Social Media explodes as the news release from Apple hits the wire. No one can believe it’s true. Someone who has made such an impact in the world was taken way too soon. Imagine all the things we will never have access to because he won’t ever invent them, think them up, inspire them.

He leaves a legacy of amazing and wonderful tools for us though. The world has suffered a great loss. RIP Steve Jobs.

There is no perfect formula for events like these, but when they happen.. it’s like binary magic!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMtZfW2z9dw (the song)

or download it on itunes! http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/bed-intruder-song/id386478006

How about a t-shirt: http://www.zazzle.com/hide_yo_kids_dark_husband_tshirt-235886155965211391

Old Spice is like Oldsmobile…  someone drives/uses them, but it certainly isn’t you or anyone you would consider having drinks with… right… Their new campaign featuring a hot man speaking only to WOMEN in a pseudo “romance novelish” series of scenes offering women tickets to “that thing you love” which quickly turn into diamonds is hysterical! This product truly suffered from being “out of style” and pigeon holded as something your Dad used that someone always gave him along with Soap on a Rope for Christmas. It was definitely not HOT or Modern!

The new campaign virtually resurrects OLD SPICE from the dead! Why is this so effective?

#1) Humor is a gift…

If you want people to love you and your product or service, humor is the #1 way to make them immediately appreciate and identify. WHY? because when someone can make us laugh, they have made us happy and brightened our day for a moment and that moment caused a positive reaction association with the product/service. Every time you see a duck or even Ben Afleck’s name.. someone shouts out AFLAC!  and Geico has a series of great ads that made them a household name including the Cavemen, the Money with Eyes and the famous Gecko who originally would get wrong number calls from the phone book when people were looking for Geico (making the odd name a memorable image). Sex sells as they say, but can also offend..  HUMOR, you cannot go wrong with it!

#2) Viral Space & Have you seen this?

Whether it is the humor or the gorgeous man, this video has been shared millions of times since it aired and he comes up in conversation on twitter, facebook, myspace etc.. I have talked to my friends about him and heard women in the market talking about him.. BUT THE PRODUCT IS FOR MEN! Ah Ha! But like the AXE commercials TRY to show, men’s goal is to impress women…  it is the ONLY reason they wear cologne in the first place (gay guys.. you just liked the ad because dude is hot! and anyway, nothing would persuade you to wear Old Spice and you know it- mmmWAH!) The ad conjuries up this man’s image with the mention of it’s name..  and men cannot possibly help but notice the reaction he causes, after a while, the image may fade, but the positive association to OLD SPICE remains and now it brings words like “Sexy, Rich, Funny, Hot” to mind..  Bravo!

#3) Keep it Brief! (or in briefs)

This ad goes by super fast.. they don’t waste a moment of air time and the urgency of his introduction and the set changes CATCH your attention! He is talking JUST TO YOU and he is moving fast.. the ad is over by the time you are able to react and you what? WANT TO SEE IT AGAIN!  Lingering would have made it less funny and given you enough content to feel satisfied, however, his last words “I’m on a horse” cut.. the image is indelible, funny, sexy and GONE..  it leaves a great mark..  and you will most likely look it up on YouTube later or ask someone; “Have you seen that Old Spice ad?”

#4 Come Out of Left Field

Think about how many ads a day you see that are boring or extremely similar to other ads featuring similar products. One good example is Shampoo..  think for a moment about Shampoo ads..  aren’t they all the same.. they have a model with frizzy hair (or an actress we know from some tv show) she uses the product and we see some animation of how it nurtures the hair from inside, then the final shot – she is all glam now and her hair is so glossy it actually shines.. she spins or tosses her hair and says the tag line for the product and its over…  BORING! Most ads stay in formula.. this ad comes out of no where, from it’s opening scene to the closing line, you are off kilter and have no idea where it is going… it surprises you. Approaching a product like Old Spice could have been similar to the ad for Aqua Velva that features a man playing catch with his son, then tossing him a bottle of the  green liquid, then we see them shaving together – then the tag line.. BORING! Does that make ANYONE want to use Aqua Velva??? No, it is just as dowdy and old fashioned as ever! SURPRISE your audience and make them pay attention.. come out of left field!

These rules work for any product or service really. Something as serious as Insurance.. or as light hearted as Candy..

What are your favorite ads that follow this formula?

In addition to your reactions to “Guys and Dolls” the documentary on men who have chosen to use dolls as mates instead of real women, I had recently read about a few men who had similar replacements for the real thing.

The first one that comes to mind is the man who fell in love with his pillow case:

The pillow case depicts an Anime Character named, Nemutan, from an X-rated PC video game called “Da Capo”. Nisan, the man, takes Nemutan, the pillowcase, with him to restaurants and events as if she were a human. He expresses a deep and passionate love for her as you can see in the photo of him holding her tightly in public and how he has placed her meal in front of her at the restaurant. (actually spending money to set food out that won’t be eaten). I couldn’t help feeling both disgusted, intrigued and then sorrowful as I read the story and thought about what leads to this sort of intense need for love, so intense, that it drives a person to project love and imagine love returned by a PILLOW CASE! Looking into blank eyes and seeing yourself reflected with adoration? How does someone come to this place mentally and emotionally? However, what may seem akin to that Homeless person you see talking to themselves is actually widely accepted in the “2-D” set and referred to as being “moe”.  This SAD man has become a bit of an icon to the Otaku (video game obsessed youth) and is a level TEN moe! Nisan doesn’t want to be anyone’s icon though and was quoted as saying““I’m not saying that everyone should throw away hopes of real romance right away. I am simply saying that guys like me who have gotten to a point of no return can be happy living in 2-D.” A very profound statement.. just when does “THE POINT OF NO RETURN” occur?

SAL9000, Boy meets video game…

The case of someone who would clearly know came up just a short time after Nisan…  Twitter was lightly a buzz with the story of a man named, SAL9000 (he calls himself) who was playing a popular 2-D game called “LovePlus”. LovePlus offers you  a virtual girlfriend who can actually get pissed at you if you don’t give her what she wants and spend enough time with her. Most of these virtual girlfriends are of High School age and range from very compliant to pissy, snobby or even Hard-Ass, as noted in the article “My Husband has a Virtual Girlfriend”. Apparently however, they can also be very loving, kind and amusing….

SAL9000, unlike the hubby in that article, was single and soon found that HIS virtual girly, Nene Anegasaki, was the perfect woman for him. So much so that he decided to marry his  SIMULATED lover and take her on a honeymoon to Guam. When people heard about it, they made sure cameras were at the wedding and that his honeymoon was documented as well. In America this would be a PR Stunt to get your own reality show, but when you hear this young man’s adoration for Nene, you wonder if he could be for real…  Sadly, I think he may be. His story was covered by BoingBoing, FOX, CNN, and many others and became a case in point for Japanese author Hiroshi Ashizaki who studies Internet addiction, he said many Japanese youths cannot express their true feelings in reality, only in the virtual world. It is a trend that could become increasingly common as the entire globe socializes more online and less in person, but I don’t think this just applies to Japanese youths as we become ever more virtual – talking on Facebook instead of grabbing coffee and texting instead of ringing each other up on the phone.. but that is an entire other blog.. (watch for “Sorry I can’t talk to you right now, I am tweeting!”)

Introducing, ROXY! The Sex (& Conversation) Robot…

So on top of all this, we now have ROXY, the SEX ROBOT, which you HAD to know was going to happen.. but this you may not have expected.. consumer research (would hate to have compiled this data!) showed men wanted the sex robot to TALK- (OH YEA? So you can pretend to listen to her too?) So, the company made Roxy as a life size chatty Kathy, who can talk to men about Sports and respond to touch with phrases like “I love when you hold my hand…” Roxy is surprisingly displayed as a brunette and although I am sure you can order any hair you want on her… the display choice still surprises me…  having her look more like one of Heff’s plastics would have been expected on my part, though whatever hair they put on her/it, to me she still looks frighteningly similar to a lingerie clad cadaver which scares me for numerous reasons…

In fact all of this information sends my mind reeling in several directions at once.

ONE: Why do Heterosexual men  seem to be the adopters of this 2-D lifestyle, what is the difference between their life experience/view that allows for this to become more easily acceptable (apparently) than for women. I dare not answer… although I have opinions.. I want to hear yours….

TWO: The objects of affection in the video game obsessed 2-D/Moe’s seems to center around “children”. Girls of a tender age, that were they live, would be jail bait and cause for alarm…  Why is this acceptable when the objects are not real, and will these loving relationships between men and virtual children ever cross over from fantasy to reality? Would you feel okay about someone you know virtually dating a simulated child (HS freshman)?

THREE: Is there an element of what many women believe to be true about real women being threatening because we are no longer the doting housewives of the 50′s whose childlike fawning was ego-candy for men, that the modern woman is only fit for a man who desires a challenge.. and these men (whose numbers are increasing) prefer fantasy to a challenge… (please don’t read this as man bashing, I am just posing the question).

PLEASE DON’T BE SHY… TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK?

Most of them seem to hold the belief that the media was mainly meant to convey the kind of daily prattle you might text to a small group of buddies now and then. “Going to be at Townie Bar tonight, who wants to come by and meet me?” , “Hoodies are on sale at the Old Navy on Main Street..” – that sort of thing. To be honest, I am rather exclusive when it comes to letting people know where I am and inviting people to join me out or keep tabs on me and though I play with the GPS apps on my iphone alot, I am pretty sure that I don’t want to be the story that will be on the news soon about the chick who tweeted all her where abouts and was stalked and killed by a follower… That having been said, I do play Foursquare, a game where you check in everywhere you go and earn badges or become the Mayor of said places.. but I always check in after I have already left the location, as a stalker prevention method. So back to these Twitter Snobs.. I wonder… Are there sets of people using twitter completely differently.. and is there a right way and a wrong way, as they propose? I, of course, like everyone else am annoyed by the spammers who DM you about getting more followers or buying some herbal drink from Trump Enterprises.. LOL.. but I doubt those tweeple are real people anyway…

A friend recently commented that my making a facebook fan page for myself made him feel like facebook was turning into MySpace.. of course this friend is a kid just out of college and we all know that they remember the days when facebook was simply a “we went or are going to the same school” dating service… (come on, you know its true). The founder has been very smart in realizing the tool allows for business connections to be made in a non-invasive manner and the powerful matrix allows content to rise quickly from obscurity to super fame in under a day through “sharing”.Think about Susan Boyles.. right now some sort of Metal Rooster is trending on popular videos.. it really is a marketing tool, whether you like it or not.. anytime over a billion consumers GIVE someone their data willingly, the founder would be a fool not to use that information to his best advantage. So sorry facebook snobs, but the media is too big NOT to be a marketing machine at this point.. it just wouldn’t make sense..

On the side of keeping in exclusive, I created my fan page because my friends page is shared mainly with people I have met in person and at 197 of those, I am still rather careful. I know there are others who have thousands of “friends” on their facebooks and you know that they simply add anyone and everyone… but you won’t find me snobbing on them.. they are using it to their purpose and not mine.

As for MySpace.. I think it’s main failing was in the lack of ease of use. Alot of people criticized it for a lot of other reasons, but it simply was not easy to use, add to and it was hardly mashable, even now, if you have a wordpress or other blog system, you are hard pressed to get your myspace to integrate.. where as twitter and facebook to a degree are mashable in a hundred ways with ease..

I am rambling here… but let me know what you think. How do you use “Social Media” and what are your pet peeves about how others use it?

protesting

just a bit…

being

a hole

woman -

born

empty inside

literally

a hole

a void

a vacancy

waiting to be inhabited

by baby

and baby daddy

not in that

order – of course

i active…ly

avoid

being – turned

inside – out

for

any

one

_______________

change my mind?

you can try…

till then… whoa Man….

WOE man…

i am not your woman….

I was just thinking today about how you can work very hard to get somewhere you never wanted to be… a place in life that really doesn’t suit you.. although you are successfully placed… you are not fulfilled…

Maybe this is what Mary meant when she thought about returning to her former Gothic Girl Self… I don’t know.. I often think lately about the me that would spend days at a time building sets, finding props and casting parts, writing scripts and shooting scenes.. hours on my knees with all sorts of electronics, wires and mics, cameras, vcrs, tvs hooked together into a menagerie of editing and dubbing equipment that I would use to assemble a film that perhaps only a few people would ever see.

why did i go from not understanding the word impossible.. to accepting the probable as fact? I am sure some would say this is called growing up, but when i was a kid.. well, a 13-23 year old, there was nothing but film-making.. nothing but plays, scripts, films.. writing, shooting, stomping off the set when my cast wouldn’t stop laughing during serious takes… this was life… living for the next reason to shout “Action!”

Now I get paid for creatives that help other people sell money to people who want to invest in property and have the American Dream.. it is nothing to be ashamed of… i am a home owner myself… it’s a good business and i am glad to do well at something still so fundamentally creative.. but it doesn’t fill that hole in my heart… it doesn’t feel the way the story does.. coming out of me, onto paper.. onto celluloid.. onto youtube?

There is a basic argument here. I was in an investment seminar recently.. talking stocks and bonds and 401k retirement funds… and it hit me.. i am on this road.. to a safe and plotted life.. work hard, save money, build equity, buy an investment property, get married, have kids, get old.. etc… granted, i support my family, eat very finely, drink even better and party well… a girl has to have some fun… but still… will i ever have a better shot at returning to myself… is the time coming to make the change?

the other road is un-sure.. no steady income, no guaranteed security… can you even pay your mortgage and buy way too many pairs of designer shoes (current count about 200)
and the real question.. can i have both?

I am willing to try…. i want my passion back.. i want to fall in love again… i want the thrill of the story back in my blood, i want to chase that perfect plot line and do more than dream about that Oscar…

Ok.. I talked me into it… ACTION!

RE-POSTED from TUESDAY, AUGUST 26, 2008

Dehumanizing depictions, breast implants, sugar daddies, and violence against women