Natural’s Not In It

It's still very strange to hear the Gang of Four on that XBox commercial, or on TV at all really. Maybe it's no stranger than some stuff you might hear on the muzak in Safeway.

Unlogo: computer vision to erase logos [x2]

Peter Kirn posted on a new service in Unlogo Uses Computer Vision to Erase Logos from Your World at Create Digital Motion. Here the intro from Unlogo by Jeff Crouse:

Unlogo Intro from Jeff Crouse on Vimeo.

Update: PopSci discusses something similar from Germany (“Diminished Reality”) in Voodoo Software Removes Objects From Video In Real Time,

Update: see also Brad Larson on object tracking on the iPhone in GPU-accelerated video processing on Mac and iOS.

Mad Men: saturation, psych, and beyond

@StudioDaily noted an insightful BBC blog post by filmmaker Adam Curtis, director of documentaries on desire and fear Century of the Self and The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear, on the real-life advertisers who inspired the TV series Mad Men. See also Meme tracking and the News Cycle; here's an excerpt from Madison Avenue: Experiments in the laboratory of consumerism:

"The widespread fascination with the Mad Men series is far more than just simple nostalgia. It is about how we feel about ourselves and our society today.

In Mad Men we watch a group of people who live in a prosperous society that offers happiness and order like never before in history and yet are full of anxiety and unease. They feel there is something more, something beyond. And they feel stuck.

I think we are fascinated because we have a lurking feeling that we are living in a very similar time. A time that, despite all the great forces of history whirling around in the world outside, somehow feels stuck. And above all has no real vision of the future.

And as we watch the group of characters from 50 years ago, we get reassurance because we know that they are on the edge of a vast change that will transform their world and lead them out of their stifling technocratic order and back into the giant onrush of history.

The question is whether we might be at a similar point, waiting for something to happen. But we have no idea what it is going to be."

Update: some may enjoy The Mad Men Era at The Museum of Advertising.

The PEN story: another YouTube Dilemma

A Filmbot RT Twitter notes The PEN story controversy, which was discussed by PDN in Did Olympus Steal Idea for Viral Ad About EP-1 Camera? (UPDATED) and Gizmodo in Olympus Stop Motion E-P1 Ad Concept Is Clever (Also, Stolen).

This topic ("great artists steal") was discussed with many examples at Creative Review in May; see The YouTube Dilemma for creatives.

Also of note is an open blog ‘you thought we wouldn’t notice’ that's dedicated to pointing out these things (via El Gordo).

Michael Jackson: So 10 days ago.

Michael Jackson, the self-anointed king of pop, was one of the biggest things on the Web. Peter Kafka on All Things Digital now notes that in Web Video Viewers Forget About Michael Jackson, at least the YouTube ones.

Kafka used the video views tracker on TubeMogul illustrate his argument. TubeMogul's analytics package brings statistics to both publishers and gawkers on 15 top video sharing sites; some services are free for non-commercial users.

Others like Silicon Alley Insider pronounced the Jackson meme dead on July 3. Jackson didn't even show up in the top 50 of Google Hot Trends of July 17. Here's Google's average worldwide traffic of "michael jackson" in the last 30 days:

Of course the major networks milked the story until fatigue set in, which spawned comments like This Just In: Michael Jackson, Still Dead. But another observed that Jackson’s demise allowed us "to interact with other people; to turn the news, to use the current jargon, into a ‘social object’." It's unfortunate for 800-1000 million who are slowly dying of hunger that they are social problem not a ‘social object’!

For a related perspective see the recent AEP post Meme tracking and the News Cycle.

Update: for a more serious look at the phenomena see The Man in the Mirror by Chris Hedges on Truthdig.

The YouTube Dilemma for creatives

Via Motionographer is The YouTube Dilemma from Creative Review. Here's an excerpt and example:

"YouTube provides a steady stream of inspiration to advertising creatives, but it also leaves young directors vulnerable to having ideas stolen and agencies open to accusations of plagiarism. How can both directors and agencies protect themselves?"

Photoshop adbusting on Berlin billboards

via Motiongraphr weblog, via Gizmodo, via Notcot.org, etc...

Photoshop adbusting on Berlin billboards

As a bonus, Smashing Magazine organizes and pumps up 50 Stunning Photoshop Text Effect Tutorials.

'They Live' tops fictional-ads-in-sci-fi-movies list

They Live tops the fictional-ads-in-sci-fi-movies list on Den of Geek. They didn't have Idiocracy in their top 10 list though; I would for reasons mentioned here earlier in Idiocracy kool-aid -- red or blue?

Fun details can be found at Den of Geek. Here's a clip from They Live, and remember you got to be good looking cause he's so hard to see:



Den of Geek also has:

Top 50 movie special effects shots
The 24 worst special effects of all time
Drugged! The top 50 trip sequences in movies
Top 10 mindf* movies

PETA Urges Ben & Jerry's to Use Human Breast Milk

from SFist:

"PETA Urges Ben & Jerry's to Use Human Breast Milk"

YVAN EHT NIOJ + Hippie Fantasy

"Yvan Eht Nioj" (Join The Navy) and "The Hippie Fantasy again" are from Season 12 episode 14 of The Simpsons:

Rules of Web Video Advertising

Camcorder.info gives you "The Seven Rules of Effective Video Advertising," which riffs off of a Mashable post, "How to Easily and Inexpensively Create Eye-Popping Video Ads." This is noteworthy since the Mashable author, CEO of auto-clip-art video admaker Jivox, claims:

"Online video advertising is growing at a faster rate than any other type of interactive marketing. And that’s because video advertising works, generating twice the clickthrough rate of banner ads, according to eMarketer. That level of effectiveness is why spending on online video advertising will surge from under $1B in 2007 to over $5B in 2011."

Of course this projection assumes, among other things, that Europe and Asia won't insist on being paid back for the Iraq war, and our own elite hasn't robbed us blind and want to deflate all vestiges of a bubble to get out clean with the loot. Plus, it also depends on how much is bled out through energy payments and if, as Kottke notes, people stopped looking at ads like they did in The Simpsons 'Treehouse of Horror.'

Metrics and viral video redux

As NewTeeVee looks at TubeMogul and Vidmetrix in Emerging Company Category: Video Metrics, and offers Online Video Predictions for 2008, I'm still thinking about who and what are behind various viral videos, as discussed in previous posts Go Viral + a web video swarm and Idiocracy kool-aid -- red or blue?

Stanford grad student Dan Ackerman Greenberg, connected with Stanford's Persuasive Technology Lab, posted techniques for promoting videos in his TechCrunch article The Secret Strategies Behind Many “Viral” Videos. Christopher Herot summarized the article with a handy list in How to Make Your Video Viral - or- The First Law of Holes:

The Obvious:

• Make it short.
• Design for remixing, e.g. Dramatic Hamster.
• Don't make it an outright ad unless it;s as clever as the one for Sony Bravia.
• Make it shocking.
• Use fake headlines.
• Appeal to sex.
• Share the video with your friends on Facebook.
• Set up a Facebook event to promote your video.
• Send the video to a mailing list.
• Tell all your friends and get them to email and share it on Facebook.
• Pick a catchy thumbnail, preferably with a human face in it.

The Clever:

• Make sure the frame in the exact middle of the video is eye-catching, since it will be one of the three grabbed by YouTube.
• Change the thumbnail every few hours.
• If you have more than one video, release all of them simultaneously instead of dribbling them out one at a time.
• Pick unique tags for al you videos so they will show up in each other's 'related' lists.

The Sleazy:

• Pay bloggers to post embedded videos.
• Have your own employees to set up multiple accounts on a forum and start fake conversations with each other.
• Delete negative comments that others make.
• Embed videos in the comments section of people's MySpace pages
• Use a misleading title, with terms such as 'exclusive,' 'behind the scenes,' and 'leaked video.'
• Use an image of a half-naked woman in the thumbnail.
• Once the 48 hour window for 'most viewed' expires, delete the video and reload it.

Adobe track backs

As noted in an earlier post Go Viral + a web video swarm, behavioral tracking is a popular topic among marketeers as companies try to leverage information from data mining (so careful what you click). The hullabaloo on Adobe and Apple partaking in tracking -- as acknowledged by Photoshop product manager John Nack in 3 posts so far-- got me thinking about behavioral targeting again. For more check out Anil Batra's ISP based Behavioral Targeting and Watching What You See on the Web from the Wall Street Journal, though the topic still confuses me.

I was also confused by all the Omni-s: Omni Consumer Products LLC which borrows its name from Robocop was involved in the Idiocracy energy drink, and The Omnicom Group owns Agency.com ran some behavioral marketing project for Adobe. But it's Omniture which collects data from iTunes and CS3 clicks through a tricky domain "2o7.net" (it's an o not a zer0).

Both Mitcho.com and dev.netcetera.org discuss opting out of the schema.

Anyway, there are privacy concerns and even under the current Bush administration the Federal Trade Commission took note, albeit for "self-regulation" with Online Behavioral Advertising Privacy Principles. Maybe Adobe is going to tap revenue streams for services, which was perhaps signaled by the purchase of Scene7. They could leverage existing products a la Bridge Home and the Flash panels, and draw in new customers with free services like Adobe Share and Adobe Media Player plus all the AIR widgets looming on the horizon. The question is still open on which direction the industry in general takes: follow the seemingly hands-off model of Google (expires in 2038) or go brilliant but "evil" like Facebook. GigaOM summarizes many of the issues in How to Safeguard Your Privacy Online.

Update: Wired takes a look at the World's Top Surveillance Societies and a mix of privacy and fear concerns in THREAT LEVEL's Year in Review -- 2007.

The trend in video seems to be "social-networking TV," an electronic panopticon where you can "participate in your own manipulation," as EBN mused.

Update 2: In a funny turn, if you remember the revelation about the pre-9/11 wiretapping by the telecom giants and dark forces, the Democratic National Convention Committee announced their telecom provider for their convention. See DNCC Goes With Qwest.

Update 3: John Dowdell notes a story from the BBC in Underestimating privacy, where "a newspaper columnist said 'oh privacy is overrated' and published his bank account number to prove it." He also notes the scraping friends story from Judi Sohn's Scoble, Facebook & Plaxo: It’s a matter of trust. And fear. Privacy policies may change with the bottom line.

Update 4: John Nack has more from Adobe on the issue.

The Corporation -- another viral video

The Secret Strategies Behind Many “Viral” Videos also reminds me that the film The Corporation was really good, so here's the official grassroots version (iPod/MP4 version); the advertising segment starts around 1:04:35:

and part 2

Go Viral + a web video swarm

Camcorderinfo has a swarm of new posts on web video:

• How to Improve Google Video Search with Sitemaps
  
• Win Money for Your Travel Video on Rtravel
  
• How Video Goes Viral
• YouTube gives realted video a new look
• Guide to Website Analytics: Track Your Video Traffic
• Google Makes YouTube its Own Category

My favorite post of the bunch is How Video Goes Viral, since I enjoyed how Fox has been leveraging viral video to promote a fictional drink from a movie they wouldn't promote (see an earlier spin Idiocracy kool-aid -- red or blue?).

At a recent SF Cutters meeting, it was noted that much of the business of Phoenix Editorial has shifted to web video (especially HD). It seems that companies want to create video that can go viral, which would seem to be the art of astroturfing (as opposed to grassroots). And like the rest of the web, there are exploits to raise ratings (like on Viral Video Chart); see Blackhat Video SEO on Youtube - Boost Video Views for one example. Companies can also deflate as well as inflate; as noted by NPSC Blog: "Another blogger details how the San Francisco Chronicle uses software to continue to display deleted comments to the people who posted them, leaving them completely unaware that their views have been hidden from everyone else that visits the site. Subsequent commenters to the post then reveal that other sites are using similar techniques."

Camcorderinfo's How Video Goes Viral does note some tips on how to propel video into viral territory. These were summarized from an interview from a CNN video show below:

1. Keep the video short.

2. Design the video for remixing like “The Dramatic Hamster” to allow other viewers to customize it.

3. Don’t make the video an outright ad.

4. Make it shocking.

5. Share the video via social networks like MySpace and Facebook and through e-mail lists.



Dan Ackerman Greenberg, the same fellow interviewed by CNN, also posted a detailed article on TechCrunch last month. Here's a very short excerpt from the heavily-commented article, The Secret Strategies Behind Many “Viral” Videos:

"Over the past year, I have run clandestine marketing campaigns meant to ensure that promotional videos become truly viral, as these examples have become in the extreme. In this post, I will share some of the techniques I use to do my job: to get at least 100,000 people to watch my clients’ “viral” videos.

Secret #1: Not all viral videos are what they seem
2. Content is NOT King
3. Core Strategy: Getting onto the “Most Viewed” page
4. Title Optimization
5. Thumbnail Optimization
6. Commenting: Having a conversation with yourself
7. Releasing all videos simultaneously
8. Strategic Tagging: Leading viewers down the rabbit hole
9. Metrics/Tracking: How we measure effectiveness"

The comments on this article were quite lively, for example Fleet Street PR later presented a starker summary of some of Greenberg's other tactics:

• Using fake headlines
• Paying bloggers to post the videos
• Spamming forums on websites
• Spamming peoples' comments on their MySpace pages
• Spamming email lists
• Fake comments by his company on videos to provoke controversy

Check out the ViralBlog and B2BbLead for more on viral marketing in general; they track leading viral companies like GoViral, ViralTracker, The Comotion Group, and Promote Socially. Also, Pam O'Neal Mickelson presents a sober overview and case study on viral marketing in a Vimeo video.

Update: of course marketing goes far beyond viral video -- behavioral targeting of ads and content is really still in its infancy. but still has attracted the attention of the FTC.

Update 2: one investor's alternative...Track your videos and stats properly using TubeMogul.

WGA Strikers & trying to count video streams

As momentum for internet delivery of TV and movies builds, it's clear there's a lot of money and basic rights at stake in the writers' strike. But there are more than a few uncertainties. Reel Pop notes and quotes a Shelly Palmer post on media business site JackMyers.com:

"Who in their right mind thinks that the 'number of video streams per quarter is a readily ascertainable number.' First of all, what is a stream? Is it defined as an open socket between a server and a client? What if the stream is peer-assisted? Does that count? How about progressive downloads that are abandoned before they are viewed in their entirety? Are they considered downloads or streams? What about downloads? Do they count? How about off network plays of previously downloaded material that actually has a reported playcount? Wait … there’s more. How about VOD streams over closed IPTV networks? That’s what the cable industry is about to turn into – technically every one of those plays is a video stream. Does it count if you stream data that updates creative on an HD-DVD or BluRay to change story arch or release additional material that creates a derivative work? I could go on for about thirty pages and not come close to creating a complete list."

Reel Pop has also covered aspects of online usage stats, noting that search for video is also important. Now for balance, here's an explanation of the groundbreaking new deal put in a way writers can understand:

Idiocracy kool-aid -- red or blue?

FreshDV notes reports (Spout Blog, Guardian UK) that "Fox had struck a deal to produce real-life Brawndo, the fictional energy drink that threw the Earth into chaos in Idiocracy, a film that Fox barely released and all but refused to promote." Perhaps part of the reason for all this was that the Fox News brand remained pretty much intact (though more muscular) in the movie's dystopian future.

And as The Chutry Experiment notes, Fox and pals are "going full steam ahead to market Brawndo using viral videos on YouTube, a Brawndo website, and other social networking tools. And, yes, you can 'friend' Brawndo on Facebook and MySpace." Sort of reminds me how The Merry Pranksters kool-aid was re-branded by the SF People's Temple at Jonestown. The Brawndo episode also comes from San Francisco, this time from Omni Consumer Products LLC which borrows its name from Robocop.

By the way, design in Idiocracy was fun; see "The graphic design of Mike Judge's Idiocracy" at SpeakUp and Idiocracy is Reality at graphpaper.com (which notes the "flat buns" burger commercial). Seen at the left is the movie's US President -- a porn star and wrestling champ -- at the "House of Representin'", which is sponsored by Pepsi. The Cabinet is sponsored by Carl's Jr, which devolved a new tag line, “F$#k you! I’m eating!” Video segments can be found via YouTube and Google.

At this point you really can't be sure who's zooming who. As shown at FreshDV, the Brawndo attempt to go viral mimics both Ideocracy and this viral video (one viewing is more than enough):

And here's a segment from The Daily Show on Brawndo's sister 'Cocaine Energy Drink':

Electronic Behavior Control System

Emergency Broadcast Network (Joshua Pearson) has had their ground-breaking audiovisual 1994 album Telecommunications Breakdown and more online for awhile, but it's still pretty fresh. Some of the same material and more from another member of EBN is available at GregDeocampo.com (a founder of the Company of Science and Art , CoSA).

The EBN videos were all done in early versions of Premiere and After Effects; my favorite is "Electronic Behavior Control System," second in series playing below. To participate in your own manipulation, hit the forward button to advance right to this video. video via the Audiovisual Blog.

Hacks v. Flacks

Beet.TV has an short section of a 10-month old interview with Chris Anderson of Wired about video and "the long tail." The original interview, available as parts 1 & 2, was quite good.

Beet's actual topic though was commentary and links on a skirmish between journalists (“hacks”) and publicists (“flacks”), this time after Anderson published flack e-mail addresses he blocked. It's an interesting way to peek into those worlds. Anderson himself followed up, and even the New York Times jumped in to downplay damage to PR -- but at least giving Sheldon Rampton and PR Watch rare coverage.

Bottom of the barrel metaphor

Bill Moyers talks with "two partners of Triglyceride Investments, a private equity fund that recently announced its intention of combining the assets of all the hedge funds on Wall Street in order to bring under a single canopy of ownership every media outlet in America. Their prospectus contends that the handful of big media companies that control most of what you see, hear, and read cannot possibly produce maximum return on investment as long as each has to field its own army of lobbyists in Washington.

If only one holding company instead of four or five controlled all the country's radio and television stations and all of its cable, newspaper, and Internet outlets, eliminating the need for the competitive purchase of politicians, the savings on campaign contributions alone would increase the bottom line tenfold.

Not the least of their argument is that since our present media system and Washington so closely mirror each others' interests, it could even be possible to close down the government altogether and have the country run by Wall Street, saving huge sums of money now spent on perpetuating an impression to the contrary. Joining me are Andy Bichlbaum, the chairman of Triglyceride Investments, and his partner, Mike Bonanno, chief executive of their offshore subsidiary, Tsetse Media Inc., with headquarters in the Marianas Islands."