youngsters; yr doin' it wrong.

found originally on AdFreak, this still annoys the shit out of me.

how old were the folks making this ad? have any of them had kids? ever touched a Playstation? mind you i SUCK at Playstation and XBOX and whatever. my experience is limited to things like Spyro the Dragon and Guitar Hero. and even i knew that controller didn't match up to that game.

not to mention that dorm room doesn't match up to that kid. he looks like he's sitting in the main room of a hotel. the decorations are too classy, the room is too clean, and to boot, he has a bloody flatscreen tv. yeah, cos i had a flatscreen in college. (i didn't have ANY tv in college!)

you can tell from this ad that they were trying to improve their image with the younger demographic, and yet, didn't actually use any input from that age group. (wtf kid model, didn't you point out the nonmatching controller? or are you too into fashion to be bothered?)

this violently violates a sense of relevancy to the customer. rather than saying "hey, we get you, give us a second chance," it says "we want your money and can't be bothered to take the time to get you right."

if you're targeting a demographic like that--male college age gamers--you'd better believe they know their shit and will see through yours, too. you may have gotten away with it if you were being general, but "gaming" is intense--thus the "play hard"--unless they didn't even make that connection.

this is why agencies should hire a few younger kids. a la dave trott's suggestion. otherwise you'll just do more harm than good to that market.

cool things to check out.

if you do nothing else today, you must wander on over to miss Jane's blog and view the special on "The Stopping Occasion." i'd post it here, but then i'd be stealing. so i'll borrow with credit. check out the absolute hilarity if you haven't heard about it already. oh, and if that's not enough for you, try out a youtube version of Choose Your Own Adventure (courtesy of adverblog). i was going to save it for Feline Friday, since it has to do with finding a cat named Sparta, but you get lucky this time.

be sure to stick your nose in or around all the fun cameras in the Plaid van. the tour is in full swing; i've followed them through Vancouver and Seattle so far (digitally speaking). i even got to listen to Bill pick radio stations. i was envious of the Canadian view, but even more jealous of their trip to Jones Soda. i love the Cream Soda best. they promised to drink one for me. you can tweet them, AIM them, and any number of other dirty-sounding social networking actions. ...PS >> if you didn't notice, even their social media tour shirts are dirty. can anyone say "tires"? hee! (thanks, greg, for loan of your photo!)

AdFreak. yes, as in the blog. they're on fire these past few days with some really interesting posts. if you're not a frequent reader, you should just dash on over there for a few minutes and peruse the latest stuff. full disclosure: no, they did not ask me to do this. i really just enjoyed it that much. so apparently did johnny (every time i type his name, i hear Poe's Angry Johnny in my head).

twitter as int'l pr/ad firm merger.

so yesterday i was chatting with my 'big brother' @griner on GChat and, among other things that are likely unrepeatable, we got to talking about what we look for in our jobs, and, what our jobs would look like ideally.

both of us are intrigued by social media (big shocker right?) and somehow we got on the topic of twitter... as many of us tend to do. it seems everyone wants to figure out why, exactly, twitter is awesome, how it could be more awesome, and why younger kids (and older folks?) aren't yet sold on its proverbial awesome awesomeness.

David and i realized that twitter is pretty much the best ad agency we could ever want to work at. as in, if we selected folks we know on twitter, regardless of location, it would make for a pretty sick setting. the thinktank there is marvellous. so many ideas are being bounced, debated, and realized. we're cerebral professionals, only also people, and accepting of that.

twitter is pretty much the staff meeting we always wanted.

in consideration hence, i think this is why its so alluring to our demographic, which i'm going to gingerly put in the 22-50 age bracket of varying professions. i know us social media and digital types are all up on it, but we're not the only ones. study the Everyone tab long enough and many professional communities emerge, from clothing designers to astrologists.

if someone were to form an agency from just our circle of twitter insanity, David and i suggest the following names:

Swallow (David adds: "We do what others won't." har har, pervy social media)
Finch (i counter in buzz cliche: "The next evolution in communication.")

but, to go back to why it's not catching on down the line, young kids don't need that same thinktank. a lot of them are very localized to one another and their desire for idea sharing isn't quite the same as ours (not that it doesn't exist--it just has different needs), a lot of which are solved via regular txt messaging and don't need a supplementary txt message program.

perhaps if there were an organization to join twitter and inform of parties in each area, that may be more attractive to a younger demographic across multiple spaces. or if charities working with a younger target market did it. i mean, even my personal fave charity, TWLOHA, doesn't have a twitter--and given its demographic influence, i would think they should.

on these websites everyone keeps talking about

case in point.

i mean, alright. some of us are forgetting functionality a wee bit.

HRP: kudos on the red smoke. it's visually engaging. i like red and grey together, even if it looks like 80 or so images on iStock. but overall, i'm going to go with a no. it is cool that, if i had a webcam, i could navigate your site with my finger (or something). but i don't. and, moreover, it takes for-ever-er to load. i'm already not interested. it's hard to navigate and hard to understand. HRP? sacrifice some art. especially when it's a wee bit s t o c k y.

R/GA and Grey are still stuck somewhere in the span of last year. come on, it's a spring update. how come Grey looks like the bastard lovechild of a smaller, lesser agency and a Gravitron? at least R/GA is visually pleasing in that flashy, fade-in fade-out javascript sort of way. i just feel like it's nothing i haven't seen before. not bad, but not buzzworthy.

Barbarian is interesting insofar as it's different. it holds with content is king, and, as a blogger, i like that. unfortunately, it also reminds me of--well--a blog. and while that's well and good, i also want it to remind me of an advertising agency, which, it currently does not. i'm not saying it needs more images, but i am saying it needs more style. less newspaper, more colour differentiation, perhaps.

and then, of course, there's Modernista. chances are you've seen it already, but if you haven't, be warned: it will appear on top of this page. the reds and pinks will clash. it will be an eye sore. consider yourself warned. that being said. i initially like this. it's new, it's funky, it's integrated, it's sexy. i'm for it. except for the first time, the links didn't work in my browser, so i was left confused. and then, if you scroll down too fast, the M! site hiccups all over the page. 3.5 stars and my fave of the group.

but you know what other site i really like? Zeus Jones. also funky, integrated, and sexy--but in a different way. the word that jumps to mind is "flatter," but that's not necessarily a bad thing in this site's case, i'd argue. and, kind of like the twitpitch, it speaks for itself. i'm for it. click away.