Saturday, July 26, 2003
The Restaurant is a new ?reality? show on NBC. I put reality in quotes because I didn?t realize reality was scripted. It is very apparent that Mitsubishi, Coors and American Express are all sponsors of this show. Throughout the 60-minute show these 3 companies happened to work themselves into casual conversation.
Shameless, scripted moments:
1. A guy is standing in line to interview for a job at the restaurant when Rocco, the owner, pulls up in his new Mitsubishi Endeavor. The guy basically says, ?That?s how you get girls, you can?t lose when your name is Rocco and you drive a Mitsubishi.?
2. Rocco gives an extended speech on how his staff should go out of their way to get anything a customer wants. If they want a frozen drink and the bartender says we don?t have a blender ? go buy one. He randomly, or not so randomly, asks someone what he wants. He conveniently says, ?A beer?. He then picks out a woman and says don?t come back unless you have Coors for everyone. They proceed to play a game of quarters and drink the Coors.
3. As the restaurant is getting close to opening, a woman approaches Rocco to tell him about all the invoices to be paid. Rocco says, ?Call Amex, we have OPEN they can handle it?.
4. Finally, or at least of the ones I caught, the beer delivery guy shows up from Coors. He spends several minutes trying to track down the bar manager so he can deliver the beer. The Coors truck gets several nice shots.
My intelligence was insulted. I expect to be interrupted with ads hundreds of times a day but don?t try to be coy about it. I essentially watched a 60-minute ad for these 3 companies. The true commercials were for these companies and the show itself was an ad for these companies. If I wanted to watch an infomercial I would stay awake until 2:00am.
Be prepared for more and more of this type of advertising. It is already happening in movies and has happened some on television but you can expect to see plenty of it this fall on television.
Update: I just found this article which validates everything I discussed.
posted in: Marketing, Television
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Friday, July 25, 2003
You know that game where you have your hands out and your friend tries to slap them and if they miss you get to do it to them? Now you can play online.
Since we are killing time - go play mini golf too....
posted in: Games
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Wednesday, July 23, 2003
First let me state I am not a coffee drinker so I may be off on this posting.
I had a 9:00 am meeting today. At that meeting someone brought in a “box of joe” from Dunkin’ Donuts. For those of you who don’t know what this is; it is a gallon of coffee in a box.
Six hours later the box sits on the conference room table and the cap for it has been off since 9:00 am. I sit outside the conference room and one co-worker stopped by (6 hours later) and asked if any cups left for the coffee. I said no, he then looked down at my trash basket, leaned over and pushed around remains of my lunch and saw two cups. He then proceeded to examine them to see if they were good enough to drink out of it. Twenty minutes later this exact scene repeated it self only with another co-worker. They didn’t use the cups but why would you even consider this an option?
Few observations:
- It is 6 hours old - break out $1.00 and hit the convenience store which is 1 block from us for a fresh cup. Yes, it costs $1.00 there.
- Is coffee so addictive that you are willing to use a cup that was in the trash to drink it?
- Let me repeat: Are you willing to use a cup that was in the TRASH to drink it?
posted in: Humour
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Tuesday, July 15, 2003
I had some free time on my hands today and wanted to make a few of those little 80x15 images you see on sites. I didn’t really want to make one for myself so I decided to make some for the marketing guru Seth Godin. Below are buttons for: Idea Virus, Do You Zoom, Seth Godin, and Purple Cow. Feel free to use these on your site. Let me know if you do.
posted in: Marketing, Personal
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Wednesday, July 09, 2003
Most of us remember the movie “Revenge of the Nerds” and this dialog:
Takashi: “Maybe we should serve robster craws.”
Booger: “What the f*ck are robster craws?!”
If you thought that was funny go check out Engrish.com. The home page has the latest Japanese mistakes. Move inside to see the recent entries for some good laughs.
This monkey does some interesting things…
Enjoy.
posted in: Assorted, Interesting
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