Tag: ads

  • Reality TV recaps

    Reality TV recaps

    Against all odds, I’ve fallen in love with a reality TV show. Despite its rapacious land ethic, Discovery’s Gold Rush keeps me coming back for its loveable, hapless stars. However, Gold Rush makes me worry about American attention spans. The show treats its audience like chronic amnesiacs. Before every commercial break, Gold Rush flashes a…

  • Retroactive ads.

    As commercial breaks become less and less effective (thanks to TiVo), embedded advertising will take over. Films and television are overrun by this covert advertising. In fact, almost any logo or brand mention on modern shows has almost certainly been purchased by a multinational conglomerate and placed according to a strict marketing contract. What’s the…

  • A kink in the fire hose: Twitter search and ‘top tweets’

    The ‘top tweets’ feature undermines one of Twitter’s greatest strengths: disintermediated public access to primary sources.

  • Embracing the Cheese

    This commercial is so full of win, I can hardly stand it. Let’s talk about why. Locally-produced commercials are infamously cheesy. Low-quality video sources, inadequate audio equipment, tasteless subtitles, and tragically unhip jingles mark the genre. Unfortunately, it takes cash to do a whiz-bang, slick ad–and cash is exactly what a small local business lacks.…

  • Urinal logos: flushing your brand down the drain

    Conventional wisdom says that you want to get your brand out there, no matter what. Sloan Valves, manufacturer of my school’s waterless urinals, has apparently taken that to heart. The drain canister on a Sloan waterless urinal. Photo credit: TSOMPITM. Any press is good press, right? After all, by printing their company name here, Sloan…