Companies are now starting to dip their toe into the world of Mashups/user-generated content – but when the user is generating it, the results might not always be what they expect or desire. We’ve seen a few examples of this today.
Uber-car maker Chevrolet – or their agencies – came up with a great wheeze. They’ve put tools on the Web to allow the worlds users remix and mash-up their latest Chevy Tahoe adverts.
It’s not hard to imagine the scene. The agency person, having hear from his ‘Geek’ source that mashups were ‘The Latest Thing’, over-enthusiasticly pitching it to Chevy
Amazingly the thing that they don’t appear to have noticed is that many people see Chevy as Uber in a couple of sense – the sheer size of their company and, importantly for this piece, in the sheer size of the cars on the road and fuel-guzzling nature.
Some witty wags have used the Chevy tools to create adverts mocking the over-sized cars, the nature of their advertising and the company generally.
Selection of spoof ads
Roll-up, roll-up get them while they’re fresh (and before they get taken down by those that be).
Where’s My Helicopter? – This mocks the unreachable locations that car companies put their cars in for adverts, then proceeds to question if a 4×4 car of this size is really needed when they are, on the whole, only used to drive to the shopping mall.
Global Warming – The sights of this spoof are a little more ambitious – asking why the USA reaction to the threat of Global Warming is to make and sell cars like the Chevy Tahoe.
Flowers – This one addresses the over-sized, aggressive nature of the car. Summary – Where have all of the flower gone? Who cares? My truck’s bigger than yours and I’ll crush you.
We love the idea of corporate tools being used against those who are paying for they development, hosting and bandwidth, but suspect that corporate number two who approaches this may take a different approach. This won’t of course stop those who are angered by this type of thing using their own footage to the same affect.
Expect people in the marketing department to get fired over this one. People who run companies like Chevrolet don’t like to be made to looks foolish. Perhaps if they moved to destroy the planet a little less they’d get a better reception from the world.
Thanks to Holy-Moly! for the pointer to the videos on this one.
We’ve had the Wicked Laser Green 95mw laser for a couple of weeks now. It’s falls outside the sort of things we’d normally test, but I’m glad we made an exception, because this thing is bonkers.
It arrived well packaged in a rather natty box and we couldn’t wait to get it on. An unexpected lack of the required 2 x AAA batteries at our end lead us to initial disappointment but this instantly evaporated when it was powered and switched on for the first time.
Safety
Conclusion
Toshiba has today released the first HD-DVD player.
Where the Toshiba-lead HD-DVD will win with the public is in the simple extension of the DVD name, incorporating HD which everyone either does know about, or will do after the advertising frenzy around this years World Cup.
It’s thought that the forthcoming UK chart show, released on Sunday, run by the terribly formal sounding Official UK Charts Company, will be the first time a Number 1 will be a non-physical product. Translated – Crazy by Gnarls Barkley has only been released electronically, as a download.
Those Chart cat’s are exactly what you’d call ‘with it’ are they? But I guess we know that given how long it took the music companies to pull their fingers out and start to grab hold of the digital revolution – actually there’s many who’d argue that they still haven’t.
UK Mobile company, Orange, is to abandon their numbered Talk plans to replace them with ‘types’ – Dolphins, Canaries, Racoons and Panthers.
Orange has always been a pioneer in dealing with customers. This started with their name, which back in 1994, was extremely adventurous – as was tying it in with a colour and trying to associate it with emotion.
On a personal note – I’ve been with Orange since they started and was highly impressed in the early days. Over the years I found that the quality has gone south a little – people you speak to there are a little less helpful; the flexibility that made you glad to be with Orange and started to atrophy shortly after Wanadoo (France Telecom) took over in 2001.
Instead we will be categorised as Dolphins, Canaries, Racoons or Panthers. Here’s the explanation …
The BBC are reporting that they are suspending a Blue Peter badge scheme. Why? Cheeky blighters are buying them on eBay and presenting them as if they ‘earned’ them and claiming the benefits.