August 30, 2006
If the Akeelah and the Bee DVD box designer had been the subject of a movie it would have been a disaster
What is this?
Not seeing it? Read on, my friend. Read on.
I'm sure you all remember Akeelah and the Bee. The charming little movie that Starbucks baristas... um baristae... No, I think it's baristas. Anyway, the charming little movie that Starbucks employees got to see ahead of time so that they could blab about how great it was and create some of that sweet, sweet word-of-mouth marketing that is all the rage with the kids these days.
Oh, you don't remember that? Hunh. Go figure. Money well spent.
So I'm grabbing a coffee today at one of my the 5 local Starbucks and I see a blown-up version of the DVD cover. And it kind of stopped me in my tracks. But not in a good way. It stopped me in my tracks in a who-in-their-right-mind-ever-thought-this-was-a-good-idea way.
So, I have some questions about the cover:
1) When did consistency become such a problem? Or why didn't they just use the movie poster? It's a pretty compelling shot, isn't it?
2) Was it really the designer's fault that all the people are misnamed? (I mean, we all know that creatives are the last people in line to make decisions in Hollywood. It's highly likely that this decision was driven by agents and metrics and testing and blah blah blah. But I'll still blame the designer.)
3) If this movie had actually made money, would they have resisted the urge to "retool" the imagery? Or do they think that a bevy of Larry Fishburne fans are going to pick this up? "Apocalypse Now, Boyz n the Hood, the Matrices... I love that Fishburne guy. What's this Akeelah action flick?"
4) Given that this movie didn't make money, why on earth would they spend more money compromising the marketing that is already out there, thereby making a bad thing worse?
Sigh. Bad design is everywhere. And, fortunately, I'm an egotistical and overly critical hack who can sit back and complain rather than try to fix it.
Until next time, true believers.
Technorati tags: Akeelah, Starbucks
If the Akeelah and the Bee DVD box designer had been the subject of a movie it would have been a disaster
| | Subscribe:
RSS, Bloglines
August 11, 2006
User-generated content? Welcome to the party, pal
Dear Web 2.0 hype machine:Apparently, the navel-gazing and self-congratulatory efforts have paid off. User-generated content, or as some of the hip kids like to tout it: UGC, is the new hot thing in the world of online behavior.
Brilliant.
Hate to burst your bubble kids, but this is nothing new.
The Web, and the simple no-frills Internet before it, have always been about user-generated content. The most prolific user-generated content tool of all time? Flickr? YouTube? Digg?
Try email my friend. Not a proprietary tool, the concept itself. Try a bunch of geeks like me creating BBSes and MUDDs in the late 80s and Web pages in the mid 90s.
You see, it's always been about user-generated content. The problem was that this user-generated content got co-opted by large corporations as a marketing tool. So co-opted, in fact, that we forgot the original start of this whole thing.
(It really goes back even further to communication among individuals that was co-opted to become news and advertising and whatnot, but I'm trying to keep this brief.)
It's not that the user-generated content is a new thing. It's the fact that said user now has the ability to generate and share that content more easily, rapidly, and widely than ever before.
No more slogging through code. Blog. No more sending out tapes. YouTube. No more hoofing your book. Flickr.
And that truly is interesting. But let's not forget the context.
Love and kisses,
Rick
Technorati tags: User generated content, UserGeneratedContent, User-generated content
User-generated content? Welcome to the party, pal
| | Subscribe:
RSS, Bloglines
