Off Target

This is two weeks old now, I've been meaning to post about this for what amounts to an eternity in blog time. But here I go anyway. I went to the Barack Obama rally at UIC the day after he announced his candidacy in Springfield. His bus was late coming in from Iowa, so there was an unusually long build up for his speech. When he finallly came out, the crowd of about 8,000 (I was amazed that there were empty seats for this free event) was ready to show him love. About 10 mins into his speech, a group of students (or just youngsters) gathered at the railing of the upper level and began shouting anti-Iraq War chants in unison. Obama was in the middle of talking about healthcare, but the protesters were so loud that he couldn't speak over them. The crowed booed, and Obama said to them, "OK guys, you've made your point. I'll get to that, but right now I'm talking about healthcare." I thought he handled it about as well as anyone could.

My problem with it is that the idiot students were pulling this on probably the single most sympathetic politician to their cause. The most prominently vocal candidate against the war, Obama has even suggested a timetable for getting out. Couldn't these students find a more appropriate target for their angst?

Tweedy's Insight

A guy I work with loaned me Jeff Tweedy's live tour DVD called "Sunken Treasure." If you are a Wilco fan, you'll love it. If your not a Wilco fan, watch it. My favorite moment from it came at one point while he's tuning his guitar between songs. People in the crowd are yelling song titles at him that they want him to play. He laughs, and says "That's what it sounds like inside my head..." All these competing voices trying to get their songs played. He continues by saying that his alltime favorite moment like that was a guy who yelled out, "How did you get so insightful?" Then he says (I'm paraphrasing) "I said something like thank you, but I really think insight is probably overrated and that being true and authentic is probably much harder. And the guy yells back, 'That's very insightful.'"

This is Why I Love Blogs

Jessica's index card project achieves the ideal that smart communications strive for... simple in form and function, but elegant and thoughtful in execution. It inspires me to find an idea that I can use as a form and then come up with a series like she has. Someone had better tell Ernie Schenk about this, he's going to love it.

Three Unrelated Thoughts

The only thing these three little thoughts have in common is that they entered my mind within a few hours of each other.

First, our Media Economics professor, Frank Mulhern, raised an interesting question last night: why does "the news" spend so much of its time and energy giving stock updates? People who don't own stock don't care, people who own a few stocks probably aren't in it for short term gains and probably care very little about daily fluctuations in price, and the active traders are most likely very aware of what the market is doing because they're getting live updates on the web. Who's left?? 50-somethings who can't get enough of Maria Bartiromo?

Next, one of my classmates said that he heard that Rex Grossman became the first non-politician to have his Wikipedia page locked down because it was being constantly defaced after the Super Bowl. As you can see, his page is locked, but I don't have time to look up whether or not the "first non-politician" claim is true. Frankly, it doesn't matter. If more people would have heard of Wikipedia in 2005, LaTroy Hawkins would have been the first. The numbers don't tell the story (btw-baseball-reference doesn't track blown saves?), but Cubs fans remember.


Finally, isn't it interesting that the main component of iTunes logo is a CD, when in fact iTunes is bringing about the end of the CD as we know it? Physical media is less relevant every day, due in large part to iTunes, Gmail, Flickr, and other forms of digital distribution, and yet iTunes chooses the CD as its visual cue. What would be a good analogy for this? Cell phones using the traditional land-line phone handset as the icon for "call"?

Chairman Mao's Metaphor

One of my favorite chapters in Dan Pink's "A Whole New Mind" is the one about metaphor. He's right in that we should all stop and appreciate a really good metaphor when we see one. Well I found this one in the Shanghai Propaganda Poster Art Center.



The text at the bottom of the poster reads "Sunflowers towards the sun, red hearts towards Beijing." It's an original poster from 1968, they had dozens for sale in the Poster Center. I'm not sure if sunflowers have a cultural significance or they were used because they face the sun more prominently than other flowers, but positioning "Beijing" (ahem.. Mao...) as the sun is not very subtle, but smart. Framed it myself when I got home, not bad, eh?

I've recovered.

The Bears lost the Super Bowl. They got off to a spectacular start and then fell completely flat in the second half. I've recovered enough to throw my 2 cents out there about the advertising.



This Coke spot was by far my favorite. The execution is amazing, and I thought the strategy was very clever. Most of the other ads were pretty dull if you ask me.

Bad Blogger

I know, I know... it's been entirely too long since I've posted. What can I say, my team just lost the Superbowl, and I haven't had time to write a recap of what I thought about the advertising. I'll get to it, soon. In the meantime... watch this. It's very well done.

What's in a name?

Yesterday on my lunch break, I walked past a Dress Barn. What's a Dress Barn, you ask? I've never been inside of one, but it looks like a women's clothing store that looks like it's nothing fancy, but nothing terribly low end either. My question is simple... how did someone think it would be a good idea to call a women's clothing store a barn? It sounds like where you would go if you needed an evening gown that would fit a cow. Am I reading too much into this? I thought that weight was one of those things that you don't even allude to if you know what's good for you. Aren't there an infinite number of other nouns they could have used? Dress Depot... Dress Warehouse... Dress Town? Do they think they're getting brand equity out of the word barn because it has a nice, homey, small town feel to it? I think they're nuts.

I don't care if it makes me crazy

I love what John Kilduff does.