Guaranteed to be Vain & Vapid™ or double your money back.
How do you promote a site that’s about dressing like a grown up? By taking a bizarre 1964 audio recording of LBJ ordering custom slacks from one of the Haggars then adding even weirder animated video that makes it palatable to today’s attention-deficit audiences. Comic genius.
Put This On: LBJ Buys Pants from Put This On on Vimeo.
Our ISP Webpass upgraded the onsite equipment recently so our connection got even faster. Miracle upon miracle, they didn’t raise prices either.
Top Gear series 16 launches next Sunday on BBC2. Should be a televised Mylanta moment for the nauseating Americanized version we’ve endured these past nine weeks. Now if BBC Worldwide would release the rumored North American iPlayer already. I’ll gladly fork over the subscription fee to avoid those pain-in-the-ass torrents.
In this week’s BusinessWeek, CEO Ivan Seidenberg admits that Verizon never had a shot at getting the iPhone originally because Apple was concentrating on deploying the same GSM hardware worldwide. It’s gratifying to see someone finally admit that story about how the carrier wouldn’t cede customer service, etc. is little more than a lie pushed by Verizon PR flaks. Though I’m highly amused that the idiot Joe Nocera got duped into publishing the fiction again the day after BusinessWeek’s interview broke. Also, Nocera’s assertion that Verizon iPhone customers will need to visit a Verizon store for service rather than an Apple Genius bar is laughable.
I don’t get why the press–particularly the NY Times–has decided to stereotype AT&T as inept and Verizon as infallible. Over the years, I’ve had both regular phones and smart phones on AT&T, Sprint and Verizon. None struck me as notably better than the other. My calls dropped on all three. I found dead zones with all three. None came close to perfection. Barely tolerable seems the nature of the cellular beast.
Right now, I’ve got an iPhone with AT&T. But I’ve also got Verizon service in the form of my car’s telematic system. The BMW has a built-in cellular radio independent of the bluetooth connection that lets me make calls with my phone. I can just punch a button and talk to reps who look up phone numbers, provide directions, place an emergency call, etc. Or I can open a data connection to search Google, look up headlines and get weather forecasts. Most car makers offer an equivalent, OnStar et al. The BMW Assist service happens to run on Verizon. In California, the reliability sucks.
At least 25% of the time, pushing the button results in just dead silence. No connection. The odds of failure jump dramatically when I’m near a major freeway (my office is less than a block from the SF anchorage of the Bay Bridge so I’m near a major freeway a lot) or around afternoon rush hour. And the problems aren’t just in SF. I couldn’t get a connection despite trying for a good 20 minutes one Saturday night in the middle of Century City. Given that it’s LA, where I was visiting, being able to get directions would have been very helpful.
Data is more reliable but the connection is dog slow. Searches that take maybe 30 seconds on the AT&T iPhone will take three or more minutes through the car’s Verizon system. But it’s easier–and likely safer–to use the iDrive for input so I put up with it.
All of which is a long way of making the point that all the cell networks suck. And if you think that Verizon offering the iPhone will change anything, you’re as big of an idiot as Joe Nocera.
U.K. clients must be more adventurous than the risk-averse MBAs we get in the U.S. Not that it makes this oddball spot for Renault subsidiary Dacia comprehensible.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Arizona Shootings Reaction | ||||
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Jon Stewart, as usual, seems to be one of the few with an appropriate reaction to the weekend’s tragedy in Arizona.
Future as in the next two years. The Republicans took over the majority of the House this week and immediately started their pointless grand standing. Not that reading the US Constitution is without point. On the contrary, my issue is, as usual, with the way they did it. All for the cameras and the 30 second news blurbs. Typical for any religious zealots, they left out the parts they don’t like anymore. Can’t risk references to slavery slipping into the 24-hour news cycle. Worse, the caucus demonstrated the futility of this exercise by not noticing when two articles were skipped and running for the exits before the reading was finished. Even new Speaker Boehner essentially said the exercise was pointless when he held his weekly news conference while the reading was still in progress. Blowhards. Posers. Hypocrites. Buffoons. Should be a fun 24 months.
Starbucks announced a logo refresh today. I hesitate to append the term new, as other pundits are, since the update basically just drops the surrounding circle, English words and two-color registration requirements. While I’m sure a lot of blowhards will fire from the hip with hate, I think Starbucks has done a nice job.
First, it’s tied to the company’s upcoming 40th anniversary. Seems appropriate to recognize such an event with a visual update.
Second, they are pre-announcing it rather than springing the change on customers and more importantly employees. Giving audiences time to get used to it in advance.
Third, they debuted a page with Howard Schultz explaining the thinking and rationale.
All in all, I can see this becoming a text book example of how to move a brand forward.
The refreshed mark also accomplishes some points that Schultz didn’t address in the video. I think dropping the words in the circular band is very significant. For one, it moves Starbucks beyond a single language. The image mark will communicate the brand name as the swoosh does for Nike or the three-point star for Mercedes Benz. No translation needed on the increasingly important global stage. And as I alluded above, using just one color where previously two were required will cut printing costs. Given the number of paper cups Starbucks must blow through everyday globally, that had to be a factor.
Well done Starbucks. Other brands should take note.
January third, twenty eleven. That’s twenty eleven.
Why is it that the hate mail always, and I do mean always, has at least one typo or grammatical flub?
I shouldn’t question because they make it that much easier to just delete and/or ban the IP address.