CBS and Pepsi Bring Video Ads to Printed Page

I had this on my Twitter feed last week, but I found some video of this in action.

Target: Women

Here’s a couple of entertaining videos about gender roles in advertising.

The best part about being a girl is your girlfriends. They keep you happy when you’re sad and make you laugh when you want to cry, and most importantly, tell you what to buy.

This one has a bleeped-out word towards the beginning.

Single men in commercials look good, drive fast, and drink beer. Then they meet women, get married, and become good-for-nothing doofy husbands.

Top 5 Twitter Related Trends to Watch

Not sure why I’m focusing so much on Twitter lately… honestly, I think that Facebook is a bit more of a useful platform. Anyway, some interesting points in this post here, especially the advent of real-time search engines. An interesting idea, but why do you need real time updates to your Google searches? After you’ve found your link, how often do you go back? And what kind of a drag is that going to create on performance? Enquiring minds want to know…

#3 and #4 on the list are way more interesting to me. Enlisting product champions on Twitter to tweetvertise for you with RTs and links with the promise of winning something is brilliant marketing strategy. I have to admit it, I’m hooked.

Protesters Target Dante’s Inferno Game

Mainstream “Christians” in the culture with their boycotts and protests have skewed society’s view of what Jesus is all about. To Electronic Arts, Jesus is all about hating video games for fun and profit.

It isn’t all playing games and doing business at E3 this year. A small group of 13 protesters had attendees gawking by one of the entrances to the Los Angeles Convention Center. The object of their ire? Electronic Arts’ upcoming video game based on the literary classic “Dante’s Inferno,” which is on display at the show.

The protesters, who came from a church in Ventura County, held signs with slogans such as “trade in your playstation for a praystation” and “EA = anti-Christ” as they marched and handed out a homemade brochure that warns, “a video game hero does not have the authority to save and damn… ONLY GOD CAN JUDGE. and he will not judge the sinners who play this game kindly.”

Matthew Francis, one of the protesters, said he and his fellow church members were particularly upset that Dante’s Inferno features a character who fights his way out of Hell and uses a cross as a weapon against demons. “We think this game should never come out,” he said, before asking a reporter to convey his message to executives at Electronic Arts inside the show, where non-industry professionals are not allowed.

I’ve never read Dante’s Divine Comedy, but Wikipedia says it was written from a Catholic viewpoint, and that the villain in the Inferno that plays second fiddle to Satan is Judas Iscariot, the betrayer of Jesus. It discusses sin and theology. But, the protest portrays Christians as ignorant, kneejerk reactionaries who heard the words “hell” and “Satan” and rushed down to Walgreens to buy Sharpies and posterboard.

So, come to find out the next day that the protest was staged to get the word out about the game…

Nintendo Canned New Handheld Project

One of the more recession-proof industries of the past year have been video games. During Christmas, while revenues for most stores were down, electronics and technology practically drove consumer spending in December. The video game industry is the second largest entertainment industry in the world, second only to motion pictures.

Video game consoles generally have a 10-year life span before the next generation is released. Microsoft’s XBOX 360 came out in 2005, so we’re just about halfway through the life cycle of the 360, Sony Playstation 3, and Nintendo Wii (even though those last two came out a year later). Already, people are clamoring for news this week from the E3 Electronic Entertainment Expo on the next generation of hardware. The problem is that the industry knows that any new hardware releases right now are going to be a tough sell for recession-strapped families.

Even so, Nintendo released an updated version of their handheld Nintendo DS system this past spring called the DSi, and they have apparently developed a new model each of the past three years, but haven’t put them to market.

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has revealed that the company has created – and completed work on – an entirely new handheld gaming device at some point in the past three years, but decided that it wouldn’t do anything for the momentum of the business and ditched it. “In the history of Nintendo, there are several such examples,” he told CNBC, declining to reveal any details of the product. “But when we are launching new hardware, the most important is thing is to sustain the momentum. If introducing new hardware won’t do anything to do that, well…”

Iwata also confirmed the company’s stance on price points, echoing UK boss David Yarnton’s words to GamesIndustry.bizyesterday. “Right now, we have no plans at all about a price cut,” he said. “We are going to start launching the stronger software in the later half of the year and we are confident [we will] regain the momentum,” he added, referring to a stall in particular in Wii sales in Japan. “People often talk about the price cut as if it’s an almighty weapon. The fact of the matter is that what a price cut can do is rather limited. In the long history of videogames, at the time of the price cut we see a momentary hike in sales, but usually that can not sustain its momentum and it soon comes down to below the price cut level.”

Green Day Lashes Out at Wal-Mart Policy

Should the freedom of expression dictate terms to the marketplace or vice versa?

Green Day has the most popular CD in the country, but you won’t be able to find it at your local Wal-Mart. The band says the giant superstore chain refused to stock its latest CD, “21st Century Breakdown,” because Wal-Mart wanted the album edited for language and content, and they refused.

“Wal-Mart’s become the biggest retail outlet in the country, but they won’t carry our record because they wanted us to censor it,” frontman Billie Joe Armstrong said in a recent interview. While Wal-Mart sells CDs from acts known for raunchy content, including Eminem’s latest, they offer customers the “clean” version of those CDs, which are edited for content that may be objectionable. But in Armstrong’s view, “There’s nothing dirty about our record. They want artists to censor their records in order to be carried in there. We just said no. We’ve never done it before. You feel like you’re in 1953 or something.”

“21st Century Breakdown” contains curses and some references considered adult. Wal-Mart said that it’s the company’s long-standing policy not to stock any CD with a parental advisory sticker. “As with all music, it is up to the artist or label to decide if they want to market different variations of an album to sell, including a version that would remove a PA rating,” Wal-Mart spokeswoman Melissa O’Brien said. “The label and artist in this case have decided not to do so, so we unfortunately can not offer the CD.”

But guitarist Mike Dirnt said: “As the biggest record store in the America, they should probably have an obligation to sell people the correct art.”

Not being sold at Wal-Mart didn’t stop the band — which kicks off a U.S. tour summer tour in Seattle on July 3 — from landing at the top of the album charts this week. “21st Century Breakdown” sold about 215,000 copies since it’s debut on Friday… While Armstrong, Dirnt and drummer Tre Cool are still top-sellers without Wal-Mart, Armstrong said the store’s policy is disappointing, considering it has become the dominant seller of CDs with the decline of traditional music stores.

Unselfish Self-Promotion

This is a very interesting article.

I very often see blog posts with a title that reads “Shameless Self Promotion” followed by a small blurb about their new product or their new self help book. I never understand why so many people say this. I get blog posts daily related to self promotion and the majority of them are start with the words “a bit of Shameless Self Promotion”.

You might think that the title “Shameless Self Promotion” appears once in a while here and there on a blog or a website. The majority of blogs or internet posts use the word “Shameless”, WOW. This inspired me to write a self help or self improvement book on how to market and self yourself.

Are you afraid of promoting yourself ? Are you afraid that others will not like you because you are selling or marketing or promoting? What’s going on? For starters, most of these internet entries come from people that have great content on their websites and blogs, so promote it, otherwise people will never find out and benefit from that content.

… Now, you also have to remember that if you have a good product or a good service and people will benefit from it there is no shame in promoting it. After all, you are providing a solution. This single thing is the premise of this post. -If you provide value you need to promote it- This value can be with a product or service and it can also be form [sic] your advice, expertise, stories or blog posts. It is what I call “Unselfish Self Promotion”. Unselfish Self Promotion means that you provide value first. You provide value to family, friends, stranger and even customers or prospects. You provide it in content, products, advice and friendship. When you do this you are promoting yourself whether you want it or not.