At least it was, about a month ago.

It should come as no surprise that “disaster marketing” has just as much impact as any other type of marketing effort that’s out there. In fact, media outlets know that when it comes to selling a story, there is absolutely nothing that will do it quite like news of impending doom.

Once disaster strikes, it’s nearly impossible to avoid coverage of the event in the media. Every outlet sets up some sort of task force comprised of elite, special forces trained… journalists to cover all aspects of the event in order to protect YOU THE PUBLIC. Well, until the next story hits anyways. As far as the media is concerned, it seems that the ability to strike fear into the public only lasts as long as the public’s attention span.

Look at the most recent episode of global fear-mongering: The H1N1 virus, somewhat erroneously identified as “Swine Flu” – which you can also thank the media for. The H1N1 virus is actually a potential variant of a virus that has shown to be endemic in humans and birds (as well as in swine). But I guess the Avian Flu (H5N1) trend was too “2007″, so the decision was to go hog-chic this time around.

So H1N1 was destined to destroy the world. The flu pandemic caused so much fear in fact that thousands of pigs were slaughtered, under the mistaken impression that it would help to stem the spread of the flu, despite a lack of evidence that any pigs were even infected to begin with. Masks were donned, reminiscent of the SARS outbreak a few years ago. Schools closed. Travel stopped. Bacon afficionados wept. News stations promised round-the-clock updates and “front line” reports the minute they occurred. It seemed like we were all in for an era of trepidation not seen since the Black Plague.

Well, until American Idol announced their winner anyways. In fact, even before that, people simply started to lose interest in the swine flu outbreak. At least on this side of the Atlantic. Search inquiries started to drop around the beginning of the month (link). But… how could people be so willing to throw caution to the wind like that? The entire population is at risk! Millions could die!

Well as it turns out, to date less than 100 fatalities have been recorded since the pandemic began (source). In comparison, the flu (multiple strains) kills tens of thousands of people per season (though precise numbers are hard to determine). So, while the spread of the virus still remains a concern, the public’s beginning to see that there really wasn’t as much to fear as they were first told.

In fact, there’s probably much, MUCH more to fear from the still-deepening financial crisis that’s occurring across the globe. But it’s a lot easier to convey the effects of a flu bug to the public, than it is to explain the effects of toxic mortgages, derivatives, and the parallel banking system. Hell, I’ll freely admit I don’t completely understand it myself. I just fished out those terms from Wikipedia.

So I guess if we want our next fear-fix, we’ll have to wait for the next potentially crippling disease, natural disaster, bee dissappearance, or Coldplay album release to make its way to the newswire.

They have the ability to lie dormant for years, re-activated for any one of a thousand strange reasons. Maybe you’re at a party and someone whistles 3 or four notes that force you to stop and try and remember their origin for days. Or perhaps you’ve heard someone utter a cryptic pop-culture phrases like “Where’s the Beef?” or “Mikey Likes It!”. Whatever the reason, there’s a good chance that if you grew up in front of the boob tube, part of your subconscious is now permanently etched with countless slogans and catchphrases used to market just about everything, from Ketchup to Cars.

Think you’re different? Think your psyche’s been cleansed for the better? …

(I’m sure just those 3 videos, or any of the ones linked above, will no doubt cause a 3 hour YouTube session. You can thank me later.)

This was just a fun little post. There’s no deep analysis here. No probing question for you all to chew on. Except for maybe one. Despite their overall quality, what makes these old ads so … “appealing” 10, 20, or 30 years down the road? What is it about nostalgia that makes us praise and treasure something that was seemingly worthless and annoying (regardless of how catchy it was) when it was created?. Further, which ones are destined to become the next batch of guilty pleasures that will make future generations question their own sanity?

A friend of mine recently sent across a link to an ad for the new Pomegranate Phone.

Now, you could be a party pooper and fire the appropriate term into Google, rendering the need to read the rest of this post null and void. But for the remaining 1 or 2 readers, play along if you will.

The Pomegranate Phone

I’ll keep this post relatively short, because there’s a fair amount of buzz out there about this particular ad. The usual camps have precipitated out, and the debate will rage on for a few days or so whether or not the ad accomplished its goal. I took the time to explore the ad, never having heard of the phone in the first place, and I think if you go into it with that mindset, you’ll be all the more entertained.

I’ll post again shortly with some followup once the buzz has died down.

Back in 2002, the individuals behind Clueless Mailers distributed a massive diagram that illustrated just how endemic the problem of spam really is. For the first time, you could actually see how various networks connected and collaborated with one another across the globe, to ensure that you had an endless supply of messages in your inbox promising you untold Nigerian fortunes and more manhood than you can shake a stick at… so to speak.

Click to check out the full version of the map

Well, there’s now an updated version that you can access at Spamworld which uses the Google Maps API to track known IPs of networks that contribute to spam traffic on the Internet, in real time (There are other lists out there, but it’s difficult to glean where their numbers are coming from). Looking at the map, it’s not that surprising to see a large number of spam coming from Asia. Which is not to say that the Asian populace is being shady on purpose. It’s merely that there are a lot more people there, and hence the opportunity to set up a relevant infrastructure is that much higher. Almost 2300 IPs carry spam traffic from Turkey, which is almost equivalent to the number from China. Equally strange is the absence of information out there that attempts to explain why.

Perhaps there a lot of server clusters in Turkey that are unwittingly being used by bots and other computer networks as a relay point for spam from elsewhere. Perhaps it’s a viable economic venture for a small group of people in Turkey that have figured out how to exploit the system. Who knows for sure?

But it gets a little weirder than that. Try doing a Google Search for TurkTelecom (Search for “TTnet” – I’ll leave the actual URL off of here) and see what happens. On the first page of results you get links for:

- A Chinese Parts Manufacturer
- A forum about the Nissan Twin Turbo
- A few Training Networks
- An Internet Services Company that has a rock band … or something
- A Textile Company
- The Mongolian Embassy (which,… strangely is linked from the proper TTnet parent domain)

It’s only when you get to page 2 that you actually hit anything that resembles the TTnet site. You’ll also find the Wikipedia entry for the site, which is an orphaned article that has very little info. It has an Alexa rating below the 5000 mark, making it one of the top 5000 visited sites in the world (to put this into perspective, a site like Wired.com falls just over the 1000 mark, whereas McDonalds.com is over the 8000 mark).

It’s an interesting little paradox. This prolific hermit of a entity phases in and out of existence depending on how you look at it.

The only thing that’s missing from that title is some reference to the Swine Flu and the NHL playoffs.

But, SEO-friendly titles aside *ahem*, I just wanted to fire off a quick post about a group of people that decided to say and do something about a recent article that made it’s way into the limelight:

This article was quite typical of those that most certainly got parents everywhere ready to voice their discontent at yet another evil demon of the internet.

However, as reported on Apohenia, this was merely an example of the media grabbing a snippet of information and running with it in order to garner more readers/consumers. Not really a shock there, hm? Anyways, if interested, be sure to check out the article in the Apophenia post which provides data that contradicts the study that the media latched onto initially.

In the last post, I attempted to guess at the future of advertising with respect to the gaming experience. I suggested a scenario whereby you’d be able to order a pizza while playing a game, without ever having to leave the gamespace. Well, it turns out that this was in fact attempted (sort of) by Sony and Pizza Hut back in 2005. While playing EverQuest II, as a player you could enter a command into the system which would then bring up the Pizza Hut website.

This is not exactly what I had mind, as all this really does is launch a web browser which is outside the game world. But it was certainly a step in the right direction. Merging elements of real life into the game environment is something that’s evolved over the last few years, and it’s been met with equal amounts of positive and negative feedback from both consumers and game developers. The major concern amongst the gaming community is that the inclusion of marketing material into a game detracts from its creative value; if you put an ad for Coke or Pepsi into a game, the entire game essentially becomes one giant advertisement. On the other hand, the industry has to be open to different revenue models that will allow it to remain competitive. At the end of the day, someone has to get compensated. So where’s the middle ground?

Well, there are some companies that have been trying to strike a balance. IBM, SonyBMG (there’s that name again), and Nike among others have all set up permanent residence within SecondLife, an online world which has been eluding a specific definition since its inception in 2003.

Once a brand makes a transition like this into a virtual world, it changes in a way that marketers and gamers don’t fully understand yet. If you walk into a store “in the real world”, you interact with a brand. It’s the goal of advertising to make this happen (in order to facilitate a transaction). If you “walk” into a store in SecondLife, the distinction between marketing and brand-interaction becomes blurred. If you end up making a transaction, the experience is really no different than if you walked into a physical store.

The difference between SecondLife and other online worlds however, is that SecondLife has no inherent storyline. There’s no plot distract from, which makes advertising seem less intrusive. It’s almost part of the experience itself. The open ended nature of many modern online games allows for the same kind of “freedom” when it comes to in-game ads. As players find themselves in between a particular set of tasks within the game, they usually congregate in common areas, which provide prime opportunities for advertisers to engage them. At this point, it’s merely up to the advertisers to do what they’ve always been tasked with doing: Provide consumers with an engaging message that persuades them to [trans]act. This doesn’t mean billboards and banners, which seem to be the predominant form of IGA (in game ads) right now. This means being as immersed within the game world as the gamers are. This means understanding their behaviour, and responding to it in a way that is as engaging as the game itself.

An example of such behaviour involves something as simple as traveling within the game world. One of the more tedious aspects of online gaming involves plodding/flying/otherwise moving from place to place. Such a thing can take several minutes, hours, or in some cases, days. So what if a company like RedBull offered an in-game service that would take the player to their desired destination (giving them wings as it were… sorry) for a nominal price (real or virtual)?

Makes sense, no?