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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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Facebook advertising standards are a hypocritical joke.
So I will assume if you are reading this that the headline got your attention. It’s a direct reflection of how sick and tired I am of feeling the need to write this parade of articles about just how hypocritical Facebook is about a lot of things.
About a month ago we all watched as Facebook take down the Burger King campaign Whopper Sacrifice because it went again what they called the site’s “user expectations”. This means that the ad created an experience or an action that went against what user would expect when they use the site. So they made their line in the sand with that decision and we all took note. So tonight as I was mindlessly cruising the site something caught my eye that made what they did to Whopper Sacrifice even more of a complete hypocritical joke. What caught my eye were the two ads I took screenshots of and are just a sampling of actual ads that are running right now on Facebook. They are built to look exactly like the Facebook user interface and in some cases have absolutely no advertising message at all. At least with Whopper Sacrifice there was a message about what was going to happen while here you have a “user expectation” that is just a complete lie.
Once again I am completely baffled with who is so asleep at the wheel at Facebook with all of these issues. They have a site that every advertiser would kill to be able to harness and would throw buckets of cash at them to do it but they can’t keep their head out of their ass long enough to have it happen. We all can see the potential but right now I wouldn’t let any of the brands under my watch spend any money to create a major campaign on Facebook because if this kind of stupidity. The fact that Facebook can’t see that is the biggest reason why they are going to have nothing but these bush league ads on their site for the foreseeable future.
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Y&R goes digital
An interesting side note that Young & Rubicam announced today that it is creating an in-house interactive unit to finally help the agency enter the digital age. Having spent time talking with them in the past I know it is no small effort but I am very glad to see Tarik Sedky will be taking the position of chief digital officer with the new company. I had the pleasure of working with him during the little more than a year he spent at BBDO Atmosphere and wish him all the best with this new adventure.
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Google Maps – NYC to Paris
It would seem that Google has a sense of humor after all and I may be the guy to know about it. If you want a good laugh –
1.) Go to Google Maps
2.) Click “Get Directions” under the search bar
3.) Enter from New York, NY to Paris, France
4.) Check out the instructions on point 23
Kinda dorky I know, but funny!
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Grey countdown clock
Grey Advertising created an interesting holiday card that you can customize for yourself. The Grey countdown clock originally counted down to Xmas and the New Year but you can also set your own dates.
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Playstation 3 – I love the smell of new technology in the morning
In December the stars aligned and I became the proud parent of the seriously overhyped and horribly launched Playstation 3. I had been drooling over it since it was unveiled so I decided to buck the trend and not put it on ebay to try and cash in on the pre-Christmas hysteria.
This choice had sparked a spitied debate at work with my boss, who stood outside the Toys R Us in Times Square to get a Wii on launch day, accuses me of choosing style over substance by getting a PS3. I spent a lot of time thinking about it and there is certainly some truth to that statement. I will give the Wii credit for really doing something different but for me the controller seems like gimmick I would get tired of in a few months and only be left with a system with substandard graphics.
After spending some serious quality time with the system I am impressed. I have spent most of my time playing Resistance: Fall of Man which was created by my favorite developer Insomniac Studio. They created the Ratchet and Clank series for the PS2 which was one of my favorites and they do not disappoint with Resistance.
It is a system you buy for the potential of what it can do much like when I bought my PSP. The PSP spent the first year of it’s existence with one of the most horrible game line-ups I can remember and only recently really started to come into it’s own. I still think the Flash enabled web browser it is a vastly untapped channel.
So if you are in the mood to throw down with an online game of Resistance or Madden send me a message at Gates-O-Hell.
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Helping to stop child abuse in the Netherlands
I came across an interesting site today called SIRE that is dedicated to stopping child abuse in the Netherlands. It is a linear experience that walks you through 7 different scenes highlighting the statistics of each kind of child abuse. Even though the experience is a linear and the interaction is limited the high production value makes the experience compelling and makes you want to explore more about this terrible subject.
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IAM Studio
Saw the IM Studio site today which is an average site that is brought to life by some very nice 3D animation. The studio’s mascot is the star of the site with numerous funny transition animation. The rest of the site pales by comparison as the navigation isn’t intuitive or consistent.
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Sunday Night Football fake-out
I just spotted something funny while I was watching the pre-show for Sunday Night Football on NBC where Bob Costas, Jerome Bettis and company where they break down the day’s scores. The group looks be sitting in front of a large window looking out onto Rockafeller Center. I never thought anything of the view out the window but tonight it was of the famous Christmas tree and skating rink in the middle of Rockafeller Center. It took me a second but then I realized that there is no building with that view in Rockafeller Center and the whole thing is fake. It is probably one of the best real-time green screens I have seen but it is funny that they are faking out most of the country who think they are in a studio with that view.
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OfficeMax launches 20 holiday microsites
I was cruising through Communication Arts web site today and saw a headline that OfficeMax had launched 20 holiday themed microsites to promote their brand. I do have to say that the write up did make me laugh as it toted this event as the most sites launched at one time by an office supply retailer which seems to me like kind of a low bar to get over. The sites are simple games, gags and image manipulation that could have been housed under one URL but where is the press in that? Some of the sites include:
Mistletoe In An Elevator – A hidden camera style perspective of an elevator with two office workers entranced by the power of mistletoe.
Conspiracy Carols – Subversive messages buried inside Christmas carols? It’s better than playing a Pink Floyd album backwards because you get to write your own message and share it with your fellow conspiracy theorists.
Everythings A Reindeer – In a move usually only reserved for the dog, you can attach reindeer antlers to pictures of your family and friends.
Stuck To A Pole – You can manipulate a small mentally damaged child who has his tongue stuck to a pole to make his perform a variety of mildly funny dance moves, songs, etc..
Elf Yourself – Probably the most interesting of the bunch, you can upload a picture of your face, call the special phone number and record a personalized holiday greeting and your face gets digitally attached to an elf’s body and the voice recording gets “elf-ed”. It is a nice viral execution that integrates multiple points of information input.
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