Posts Tagged ‘advertising’
Coming soon: Kevin Spacey sells pink sparkly jewellery
December 15th, 2009 | 
Author: 
He's all class.
Some celebrities will do anything for money.
They must get a taste for it — having a bank account so far in the black that it’s a scientific phenomenon studied by astronomers, closing down entire boulevards on a whim because they feel like shopping without the pesky plebs around, owning garages stuffed to the hilt with ridiculously expensive gleaming gold-plated automobiles… Well, I’m sure that one gets accustomed to such a lavish lifestyle.
But then the recession comes along and wipes out chunks of celebrity fortunes, and suddenly, terrifying normality is knocking at the door.
So what do they do? They sell out.
Host your own Windows-themed parade of forced corporate tastiness!
Don't worry! Just mash Ctrl+Alt+Del twice if you're in a hurry...
Microsoft can’t be arsed to take Windows 7 to exhibitions or expos this year. Instead they encourage their beta testers to invite everyone to their house and have a Windows 7 themed party.
The hammyness is only occluded by the strained range of genders, ethnicities and age groups on display here. The idea is to gather the most unlikely bunch of “friends” on the planet, and instead of playing Ring of Fire, Spin the Bottle or Rude Guess Who? let’s exchange lessons in desktop customisation and taskbar organisation. WOOHOO SPRING BREAK!
“We’ve all had a head start” gushes the soccer-mom typecast in the promo.
“You may want to begin installing Windows 7 a few days in advance” the plaid shirt and thick-glasses clad barely palatable techie guy meaningfully warns us.
Social revolution: rising up against online marketing
I submitted this to Threadless.com and got knocked back.
A friend of mine – who is about my age – asked me recently what ‘tweeting’ is. I gave him the stock, Twitter-approved answer that every tweet is an answer to the question, “What are you doing right now?”. My friend then asked me what blogging is, then wondered how such a big internet could fit down those really thin phone lines.*
I’m going to go out on a limb here and tell you now that I like Twitter. I like being able to see what my friends are doing, and tell them in return what inane shite I find interesting right this second. Considering mobile phones and text messages didn’t become commonplace until well after I left university, my acceptance of this culture of being socially visible has been nothing short of startling.
I disagree with Daniel, who states that Twitter began as a “medium of communication for lazy bloggers and self-important narcissists three years ago”. I also disagree that dead bloggers are a bad thing. I find it genuinely impressive that the deceased find the time and energy to tweet regularly. However, I do agree that Twitter has since been hijacked by the lazy bloggers and narcissists, although I don’t necessarily think this is a bad thing. What infuriates me is how, as Daniel points out, Twitter has become just another marketing tool.
Tags: advertising, big business, email, exploitation, gaffes, marketing, media, pr, social media, spam, twitter | 
1 Comment »
Alive and tweeting
Twitter bird finally giving up the ghost
The whole developed world is in the grip of #TwitterMania – even the interred are getting in on the action.
The bizarre movement of providing a global audience with a play-by-play of sordid exploits began life as a medium of communication for lazy bloggers and self-important narcissists three years ago. Some purport that its name is an acronym for the unnatural phrase “text (of) what I’m thinking toward everyone reading”. This is unconfirmed by the bastard who created the damn thing, Jack Dorsey.
@somepointmid2008 the corporations got their sleazy mitts on it and turned it into an advertising medium more sinister and asinine than TV – something I never thought possible.
Now, with a new and inevitably bleaker decade approaching, and with nearly all the good old celebs dead, metaphysical brainfarts from our loved and lost idols are beamed in from both realms of the afterlife, lest we should miss out on a single minute of the infernal quandary or unbridled paradise of famous souls milling about waiting for The Final Judgement.
Where the elite have no shame
Only a truly self-righteous prick would want everything they own to be red.
Bono is widely accredited with being smug, arrogant and self-righteous. Not content with this public stance he continually goes on to prove everyone right by using the plight of the third world as a marketing outlet.
Project Red customises popular wares with a unique red fascia. Phones, iPods, t-shirts and what have you all come in red so that people just as bare-faced can simultaneously accessorise and brag about their tireless charitable efforts.
Purchasing the Motorola Red phone sends £10 straight to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, and £130 to Motorola. I daren’t suggest what proportion of this went to the Global Fund to Kit Bono out with a Limitless Collection of Ostentatious Commodities (GFKBLCOC).
Tire out your face for absolutely no visible results!!
Does your fat face need a work out? Then we have the product for you – the Facial Flex! You’re just 4 minutes and thirty bucks away from looking like… Marilyn Manson!
Marilyn Manson is an ardent user of the Facial Flex
“You can do it while you’re doing something else. You can watch television, walk the dog…,” says the host, Tommy. (Imagine if you saw your neighbour walk past with that in their mouth)
“Even if I don’t see anything yet, I know there’s something happening…,” says Susie, the caller-in. She sounds enthused.
“I know you’re looking at us doing it, and you’re going, does that really work?” says another host, Lisa. Very perceptive. It’s like she can actually see me through the TV.
Later, she adds: “Now if your New Year resolution includes working out, why aren’t you working out your face?”
Well, that’s a really good question, Lisa…
MTV: happily eroding the attention span of an entire generation
Nelly: revered even though he deserves nothing but contempt
Don’t you just love the system? It has taken Rupert Murdoch and his equally odious contemporaries just a hundred years to mould the economy so that everyone’s money goes to him.
Gone is the traditional type of capitalism where everyone worked hard for a salary they genuinely deserved. Spend what you need and accrue some savings along the way? Out the window with it. Instead, we have a system where saving is pointless unless you earn megabucks, and wanton spending is encouraged, if not passively enforced.
How pyscho axe murderers get that healthy, rosy glow
Rejuvenique Electric Facial Mask: another godawful infomercial from the vaults!
4 reasons why the beauty industry thinks you’re a sucker
My face hasn't moved since 1983
So, I’m less than 30 years old, but the gap is closing, and I’ve noticed my face has started crinkling up in places and staying that way, even when I’m not grinning like a maniac.
I’ve started looking for ways to stop my face doing that.
Like many women, my first step is purchasing a range of creams, oils and unguents.
I’ve come to loathe the advertising for all that gunk — yet I still use it on my face! We live in a cynical, cynical world. Unfortunately I’m so tangled up in the great big lumbering lying beast of the beauty and anti-aging industry, that while I don’t believe the promises it makes to me, I still try to turn back time. I am a woman. We are not supposed to get older. Just look at Madonna “My face hasn’t moved since 1983″ Ciccone.
The entire subject of women and the beauty industry is too big for me to begin to address here. Naomi Klein had some good things to say about it in The Beauty Myth. You can read that later. In the meantime, I’m going to talk about how the beauty industry uses four key techniques to make squillions advertising to susceptible oh-shit-I’m-getting-older women:
