Filed under: Hawaii, Honolulu, Media | Tags: flux hawaii, magazine, noble cause
Apparently not everyone is convinced print media is dead in the water. A new magazine is rolling into town: Flux Hawaii. Best I can gather, it is a lifestyle, arts and culture rag. Which I think is a fine and noble cause. I just wonder about the choice of medium. They are allowing prospective readers to choose the first edition cover from five submissions by artists asked to portray “the future of Honolulu”, and have the originals on display over at Borders in Ward Center. I voted for the rather bleak one above, both for the artistry that went into it, and the fact that it most accurately displays the current cultural temperature. I’m a fan of optimism, but let’s be real – this state needs a lot of work.
Filed under: Branding, Media, Random | Tags: jon stewart, microsoft, morning joe, msnbc, snl, starbucks
I’m not really an ad man, but I do follow the industry trends a bit. I guess that makes me a wannabe ad man. In fact, I think the honest truth is that most people in branding are wannabe ad men (and women, to be politically correct).
These days, for all our advancement toward the bright future where advertising has died and been replaced by digital brand experiences, there’s a whole lotta retro going on. One trend I’ve noticed recently is a return to the good old days of solo program sponsorship, where a single brand carries the show. Like the Ed Sullivan Show brought to you by Brylcream – a little dab’ll do ya.
Some examples from the past few months:
Morning Joe – Starbucks’ uneasy marriage with MSNBC. Jon Stewart, in typical fashion, cast the sponsorship deal under a rather harsh and sniggery light.
Bud Light Golden Wheat (which probably needs all the marketing push it can get) bought up a single edition of SNL for its brand launch.
And then there was the ill-fated Microsoft-sponsored Seth McFarlane variety special. Microsoft pulled out when they learned the content was less than savory. Which makes it seem like the marketing folks who approved the deal had never watched a single episode of Family Guy.
Ah, it was so much easier in the old days…
For a while now, for years, I think, I had been wondering when brandchannel, Interbrand’s branding news site would get with the times. Their time to press, article selection and overall design and layout never seemed quite worthy of a global branding leader. And it certainly didn’t seem to gel with the contemporary blogosphere landscape.
Fortunately, a couple months ago brandchannel upped their game with a fresh look and daily content updates. At first, it didn’t seem like they had the content to populate the site on a daily basis, and some of the writing was a bit patchy, but recently they seem to have hit their stride. Still, I wonder if this is the right strategy for the site. The weekly content was more in-depth, and tended to spark more dialog in the peanut gallery. Has brandchannel become just another marketing blog?
One point of relief: my old brandchannel articles are still tucked safely away in the archives.
Max Headroom is a precursor of the vlog – quirky, opinionated, schizophrenic, disembodied.
I think Ze Frank’s body of work, for example, bears signs of the Max Headroom influence. (Side note: I really wanted to embed this video rather than link it, but the bastard just wouldn’t embed.)
Filed under: Events, Hawaii, Honolulu, Media | Tags: ashton kutcher, Hawaii, Honolulu, ing direct cafe, mufi hannemann, polygon, social media club, twitter
Friday I dropped by the monthly meeting of the Social Media Club Hawaii. The highlight was probably the leadoff presenter, Dan Zelikman. His Twitter insights were not new by any stretch, but he has a very engaging presentation style that made the content come to life. Plus a ton of good examples to back it up.
A couple interesting tidbits from the night:
Mufi Hannemann has nearly 700,000 followers on Twitter (love the poorly executed Photoshop by the way – his head is a polygon!). That’s not quite Ashton Kutcher territory, but getting there.
Big City Diner uses Twitter to broadcast a secret password that gets people discounts and free stuff. So simple, so smart.
One final word about the venue: ING Direct Cafe=marketing genius.
If you have a designerly bone in your body, you must see this beautiful documentary. Ostensibly about Helvetica, it uses the font more as a launchpad for discussing the evolution of typography and graphic design since the birth of the classic Swiss typeface. Helvetica, according to the film, is a stake in the ground that has been embraced, rejected, and returned to again and again over the last several decades. It is more than a font: a touchstone of fundamental design principles around which the “progress” of design continues to dance. Directed by Gary Hustwit, whose new film Objectified will no doubt equally amaze.
This SNL sketch sent Hawaiians into a tizzy over the past week. Some proved incapable of taking a joke, including the Lieutenant Governor and tourism officials. Instead of getting defensive, perhaps they should consider addressing some of the issues raised in the sketch?
Filed under: Branding, Hawaii, Media, Random | Tags: go!, hln, ignominious, naming
As someone who entered branding via the ignominious trade of verbal identity, I sometimes, rather pathetically, still find myself hovering hungrily over news of a verbal rebranding like a collector of rare manuscripts. I came across a couple this week:
This week a federal judge helped thwart go! Airlines’ attempt to rebrand as Aloha, dismissing their purchase of the name and logo as illegally conducted. Aloha was the local airline they put out of business almost a year ago through aggressive pricing tactics. It’s really odd to me that they’d want to reskin using the dead remnants of their old competitor. Yes, there is a lot of equity in Aloha, but here in Hawaii, folks would scream for blood if the deal went down. Aloha was part of the community, and a big job provider. You might fool the tourists, but the locals would be pulling the screws out of your wings.
I was a little slow on the uptake on this one, but to be honest I just don’t watch that much tv anymore. I happened to flip on Headline News – I mean, HLN – and the first thing I noticed, aside from how much further it continues to slide down the infotainment tube (npi), with CB-Rihana dominating the cycle, was the logo change. All this happened late last year, from what I gather, but they are still reminding viewers, just as the newsreader had to remind us that arraignment means “formally charged”. I guess all this is geared at the text generation, and what with the E!ish content leanings, it does seems very craftily crafted for their target demographic. At risk of sounding fogeyish, I was turned off (npi). Win some, lose some, I guess.
I may be late to the party, but chances are I am earlier than you, dear reader. That’s right, I have jumped on that next big bandwagon, and if you are not there, you are as behind as I was yesterday. I am officially a tweetin’ twitterer.
While out at First Fridays this month I came across the virgin issue of a new, Hawaii-produced zine covering the local art scene. It’s called Contrast, and it’s a pretty nice-looking creation, and a very good idea.
