DISQUS

Looking forward to seeing your prolific experiments.

And don't worry about alienating your readers. With 190 subscribers, I think you have some buffer to work with.

Not like me.
I need every one of my 35 nuggets of RSS gold.

I'll probably decide sometime close to midnight on Halloween.

Fittingly, you've kicked this new resolution off with an original photograph of an original illustration. Bravo.

Am I seeing a full-blown tiki bar in the basement?

I'd love to pounce.

Wow. I've never seen that print ad before. Thanks for sharing.

I still remember the first time someone said, "Just email me."

It was a cousin of mine. At the time, he was studying robotics at USC, and was more advanced than me in many, many ways.

I replied with, "Uhh, okay."

Great post, Jeremy. I think one of my first personal contributions to the Internet in the form of UGC was this, which I found on the Internet Archive. That was back in 2001.

Thanks. Now I can't get that song out of my head.
Best of luck, Jeremy.

Good point, Jeremy.

I would even venture to suggest Southwest Airlines' "DING ... You are now free to roam about the country." as a one-note jingle that is unmistakable to most of us now.

Okay, that may be stretching it.

I actually believe that someone will bring back the jingle in a BIG way very soon. The time seems right, maybe.

CP+B, are you listening?

I think it's telling if you listen to the three jingles that you've provided. They all sound like throw-backs to a bygone era. Jane mentions remembering one that was barbershop-tinged. Who listens to barbershop anymore? It's a caricature of a musical style that's long gone.

I collect vintage bottle caps. Most of the caps, or "crowns" as they are commonly called, have quirky names and naive taglines or sales messages on them. This is because back then the bottles were loaded into vending machines sideways with the tops of the bottles facing forward. The only visible part to the buyer was the cap, so soda companies did their best to make them colorful, well designed and capable of selling the product on their own. That's why they look so compelling now, compared to modern bottle caps which for the most part are just plain plastic twist lids. I guess my point is that sales mechanisms change with the times based on what works with consumers.

Jingles sound like what they are: shallow sales messages conjured up by advertisers. I love them just as much as you, but today's consumers just aren't into shallow sales messages.

I would argue that the modern form of the jingle IS the licensed music track.

Case in point: I can't listen to Dirty Vegas without thinking of Mitsubishi.

I found this VTB piece strangely entertaining. You have to give them credit for standing out and getting noticed. It seems as though they're trying to get Vermont Teddy Bears added to the pop culture lixicon.

Head on.

Great to see you back on the blog. It'll be even better to see you back in person. Kansas City has been strangely cheerless without you out and about. Stay warm and get well.

I guess what seems lacking here is a true sense of corporate responsibility. Granted, the city may have overreacted. But you can't fault authorities for reacting to someone who has spotted a suspicious looking device mounted beneath a bridge. I've also heard that during the day the characters were not visible -- which probably made the wired boxes look even more suspicious.

It seems like someone from the group that created the campaign could have called Boston authorities right away when this thing started to hit the fan. I mean, it was on every news channel. You can't tell me they weren't seeing what was happening.

I also feel that at some level they should have looked into getting a permit to do this stunt. I'm all for guerrilla tactics, but this is Cartoon Network, for crying out loud. They should know better.

Steve Burns is a genius.

That's incredible. Great find.

As someone who went through the same ordeal, I found that the daily deadlines actually sharpened my ham-fisted skills as a blog...ger (it's still hard for me to use that term regarding myself!). It's kind of like what happens when you know you can only print a piece of creative in 2-colors and on a low budget. The restrictions actually liberate you from over-thinking the extraneous decoration and focus on the core of the idea. I came out on the other end feeling more spontaneous and better conditioned to create timely posts on the fly without laboring over perfection. Looks like you feel the same way. Congrats.

Off-topic, I know. But I had to send respect and a holla for completing the NaBloPoMo challenge. Nicely done. Tell us, did you have a rough patch anytime during the month where it was a real hassle?

It's a shame Coors Light ads aren't more like your wife.

Wait, that sounded really strange. What I mean is if you combine observation #2 with observation #1, things are better for all of us. And now that I read your post again, I see that that's your point. Never mind.

I have to agree. Sometimes during special events, I'm called upon to take photos or to run the camcorder as things unfold. It's never the same when you're stuck behind a viewfinder, and the resulting images can never hold up to the real experience. I always try to strike a balance, and tend to heavily favor snapshots to rolling video footage.

Think of all the dads who miss their kid's first school musical because they're too busy focusing, zooming and struggling for a better line of sight.

Kind of reminds me of those really strange 5-second promo clips that aired on the Sci-Fi Channel a few years ago. I remember one featured a baby. I think it burped up fire or something. Anyway I think the common creepy thread here is the baby. That's pretty universal along with clowns and mimes and anything resembling a lawn grub.

I tried to look up some of those Sci-Fi promos from their "what if" campaign. I didn't find them, but I did find this. Enjoy.

Hey, thanks for the good words. And thanks for putting the link up for LabFracas. Did you mention that the entire LabFracas game is under 20K?
There, I did ;)

Great post.
Target is a great example of a brand that has successfully "taught" a higher form of visual language to a value-based customer. In fact, Target and brands like it have been so successful at this that their customers have come to expect (read: demand) it. The result has been felt all the way from point-of-sale graphics to product design. But Target and others like it can afford to make that kind of investment. The local tire shop doesn't feel the same way.

A relevant and timely post from Man oh Man.

I chopped down a tree this past summer. It was already dead. But still.
I know what you mean.