Tuesday, October 17, 2006

If NJ finds a right to marry…

Conventional wisdom has it that if NJ rules in favor of gay marriage, all bets are off in the coming election; the Right will be reinvigorated and motivated to turn out in droves.

I don’t think so. I think just as plausibly the left will be so motivated that it will turn out in droves:

The state Supreme Court is expected within the next week to rule on the legality of same-sex marriage. If the court rules for the plaintiffs in the case, known as Lewis v Harris, New Jersey would be the second state in the country to allow such unions.

Several legal scholars and political insiders expect the court - known to be among the more activist in the country on social issues and individual rights - to find that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry in the state.

I just do not believe that people are as moved by this as all those elections have seemed to indicate.

Not a paint ad

From Sony, an ad with its own RSS feed. Watch it. More here, here, here, here, here and here. Remember balls?

The iPod story: short and sweet

Wired News has a nice telling of the birth of the iPod. About that name:

The iPod name came from an earlier Apple project to build an internet kiosk, which never saw the light of day. On July 24, 2000, Apple registered the iPod name for “a public internet kiosk enclosure containing computer equipment,” according to the filing.

“The name ‘iPod’ makes much more sense for an internet kiosk, which is a pod for a human, than a music player,” said Athol Foden, a naming expert and president of Brighter Naming of Mountain View, California.

But Foden said the name is a stroke of genius: It is simple, memorable and, crucially, it doesn’t describe the device, so it can still be used as the technology evolves, even if the device’s function changes. He noted the “i” prefix has a double meaning: It can mean “internet,” as in “iMac,” or it can denote the first person: “I,” as in me.

“They discovered in their tool chest of registered names they had ‘iPod,’” he said. “If you think about the product, it doesn’t really fit. But it doesn’t matter. It’s short and sweet.”

A GOP Mission: save America’s most-endangered senator

LATimes:

It is a four-alarm fire for conservatives, who are bringing water buckets from all corners of the political world. Across Pennsylvania, pastors are preparing to stuff voter guides into their Sunday bulletins. In Washington, D.C., Paul Weyrich, a national conservative leader, hosted a conference call to give a pep talk to Republicans in Pennsylvania. In England, some Santorum fans are planning to cross the Atlantic to help campaign.

“I think it’s important for people across the country to recognize how important it is not only to pay attention but to get engaged in this race, whatever way they can,” said Colin Hanna, head of Let Freedom Ring, a conservative group based in Pennsylvania. “If Rick Santorum were to lose, it would be cited as a turning point in the social conservative movement.”

Uh huh. It will.

Commercial culture

The future of advertising, attraction then promotion:

In some ways, marketers on these sites are treated just like any other member. On MySpace they can have a profile page and a group of friends. Facebook allows marketers to use a feature that lets any member create a group that other members can join.

Advertisers can add features to their MySpace profiles and Facebook group pages like video clips, quizzes, downloadable goodies like ring tones, and, of course, links to their own Web sites.

These approaches run the risk of generating a sour reaction from the online community if site members feel marketers are going too far in trying to fit in.

The risk is not advertising, it’s bad advertising. Young people have always embraced ad campaigns that speak to them. In fact, we all like advertising; we want advertising; we even need advertising. We don’t know it because we’ve been overwhelmed with ad clutter, ads that assault and interrupt us and irrelevant ads. Advertising can’t get away with that anymore and so must learn another way.

Unilever, for example, has turned its Axe deodorant into the No. 1 brand in less than four years by promising to help men attract more women. This spring it created a promotion around a group it called Gamekillers - people who get in the way of a seduction, like a guy with a British accent who gets all the attention. The pitch is that Axe helps men stay cool in the face of the Gamekillers.

The campaign included an hourlong program on MTV and a page on MySpace devoted to the topic, with message boards where people could trade complaints and tips about Gamekillers. Its online host was Christine Dolce, a busty model who was already a celebrity thanks to MySpace, where she has accumulated more than a million friends. [...]

As they start to build up advertising sales operations, the social networking sites are starting to develop offerings that let marketers take advantage of some of their features.

For example, Chase has a promotion on Facebook that implicitly uses a person’s friends to endorse its credit cards. When people join the Chase “+1” group on Facebook, they see a list of their other friends who have joined the group. The program gives members points when they do things like apply for a card and get others to sign up. Those points can be redeemed for prizes, donated to charity or given to other friends on Facebook.