Funny
Virgin Mobile wants you to please SHUT UP
Virgin Mobile’s recently launched a pretty funny new microsite to helps to rid the world of annoying cell phone talkers and formed the Center of Phone Etiquette that can be found at PleaseShutUp.com. The site brings the problem to life through airplane safety card style infographics and the list of unspoken rules, hidden videos, the mobile eti-kit and the ability to report your own incident. I could use a lot of these tools on my morning MetroNorth commute into NYC when the over caffeinated stock broker in the row behind me won’t shut up when all I want to do it read in peace.
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More funny messaging…
I cam across this error page while setting up my Formspring digital office hours page and while not as good as some of the other 404 pages I have seen it (example 1 and example 2) I thought it was pretty good.
I don’t know if this one gets blamed on the FCC or DirecTv but I recently noticed that the information display on my receiver defined the rating of shows like House and Hell’s Kitchen as ‘Iffy’ for certain age groups. The best we can for a rating system is iffy?
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The ultimate Photoshop feature we will never see
We were sitting around the studio last week and came up with what might be the ultimate feature for Adobe Photoshop that we know will never be made. After your first client presentation when you have shown new creative work to a client you can go back into Photoshop and under the ‘Edit’ menu choose ‘Chinese Menu’. A dialog box will appear allowing you to choose elements from multiple different designs – like ordering from a Chinese menu – and merge those different elements together in one new design. Clients ask us to do it all the time so we figured why not just bake it into our favorite design tool?
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Star Wars Weekends at Disney Hollywood Studios
Thought these were funny and wonderfully simple ads for Star Wars Weekends showing Star Wars characters enjoying Disney World’s Hollywood Studios.
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More examples of how good messaging can save a bad experience
Who knew AdAge had a sense of humor?
Just over 2 years since the launch of the iPhone and this is the first time I have ever seen the designers who were smart enough to create a custom iPhone message give the user a another way to experience their work. Bravo to FL-2 and can you send me the code so I can add it to my all Flash portfolio site?
While you are there also check out their very cool Twitter visualizer I Tweeted My Pants.
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Take the pledge for all of us
Thought this was funny if you know someone in your studio use one of these typefaces to the pain of the rest of us. If so you can help with this poster to make your colleague take this pledge and sign it. Preferably in their own blood.
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Following the Monster.com career path may get you lost
A friend of mine sent me an email about the new Career Path functionality that Monster.com recently launched. He thought it was interesting and worth checking out so I headed over to see what I would predict for my future. The concept is kind of like a virtual guidance counselor with two different options to get advice. First you can put in your current job and it will tell you what would be a good next move or you give it an ending point and it will try and build a career path for you. Let’s just say that I am glad the functionality is still in beta because it wants me to become a Web developer or producer. I will be curious to check back in on it in a few months to see if it gets smarter as more people use it and it gets smarter.
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Your advertising career evolution
Dad always said the longer you’re in advertising the farther away you will get from what you love to do. I thought this illustration was the best visual representation of that fact I had ever seen and it made me laugh.
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Corporate stop sign design
A few years back the video about what it would be like if Microsoft designed the iPod packaging was all the rage. It was a really funny and sadly realistic look at what happens when corporate America takes control of the design process. This new video looks to be the successor to that Microsoft video at it explores what if there were no stop signs, and a major corporation was charged with inventing one. It is again a sad and often painfully true inditement of the majority of corporate creativity, where groupthink and endless revisions rule the day.
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Ogilvy’s advice on the recession has a recession
I came across an interesting site today from Ogilvy who ever trying to spin the message has launched a site all about the recession in an attempt to keep brands from cutting their budgets. This site gives you access to a series of booklets with titles like ‘Optimizing The Marketing Budget In Recession’ and ‘Turning Shoppers Into Buyers’. They are target at CMOS and CEOs to highlight strategies and tactics to try and take advantage of different channels through these economic troubles.
Enough about the set-up. So after reading the into to the site I was curious and wanted to see what they had to say about turning shoppers into buyers. I clicked on the link and low and behold a lead generation form pops-up which is to be expected on something like this. I filled out the form and hit download to get the PDF. A few quick seconds later the file had downloaded and popped open in Acrobat. The first thing I noticed was that it was only 1 page which seemed strange but maybe it was some really good and really condensed knowledge. I scrolled down to find…. YOU HAVE GOT TO BE #@$%ING ME.
After all the lead up, after the pitch to position themselves as the shepherd who can get you through the storm all you get is a 1 page coming soon PDF? You expect clients to trust you next year with their limited budgets when they are under intense pressure for results when you can’t even come up with the goods on your own advice? I will check back next week and see if any real content shows up and if it does I will write a follow up on what they have to say.
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