Archive for March, 2007

People who develop innovative ideas often work in innovative ways. No shit, right? But think about it. It often takes a different way of working to develop big ideas, not just a eureka! moment.

Take ad agencies, for instance. Most of them are proud of their creative environments but are still working in ways that might not make for the Punkest Marketing solutions. A creative team is briefed by an account guy or planner or whatnot and then goes off in a huddle for a few weeks to come up with ideas. The problem with that is a two-person team, over familiar with working with one another, may not be pushing through their own comfort zone. They come up with work that starts looking tired and familiar because, well, they are tired and familiar.

Then look at Crispin, Porter + Bogusky and how its creative process - one we call ‘Democratic Creativity’ in our book - involves many more teams jamming together until the good ideas rise to the top and, under the guidance of the creative director, they build upon these ones until some truly great ideas emerge. Ones that are so unexpected they knock you sideways.

There is an interesting company in South Park, San Francisco, that is also using a collaborative rather than a silo-based approach to problem solving. They have developed a product that is causing quite a buzz among the Silicon Valley money men. The company is called Obvious Corp, and the product is Twitter. Twitter is a way to broadcast short messages on cell phones to large groups of people. Apparently it is strangely addictive and has attracted tens of thousands of users (60,000 or so as of last week), including presidential hopeful John Edwards. One simple question that is at the core of Twitter gives friends a glimpse into one another’s lives: “What are you doing?” The answers can range from the mundane to the ridiculous to the downright hilarious.

According to a March 19th article in the San Francisco Chronice, Obvious Corp. has been experimenting with ‘co-working’, in which likeminded companies share office space and ideas. Once a month they convene a Company Chow Fun, a meeting at which a dozen local tech firms get together over food to brainstorm solutions to their problems. While we wouldn’t recommend ad agencies all club together to develop creative ideas for their respective clients, bringing outsiders in as part of the problem-solving process to shake up the comfortable old solutions is something we definitelty would.

One problem Obvious Corp. might soon have could be how to spend the millions of dollars they will make from selling Twitter to NewsCorp or Viacom or Yahoo! or Google, or whoever else thinks it will be the Next Big Thing

Exactly one week after Viacom said it was suing Google and YouTube for copyright infringement, two of Hollywood’s other big TV boys showed that there can be a different approach to tackling the Tube. Today NBC and NewsCorp announced they are joining forces to launch a website of professionally produced video content. What’s more they’re doing it with the distribution power of Yahoo!, AOL and MSN. And NewsCorp’s mighty MySpace is there to help with distribution. The partnership crows that they will be able to reach 96% of all US Internet users with this new, yet to be named, website.

A few observations about this deal:
1. Google must be thinking oh shit, there goes all the good stuff from the website we just sunk $1.65billion into.
2. For NBC and NewsCorp to form a partnership I guess they must have been pretty desperate not to have to rely on YouTube to keep the youngsters intersested in their content.
3. They are selling ad space and no doubt are offering it as part of a value-added package to TV advertisers and have a business model that works. They’ll probably be in profit quite quickly while YouTube won’t be for a long long time.
5. All the content will be professionally produced. This doesn’t show they have much faith in the consumer-produced stuff, which soon will be all that will remain on YouTube.
6. Viacom better jump in with NBC and NewsCorp or come up with an alternative plan soon or they’ll be looking like they missed the boat…again.
7. Marketers can experiment with both YouTube and the new website before they invest too heavily in either. That’s good, right.
8. If the content on the new site isn’t great and does not pique the interest of younger consumers in the same way that YouTube content does, they and then the advertisers will quickly say, nah forgeddit and move on. Professionally produced could end up being as bad as the shit on TV. Remember it’s not where the stuff is placed it’s how good it is.
9. Let’s hope they come up with a good name for it soon. Any suggestions? We’ll pass on the ones we like to NBC/NewsCorp. Our favorite so far is ScewYouTube, but see if you can beat it.

I was an issues reporter way back in the day (did Guerilla Consumer segments for Marketplace on Public Radio for seven years) so nothing gets me going as much as deception by major corporations.

Blockbuster Inc. takes the icing AND the cake, and in Punk we talk about their “end of late fees” debacle from a few years back after the micro-print (smallest disclaimers on consumer offerings) told us, well, you do get charged a restocking fee and etc. etc. They got sued by Attorneys General and the hoopla plus the offer came to a crashing end.

Now, however, they are getting away with a lot more, and the NY Times reports they even gained just shy of a million new members due their home-delivery service Total Access and the unearthed-till-now fact, ta da!, that they are lying again. Here’s the poop.

The whole NEVER BE WITHOUT A MOVIE campaign says you can rent a flick, have it sent to your home and with no due dates or no late fees, return it in the mail (free), or bring it to the store and return (no problem) for an exchange of your next chosen movie. Sounds cool. And a fantastically devised to stick it to Netflix, the killer competitor.

That’s not how it works, I found out harshly. During a conversation reminiscent of the time I asked the Starbucks counter person if she could “restart the modem for my Starbucks T-Mobile access” and I got stared down at my two heads….I tried the offer of free exchange at a Blockbuster on way home from a bar one night. I was carrying a copy of Take The Money and Run (vintage, hilarious Allen) in the BB sleeve it arrived in , and walked over to the Blockbuster to ask the man at the desk to take it back.

Oh no, he said, looking at me with the guile of a deer and his headlights. I can’t do that.

Oy, I decided. Here we go. And we did:

Turns out Blockbuster only allows us to return a movie in person if we have a separate “in store” account at that very locale. Now, how likely is that if you get discs in the mail? And if you should have an account, as was explained by the dude in the blue smock, you have to bring with you the postage-paid return envelope the DVD showed up in. Because, said he, the people at the store need to mail them back just like we do. Huh? Yes, he swore, they have no interoffice mail at Blockbuster.

Ok, sure, I brought the envelope it came with ….it’s right in my….

What the?

Anyway, a short while after the daily Times crowed about the new success in rental programs, Blockbuster’s CEO was profiled in the Sunday Times for his decision to advertise that offer proudly and loudly. Today I wonder why Netflix doesn’t just go all nuts proclaiming how easy it is to get a movie from them—with the added bonus of absolutely no free bullshit sold to their loyal customers.

Me, I’m doing nothing but Pay Per View now. At least I can hit the delete button without having to deal with a clerk whose actual job, I’m starting to imagine, is to disappoint me.

For more on this deception go to the following and especially the bottom where the asterisks are: Blockbuster’s been busted!

Or….Sumner Whine.

Today old man Sumner Redstone’s Viacom announced it was suing Google for $1billion for copyright infringement because of the 160,000 video clips posted “illegally” on YouTube, including shows from Viacom’s VH1, Nickelodeon and Comedy Central. According to Viacom’s legal claim, in the last six weeks since they asked YouTube to remove the more than 100,000 illegal clips of Viacom shows, over 50,000 more have popped up. Oops.

If this ever goes to court - Redstone is a grumpy old man with a big ego money to burn, so it just might - Google will be using the “safe harbor” defense from the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 that basically says if users stick up content illegally and the company takes them down when asked, all is sweet. One commentator has likened the current law to “head shops” getting away with selling weird-shaped smoking pipes because, they say, they didn’t realize that the pipes might be used for smoking illicit substances (”Oh, that’s why the kids with funny beards bought them!”)

Of course it’s really about the fight of Old versus New. Old media conglomerates like Vicaom have been losing the battle for the teen and young adult audience, while those pesky upstarts like MySpace (Redstone is still bitter he missed out on buying that one to his much more tech-savvy rival Rupert Murdoch) and YouTube. Print publishers and authors have also been upset at Google’s quest to put all the information up on the web for free when it’s their content that is being put up there. And who can blame them. TV networks and writers (hell, I’m one!) spend time and money creating content and then Google lets people put it up there for all to see without paying for it.

The question that companies including Viacom have been wrestling with is whether it’s better to let YouTube show bits of its content for free and hope they benefit from the potential increase in viewers to the show it came from on the box; or, whether they the should retain complete control and make people come to the their own sites if they want to see stuff like South Park. There’s no easy answer. In fact since Viacom told youTube to pull all its content from YouTube a few weeks ago indications are that traffic to its own websites, showing clips of Jon Stewart’s show on Comedy Central for instance, have increased.

Not that Google’s made any money from having the illegal clips up on YouTube. But every one of the big media companies know that that will soon change. Google paid such a hefty price for YT last November ($1.65billion) because they saw where the eyeballs were going - to short online video clips - and know they should be able to monetize that interest through sponsored searches, the method that has made them the giant they now are.

There’s no telling how the battle will pan out. For sure Google will tighten up its technology so it’s easier for them and the media companies to track illegally posted content and pull it down. Meanwhile the big G will be scrambling to do some big deals with content owners before they, seeing Viacom’s move today, build their own sites to compete with YouTube.

But the end result will not be determined by big media deals and court cases, but by the consumers. They will seek out the content they want, and turn on companies - Google, Viacom or whoever - who don’t give it to them in the form they want it. The winners will be those that work out how to do this in the least bullshit way.

Meanwhile, I bet Chad Hurley and Steve Chen - the founders of YouTube - are glad they sold when they did, before the law suits started flooding in. Here’s to ya, boys!

Here at Punk Central we give awards sporadically to awards given previously, those that in our estimation have to be remembered. And in honor of the Oscars:

11 Awards Given For Oscars (delayed so we could fully wake up from it)!

Award for Whitest Host

Ellen. What’s up with that? I think she was trying so hard but in the end was so terribly inoffensive (and wearing a serious white outfit when you’re THAT Caucasian is a mistake, talk about blending in with wallpaper) that it often felt like she was just the MC waiting for the host.

It’s like the show never even started.

Award for Strangest Use of a Tuxedo

A woman I had never heard of, Thelma Schoonmaker, a childhood pal of Marty Scorcese’s, winner for editing The Departed, wore a tux that made her look like one third man, a third editor, and third faux lesbian.

Award for Leaving At the Right Time

Eddie Murphy thankfully did not win–imagine living in a world where Oscar Winner Eddie Murphy was on signs for Norbert III–but you could see him get up and leave huffily after Alan Arkin did do the winner dance. Strangely good timing.

Award for Pretending to be Upset by a Breakup that was Made for the News

Cameron Diaz, with face more noticeably filled with pock marks (maybe you’re a fan, but I got Hi-Def at home), showing how happy she was to be single again; but I’m not certain their much ballyhooed relationship was more than gossip fodder. Fantastic acting, Cam, finally!

Award for Best Line of the Night [paraphrased]

“We want to thank everyone for wearing penguin suits!” from George Miller, brilliant director of the audacious and non-Disney Happy Feet. If you haven’t seen it, get out–this is NOT for kids.

Award for Least Useful Person On TV

Chris Connelly. I remember him at Rolling Stone and Us where he wrote heartfelt pieces on the star of the moment. His before-the-show banter was fine, but what a waste of tiempo having him backstage reminding us what’s to come (like we couldn’t guess–we’ve been watching these boring backslappers for decades).

It’s times like this I think so many salaries in Hollywood could be done without and the funds can automatically be channeled to charity.

Award for Reminder of Stephen King’s Best Horror Piece

The white glove hands sweeping off the “remaining” Oscars backstage. Creepy–and Carrie reminiscent.

Award for Best Reason to be on the Pacific Time Zone

Geesh. Here I am shlumped outside LA, the awards are on real time….I’m half-asleep at 9:30. So, uh, what’s it like for the East Coasters???

Award for Silliest Hair and worst reminder of Shaft

I am already not a fan of Will Ferrell’s (except in Old School, a humble Ferrell)…The hair was more a reminder of Bozo than anything. Wear a hat, dude.

Award for the Best Line Advertised Onscreen Meriting A Quote on Our Blog

“Well, do ya punk?” from Dirty Harry (1971) quoted on your monitor as you watched at home. This was the Academy’s pseudo-cool way to show off lines from movies. But the Punk line at the bottom of your TV was the one that you saw constantly floating around the screen. And because Oscars were two days before our book came out we call it a tribute!

And we accept. We’d like to thank–oh forget it.

One final award for the night:

Award for the Missing Presenter

Topher Grace isn’t a big deal (remember him from That 70’s Show?) but he’s the funniest of a myriad young upandcomers. Sorry he wasn’t there; he does a good “young worker” in movies and he’s been funny as himself in those Oceans flicks too. He once said the truest comment of any star-in-the-making: “I’m really open in talking about how green I am and how much I just want to learn,” says Grace. “A big part of it for me was just trying to shut up and observe.”

Amen, Topher.

Yes, we know. If we’re so bored well why do we watch them? So we can make fun of them, is why! Hooray for Hollywood.

We’ll see you soon, when we start to give presents to people in the service businesses on our own page, AwardsAwards, right here on PunkMarketing.com…and at a teleprompter nearest you!

With Love,
Oscar Laermer