Captain Digital

Random musings on politics, society, and pop culture from the Internet's marketing curmudgeon.

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Marketing, Advertising & Branding

Lingere. Logic. And Lightbulbs.

Um...yeah.

Are you a woman? If not, do you know any women? Let me put this another way…are you a woman (or do you know any women) who, from time to time, buy…um…undergarments? Well, if so, I have an idea that might make that experience a little easier (for the women, anyway). And less painful for the men in their lives. Because is mama ain’t happy…

Here’s the deal. Most women have, shall we say, “strong feelings” about the experience of buying underwear. And if by “strong feelings” you understand me to mean “hate with a passion usually reserved for recent ex-boyfriends, root canals, and income tax audits” then we’re on the same page. Yes, fellow males of the world, women HATE to shop for underwear. Now I’m sure that there are SOME women out there who don’t hate it. We have a name for such women. We call them “Victoria’s Secret Runway Models.” But, I digress…

[Read more…] about Lingere. Logic. And Lightbulbs.

Directorial Excess.

King Long.I watched a lot of movies over the holidays. I’m a movie fan. At one time, I’d watch almost anything, just to try and learn something about telling a story visually. I’d even watch a bad movie, just to see how truly bad it could get. (For the record, the worst movie I ever voluntarily sat through on my own dime was Gas, a little comedy opus on the gas crisis of the 70’s. I don’t think Donald Sutherland put THAT one on his resume.)

But, I digress. As I’ve studied editing, lighting, directing, screenwriting, scoring and so forth, I’ve been struck by how some movies can go so very wrong. I’m also struck by the fact that good directors are allowed to bend the rules of storytelling, because of studio indulgence – and how bad directors keep getting hired to helm movies they have no business directing. [Read more…] about Directorial Excess.

A Captive Audience.

This is the FBI. We're here to annoy you. I don’t watch a lot of movies any more. I used to. There was a time that I’d go see 10 or 12 movies in a month, if I could. It would be easy to explain away my change in habit…I’m married, I’ve got a young daughter, my wife doesn’t like theatres (she doesn’t like the volume cranked up), theatre audiences are rude, tickets are too expensive, and on and on. But None of that explains why I don’t rent a lot of movies. No, I don’t have HBO, Skinemax, or Stars at home. In fact, I’ve got the equivalent of “expanded basic” on my satelite dish. Nope, the reason is the way movie studios choose to burn their DVDs. Strange, you say? Read on… [Read more…] about A Captive Audience.

G. vs. E.

G vs. EOpposites are funny things. When I was a kid, I was an avid comic book reader. My favorite back then was Superman. A number of the Superman plotlines revolved around someone called “Bizzaro Superman” who lived on Bizzaro Earth, as I recall. There, everything was backwards. When Bizzaro Superman came to (our) Earth, he did everything backwards, at least from our point of view. (Stay with me…this is going somewhere.)

The problem is that sometimes opposite and backwards are two completely different concepts. The opposite of open is close. The opposite of dark is light. If you wanted to do something “backwards” you’d enter a room and turn off the light, and turn it on when you leave. However, consider the concept of “love.” The opposite of love isn’t hate – it’s indifference. If I love something, that means I care passionately about it. If I hate it, the same is true (different emotion – same intensity). If I stop loving something, I simply cease to care…therfore the opposite of love is indifference. [Read more…] about G. vs. E.

Pay Attention.

When I was a kid, I lost count of the times my father (mother, teacher, adult, grandparent, etc.) said “Pay Attention!” to me. Not that it mattered. I’ve always been something of a dreamer. It’s where I get my best ideas. Anyway, it seems that they were onto something. Attention, I mean.

It goes something like this…no matter how rich or how poor, how powerful or how weak, how young or how old, there is one common denominator in all our lives. Time. Each of us has the same 24 hours per day – no more, no less. How we spend this time is what occupies our waking hours. When I was a kid, time was a pretty simple thing to manage – get up, eat breakfast, go to school, come home, do homework, eat dinner, go to bed. What free time I had, I could choose to read (my personal favorite) or watch one of three TV channels, or listen to a handful of radio stations. Occasionally, I could go to see a movie or a play. That was about it. Now consider my daughter. This seven-year-old is growing up in a world with hundreds of satelite TV channels, ditto for satelite radio. Add to that dozens of magazines, CDs, DVDs, podcasts, MP3s and a host of other stiumuli. She has literally hundreds more choices in entertainment than I had at her age.

Pause with me for a nanosecond. [Read more…] about Pay Attention.

Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam…

I don’t want to get off on a rant here (with apologies to Dennis Miller), but I feel compelled to say a few words about SPAM. I’m not talking about the all-purpose food from the fine folks at Hormel, nor am I making a Monty Python reference. No, gentle reader, I’m talking about unsolicited email, and nefarious bastards that are behind the practice. Unlike the Feds “we don’t know how to define spam, but we’ll know it when we see it,” I can define it. It is the moral equivalent of 4th class advertising. Unsolicited, unwanted, and unnecessary. Ever wonder why you get so many unsolicited ads in your (snail) mail box? Because they are A) cheap to send, and B) work.

Pause with me for a nanosecond. [Read more…] about Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam…

Yelling “Movie!” in a crowed firehouse.

How Weird, Stern.In January 2006, The “King of All Media” (a.k.a. Howard Stern) moves his blue humor act from terrestrial radio to Sirius satellite radio.

Yawn.

I don’t know about you, but I’m not going to hold my breath that Sirius is going to see some huge uptick in sales, as Stern-iacs sign up for satelite radio to get their daily fix. (A) I don’t care, and (B) I know something Sirius doesn’t.

Consider parents with a youngster who suddenly discovers that he can get a rise out of his parents when he uses a “bad” word. What happens? Well, in my family, the child is told “we don’t approve of that kind of language.” If the language persists, the punishment begins. Eventually (even in families that equate a lack of discipline with “loving” the child) the novelty of the bad word wears off. Eventually, the child must either give up, or look for an even more shocking word. Eventually, even that falls flat, and the child has nothing left to do for an encore.

Pause with me for a nanosecond.

[Read more…] about Yelling “Movie!” in a crowed firehouse.

Monkey #3.

Monkey #3One of my favorite stories concerns scientist studying monkeys. As the story goes, there’s an observation room with some one-way glass, overlooking a room where the experiment is carried out. In the room there is metal plate on the floor, in the center of the room, which can be electrified to deliver a mild, but somewhat painful shock. Suspended above the metal plate by way of a string, is a bunch of bananas. [Read more…] about Monkey #3.