October 2007 Archives
First off, a fond childhood memory that is now being co-opted by yet another car company...
Seeing as I am either a coffee achiever or a malt and barley achiever, I was excited to find evidence (aside from a snippet in Gray Matter's otherwise sub-par "Caffeine Blues") that the National Coffee Association did once run national advertising.
Next, with a hat-tip to "Scatter o' Light," is one of the unintentionally funniest stories I've read in some time -- the martial arts nuns. Seriously, if the Roman Catholic Church were still in a major evangelizing / missionary expansion mode, they would commission their own movie with the nuns defeating heathen Shaolin monks (but sparing their lives) to prove that Christ's love conquers all.Finally, since we're headed into the one weekend every year when women claim to have an excuse to dress like trollops (as opposed to those doing it because they think it's actually attractive and positive), today's LA Times op-ed/humor column by Joel Klein is right on the mark. Put "SlutFest 2008" on the calendar for next August, people, and let Halloween be creative and original instead of pornoriffic. (And no, this isn't a "family friendly" rant -- this is about standards of common decency in public behavior. Thpppppt.)
From Sunday, October 7 at 7:00pm to Sunday, October 14 at 6:00pm, WPRB will be conducting its first on-air membership drive. We'll be taking your calls and pledges, doing special on-air events, and generally trying to maintain some sense of sanity while also asking the community to help support our continued operations. Pledges can be made on-line right now, or over the phone once the drive kicks off on Sunday. The premiums are pretty slick, starting with the magnet and bumper sticker showing off our new logo (to the left), and there will be special prizes available during various shows throughout the week.
WPRB is not the only independent, student-managed radio station left on the public airwaves, but it is one of the few stations of its broadcast strength and coverage that hasn't been annexed to a journalism or mass communications program. We have never received direct funding from the university in nearly 70 years of existence, whether transmitted through radiator pipes, primitive carrier current, AM, FM, or on-line. We want to maintain that independence of spirit and circumstance, and to be a part of the greater independent music community in all genres (classical, jazz, rock, world, folk, hip-hop, arcana, etc.). This membership drive will help us secure the operating budget necessary to continue our mission and hopefully deepen the sense of common purpose between the station and its listeners.
And if that plea isn't enough to motivate a few contributions, I'll be on the air on Monday, October 8, from 10:00pm to midnight (eastern) so you can harass me in real time over this pitch. Thanks for the support (and for putting up with my imposition).
At the bottom, there's a lovely footnote that instructs folks to "turn on your Bluetooth" for directions to the nearest Ikea store. I had seen this ad for a couple weeks before I bothered to try it out ... and Sunday afternoon was the moment of truth. It took a couple minutes of fiddling with my phone (Treo 700p) to get the Bluetooth function turned on, and then to leave it visible, and eventually a message popped up. "Would you like to accept IKEA-CollegePark.GIF into your device?" Setting aside my fear of viruses, I accepted the file and then opened it.
It's the first time I've encountered what is likely to be a growing trend, similar to the complex 2-d bar codes I previously wrote about ... but there are a few troubling elements here. For starters, I'm not sure that there are enough people (at least not in the US) who both know how to use Bluetooth and are willing to have their phones loaded down with this kind of content. Second, the process is not anywhere near quick or impulsive. I had to wait a good 30 seconds after turning on my Bluetooth to receive the signal and then accept the file. Average phone users likely haven't turned on Bluetooth for anything other than their headsets and won't understand how to do file transfers. Unless I were actually waiting for the bus, I wouldn't have stopped for 2-3 minutes to fiddle with my phone to make this happen.
Third is the quality of the received ad itself -- and this is really a comment on IKEA's ad agency, not the technology behind it. I realize the content should be simple and relatively small for the average mobile device ... but this ad (A) looks terrible, (B) is misspelled, and (c) offers woefully inadequate directions.
So, what's next for this wave of advertising? Sadly, I see a decent amount of bad (hackers sending junk files when one is expecting a legitimate ad), a whole lot of disappointing (continued ineffectual spots like this one), and ultimately the ugly, a "Minority Report" kind of world where advertising is completely immersive, adaptive, and inescapable. The open question is whether Bluetooth is the right transmission mechanism ... just wait until GPS and 4G wireless technologies team up to start driving some kind of high-speed wireless ad delivery.
