Friday, May 26, 2006

The BBC Production Assistant Grabbed the Wrong Guy...



So your name is Guy Keyney (pictured above on the left), and you are sitting in reception of the BBC about to go on air to talk about the Apple Computer/Apple (The Beatles’ publishing company) lawsuit.

You are nervous, because you are slated to go on air at 10:30 and it’s 10:29 and you’re still sitting in the lobby. The receptionist assures you everything is ok.

Then, at 10:30 as you are watching the live feed of the broadcast via the television in the lobby, you see the show host introduce you. The camera then cuts to someone in the guest chair who is certainly not you (the Guy pictured above on the right).

Here's a snippet from Guy Keyney's blog post:

There were several surprising things about my interview. We'll ignore the fact that I wasn't giving it, and had not given it. We'll even gloss over the fact that, judging by my performance, English wasn't my first language, and that I didn't seem to know much about Apple Computer, online music, or the Beatles. People have accused me of all those things, at various stages of my career...


Seems as though there were TWO people named Guy in the lobby that morning. One was a taxi driver named Guy Goma who was there for a job interview, the other one was Guy Keyney, a well-known journalist and respected technology law expert in the UK. The production assistant grabbed the wrong Guy, whisked him to the studio, sat him down and put a mic on him.

Watch the video here.

Read Guy Keyney’s take of the incident here. Read more about it here and here (PR Opinions). Thanks to PR Opionions for the link.

To his credit, the “other Guy” tried his best to answer the questions. I’m sure he thought this was one hell of an interview process!

-aB

Sunday, May 21, 2006

TiVo Required For New GE Ads



So, what do you do when you're an advertising agency and the TiVo and DVR are preventing people from watching your commercials? You develop commercials that can only be seen with a Tivo or DVR, of course!

This is pretty neat stuff. GE is unveiling their "One Second Theatre" during commercials that will play this month.

Read about it in this New York Times story here.

Basically, the GE commercials will now include a one-second "flip book" like slide show at the end. It's a mini-commercial sandwiched into one second. To watch this last second, you'll need to watch it frame-by-frame, something you can only do with a TiVo.

Very interesting idea. For some reason, this reminds me of playing old record albums backward when I was a kid to hear the "secret message." Anyone remember the Queen song Another One Bites the Dust and it's secret message?

Visit GE's One Second Theatre micro-site here.

UPDATE: It seems as though Sprite is jumping on the "DVR Ready" commercial bandwagon, too. New commercials from hot ad agency Crispin, Porter & Bogusky (that's the Subservient Chicken agency, by the way) call it "SubLYMONal" advertising, bringing back the old Lymon marketing idea for Sprite. Look through the commercials frame-by-frame and there are supposed to be plenty of goodies...

-aB

Monday, May 08, 2006

Which Midget Is Taller?



The median age of the CNN and FOX News viewer is over 60. Ouch.

MSNBC and Headline News aren't much better, with the median viewer 57 and 59, respectively. This is according to Brian Lowry's column posted on Variety last night.

For a business where the 18-49 demo is so critically important, this is a tough pill to swallow. And the networks don't talk about this a lot - leading Brian Lowry to make the following observation:

The cable nets' older profiles have also yielded absurd exchanges about demographic superiority, such as the boast that more young adults view MSNBC's Keith Olbermann than CNN's Paula Zahn. Whichever midget is taller, the truth remains that the vast majority of young adults have no interest in either.


Interesting, eye-opening article. Read it here.

-aB

Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Mass Confusion At Best Buy



A "prankster group" called Improv Everywhere got 50 people dressed up in Best Buy-like regalia (blue shirt, khakis) and raided the local store.

According to the story, there was mass confusion. Snippet from Gizmodo.com:

Customers were confused, some sales staff were supportive while others got upset, and predictably both management and security went apoplectic.


More pictures here in Flickr and the full story here on Gizmodo.com.

-aB