Faster than a speeding line of legal.

I always thought that the ultra-fast reading of legal copy in advertising was because advertisers didn't want you to hear how horrible the featured deal really was. In actuality, advertisers just hate legal copy. So they make it go fast.

At times, it can take up nearly :20 seconds of a :30 second radio spot. Leaving but :10 to create some sort of mini-sit-com scenario to sell a product. But, really - what can you do with :10 seconds to sell a product with no visual aid?

So in order to provide more time for some sort of comic relief and/or advertising of any sort, the legal that should take :20 seconds (at a normal pace) is condensed into a :12 second read. Way too fast for any normal human being to truly comprehend, so why then must we have legal at all?

See store for details.

Disaster Advertising

Here's a test:

Pick any brand under the sun that might have a product to help people recover from or deal with a major disaster. A disaster like the one Southern California is facing.

Now write a radio spot or make an ad conveying your sympathies and letting people know that your brand is here to help.

Oh, and - don't sound corporate, patronizing, or in any way shape or form like you are selling a product.

Wow. That feels immoral.

Is it? Or has Don Just gotten in my head?

Crap.

I just changed my template to black for Halloween and Blogger saves nothing but my stupid posts when switching over. So now I have to go re-learn html and put things back the way they were.

Damn you Halloween. Damn you.

ps - I hate this font color.

Useless Knowledge Update

I thought I'd validate my findings by asking one who'd know: My daddy. He was in the US and in high school during the 60's so I asked him what he thought of this green = homosexual myth (see below "Useless Knowledge" post). Here's his response:

I’ve never heard that before, but I tend to be a little naive where those things are concerned. Cox HS (the high school that he and my brother and I went to) colors are green as you know. I never looked at the calendar when I wore my letter jacket for instance and never had any male approach me with any lewd offer. But that is most likely a good thing!

Love-
Daddy

Ohhh, dads.

But it raises a valid question: How does stuff like this get started? When I was in high school it was "if you're right ear is pierced you're homosexual." Or more commonly: "Left is Right, Right is Wrong."

I have my right upper-ear pierced and I fancy the opposite sex. So I'm either as naive as my father, or this theory holds no water. I vote for the later.

Right or wrong, it's interesting to see the most primitive stages of viral marketing. (And the irrational nature of the high school teenager.)

Useless Knowledge

A Wikipedia search on "green":

In high schools in the United States during the 1960s, it was widely believed that if someone wore green on Thursdays, it meant that they were homosexual.^[23]

St. Patrick's Day 2008 is on a Monday.

Despair.

When all is lost, there's always despair.

A few of you may have already stumbled upon this site. They emblazon everything from posters to t-shirts with their brand of encouragement.

Here are a few of my favorites.

Robo Dog Trumps Real Dog. Sad T-Shirt.

Sad Posters:

Branding Everywhere.

Even in the parking lot.

Glad they passed on the standard "Chipotle customers only. All others will be towed." format.

Could you imagine someone talking to you like that? Grandfathers on porches shout at kids like that. Chipotle isn't a grandfather. And it knows it.

It also knows that its brand has a voice and personality - even when asking people to not park in their parking lot.

Well played.

How to make simple spots more interesting:

Direction*.

There's this series of Miller High Life ads done a few years ago. They have very simple ideas behind them. But all are very smart.

They play a similar tune as the current work being done. I'd imagine the brief read, "High Life is a beer to be enjoyed by the blue-collar, every-day man. The simple man."

The thing is, I think these spots (the old ones) would have flopped without the excellent direction of Errol Morris. It's just such a simple idea that if shot in a normal way, it would have been boring.

Here are three of my favorites from the extensive campaign. You can find the rest here.


Mosquito




5 o'clock




No Salad




*Oh, and excellent voice-over talent doesn't hurt. Keep in mind, you'll have to cast all these guys at some point. Yes - you. The one who wrote the spot. You're totally in charge of hiring someone to act out your script. That was the most surprising thing to me when I got into this. I got to make the call. No matter how junior I was/still am.

So anytime you write radio or tv, always know who your characters are. How do they sound in your head? How would they dress? The choice could make or break your spot.

Helvetica Films.

I'm usually a sucker for those crazy, trendy fonts. The ones with the swirls, twirls, and worn-in marks (Jill Lin knows what I'm talking about).

I'm not often a fan of the clean lines of fonts like Arial and Helvetica. And maybe that's because of the frequent mis-use and abuse of such fonts. But when they're done right, they're 100x better than any trendy font could ever be.

But it usually takes an obsession to get it done right.

I love the people who are obsessed with type. They're hard to find. But they're often worth the search.

Here's one of 'em.

I don't wanna.

The summer between graduating from high school and my freshman year of college, I was a life guard. That probably wasn't the best idea considering my utter lack of agility when submerged in water. But it paid well and two of my best friends from high school would be working with me. So swimmers beware - I did it.

I learned a lot that summer. Like how important you feel with a whistle around your neck, what a Baby Ruth bar looks like floating in the water, and how many mothers consider a pool staffed with lifeguards to be "daycare."

But one thing I learned that I didn't realize until now is the power of nudging an idea. How did I learn this? Well, that's a great question, your name here.

There was a group of kids from the CDC (Child Development Center) that would come twice a week to the pool where I was stationed. They came for swimming lessons. So we'd toss them around in the water for about 30 minutes or so. And at the end of the "lesson" we'd have them jump off the diving board into the deep end.

While it might sound a bit dangerous to have kids who are just learning to swim hurling themselves into 12 feet of water, fear not. As my fellow co-worker guided the little tykes to the edge of the board, I was floating in the water, arms sprawled, waiting to catch those who dare jump.

There was this one kid that stood out. I can't remember his name now. But he always had these black swim-shoes on with giant dinosaurs on them. Hideous.

Anyway, he was up to bat. And as he approached the end of the board, his eyes got huge as he uttered profusely under his breath "I don't wanna, I don't wanna, I don't wanna..." Meanwhile, my co-worker and I both knew that this same kid, the very one before us with fear in his eyes, had made the same jump just one week prior.

He'd get to the end and we'd do our best to comfort his unwarranted fear, reminding him he did fine last time. This was to no avail. So, being the smartest lifeguards in the history of lifeguardership, we pushed him in every week. After the first jump of the day, we couldn't keep him off the board. He'd keep coming back for more.

It made me wonder what I do when I get to the edge of the board, ideas in hand, and there's nothing but a deep pool of potential humiliation before me? A pit of hack-failure and possible rejection?

I do exactly as the dinosaur-swim-shoe-wearing-kid did. I say "I don't wanna, I don't wanna, I don't wanna" and won't jump. Until someone older than me, someone with more experience than me, someone who saw me make the jump just last week, gives me a nudge and pushes me and my idea over the edge.

That's all it takes. Just one nudge from someone. A nudge that makes sense and I could have thought of. But didn't.

So I look to the dinosaur-swim-shoe-wearing-kid for inspiration. I know I jumped just last week and did fine. I know all it takes is a little nudge. And now I have to be the one to jump. To nudge myself. To dive without regard to consequence.

The only catch is, I don't have anyone waiting at the bottom to catch me when it turns out I can't swim.

John Lennon's Piano

So, two posts ago I wrote about how John Lennon's Imagine piano has taken up residence in a mall. The post was prompted because I just happened to find the piano one day while looking for some new possessions to collect at the Dallas NorthPark mall and found it a little too ironic.

Mr. Treston later informed me that just a few months ago in May, the piano was on display at my alma mater, Virginia Tech. And after a little research, I found that this piano is taking a tour across the US to places where land-mark tragedies have occurred. Virginia Tech being the freshest on the list. All to promote peace.

So why then is this piano hanging out in front of a movie theater that's running Super Bad and Resident Evil?

It's on a 4 month break. The tour will resume Dec. 1st.

While I find it sad that its current resting grounds are the antitheses of its symbolic meaning, I do think that the tour's concept is a pretty good one. I wish they would have mentioned something about it in the plaque on the piano's current casing (in my previous post).

Check it out.

John Lennon's piano in front of Burrus Hall, Virginia Tech
May 26, 2007

Those Japanese. They so funny.

This clip is called 'Troop of One Hundred', where a 100 people chase after random strangers and you see their reactions. Totally harmless but their reactions are priceless.

For a translation of what they're shouting:

- For the 1st and 2nd guys, they shout: "Here come the tsunami!!" (tsunami da!)
- For the 3rd guy they shout: "it's that guy!!" (aitsu da!)
- Nothing for the 4th guy
- Last scene: "Heads up! (danger)" (abunai!)