beautiful

Kuroshio Sea - 2nd largest aquarium tank in the world - (song is Please don't go by Barcelona) from Jon Rawlinson on Vimeo.

People love themselves.

Marketers must remember this. That is why viral Internet campaigns work so well when they include the viewer. For example, the “Elf Yourself” campaign from OfficeMax was WILDLY successful? But why? Is it because around the holidays people found a newfound affinity for buying office supplies? NO, I tell you! People love themselves. And they find it so amusing to cut out their heads and stick them on dancing elves.

But it’s not just elves that people like to see their heads on. There was the site where you could put yourself on the people dancing to the Scissor Sisters, a site where you can “Scrooge Yourself,” and most recently, a site where you can “Mad Men Yourself” (for an example of that, please refer to my previous post).

People not only enjoy these sites, but send their result to their friends, or post it on their Web page. Right now, two people I know have their Mad Men selves reppin’ them on Twitter, and my brother’s Mad Men dude is his Facebook picture. These sites have the power to be viral and powerful and get people talking.

And it’s all based on the fundamental theory that people love themselves. That’s why celebs Tweet, it’s why people Mad Men themselves, and it’s why people have to look in the mirror at themselves for at least 10 minutes before going to bed each night … maybe that’s just me.

But honestly, if you’re a marketer, your job is to trick people into doing what you want them to. What better way to do it than by distracting them with the thing they love most in the world (themselves) as they interact with your brand?

Food for thought.

That’s all for now, I have to go look in a mirror for a few minutes.

fine, I Mad Men'ed myself...

I'm the one standing awkwardly in the middle holding a cocktail. Look at Don Draper look at me. Like he wants to take that dress right off me...

Make your own Mad Men self here.

Starbury TV…

Stephon Marbury, if anyone is unfamiliar, played in the NBA for 13 seasons, and has his own affordable STARBURY basketball sneaker line. Now he can add crazy to his resume. The athlete’s meltdown has been documented (by himself) through streaming video on the Web, including moments of him singing, crying, and apparently eating Vaseline.

It makes you wonder why. Some articles say Marbury doesn’t know what to do with himself now that his basketball career is over, some say his ego is so huge that he can’t stop broadcasting himself. But I know other professional athletes that have found things to do after retirement (it can’t be that hard when you’re rolling in $$$). I also know other professional athletes that have huge egos yet don’t broadcast themselves going crazy on the Internets (TO, Ocho Cinco…)

This is yet another instance of a celeb on the Internet sharing their personal life (maybe too much of it) with fans. It’s such a weird phenomenon to me. I mean honestly, what’s the need for paparazzi when you have stars taking far more intimate videos of themselves and posting them for the world to see? Some of the most intimate (and disturbing) videos of celebrities have been shot by the stars themselves (or family/friends of stars), and posted online. Take the Britney Spears video where she’s obviously high on something, talking about time travel with her boo, K Fed. Or the David Hasselhoff video taken by his own daughter, where he is so drunk he is having trouble eating a cheeseburger. The paparazzi better watch out, their jobs are being taken by celebs themselves.

As for Stephon Marbury, if this really is a “cry for help,” as many speculate, I hope it brings the help he needs to stop eating lube. But the whole ordeal brings a greater issue to light—why do celebs post online video? I guess we can just suffice it to say, as they do in the tabloids, “STARS – THEY’RE JUST LIKE US.”

wish i was here.

Javier Serrano photography

funny looking animal of the week!

screen addiction

I have often thought that it was kind of weird how much time we spend looking at various screens throughout the day. It’s like you go from screen to screen until you go to sleep. At work you may stare at a computer screen for many (tedious) hours until you finally get to leave to go home and stare at your television screen, taking breaks to glance down at your cell phone screen to see the time or read a text message...it’s weird.

Stephen King wrote an interesting article about “Screen Addiction” in the last issue of Entertainment Weekly. I guess there was a study that found that the average American adult spends 8.5 hours a day staring at various screens. THAT’S CRAZY.

That’s all. Happy Monday, let the screen staring begin…

man of the hour

Congratulations to MARK BUEHRLE, my namesake and pitcher for the Chicago White Sox - You're having the best week ever!

Yesterday Buehrle threw a perfect game, only the 18th perfect game in MLB history. And... he's just an average guy, says espn writer Jon Greenburg:

"How does Mark Buehrle do it?

Look at him. He's a monster-truck-driving, deer-hunting, self-proclaimed country boy who strains to hit 90 on the radar gun and was picked in the 38th round of the 1998 amateur baseball draft."


I also liked this line from the article:

"For the guys out there with love handles and three days of scruff, Buehrle is your kind of guy. His coaches get on him for his offseason conditioning, which consists of watching his kids play, deer hunting, and jogs to and from the fridge. He's a real person. He loves to catch those ceremonial first pitches, and he comes to work nearly every day in cargo shorts and a T-shirt."


Come on, the guy just achieved a huge professional sporting feat, and you're rippin' on his love handles? (there was going to be more to this paragraph but I censored myself. just use your dirty imaginations and love handles...)

Buehlre was also aided by an amazing catch by Dewayne Wise, who robbed a homer from beyond the fence in the beginning of the 9th inning to preserve the perfect game. He's having the second best week ever!


Nice job, Mark Buehlre...I hope people with similar names can have similar outcomes in life - average, yet spectacular.

wondermilk shop & cafe in Malaysia. I wish it was closer because it seems awesome.

a glimpse of celeb tweets

I've been watching this Twitter phenomenon from afar, I'm too scared to jump into it, even though I find myself sometimes thinking what I would say at a given moment if I had a Twitter account (example: picture of Ithaca woods on my day off with the caption "much better than the 36 floor"). Then I realize whatever I wrote would be stupid. Twitter makes me so nervous!

But it's amazing how many people follow celebs on Twitter. And kind of funny that celebs want to be followed. Usually they try to stay away from the public eye and now they are asking people to follow their daily thoughts and lives.

I decided to see how popular celebs who Twittered are, so I did some research and came up with this chart of a few hand picked celebrities and how many followers they each have:



As you can see, Ashton Kutcher is very popular. So is his cougar of a wife, but not quite AS popular. And Miley seems to have a lot of tweens following her escapades. Like today, she went to Bible study with the girls. I wonder what Bible study is code for...

There really was no point to this, except for you to see how many people follow certain celebs. And if you look at this chart and apply the results to reality tv, I think Shaq's future reality show will be a lot more successful than the current T.O. show.

i want to go to there

500 Days of Summer looks like it's going to be a good one, I really want to see it. From what I've read, it chronicles the 500 day long relationship of Joseph Gordon-Levitt's character Tom, to "free-spirited" Summer, played by Zooey Deschanel. But it's not your traditional rom-com, with the formulaic meeting, courting, falling for each other, break up and eventual reunion of lovers. Instead, the movie flutters about through the 500 days in Tom and Summer's relationship, so you may witness a scene from day 97, then skip back to day 5. Kind of a cool way to do it.

Some other perks of this movie:
- there's a musical number (which I think may be reminiscent to another great scene in one of my favs, Get Over It)
- apparently it's got a great soundtrack
- there's a split screen sequence which shows the way something really happened, and the way that Tom wanted it to happen (kind of like at the end of Wayne's World when you get to choose your own ending)
- it has nice posters. ha what an advertising nerd I am...

So check it out if you're up for something that doesn't have robots, super heroes, wizards, or quasi-gay foreigners.

nice stuff

-click to see larger view-


anak krakatau

wear sunscreen

I got burned real bad about a month ago, and somewhere between the most painful showers of my life and the point where my entire torso peeled off my body (so hot, I know), I thought to myself, "should have worn sunscreen." Now, I am your classic jackass who never wears sunscreen and usually doesn't burn. Sure, maybe I had a weird sun-induced fungus on my chest once, prompting many an interesting nickname, but besides that I've been good so far. I guess the real repercussions won't hit until around the age of 40 anyways, but I'll just have to be on mole patrol like crazy.

But for now, maybe I'll start wearing some sunscreen. I mean it's totally worth it too when you can get stuff like this brand, sponsored by Will Ferrell:



Yes, they're real (that's what she said). And you can buy them here. All proceeds benefit Cancer for College, which helps provide college scholarships to cancer patients.

Preview: The TO Show

Tonight marks the premiere of what’s sure to be a very entertaining reality show starring NFL’s controversy-ridden Terrell Owens. Ads for the show leave me wondering what exactly will happen, as a stark naked Owens sits solemnly holding a football. Is he going to try to tone down his escapades? I hope not.

Over the years we’ve seen T.O. score touchdowns, fight with quarterbacks, create locker-room animosity, and almost overdose on painkillers. Now we’ll get to apparently see him “hanging out with his two best friends/publicists,” says one review of the show. But to me that sounds really boring. I’m hoping for a lot less chatting with females and a lot more craziness.

The new Buffalo Bill surely won’t disappoint in that regard, right? I got my popcorn ready.

VH1, Mondays at 10

check out the tiddy bear...

another great find by rebecca p.

Welcome to NYC, Timmy Ho's!

Wonderful news everyone! Tim Horton's has opened 12 locations in New York City. Many people probably aren't familiar with the Canadian coffee/donut chain, but since I grew up so close to our neighbor to the north, I have fond memories of Sunday mornings drinking Iced Caps and eatin' a Boston Cream.

If you live in the city and want a tasty donut treat, check out Timmy Ho's.

pretty cool/SCARY site

So we had a vendor come in today to show us some creative stuff they've done lately. Banner ads, interactive banners, Web sites...all cool stuff that advertising nerds love to sit in a conference room and watch for an hour.

Anyways, this one site they showed us was pretty cool/freaky - frenziedwaters.com. If you go there and click on the floating barrel on the right, "My Story," it will ask you to enter your facebook username and password. Then watch the video that follows - it uses information/photos/etc from your facebook account to include you in the story... and it's kinda creepy.

This could apply really well to a lot of interactive Web sites to get users more involved in the experience.

Check it out.

See you in hell, Bills

From Bill Simmons mailbag:

Q: Let's imagine for a second that you go to hell and are going to be forced to watch every game a sports team ever played and will play for the rest of eternity. Except, your memory will be wiped so you don't know the results (to maximize the agony) and you will become a die-hard fan of that team with no memory of other fan association (to ensure you don't get free Red Sox tickets forever). Which team in each of the four major sports will Satan be bestowing on you?
-- Marty, Flint, Mich.

SG: Cubs, Bills, Clippers, Maple Leafs. I didn't have to think for even six seconds about it. In fact, I think this is part of hell -- you have to adopt these four teams and watch their games as you listen to a looped recording of Bill Russell's laugh mixed in with Yoko Ono music and no-longer-timely sideline reports from Tony Siragusa. Welcome to hell.


(thanks for finding this Cordes!)

the great foods of buffalo, ny.

Every time i go home for a weekend I remember what great food Buffalo has to offer. It makes me realize why people put up with the cold, snowy winters and horrible sports teams - the food makes everything okay (not to mention the general availability of good Canadian beers). But in particular, the Buffalo food front is remarkable. And it's not just the chicken wings either, Buffalo rocks some really awesome food chains that are only found in Western New York. Here I will pay tribute to several of these chains.

MIGHTY TACO


Besides being the go-to "hangout" for when we were doing absolutely nothing in high school (meet you at mighty? fine...), Mighty features Mexican fast food treats that make Taco Bell seem, well, shitty. The nacho cheese sauce there is amazing, and makes for a great dip for the deluxe soft-shell beef burritos that I personally prefer when ordering. They are always pushing the bounds of amazing (now they have Buffitos, burritos with buffalo chicken in them!), and I hope they will continue to be a Western New York staple for years to come. God bless you, Mighty Taco.

TED'S HOT DOGS

Gimme 2 footlongs, a fry, an onion ring, and a chocolate milkshake and I'm good to go. Ted's Hot Dogs have been around forever, and I've been dipping my french fries into their milkshakes for as long as I can remember. They cook the food RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU on glorious grills, and if you know how to do it right, you can go fill up the little ketchup cups and find a table while mom and dad grab the grub. This is another Buffalo chain that really knows how to work it. I salute you, Ted's Hot Dogs.

ANDERSON'S

Anderson's has it all - from world-renowned (and overpriced, says my dad) beef on weck, to tasty ice cream treats galore, this is the place to go if you want a tasty meal with a little dessert at the end. Or you can meet up there after baseball or softball games (but only if you win; no losers allowed). And my friend Steve used to work there. And all his brothers and sisters too. What else could you want?! Well played, Andersons.

JIM'S STEAKOUT

Last but certainly not least, is Jim's Steakout. Jim's is a little bit newer on the Buffalo fast-food awesome scene. It started as a late-night sub place, where the kitchen staff wore shirts that claimed "I see drunk people." Because it's deliciousness can break the all-so-crucial boundary of tasting good even when you're sober, Jim's has expanded exponentially in the past four years and now is serving the best chicken finger sub in the world at nine different locations around town. A trip to Buffalo is far from complete unless you eat at least 2 Jim's chicken finger subs while you're there. And I actually am on my way to complete that task right now... So God Bless you, Jim's Steakout.

Until next time, keep eating, Buffalo.

heard on my plane

"This is Jet Blue? I don't see blue anywhere!"

-little boy on my (really delayed) flight

this is how i will walk Reese this weekend

nyc prep

So I started watching NYC PREP on Bravo, which is a new reality show about teenagers that go to Prep Schools in NYC. It’s kind of like Gossip Girl. Only real. And the people aren’t as attractive. And are actually teenagers.

But, I digress. One of the kids on the show is named Sebastian, and in the first episode he said probably what will be my favorite line of the entire season:

“If you go to a good amount of parties you can hook up with anywhere between two and 16 girls a month.”
-Sebastian, 16, NYC PREP

Oh Sebastian…what a bad boy. This line made me laugh really hard and I think I actually rewinded my DVR to hear it again. I needed to make sure I had the numbers right. Between two and 16 girls? That is a really large span, Sebastian. And how do you get the number 16? You really keep a month-by-month list of hook ups? What a nerdy player.

And another thing—what constitutes a hook-up for 16 year olds these days? I mean, I’ve heard that kids are getting’ real slutty these days, but Sebastian, are you really banging 16 biddies a month? That’s pretty baller. I was impressed, but then I watched the next episode where you kissed Taylor for about 2.5 seconds and she told all her friends you guys hooked up. Now unless I missed something that happened off camera, now I understand how it is so easy for you to hook up with 2-16 girls a month.

Hooking up apparently equals a lil’ lip action. That’s not how it is on Gossip Girl! I am a little bit let down.


Oh well, I guess I’ll just have to keep watching and see if some real action goes down later - NYC PREP, Tuesdays at 10 on Bravo (←shameless plug for no apparent reason).

Feel free to post your average number of monthly hook ups to comments.