GoPro Seagull Viral

From The Daily Mail

Advertising down the ages - Rory Sutherland

A viral that works!

NY Times article on how a low/no budget dance video shot by youngster Jason Krupnick went viral:

A month later, Krupnick and Marsen were on the early-morning Staten Island Ferry, along with two other dancers and Krupnick’s wife, carrying boomboxes and cameras and ducking security guards, shooting guerrilla-style test footage for “Girl Walk//All Day,” which Krupnick describes as “an epic, 71-minute-long dance-music video” in which Marsen will dance her way through the entire Girl Talk album and up the island of Manhattan. By the end of the day’s shoot, they had eight solid minutes, which Krupnick cut together and tossed up on Vimeo as a kind of trailer for the full movie, to see if anyone noticed. The first day, 11 people watched. On Day 2, six did. Then on Jan. 12, Gothamist posted the video, and an hour later it appeared on The Huffington Post home page. By day’s end, more than 17,000 people had seen it. On Jan. 28, Krupnick put up a donation page on Kickstarter, hoping to raise $4,800 from strangers to help him and his collaborators make and distribute the complete video. They gave themselves 45 days to meet their financing goal. It took six. By Valentine’s Day, they raised $12,000, and the trailer had been seen almost 60,000 times.

Girl Walk / All

Girl Walk // All Day from jacob krupnick on Vimeo.

And now for the most interesting part (something the agency T-Mobile uses could learn from):

It is no surprise that people go nuts for the trailer. It is weird and joyous, popping with youth and energy. At first, Marsen looks more like an enthusiastic and slightly dorky amateur than a trained dance pro. She wears regular tennis shoes and worn gray cords and an oversize, multicolored jacket, and at one point she falls off the railing of an escalator. It’s not until a minute or so in, as she twirls and gyrates through the ferry’s upper level, staring down the camera with a sly smile on her face as sleepy commuters pretend not to notice, that you start to suspect that you’re watching something more than a little magical.

Curious ad promoting tourism in Egypt

'And the stones spoke to me'...

And what, pray, did they say?

Art Director to Debbie - Kate Winslet-esque model from Luton:

'Great, Debs. But could you part your lips a little more and amp up the wistful this time.'

So golden girl is a tourist from the frozen north overwhelmed by the historical ambience of ancient egyptian ruins... Overwhelmed or dumbstruck? Broad appeal - for boys, 'Go to Egypt and you might bump into golden girl and charm the pants off her' - for girls, 'Go to Egypt and you might end up looking as sun-kissed and hot as goleden girl'. Good to see that they've thought this through...

THE UKELELE-STRUMMING BOSS

Classic schadenfreude from The Daily Mail - the masters.

MISJUDGING THE AUDIENCE

Four of the show’s key figures – Chiles, Bleakley, editor Ian Rumsey and deputy editor Paul Connolly – came from The One Show, but a programme shown at 7pm on BBC1 attracts a very different audience to an ITV breakfast show.

The One Show’s viewers are mostly male and over 50, whereas GMTV’s viewers were mostly young mothers – and the latter do not appreciate the changes.

‘A lot of GMTV viewers didn’t really know who Chiles and Bleakley were before they started on Daybreak,’ says a source.

‘They don’t want a surly man and a young, highly polished woman who’s in the papers with her footballer boyfriend. Equally, the editors are using tricks which work in the evening – the wacky stories, for example – but don’t translate to morning TV.’

MONEY DOWN THE DRAIN

ITV’s enormous investment in Daybreak started with its takeover of GMTV last November. The channel paid £22 million buying the Walt Disney Company’s 25 per cent share of the programme to give it complete control.

Hiring presenters Adrian Chiles and Christine Bleakley cost a total of £10 million, and bosses Connolly and Rumsey are on six-figure ­salaries.

The studio alone cost £1 million, while a further £2-3 million was spent on marketing for the new brand. Failing to recoup any of this would be a disaster.

WE'RE IN THE DARK

The plush new studio on London’s South Bank offers a panoramic view of the capital’s skyline, but its biggest ­selling point has become one of the show’s most spectacular disasters.

When the programme launched on September 6, sunrise was at 6.21am, shortly after its 6am start. But as winter approaches, the sky outside the studio is remaining dark for longer, rendering the view invisible.

ITV have resorted to paying to have St Paul’s Cathedral lit up every morning in a bid to alleviate the gloom.

The decor, too, is cause for complaint, with its minimalist wood-effect floors and walls, purple sofas and an internally-lit circular coffee table disliked by viewers who feel it has a stark, cold feel.

Producers have responded by adding fresh flowers to bring warmth, but to little effect.

A-LIST BUMS ON SEATS

The show has managed to pull in some big-name celebrities, including Tony Blair, Prince Charles and Ben Affleck, yet these interviews have been described as ‘stilted’ and ‘awkward’, with Blair allowed to plug his autobiography without much real questioning.

Producers are under increasing pressure to attract the ‘right’ guests.

One crew member says: ‘We keep being told we need A-list bums on seats, and we’re not coming up with enough.’

According to an ITV insider, executives have now let other programmes, including Loose Women and The Alan Titchmarsh Show, know that Daybreak has first claim on celebrity guests.

Predictably, this news has not been warmly received.

And what could be the nail in the coffin. Hilarious!

THE UKELELE-STRUMMING BOSS

...Known for being a ‘larger-than-life’ character on set is Paul Connolly, the deputy editor who was brought over from the BBC by his close friend Adrian Chiles when he left The One Show.

Connolly, who used to work on Channel 4’s Big Breakfast, is understood to earn a six-figure salary for coming up with Daybreak’s ideas but spends much of his time wandering around the newsroom strumming a ukelele, which he can’t actually play, in an attempt to encourage creativity.

We will have to see if Paul's ukelele works its magic and recatalyzes the Chiles/Bleakley chemistry. I look forward to see how this pans out. We can rely on The Daily Mail to spare no one's blushes if it all goes wrong.

Malt Liquor and race

The ethics of making malt liquor hip from The Accidental Blogger via 3quarksdaily.

Some malt liquor drinkers were just after cheap booze, as they had been since the Depression, but the majority were college students or nine-to-fivers playing a game of racial masquerade. It wasn't just black people who liked to imagine themselves as Billy Dee Williams or Snoop Dogg.

By drinking a 40, anyone could pretend to be a black outlaw, someone who didn’t have to worry about getting up in the morning, someone who just didn’t give a fuck. In a variant on the minstrel tradition, these drinkers adopted a stereotyped black identity as a form of entertainment and psychic release.

Bill Hicks - not a fan