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Posts Archived Under Advertising
"His Master's Voice"
(What you don't see is that Nipper is
sitting on the coffin of his dead owner) |
In company logos and advertisements, animals are a fairly common sight. So common, in fact, that you probably haven't given these mascots a great deal of thought. But those whose job involves selecting an animal representative for an organization or company face no small task. With their choice, they will be aligning themselves with whatever qualities people tend to associate with that animal. Once they’ve found their totem, they may forever be associated with it.
A prime example of logo longevity is "His Master’s Voice," a design trademarked by the Victor Record Company on this day in 1900, sealing forever in our minds the image of Nipper the dog listening attentively to a Victrola, and connecting it further with the Gramophone Company (later known as HMV). In the ensuing century, plenty of other corporate critters have made their marks on our cultural consciousness. How many times have you heard Leo, the MGM lion roar?
Financial institutions have adopted symbols of strength, including an elk and a lion, though Merrill Lynch was wise to select a bull rather than a bear. Animals in advertising have also provided memorable and humorous moments.
Cuteness gives many animal representatives their appeal. The Geico gecko is pretty adorable, as is Snuggle, the Fabric Softener Bear. Some creatures are simply effective because they are cartoons, and appeal to kids, such as the Trix Rabbit and Sugar Bear.
Turns out there’s a science behind the success of animals (or "visual identifiers," as the marketing analysts call them). While some wine critics may claim they avoid "labels bearing cute animals," the rest of us are drawn to these images almost against our will, according to researchers. Did you pick up that bottle of Syrah because it had a kangaroo, chameleon, or a cute dog or kitty on it? It’s not your fault -– you're a victim of your own "perceptual fluency."
In light of the incredible sway these animals have over us, some mascots may not have been the best selections. Joe Camel, for example, the longtime rep for Camel cigarettes, was no longer depicted in cartoon form due to objections that he appealed to children too effectively, and Budweiser’s Spuds MacKenzie faded into obscurity before anyone noticed that a dog in a Hawaiian shirt was probably not the most appropriate spokes-animal for beer. After all, wouldn’t you rather share a tall one with a creepy penguin?
Suggested Sites...
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Directory categories:
Advertising, Commercials, Pop Culture, Graphic Design, Phonographs |
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Archived under: 19th Century, Advertising, Animals, Anniversaries, Bears, Birds, Brands, Cartoons, Design, Dogs, History, Images, Mascots, Music, Music History, Nostalgia, Records, Society and Culture, TV, Wine |
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Star Trek Pon Farr Perfume: With "Star Trek: The Movie" sweeping the nation's theaters and topping search spikes this week, I suppose we were all just waiting for "Star Trek: The Perfume" to come out. And so it has! Now all you sci-fi loving ladies can wow all the special Spocks and Kirks in your life with "light, clean notes of citrus, blackcurrant, lotus blossom, and water lily." Because nothing spells romance more than smelling like a desperate Vulcan.
Opportunity.gov: Meanwhile, as we humans struggle with our economic crisis, our own Federation is coming to the rescue with Opportunity.gov: a site that provides new educational opportunities to unemployed workers.
Homes for our Troops: In all my years of watching "Star Trek," I can remember only one member of Starfleet ever sustaining a major injury that left him permanently disabled. Even when Spock exposed himself to terrible radiation in order to save the Enterprise's crew at the end of "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn," he still bounced back from his "death" with nary a scratch in "Star Trek III: The Search for Spock." Unfortunately, real life hasn't been as kind to many of our troops returning from Iraq, Afghanistan, or any of our many overseas conflicts. HomesForOurTroops.org raises money and organizes volunteers to help build specially adapted homes for our severely-injured veterans. This is truly a good cause.
GradeGov.com: If you're tired of the government making decisions that you don't agree with, let your voice be heard on GradeGov.com. You can give your elected representatives a letter grade, write them a letter, and read other letters and grades from concerned citizens like yourself. Currently, Louie Gohmert (R. - TX) has garnered a grade of "A-" from his loving constituents, while Bennie G. Thompson (D. - LA) is evidently not feeling so loved with his grade of "F."
Cars for a Grand: Even if we lose our jobs and the government fails us, there's one thing we can be sure will always be around in abundance: used cars. Capitalizing on this fact, CarsForAGrand.com offers exactly what their web address implies: used cars for $1000 or less. You can search by zip code for used, crashed, parts, or restoration project cars, or you can post your own used car listing.
Suggested Sites...
- Issuu - a free magazine-publishing platform that allows users to publish online magazines that are easy and fun to read and interact with.
- Tweetmeme - tracks the most popular and most re-tweeted posts on Twitter.
- Antipodes Map - kind of useless, but kind of fun. Shows you the exact global opposite of any place on Earth.
- Map Your Name - shows on a map the popularity of personal names and family names in the USA, Europe, or Australia.
- Extreme Ice Survey - features photos and time-lapse videos of glaciers and ice caps melting. As featured on Nova.
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Directory categories:
Star Trek Collectibles, U.S. Politics: Surveys and Polls, Automotive Classifieds, Support the Troops, Twitter |
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Archived under: Advertising, Autos, Careers, Collectibles, Democratic Party, Disability, Education, Fanatics, Fragrances, Government, Housing, Issues and Causes, Jobs, Magazines, Media, Military, Names, Nature, Republican Party, Science, Science Fiction, Social Networking, Star Trek, Twitter, Web 2.0, Yahoo! Directory |
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We cruised into the office parking lot in our mint-condition Edsel, blasting Chris Gaines on the stereo, and sipping an ice cold New Coke (from the stockpile we've been hoarding since the '80s), when we suddenly realized something disturbing: We're marketing outsiders.
You see, in our youth, the popular kids scoffed at our "Howard the Duck" lunchbox, our disc film camera, and our Betamax copy of "Hudson Hawk." And maturity didn't improve things. As adults, we've tried to get friends to enjoy our favorite movies ("Gigli," "Showgirls," "Wild Wild West," "Basic Instinct 2") and we tell them about the revolutionary innovations (Segway, Microsoft Bob, boo.com) that are going to change the world. Those looks of skepticism tell us what we already knew -- that we are in a sad minority of consumers who enjoy flops.
The fickle public may not appreciate the genius of Crystal Pepsi, "Cop Rock," and "Battlefield Earth," but there are still some of us who don't think that comparisons to "Ishtar" are insults.
Suggested Sites...
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Directory categories:
Edsel, Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Cola, Worst Films, Worst of the Web |
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Archived under: Advertising, Anniversaries, Autos, Brands, Business, Coca Cola, Disasters, Edsel, Flops, Food and Drink, Marketing, Movies, Pepsi, TV |
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It's a bright and lovely Springtime for the Internet. The lines are a-buzzin', the keyboards are a-clickin', and the engineers are a-innovatin'. Here are a few of my favorite websites to recently emerge...
FreeNapkins.com is the introductory page for an ad network called NapAds owned by JI Worldwide, Inc. They offer free napkins to their network of bars and nightclubs with their clients' logos and advertisements featured in beautiful, full color, "high-definition" graphics. While advertising on napkins is nothing new, creating an ad network which utilizes napkin-space as real estate to be bid on by a variety of different advertisers takes the former Budweiser-logo-on-bar-napkins model to the next level. So, if you happen to be (or know) a bar owner, get in touch with NapAds for some beautiful, free napkins. I wonder what the next commonplace object to be utilized by advertising networks will be ... Dishware? Cigarettes? Condoms (yikes!)? People?
Face.com: Although Face.com is still in alpha testing, I had to give you a little preview of this remarkable new digital image recognition technology. Face.com's Facebook application scans all of the photos in your Facebook account, detects all the faces in them, and then learns to recognize all of the people in those photos so that it can automatically tag those faces with the names of the individuals in the photos. The end result is that you can find your friends in pictures that you didn't know your friends were in. As a Facebook application, it's a fun little novelty, because you don't have to rely on someone hand-tagging a face in a photo in order to know that you or your friend (or even your mother) is in that photo. The image recognition technology used to power this app is pretty astonishing. Imagine what image search engines will be like once the engine is no longer relying on uncertain metadata and can start actually recognizing people, places, and things within the photos. Wow.
For more info on this developing technology, check out the Facial Recognition Systems category in the Yahoo! Directory. Continue reading below for more of my favorite new websites...
Suggested Sites...
- ZooBorns - blog showcasing pictures and video clips of the newest and cutest exotic animal babies from zoos and aquariums around the world.
- Topics - BBC - a full list of topics, nations, people, and subjects from current events and news from the BBC.
- Garden - Sunset.com - online version of the "Sunset Western Garden Book." Includes articles about gardening in the western United States, recipes, and a searchable guide to what plants grow best in your area.
- Watch TED 2009 - watch some really fascinating lectures by some really smart people on all kinds of different fun topics from the 2009 TED (Technology, Entertainment, and Design) Conference.
- Making Home Affordable - program from the Federal Government to help homeowners obtain loans and refinance their current home loans into more affordable monthly payments.
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Directory categories:
Advertising and Promotional Items, Facial Recognition Systems, News and Media Web Directories, Lawn and Garden Information, Buying a Home |
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Archived under: Advertising, Animals, Brands, Business, Creativity, Cyberculture, Design, Education, Gadgets, Gardening, Government, Home and Garden, Housing, In Character, Internet, Invention, Landscaping, Lawn Care, Marketing, Photography, Social Networking, Technology, Yahoo! Directory |
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Besides hosting homeless people and skyscrapers, downtown Los Angeles boasts a special little museum: MoNA, or the Museum of Neon Art. How can a gas, noble though it may be, rate not just one museum, but two? (There’s another one in -- where else? -- Las Vegas.)
Well, for good or ill, neon has become part of pop culture, making Sin City so bright by night that it can lighten up Death Valley. All of this is thanks to the genius of French engineer Georges Claude. On January 19, 1915, Claude passed an electric current through a tube of neon gas to make it glow, thereby inventing the neon lamp. Only seventeen years after neon was discovered in London in 1898, Claude had found a commercial use for it, and patented his invention for use in advertising.
One of the first business to purchase a neon sign -- actually two, for $1250 a pop (over $26,000 each in modern currency) -- was a Packard car dealership in Los Angeles. Across America, neon signs soon multiplied, achieving their ultimate form in New York's Times Square. Advertisements for cigarettes, beer, movies -- and even Internet companies -- have been illuminating Times Square for nearly a century. The Camel sign designed by Artkraft Strauss alone puffed smoke on New Yorkers from 1941 to 1966.
Artkraft Strauss dominated Times Square neon signage for decades, until neon was replaced by digital devices like LEDs, that use up to 90% less energy. Since November, the digital seventeen-story exterior of the new Walgreens has been shining at One Times Square: 250,000 pounds, 341 feet high, 143 feet wide, with 12 million light-emitting diodes on 17,000 square feet -- that’s what it takes to surpass the former behemoth, the puny-by-comparison 11,000-square-foot NASDAQ sign at Broadway and 43rd Street, and cements Times Square's status as the largest outdoor advertising space in the world.
Suggested Sites...
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Directory categories:
Neon Signs, Signage, Art Museums and Exhibits, Neon, Times Square |
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Archived under: 1910s, 1920s, Advertising, Anniversaries, France, Invention, Inventors, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New York, Signs, Times Square |
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