CAMBRIDGE—It’s 10:00 am and already the man in suspenders has captivated his audience. But another star is now shining bright. Marc Davis, Social Media Guru at Yahoo and a graduate of the Media Studies program at MIT, is talking about mobile media in a panel on the topic at this, the second annual Futures of Entertainment conference. Davis says Nokia figured it out. In fact, their N95 phone isn’t a phone at all, it’s …
Writing Their Way Out of the Problem
You'd think the WGA--with a membership of thousands of entertainment writers--would muster a creative approach to garner support for their cause. And they have. No word from the producers and studios yet. My guess is they're puzzling over the script. …
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Reporting Live from MIT’s Media Lab
CAMBRIDGE—Sally Hogshead, author of Radical Careering, says we have much to gain by aspiring to be the dumbest person in the room. I think I may have achieved her lofty goal today, as I’ve surrounded myself with brainiacs at MIT—students, teachers and people from industry engaged in delivering and absorbing the densest information available on convergent media culture. The Bartos Theater lobby in the Wiesner …
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Schoenie Keeps ’em Guessing
That other Boulder agency, tda advertising & design, found a way to do something good on behalf of a local car lot. And that ain't easy (unless it's spec, then it is). [via Adfreak's YouTube page] …
Because God Really Wants A Bigger Logo
Okay, it's a really long story, but basically I'm working on an assignment for funeral service memorials. And one of the 'deliverables' is a prayer card in which customers can choose from one of a number of pre-determined prayers (i.e., The Lord's Prayer, An Irish Blessing, some poems, etc.). The problem is, most of these prayers won't fit on the prayer cards. So here was one of the AE's suggestions to the …
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PepsiCo Charts Path To Sustainable Future
We tend not to think of a firm like PepsiCo as a change agent. Yet, when you consider what they're up to in rural Arizona, that title applies. International Herald Tribune is running a story about the greening of a Frito-Lay's factory in Casa Grande, south of Phoenix. Frito-Lay is embarking on an ambitious plan to change the way this factory operates, and in the process, create a new type of snack: the …
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All’s Quiet On The Entertainment Keyboard
According to Toronto's Globe & Mail, several blogs that cover the entertainment beat have "gone dark" to support the WGA writers who are presently out on strike. Blogs like The CineManiac and Media Pundit didn't actually shut down or run black pages. Instead, they ran statements in support of the strike in place of their regular content, which in most cases consists of industry chatter about whose show has been …
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WOM Is Booming
According to Ad Age, word-of-mouth spending has increased from $76 million in 2001 to $981 million in 2006 and is expected to grow to approximately $3.7 billion by 2011. Still, the discipline accounted for just 0.4% of the share in the $254 billion marketing-services category, a grouping that includes direct marketing, branded entertainment and public relations, among others. If PQ Media's analysis is correct, …
