All-Star Tuesday: One Year Later

About a year ago, I was fortunate enough to attend last year's MLB All-Star Game in Anaheim.  Yesterday I was fortunate enough to liveblog the Home Run Derby, which featured an exciting, last-ups victory complete with a record number of home runs hit in the final round by the Yankees' Robinson Cano.  Just when I was beginning to think of the #HRDerby as dull and repetitive, they come back with an exciting nailbiter - kind of like how whenever MythBusters starts to get too stuffy and science-y, they pull out a sequence featuring Kari Byron running through some obstacle course or something.

And yet even after all the fun I had last year, and all the fun the fans in attendance have, and all the fun players appear to be having on the field, getting the chance to fraternize with the best and brightest in the sport, there's still a contingent arguing that the All-Star Game is obsolete?  Because of TV ratings?  Come on!  Everybody knows that TV ratings only exist for the benefit of advertisers and every advertiser knows that the climate of the industry is gravitating away from the 30-second TV spot and towards more new-age, interactive means of reaching consumers.

The All-Star Game is about so much more than TV ratings and showcasing the world's best commercials (the same cannot be said for events of other major sports).  It's all the things Mr. Fetter notes in his "Atlantic" article: a break from the grueling baseball season, and a (better) way to decide home field advantage in the World Series (than simple alternation).  But it's also about so much more.  It's about... well, I won't spoil it in the opening; you'll have to hit the jump to find out.

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I Pledge Allegiance to the Ads: The Cannes Lions Festival

As anyone even remotely interested in the Advertising Industry should know, it's time for the Cannes Lions  International Festival of Creativity (formerly the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival, but who wants to limit themselves these days?). As you read this, all the biggest of wigs from the most prestigious ad agencies around the world are gathering in the South of France for awards presentations, workshops, networking, partying, and general patting each other on the backs behavior.

And why not? Advertising is a $300 billion industry. It's the driving force behind what we watch on TV (and why it comes on when it does), what we see on billboards as we drive through the city, what we have to click through while we surf the web, what we hear during the breaks in our Internet radio stations, and what we have to avoid accidentally hitting with our thumbs while we use our mobile phones. It determines pop-cultural phenomena and, whether we like to admit it or not, seriously impacts our actions.

You hear it all the time: advertising is manipulation. But doesn't advertising make use of art (and creativity)? And isn't it true that all art is manipulation - of the mechanisms which trigger human emotion, (to paraphrase Robert Downey Jr. in Tropic Thunder)? But in advertising all that artistic and creative energy is used with the express purpose of supporting the machine of capitalism. Does that preclude advertising from being considered as a true art form? Probably. Does it make ads in themselves any less creative? Not in the slightest.

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The Butterfly Effect of the NFL Lockout

Is football too big to fail? It’s long since surpassed the baseball as America’s national pastime. Last fall, a regular season football game between the New Orleans Saints and the Pittsburgh Steelers beat Game Four of the World Series in overnight ratings. Though folks like Seth Everett (formerly of ESPN’s Baseball Today podcast) will tell you that baseball is best judged by local not national ratings, you simply can’t deny football’s dominance when it’s beating out the championships of other sports.

Football may not be so dominant this year, however.

The NFL recently instituted a lockout after the league and players failed to see eye to eye on a new collective bargaining agreement. If this were a sports blog, I’d delve into why the owners and players disagree ($$$, the proposed addition of two regular season games, $$$, etc.), but we’re not so I won’t.

I’ll just boil it down: if the two sides can’t reach an agreement, there won’t be football this year!

And it isn’t just the millionaire players and owners who’ll feel its absence.

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Super Bowl Commercials 2011: A Tremendous Display of Blatant Capitalism!

"You know, I think I'm paying more attention to the commercials than to the actual game. I need to reverse that."

This was a comment I overheard during Super Bowl XLV. And while this is never the scenario a football fan envisions during their sport's biggest broadcast of the year, I can't say I could find fault with his initial reaction. At the time, the game was looking like it would turn into a blowout (a situation that was thankfully rectified later on) and each 30-second spot was garnering laughter and cheers from the audience.

Which is to be expected. When a company is shelling out up to $100,000 per second of airtime, the marketing folks had better have what it takes to steal the show. Many of these companies brought their A-Games, saturating the screen with arrangements of color and light and sound designed to stimulate the highest possible desire to buy their products.

I, for one, enjoyed watching some of the higher-echelon commercials, but they didn't inspire in me a desire to buy - they only inspired in me a desire to blog about commercials. Who would have thought the blogosphere would provide us with the tools to undermine the advertising age?

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I'm Getting Awful Sick of These "Personal Appeals"

Have you visited Wikipedia lately? Chances are, if you're a college student searching for infallible information to cite on your term paper, a concerned citizen looking to beef up on world news, or just a curious American interested in reading up on Frank Zappa's favorite rock guitarist, your answer to my first question is a resounding "Yes!"

And if you answered "Yes!" to the above question, you're sure to have noticed a rather unsightly and intrusive banner link across the top of ANY Wikipedia page you might have visited. It's a link to an impassioned plea from some anonymous dude to donate money to his crackpot enterprise.

When we encounter a similar request from someone on a street corner, we refer to that person as a "bum" or a "pandhandler" or someone recently disenfranchised by San Francisco's Proposition L. When we encounter this request from someone on the internet, we refer to that person as an entrepreneur. Discuss...

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Saturday Afternoon TV: Unlogo

This tech is absurdly cool.  Imagine if you could replace every Microsoft logo in the world with Steve Ballmer’s face!

Unlogo Intro from Jeff Crouse on Vimeo.

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