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July 20, 2006
Reading the WSJ
Airport Ideas in Charlotte, NC in the morning
The camelback drink insert concept came up in discussion. Pre-filled camelback bags just need to be good enough to keep from breaking open under the stress of biking or hiking or running. That and a valve at the bottom. It does not need to be made of the high test polyethylene used in normal camelback pouches.
According to the Wall Street Journal, XOXO is reviving a classic supermodel-driven advertising scheme. The WSJ notes that stars are used to brand clothing today, not supermodels. Supermodels may be a better idea, though, because they require at least a bit of inside knowledge that would give the bearer slightly of the fashion insider mystique that many teens/ 20 something seek. It might be even better to use lesser-known models.
There is a kids toy store in the airport. As always, there is at least one construction kit that includes sixteen billion reconfigurable pieces. The trouble with these platforms in that kids (often with the help of their parents) build exactly one platform and then abandon the toy. When is Lego going to respond to this travesty by releasing Lego stop animation kits, with or without a simple video camera? Let teenagers (right, probably not kids) go and make movie shorts. Design the camera and support equipment specifically to support stop animation, including 3 frame or 10 frame shots, guidelines for smooth movement, and choreography sheets. This might be too complex to be a good idea, but I’d like to see these toys used more than once and I’d like to see kids escape excessive attachment to the first round finished toy models that they build. Otherwise, they may as well be assembling Ikea furniture. Ikea should look into this.
Why do the second tier advertisers allow so many spelling and grammar mistakes in expensive national newspaper ads? If you’ve just spent $50K to get a quarter page ad in the WSJ, you could spend $1K to have someone proof the darn ad. I’m thinking here of the Diamond Essence (manufactured diamonds) ad on page A13, which occupies ¼ of the second op-ed page. This is prime real estate. Your WSJ op-ed reader is well off and will be in the habit of reading the page instead of scanning headlines. Despite the obvious placement expense the ad reads like a "Grow Muscle" insert in the back of an old Mad magazine. It’s repetitive: "revolutionary scientific breakthrough"... "the diamonds are transparently clear." There are obvious statements: "the diamonds will scratch glass!" Of course they will. There are statements that seem decidely off topic: "Temperatures used to form the diamonds run above 5000 degrees F, twice the temperature needed to melt steel." Why steel? I’d wonder about other industrial diamonds. There are, further, missing words and misplaced commas “Why so many famous and wealthy people, including royalty, movie stars, celebrities and TV personalities, wear them instead of mined diamonds” Who wrote this? It’s an embarrassment. You can advertise performance and low prices without making the consumer think that he’s buying something that “fell off the truck.” Get it together grammarians!
I’ve also read that the United States Congress is planning to get rid of the penny. The 3% copper content dives the per unit manufacturing cost above the monetary value of the penny itself. Our legislators have considered abandoning the nickel for similar reasons. I’m fond of both of these currencies. There is nothing, after all, like being hit in the head with a bag of nickels and, as my grandma used to say, a sock filled with pennies is a great substitute for a shillelagh. Even if we can’t keep the weight and the metal content, we should preserve the currency; if only to keep the spare change a flowing to charitable organizations, (the WSJ notes that spare change actually does add up and con contribute to the bottom line at many donation driven services). I suggest that we replace the pennies with AOL subscription CDs.
If AOL had been smart, they would have reduced the software payload in each CD and then enabled a recordable surface. That way, the fraction of consumers suddenly short of recordable CDs could reach in a pinch for that AOL subscription CD, open the package, at least glance at the content, and use the CD with its advertising laden surface to record some music. The CD would then be traded back and forth and would stand out in stacks of music CDs instead of being thrown immediately into the trash.
Just a thought, though.
I've been watching people walk around the airport and thinking about the role of skin in controlling information flow. If you ever look at a face peel during reconstructive surgery you’ll see layers and layers of muscle, all swarming over each other between the forehead and the chin. The skin reduces the visual impact of this muscle and allows us to communicate in a reduced set of expressions. If our brains were better at processing visual information, the role and nature of our skin might change. I can imagine a second set of cheekbones or muscles under the eyes that would add a whole new dimension of social context to communication. A smile is one thing but a smile where the muscles under your eyes curve as well is entirely different.
Article in the 20 July WSJ on web pages for the blind. Many of the major websites are making navigation easier for blind people. Google, is creating a search service that will retrieve pages in order of utility for the blind. This is great. I might start to use this service in order to find pages where information is available without distracting frames buttons and boxes.
That's it.
Jibber Jabberin | By jb | 12:00 PM
Comments
I had a friend who did stop animation with legos. Since his plotline was as exciting as King Kong's, I advised him to develop a soundtrack.
Posted by: funke at July 21, 2006 08:48 AM
Now I'm all for spare change, but spare facial muscles does seem like a case where the drawbacks would outweigh the advantages. More problems arise from what is communicated nonverbally than what isn't in my opinion. Good to know you're still spinning your wheels over the latent possibilities of the seemingly ordinary.
Posted by: Courtney at July 22, 2006 12:28 PM