"What on earth would a man do with himself if something did not stand in his way?"
- H. G. Wells
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Altoids: A Slap To The Cerebellum since 1780 (6)
Thursday, March 20, 2008 by , under adkripies, altoids, cerebellum, tv spot
Altoids does it again with two refreshing spots, presenting us more unknown stories about the darker past of the Little Mint That Could. Booo for the 18th century. Thank God for Altoids.
Kudos to Energy BBDO and MJZ.
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Pontiac: Spy Hunter (0)
Thursday, March 20, 2008 by , under adkrispies, pontiac, spy hunter, tv spot
Ah, the classic look and feel of 8-bit video games finally applied in advertising. It's about time. Thanks for that, Leo Burnett Detroit, and creative crew Jesse Rea and Regina Cesarz, director Mark Glazer and SWAY Studio for the effects. You kicked my pixel heart's butt.
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Treat yourselves to this cool video for indie band Kamera, produced by the label Nettwerk Music. I'd like credits for the production house please! Thanks.
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As you probably read all over the interwebs, yesterday was the official launch (read: getting out of beta) for United States of America-only content provider Hulu.com.
Never heard of Hulu.com? Here's a short debrief:
First, Hulu.com is the joint venture of NBC and NewsCorp.
Second, Hulu.com has come to terms with major partners such as AOL, Warner and ABC to deliver sitcoms, movies and other screen favorites for FREE on your 'puter.
This means you can now watch past Lost episodes, those Saturday Night Live skits you love or movies like Ice Age or Me, Myself and Irene for zip. Zilch. Nada. Nothing. No cost.
Provided you live within the United States of America. Because no other country can have access to its content for now. "Anywhere, Anytime" is Hulu's slogan. Sorry, not for now.
It's all advertising supported. I can only begin to wonder about the cost of placing an ad in Hulu.com. All I can hope for is that they'll find ways to make it cheaper than TV, but I wouldn't hold my breath -- especially when you can drop the useless GRP measurements for precise stats on user visits, shows watched and interactive content.
Let me tell you this, friends: this is the beginning of a new era. Google called the company Clown Co. for months before it was launched, because Hulu.com had no name. But they are being jealous. Because Hulu is going to steal away a huge chunk out of YouTube.
Because Hulu is going to steal away a huge chunk out of TV, period.
Hulu is a menace to cable TV worldwide. A well-thought of, full of potential menace. Yes, that good of a menace. Over the past month during beta, Hulu reports that its videos have been streamed over 5 million times. All the content is professionally produced. Friends, this is no clone of YouTube. This is serious distribution business.
Our canadian CRTC will be quick to not let Hulu.com make its contents accessible to Canada, because if they do, canadian TV will receive a kick in the nads like they never did before.
But at the same time, Hulu is also a wake-up call: TV viewership is knowing a steady decrease, and TV advertising is losing efficiency in favor of e-marketing. TV has lots its power to convince, entertain or educate. The Internet doesn't try to convince you, or push its content. It lets you come. It lets you get a second, third or fourth opinion on information. From people like you. It lets you be in control of what you like to see, hear, do. And it lets you speak out.
And all of this is like gold to modern-thinking TV producers, because now they have better feedback from viewers, a new place to distribute and even produce content that is likely to please diverse yet precise communities, and not just mr. and mrs. mass audience. With Hulu.com, they have a powerful, selective outlet to engage dialogue with viewer communities.
If you ask me, in the years to come, YouTube will be like this nice add-on widget to have on Hulu.
I say Hulu is the next big thing. Everyone can laugh at the badly-thought distribution scheme for an Internet content provider. Everyone can blame the fact that they do not yet have full-length shows. You can bitch about this killing the DVD / Blu-Ray industry (although they were careful in not showing full seasons as to not cannibalize the DVD industry). You can rant about the big nasty giant networks invading the Internets.
But eventually, when the technology is uber-right, we all know how these big giant networks will just crunch the numbers and say how cost-efficient it is, how wonderfully tasty it is to produce and distribute only streaming HD content. And there will it be: TV and Internet merge into this nice, slick flatscreen device on your wall. You'll have a remote control with a keyboard and joystick on it. And you will be subscribed to Hulu Digital Network Service Worldwide Inc.
I said it first.
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