• Wiki of Television (and other media) Tropes & Idioms
  Stories are made up of familiar elements that we the audience recognize and engage with. This site is a growing document of these plot, character, and other elements.

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The New York Times Magazine has an interesting summary with typo in the blurb for this week’s Consumed column.
His aids were followed…
should be
His ads were followed…
but of course, this type of thing passes spellcheck, since the error is still a valid word. Just not what the author wanted to say.

Prairie Winds is a new development in Western Michigan, a planned community (isn’t that the term?) that offers a faux version of simpler times, a vicarious farming experience. Without, presumably, the back-breaking labor, poverty, foreclosures, livestock, etc. They’ve already put up the barn, visible from the freeway, with a sign reading “Farm Living Never Looked So Good!”

I was immediately reminded of the previously blogged Karrie Jacobs piece about loft subdivisions in Colorado, manufacturing a ridiculously inaccurate buildings that are associated with a lifestyle. Contradictions? Only if you choose to see it that way, I guess.

• Photoblogger calls attention to surveillance camera on Crown Fountain in Chicago’s Millennium Park
  Mainstream media picks up the story and the camera goes away the next day. Hmm. The fountain features huge photos of faces, twisted irony to use that structure to take pictures of park patrons.

In California, gas stations usually show three prices: regular, mid-grade, and premium. Sometimes diesel is shown. Even if there is small text to explain what those prices refer to, we mostly go off of familiarity, knowing what each box in sequence is telling us.

This sign from a Speedway station in western Michigan uses a fourth slot to indicate price for another item: cigarettes. Gas stations and smokes seem to go together better in MI than in CA.

An in-store display for Pillsbury products. Press the button on Pop’n'Fresh’s belly and he emits his signature giggle. A nice and simple touch that extends the brand; links the merchandising to the ads. And is fun, of course.

Our ISP, and especially this blog, is under some sort of comment spam attack, substantial enough to hamper system performance and making this site and others at the same host difficult to reach and use.

The ISP has forcibly shut down comments to this blog. I will expect this to be a very short-term measure, otherwise I’ll have to look for other hosting.

Update: despite being told they had done this, they now say they have not done this but will temporarily do so during attacks. So confusing! At least if you see things behaving weirdly here you’ll have some idea why…

• More dictator chic: Target pulls marketing campaign featuring Che Guevara
  Haven’t seen an image yet, but reportedly this was put on CD cases, showing Guevara with “an iPod-esque set of earphones” — critic says “The stores don’t have pictures of Osama bin Laden or Adolf Hitler’
• Walmart Sells Nazi Skull Tshirt - Consumerist
  An SS image ends up on a shirt at WalMart - they apologize and claim they will remove it but it’s still on shelves

• TV ads with a slight amount of context - a technological solution
  Details seem scant, it allows a few choices, presumably human directed. Ads in a football game will vary in dialog based on the situation in the game at the time of the commercial.

Granted, the blog is called Outside Innovation but stuff like this cracks me up…

As we move towards the close of 2006, you should be asking yourself “How can we take better advantage of user-generated content in 2007?”

• The body politic - promotion for Ugly Betty TV series masquerading as vehicle for social change
  Oh the pop-culture re-engineering. Dove’s “Real Beauty” tries to co-opt feminism to sell soap, Ugly Betty co-opts Dove to sell a TV series. If the values are “good”, is it really co-opting, or just alignment?
• Talk the Talk: The Slang of 65 American Subcultures
  One of the tricks of effective ethnography is “natural language.” Listening for and mirroring the words is a way to make the interviews go better. Understanding *why* those words are being used is a tremendous source of insight.

Missing Letters, Holland, MI

I’m intrigued by stuff in the urban ecosystem that is deployed but untended. Consider this sign at the edge of a shopping plaza on a busy busy street. How long has it been like that? Has anyone who is accountable for the sign noticed? Is someone paying for advertising that they aren’t getting?

Compare with computer displays in airports showing a Windows error, or the piece of gum left on a realtor’s “about this property” display after the owners have moved out. Entropy, man.

(and probably some analogies with semi-smart automated systems that don’t get context 100% of the time)

• PeterMe’s “unfinished” thoughts on user research
  …with some comments adding clarity
• Dan Saffer’s unthinkable thoughts on user research
• Comments on Dan Saffer’s unthinkables
  Why does this have to be two separate URLs? Conversation hasn’t cohered, IMHO, on this posting. Anyone want to add their thoughts?

• evolution of an icon: a new look for Archie, Betty, Veronica
  sample cover image near the top of the link. will it sell?

Midnite Sun & Cruise? What the heck does this business do? It’s not a travel agent, or a place to take a cruise. It’s a tanning salon. A place you visit before you take a cruise? And what kind of sun is Midnite anyway? Very confusing.

Michael sent along the above screengrab, showing an all-too-familiar sight. A news story with a hee-lariously inappropriate ad placed automatically alongside. Computers are as dumb as we make them. Software looks for matches and places ads “in context” - i.e., if there’s a conversation about Olive Garden, let’s advertise to those people. There’s not enough smarts in place, currently, to find out, say, if this is bad news about Olive Garden. This ad is 180-degrees from the content. Olive Garden sickens people, well, have this coupon ON US, and come on in for some delicious food!

We’ve been laughing at these for years and years and we can stop there, or we can marvel at the fact that this is tolerable to organizations who advertise. Is this a direct-mail mentality? We’ll serve up 3 Million Impressions of the banner ad, and if 10% of them are an inappropriate, so be it, because the click-through rate is so low, it hardly matters? I don’t know what the numbers are on so-called junk mail (as you can imagine, they don’t like call us to call it that), but let’s assume they are very very low. When most of what you send out is seen as garbage, is it okay if some percentage of it actually is garbage? Could this be doing more harm for these brands than good?

The fact that this has become the norm is just a little bit sad. Those of us who design things of any type - to be experienced, seen, heard, read…we want them to be experienced in some relevant context, but we’ve accepted this as a normal error for computers blindly filling in blanks and matching X to B. I’d suggest our culture loses a little when this happens; that we have been bludgeoned just enough to tolerate quack-speak through the medium of the Internet.

We’ll see if firms like Aggregate Knowledge (with some presumably new perspectives on where the most relevant - and profitable - connections can be made) can evolve the status quo.

• Mumbai gives developers free land to build towers if they also build tenements for slum dwellers
  They raze slums and use part of the land to shelter the former residents in 225 sq.ft. units (size of a typical shanty). Developer pays resettlement. Some are not happy in the concrete non-communal setting and want to go back to slum life.
• Conference of our times: Stepping into the Moment: Psychotherapy in a Culture of Distraction
  In 21st-century America, we all live fragmented lives, pulled in many directions at once, not only by our own nonstop busyness and the generalized anxiety that seems to be our cultural milieu, but by the sheer multitude of sounds and images constantly bombarding our consciousness. No wonder we often feel detached from the direct experience of our lives, captivated by our whirling brains and unmoored from our centers.

Dirk sent me this horrifying online ad. What is happening to that poor woman? Burger-inappropriate pain? Or pleasure? Or is she gazing overhead at an incoming phalanx of special-sauce laden pelicans?

Of course, this is a company known for letting ridiculous advertising stuff get through, so this is maybe par for the course?

You can see another in the series here and a funny rant about the complexity of their product naming system is at Naming a Chicken Sandwich in Thirteen Syllables or Fewer.

• FTC Moves to Unmask Word-of-Mouth Marketing
  Companies engaging in word-of-mouth marketing, in which people are compensated to promote products to their peers, must disclose those relationships.

This is a pretty hilarious scam. I know many of you have seen this, but I had to share. What is up with the FORTUNE brand? Such whores!

Dear Steve,
In current business conditions, most companies see a need for greater efficiency and effectiveness according to a study by Accenture Management Consulting, “The Innovator’s Advantage - using innovation and technology to improve business performance”.

As a producer for the Business and Technology Report on the “FORTUNE In-Flight Radio” Channel, I am personally extending an invitation for Portigal to be featured on our special in-flight radio broadcast of the “Leaders In Business Innovation” airing worldwide April 2007.

On this show, we will be interviewing corporate leaders of innovative businesses today and discussing topics surrounding: What tools, techniques and resources have helped in creating an innovative company? How has innovation delivered long-term value and competitive advantage to your organization? What systems are important for supporting innovation?

For helping us wrap-up the show and meet our invitational list deadline, we are offering our last two segments at a substantial discount… Instead of the normal rate card of $ 6,995, your discounted cost is only $2,995. This includes everything from scripting to production, placement of 3-minute interview on 2,880 flights to 700,000 thousand passengers, listing in Northwest World Traveler In-flight magazine, and rebroadcast rights for promotional uses.

We’d like to interview you for our show. The charge will be $2,995. Um, you want me to pay you? I guess that’d be an ad, then, wouldn’t it?