Fagsbook
The founder of Blu Cigs, battery-powered electronic cigarettes that mimic the look and feel of traditional cigs and deliver vaporized nicotine to users, believes he’s discovered an innovation that could help his company compete with R.J. Reynolds and Philip Morris.
Jason Healy, president of the Charlotte, North Carolina-based company, and his team have spent about a year developing the “Smart Pack,” a first-of-its-kind e-cig pack which features unique ID technology that detects nearby e-smokers.
Before, e-cig packs were meant simply as a portable charging device for the glowing blue-tip devices. Now, when a fellow user is “vaping” (not smoking) within a 50-foot range, the Smart Pack will notify both parties, potentially prompting a social interaction. What’s more, the company has designed the products for seamless integration with social networks like Facebook and Twitter, essentially making the Smart Pack the Foursquare check-in for the nicotine-addicted consumer.
“Customers were always telling us how social Blu e-cigs were–they’d be in a bar or outside, and someone would see this blue light and what looks like smoke,” says the Australian-born Healy, who before developing the unlikely smokeless cigarettes ran his first business manufacturing basketball gear in China. “Quite often it sparks a conversation–I actually had a doctor who kept emailing me cause it kept getting him laid. So we started to develop the social aspect of it.”
This is all sparking up as public smoking gets slowly extinguished as a social habit. Restaurants and bars around the globe have shooed second-hand fumes to the sidewalk, where cigarette-dependents stand cordoned off from the inside chatter, likely griping about the soaring cost of a pack.
“More and more smokers are becoming lepers,” Healy says. “We’re not just selling electronic cigarettes–we’re selling freedom.
WTF?
More here.
ViaBrandShandy.
The Social Web of Nonsense
I find most of these this-is-the-future films completely pointless – this one is no exception. Haven’t we’ve seen all these ideas before?
Short Attention Span Culture Aware Spam
In my inbox this morning:
Good Day,
I am Shung Hin Hui, I have a business of $15.5 million for you contact me for details.
That’s it.
Genius…
iPad Steering Wheel Mount
Like the man says: ‘This is a great enhancement to safety.’
Genius.
Here.
iPad Clamcase
Just get a laptop you numpty.
Here.
The Odds Of Airborne Terror
So is the the sky is bursting with salivating terrorists desperately trying to take you down, or is it all a load of stay-home-and-be-scared nonsense?
Here’s the chart:
Shame the US government/homeland security doesn’t see it the same way. The leaked new flight rules here.
All viaBoingBoing.
Why Advertising Awards Are Retarded*
This post is not intended to be an attack on Carousel, Philips or DDB Amsterdam. I have simply picked Carousel as an example as it’s topical. My point is about advertising industry awards – not about an individual film or campaign. Carousel could easily be replaced with any number of pieces from the last few years (including some of my own work), but I figure it best to pick one – and it’s the one that’s winning awards right now. Also, I am sticking my neck out a bit because I don’t actually have any figures, but logic (and a little research) suggests my claims to be true. So, Carousel, a very good (well executed )’digital’ film has won/will win almost any advertising award ‘worth’ winning. It’s been a complete industry success story – but I have to ask the question: Has it sold many televisions?
Perhaps not.
But carousel has been canonized and is winning awards left right and center. ‘They are creative awards!’ I hear you cry. Rubbish. What business in their right mind would hire a company to simply be creative and win awards? This is about selling stuff – that’s our job – we sell stuff. We are employed purely for this purpose – that’s it. We are not film-makers, artists or poets – we are marketing people. Our industry sometimes forgets this, often celebrating these much coveted qualities. That can often be work that actually fails the people who employ us to do it? On top of that some marketing people still engage agencies based on the amount of awards they’ve won not selling other peoples stuff.
It doesn’t make much sense.
It’s like going to The British Insurance Awards and the ‘Broker Grand Prix’ going to a someone wearing a nice suit who hasn’t sold any policies..?
Maybe it’s time for change?
Oh, and before you ask – yes I have won awards and no I’m not bitter. I just think that times are changing and we all need to move on. Internet culture is exposing the frailty of some communications models and systems. My worry is that it won’t be long before companies ask themselves why they employ a marketing department and agency that could easily be mistaken as caring more about things looking pretty, and winning awards, than they do about actually selling stuff.
Which ironically I think we mostly all do (care about selling stuff) – and that, of course, includes DDB.
*Awards based on effectiveness may be exempt from my rant.
Facebook Marketing For Dummies
I shit you not.
Homemade AR/VR Goggles
The person who made this claims that the main difference between using this and the phone itself is that it blocks out your surroundings – making the experience more immersive. I beg to differ, I’d say the main difference between using this and the phone itself is that this makes you look like a massive divvy.
Arthur Sarnoff Saw The Future
If you’ve ever been in an English pub and played pool you’ve likely seen an image like this:
Happily rubbishcorp® can exclusively reveal that the much maligned artist of the dog/pool series (Arthur Sarnoff) was actually a soothsayer.
KissPhone
Snog this phone and it will measure your pressure, speed, temperature, and sucking force and then transmit those same parameters to the person at the other end of the line – recreating your kiss. Providing of course that the person at the other end of the line has a KissPhone, which they won’t unless they’re a total divvy – in which case you are highly unlikely to have phoned them.
WTF?
ViaGizmodo
Absolutly Wasted
There is so much wrong with this site from Porter Novelli for Absolut Vodka.
Firstly, for an agency to recommend a booze brand make a campaign out of the the ‘drink responsibly’ thought is frankly ludicrous, not to mention completely paradoxical. They have essentially taken a serious issue (one perpetuated by the products being advertised) and made it into a recruitment campaign. Their justification for this is seemingly the inclusion of ‘helpful’ tools; like a service enabling you to send yourself a text message to remind you not to get really hammered. WTF? On top of that, just to really insure that I won’t consume slightly too much of their product, they have loads of detestable smug w**kers telling us how we should behave, oh and a Facebook page, coz it’s for the yoof right?
Genius, that will do the trick, not least because everyone really responds to smug w**kers, especially those employed by marketing companies:
Dear Smug W**ker (employed by marketing company),
Thank you for your sincere advice – you’ve saved me. Prior to your meaningful message all I ever wanted was to be a hopeless alcoholic. Pretty much as soon as I was old enough to drink, I decided: I want to become an addict and ruin my life. Until this moment I have been struggling to manage my relationship with the hugely addictive culturally accepted substance – but thanks to you, I can now put all that behind me.
?
Ok, so clearly I don’t buy the strategy – so what about the execution?
Well, if I was to write a list of all the lame things you could do if you were making a website like this, it would be the ID boards for this site. I won’t bore you with the details but come on? A Facebook group, user generated video content and ‘share’ on YouTube/Twitter button (which has had the embed disabled???). Straight out of the handbook on building ‘yoof’ websites 2003.
Porter Novelli, check yourself and ask yourself why? Why would anyone actually do any of this, especially the people you are intending on having a conversation with.
NYT article here.
Young You Are, Learn You Must
A university is offering a course that will use the psychology of the Star Wars Jedi Knights to teach students communication skills and personal development.
Jesus Christ Super Ska*
Ironically, watching it to the end is effectively eternal damnation.
*Oh yes.
Terror Pusher
I don’t read the Metro, it’s makes me angry*. Because it’s free, it’s got little actual value. Therefore, it has to work very hard at convincing people (like me) that it’s worth picking up and reading – so it can sell more advertising space.
It attempts to do that by it’s ludicrous headlines (see above), celebrity clap trap and lightly veiled neo-conservative supremacism.
What do you mean, ‘addicted to terror’? I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure ‘terror addiction’ is a little sensationalist. How exactly does someone become addicted to terror? Is it because of a predisposition to evil, or do I need to go score, and then shoot, up some ‘Class A’ terror from a terror peddeler?
Hang on a minute, isn’t that you Metro?
*Please note: I am not addicted to anger.