Old Spice Is Too Powerful For This Blog Post!!!

April 23rd, 2010 by Chris Strong

So you may have remembered a post we shared in the blog here a year or so ago about how Old Spice was on a quest to reinvent their brand.

Hit unexpectedly hard when AXE launched onto the scene, Old Spice had to step up its coolness factor and remove the ‘your dad’s deodorant of yesteryear’ tag.

The brand’s choice: retain the character and identity, but flaunt it. Make it fun.

For a refresher course on what the brand did, check out the original post.

Fast forward to today; Old Spice unleashes upon the general public a series of pretty much the most hilarious commercials myself and from what I can gather, many others of have seen.

With the commercials, the brand has moved more aggressively (I’m being literal here) into the body wash category. This move is probably again thanks to AXE pushing hard in the segment and Old Spice wanting to build loyalty so men are using their whole product line.

So, the commercials retain the old-timey whistled jingle, but that doesn’t come until the end. Up front, they use chaos, comedy, confusion, old-school Batman style visual descriptions (think POW! & WHAM!), a well as Godzilla style demolition.

The manly man approach is clearly still there, they’ve just built on it to make it more over the top.

The brand has dedicated a page on their site where you can watch all of the commercials. It’s a good 5 minutes or so well spent and will have you laughing hysterically.

Posted in Design | 142 Comments »

Conan O’Brien Takes On The Internet

April 9th, 2010 by Chris Strong

Oh I see what he did there.

It’s truly awesome to see someone like Conan O’Brien, who wasn’t an internet user before in terms of interacting with his fans, more and more becoming a social media powerhouse.

If you’ve been following him on Twitter, you know how hilarious he is (come on, picking fights with Justin Bieber and proclaiming he is only going to follow 1 randomly selected person, the list goes on) and it has been hard to miss the legions of fans that have started groups like Team CoCo on Facebook.

Regardless of whether you like Conan and his comedy or not, he’s a brand with its own unique identity and boy are Conan and his staff embracing every bit of the web to their advantage during the year or so he can’t do tv after leaving NBC. They even appear to be empowering the fans that have started groups like team CoCo and are leveraging them for things like tour posters.

Truly great to see in such a short period of time, the way Conan is carving his niche, engaging with fans, giving them reason to follow him and reasons to buy his product when no one really knows what it will be like (RE: go see him on tour).  His 30-city comedy tour, which I’d be kinda skeptical about just because he’s not done that before, sold out after merely a few tweets from CoCo.

All in all, a great story that is continuing to unfold and one that applies not only to famous celebs use of the web, but to brands in general. I for one encourage you to check him out on Twitter. You’ll get some good laughs and may pick up some pointers from CoCo.

Posted in Uncategorized | 238 Comments »

Unhappy Hipsters

April 8th, 2010 by Julie Hill

Don’t let the name of this blog confuse you: you will find no shutter-shades here. Instead, the brand of hipster referred to are those who live in the sparse, wood-slatted homes featured in Dwell magazine, hilariously captioned with jokes ranging from the absurd to those which touch the very core of our human-ness. Like the sad lolcats. Or something.

GO! Unhappy Hipsters

1.
OMG HE'S RIGHT BEHIND YOU!!!
“Sober (and in the light of day), she realized that buying the companion sculpture to the photograph had been unwise.” Link

2.
No, not today.
“One day, after a particularly dull afternoon, she would yank hard enough on the vertical drawer to wrench it off the track, sending everything crashing to the floor—and tell her husband it was an accident. But not today.” Link

3.
That aloe gonna CUT YOO.
“Flipping the pages hurriedly, he sensed that the potted plants were advancing.” Link

Posted in Uncategorized | 173 Comments »

Take this iPad…and BREAK IT!

February 19th, 2010 by Chris Strong

iFORE!

Yep, that’s right, I said BREAK IT!

Daniel Tosh is funny. I like his comedy, it’s good stuff. His show Tosh.0, which aggregates some of the greatest web video clips each week and presents them to the world via a crazy 30 minute show on Comedy Central, is pure gold.

“Web Redemption”, where people who’ve made fools of themselves on the web via video (that more than likely others posted for them) get to go on the show and re-do their video, hopefully in their favor. Crystal Light Dancers, Average Homeboy, football player who tackles his own teammate. Truly awesome.

Last night, Mr. Tosh closed his show thanking the kind folks at Apple for giving him an iPad to try out. He then proceeded to do this, which is again, awesome.

The best part about that clip, that you don’t see because it closed out the last few seconds of the show, is when Tosh says “We never even turned it on.”

Posted in Uncategorized | 130 Comments »

Enough is Enough! I’ve had it with these stupid apps on my stupid phone!

January 21st, 2010 by Chris Strong

Next up: iRoyale with Cheese

While it may be a bummer that there are no Sam Jackson quotes from classic movies like Snakes on a Plane, Deep Blue Sea, or Lakeview Terrace on here, you do get 100% original Samuel L. Jackson quotes, apparently recorded just for the app by Sam himself.

That’s why you should get the Samuel L. Jackson app for your phone, iSamJackson.

The developers of the app have made it easy to get your Sam quotes in 2 ways, either clean and expletive-free for the under 17 crowd apparently, and then of course, well, with expletives. That’s a good move, because the world needs these quotes no matter what their age.

Samuel L. Jackson may be one of the finest actors of our time, with a resumé that goes beyond that of many other actors. I doubt George Clooney would’ve signed on to or even been able to carry Snakes on a Plane the way Sam did. Plain and simple, Samuel L. Jackson movies make you and your TV/DVD player feel good. Now they can make you and your iphone/ipod feel good.

So, you should probably buy it or Samuel L. Jackson might just call you leaving quotes from his movies on your voicemail everyday until you do.

Posted in Technology | 179 Comments »

Are you with COCO?

January 18th, 2010 by Chris Strong

On the condition that you do the string dance

I’m going to go out on a limb here and speak for the collective tv viewers across the land and say that we all know Conan O’Brien is:

1.) The man.
2.) Funnier than anyone else in late-night right now (and has been for a good long time).
3.) Deserving of his own TV station showing all Conan, all the time.

That said, Conan and NBC are definitely having some struggles right now and support is needed, for Mr. O’Brien that is.

From Facebook groups, to Twitter posts, to the “I’m with COCO” shirt, support appears to be coming from everywhere. However you show that “You’re with COCO” is of course classy, so if all of us want to keep late-night tv funny I’d recommend showing COCO some well deserved love and support.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

We’re Adults Now.

January 15th, 2010 by Julie Hill

XKCD is a wise, beautiful sage.

I was thinking of getting a couch or something for my room, somewhere for guests to lounge around. F*ck new couches. I now have a ball pit in my room.” – xkcd

Insert 'ball' joke here

xkcd’s Randall gets a little fun and poignant, gleefully describing the process of creating a real-live ballpit in his home. Impractical? Childish? That depends entirely on your definition of those things, and what ‘being an adult’ means to you. In my opinion, he’s absolutely right; who’s to say that doing things we loved to do as kids isn’t what we should be doing now as adults? If a ball pit is what you want, and you can make it happen, why not? Enjoy it.

How to:
Ball Pit Pt. 1
Ball Pit Pt. 2

Posted in Thinking | 125 Comments »

Ryan Abegglen Art

December 30th, 2009 by Julie Hill

Ce chat ne parle pas le français

KEVIN!

His tail is made of SCIENCE

Even fine modern gentlemen will sometimes stab you up.

Dear Ryan Abegglen, do you want to be my best friend?

Posted in Design | 122 Comments »

Cable Drawings

December 3rd, 2009 by Katie Winkler

Are your cables and cords becoming a bit of an eyesore? Take a cue from Maisie Maud Broadhead and turn extra cable into living room art.

MAISE MAUD BROADHEAD

Cable Drawings

Posted in Design | 199 Comments »

Method Products vs. Pervy Chemical Residue Bubbles = TKO

November 19th, 2009 by Chris Strong

These bubbles are legally obligated to notify you when they move into your neighborhood.

Many already know Method (a household cleaning supply company, specializing in natural, non-toxic, biodegradable products), due in part to their cool, minimalist-minded packaging that uniquely helps it stand out on shelf. Some may just know the company from walking through the cleaning products aisle at Target and catching a glimpse. Either way, it’s a product that is already very respectable and cool in my eyes, that I’ve been using in my home for a few years, and it just got even better. Why? Well, they are supporting initiatives called the “Household Products Labeling Acts” that would basically require household cleaner manufactures to list the ingredients in their products. This is good, because I’ve often found myself compelled to read the back of the various bottles of product in this category and never once can I say I remember ever seeing what the heck was in the stuff I’m spraying on my bathroom counter or in my shower. This kind of makes me think there is a general philosophy of ‘See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil” going on. I don’t like this, no sir I don’t.

So, this witty little video from Method struck a chord with me. It’s funny, it makes me think and it most importantly makes me question the safety of what I’m putting in my home and how it might effect me. All this of course, leads up to validating why I buy Method products. If Method markets this video in the right way, I’m sure many others, users and non-users may have the same feelings. Will it help get consumers to support the act and inevitably increase their favorability towards Method and yield sales? We’ll have to see.

One thing is for sure though, these chemical residue bubbles are funny….. but they are also perverts.

Posted in Design, News | 180 Comments »