't even break a sweat from the office. Some are great creative, some are just cool and some are actually great ideas that work.
Cool Hunt
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Apple's WWDC conference

Gizmodo and Engadget have minute by minute breakdowns of Apple's WWDC. Once again Apple creates computers and developer software to dissapoint the majority of the audience. Not that the products and applications arent killer, but everyone keeps waiting for the in-home stuff like Apple plasmas, iphones and more. With Zune less than 6 months away when does Apple bring out the big guns? Or listen to its audience who make endless mock-ups. Very rarely do companies have zealots creating prototypes and even rarer do they not produce them. What gives Apple?
Here we go Again
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Ad Not? Smirnoff's latest ad fails

Smirnoff has created a hip-hop parody music video for a new smirnoff tea line. The video was passed along to me serveral days ago by a colleague at mid-size ad shop. My first glance i had the sound very low and i thought it was quite humorous. The film quality connotates that it is clearly an expensive production. Only yesterday we gathered around our office to watch Smirnoff's newest ad..Turns out it was Tea Partay. The beauty of Youtube has propagated it about 50000 times so far in two days. Not bad, but who knows if its really reaching its target. Also its very risky to produce an expensive music video, only to throw it out into cyberspace's infinite void. Now what? Surely the video will continue to be peer shared in a viral way and generate some nice numbers. This will be a nice test of Youtube to see how effective it can be in generating awareness into sales. If smirnoff is happy to piss away money through a video that isnt really branding or establishing a clear sale, then it could fail eventually only being known as the tea party video. I myself don't think there is enough brand mention or graphic treatment in establishing a new brand to create a lasting impression on the general consumer. Also it's not clear that its an ad, barring only a website mention. That spells obscurity to me.
Tea Partaaaaay
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iPhone is an iPod therefore iTalking?

Apple is up to its usual innovative self with the WWDC approaching. The net is abuzz with rumors flying. Everyone wants to believe that the iphone aka iChatMobile aka iCall is going to be launched. Us cynics merely believe the latest MacBook pro will launch with an updated processor. I firmly belive Apple will launch something cool and it wont just be an iPod. Engadget has a plethora of articles right now about rumors. Everyone wants the iPhone and talk has been going on since the iPod's birth about the integration of the two devices. Sony has made some headway with its Walkman phones, and Microsoft's Zune is expected to seriously challenge Apple in the digital music department(wi-fi capabilities could be a huge impact). Can Apple pull another rabbit out of its hat? I firmly believe so, since Apple has always been about innovation and not merely catering to the market. It will also take some heat off Apple, who has us zealots still screaming for the fullscreen video iPod.Much of the problem is there are way too many user-generated concepts floating around the net. With photoshop anyone can create a good-looking mock-up. Only time will tell.
Rumor Has it
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Make Your Mark

Its not Urban Spam...Its art! Well depends on your definition. Piers has brought up an interesting point about the over-proliferation of street art. I tend to think this is more the case of metropolitan places like New York City, where clutter is everywhere and often people pollute space hopelessly wanting someone to notice. While less dense populations can have urban spam as well, the outdoor adverts are usually cookie cutter signs (McD's, Restaurants, gas stations etc.) If someone of good branding skills were to come along, they can often rise & create meaningful connections (Banksy, Obey among others). So the lifefilter is here to help you make a difference by adding a little art to your world. Who knows you may have the next suggestive underground brand all powered by your sticker.
Sticker me
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I know what it means...

Well at the time i did. SUPER street fighter II that is. But then again, im not your average person. I played my share of video games back in my heyday. Ok well i still play excessive amounts of halo2, but 1up.com has a hilarious retrospective look at awesomely bad advertisement's from gaming's rad 90's. All these ads proliferated the gaming mags of yesteryear. Ziff DAvis, the largest publisher of these sorts, is supposdly looking to share what built its congolomerate(not the online stuff where blogs like kotaku.com and joystiq.com are leading the charge now). TIme's have changed and while i don't think that online ads for games have made any revolutionary leaps from then, take a look at these horrible horrible ads (ok i like metroid) and drift off to a place far, far away. Looks like bad advertising is timeless..
So Awesome It Hurts
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