Monday, July 26, 2004 12:50 PM | Matthew Jeanes Okay, I seriously need the Internet to stop thinking I'm a fucking moron. Congratulations, you are the 50,000th visitor! Bull. Shit. I can never have a child, because I'd have to have the following talk with my child as soon as she/he was able to understand words (and yes, it would be complete with PowerPoint slides-click to enlarge): The world is full of assholes who will try and take advantage of you, so watch out for them. Sometimes, they are hard to identify, but a lot of the time, they make themselves very obvious. For instance, when you see someone on Ebay trying to sell a brand new Revenge of the Sith shirt from ComicCon for $99 when the same exact shirt can be ordered from StarWars.com for $16.99, that person is an asshole. The world is full of people who think you are stupid and greedy, so prove them wrong. When you visit a website and their unscrupulous advertiser tries to get you to install some application that will spy on you and potentially damage your computer , make sure you close that shit down real quick. Also, you have an obligation to write the owner of that website and tell him/her that you think he is dealing with shitheads for advertisers and that you think he should cut it out. The world is full of people who don't care who they offend as long as it makes some money. You'd be wise to stay away from dealing with corporations and people who don't see the tastlessness of juxtaposing news about the beheading of a captive American with the results of a poll about "the best Death movie ever". I would have a hard time instilling any confidence in the human race into a new member. {0} Comments Monday, July 19, 2004 4:27 PM | Matthew Jeanes Just when it looks like I'm running out of 'material', there's always the fashion industry saving my ass.  This isn't really necessarily the fault of the fashion industry, but has anyone else noticed the withering away of the meaning of the term 'Supermodel'?  I don't know who coined the term, I feel like maybe it was MTV or some equally insidious culture trashcan, but nevertheless, in the early nineties the term 'Supermodel' entered the lexicon to describe a very select group of women who had gone beyond being pretty faces and into being household names.  Think of it as models with enough of a "Personal Brand" as to be more than just models.  Cindy Crawford, Elle McPhereson, Tyra Banks (maybe?).  Basically, the only people who qualified at the time were the cast of that George Michael video (Chrisi Turlington, you know...) and the rest of the modelling world were just, ho hum, models.  Of course, that wasn't ever going to be good enough. Just like the path of Cheesy ---> Dangerous Cheetos, the rest of the world has downgraded the Ssupermodel to include, well, just about anyone who gets paid for their looks.  I've noticed this in the news, in people's blogs, and in shady internet journalism, but the interesting thing is that it really seems to be accepted as common practice to call anyone who's pretty and heroin skinny and gets paid to wear stupid clothes a 'Supermodel.'  This woman is a good example: Donna Ricci.  I can't say if it was her PR people who graduated her from regular model to "Super" but for some reason, the people who make those assanine "Bleeding Edge Goth Dolls" think she's pretty damn Super.  No disprespect to Ms. Ricci, but I don't think that woman with the dragon on her head is too worried! {0} Comments Tuesday, July 13, 2004 11:14 AM | Matthew Jeanes A bitchfest, of sorts: 1. Busking = Panhandling I take music pretty seriously. It's disturbing to me to see a show when people are talking all over it, or to see people treat music so flippantly. There's a guy downtown who sings for money with his guitar and while I appreciate the fact that he is trying to earn the quarters and dollars in his cup, I still find a lot of it annoying. To my knowledge, "House of the Rising Sun" does not have a breakdown in it that goes "Hey there guy / You have a good day." If you are going to play the songs, play them with some heart and not just as a tepid act to scrounge up some loose change. 2. "Yes, you are talking too loudly" and "No, the signal in the elevator isn't good" When will people learn that talking louder doesn't help a bad cell phone signal. It's like talking louder to someone who speaks another language--it doesn't aid in communication, it just makes you louder. As a general rule, the elevator is not a place for a cell phone conversation. 3. Flip Flops Okay, so maybe the Banana Republic, the Gap, and Abercrombie have spent millions on making flip flops cool, but really, they are not the kind of footwear that's appropriate in most settings. Sandals, okay, I can live with sandals. But please, would someone get all the frat boys and mall clones to leave the flip flops in the shower or at the beach and invest in something that says "I am taking this place at least seriously enough to put on real shoes."? 4. Expensive car/Cheap apartment It doesn't add up, does it? 5. Message Board Hystrionics Is it possible to post an opinion on a message board without using the phrases "ass clown", "sucks nuts", or "elephant spooge"? Likewise, is it possible to get someone to clarify a point you find confusing or maybe not fully fleshed out without condescending? Apparently, the answer is no. 6. Bad Movie Trailers You wanna see a trailer that makes you want to see a movie? Check out the first trailer for Garden State. You wanna see a trailer that tries to appeal to the lowest common denominator and probably spoils all of the best/funniest parts of a movie without actually making any of it enjoyable? Try any other trailer out there. It's a wonder I go to see any movies at all, because from the trailers, they all look like garbage. 7. Thrift Store T-Shirt Thrift Store T-Shirt, I love you. You are so clever and ironic and you are multi-colored. You have charm because you were once owned by someone who took your message seriously, but because I don't have to. Also, you have rings around the collar and sleeves. When I wear you, I feel funky and unique because I don't REALLY like Diet Pepsi or Twinkies, and I've never been to Tony Roma's and I didn't spend a summer at Lake Ogonquin Summer Camp, but those things are cute. It's funny to show off what I don't like as if it was something that I did like, because, you know, that's like backwards! I love you because you make me an individual, unlike those goth kids who all wear black or those metal kids who all have long hair and Sepultura t-shirts; my friends and I can all have a Thrift Store T-Shirt and we can go out together and it's cool, cause, like, who doesn't root for Thompson Middle School Girl's Vollyeball? And you are cheap, which leaves me more money for PBR. {0} Comments Tuesday, July 06, 2004 11:24 AM | Matthew Jeanes More follies from those kooky heads in marketing: Apparently, Georgia Pacific (whose office building in Downtown Atlanta is about 100 yards from mine) felt that it was time to assert their presence as a local brand to muster up some Atlanta consumer loyalty. A few weeks ago, they erected a massive GP logo on the building to put their stamp on the city's skyline. I saw it going up and it was impressive, but looked mostly like a 3 dimensional kite with the letters GP on it. It would make a good superhero logo, but on its own, it could be anything. Shortly after that, billboards started going up around town proclaiming GP as a proud Atlanta company, with pictures of their famous brand name products folding out of a wallet like the pictures some people carry of their families. This was all corroborated by a report that said that GP was rolling out a new Atlanta branding scheme to try and take its place alongside the likes of Coca-Cola as an Atlanta institution. First of all, like it or not, Georgia Pacific is no Coca-Cola. Not only does Coke have a huge (and I mean, hundred-year huge) headstart on this whole idea of winning the hearts and minds of Atlantans, but Coke's name and its product are the same thing. Coca-Cola makes... Coca-Cola! Georgia Pacific makes... Brawny? Hell, I don't even know what else they make, and neither do you probably. When was the last time you saw what parent company made Quilted Northern, or Huggies, or Scott brand paper towels? No one cares who makes those, because the brand names they know and buy are not the parent company, but the individual product lines, none of which is called Georgia Pacific. Secondly, trying to ingratiate yourself to the local population of 4 million... well, it seems a little short sighted. Atlantans love their Coke, and they might love their Home Depot, but they could care less about their Scientific American, their Russell Athletic gear, and any number of other major coporations that are based here, but that offer products that inspire little loyalty. People are going to buy the brand of toilet paper that feels best on their ass, not the one that's made by an Atlanta company. So, it all works up into another one of those predictable board-room frenzies where the corporte powers-that-be get giddy thinking about raising their stakes in and around the home turff, and where brand synergies converge in a market to form maximum touch in a new value-added paradigm. It sounds like a bad rip-off of voltron, if you ask me. Hopefully Georgia Pacific's blunder will be a lesson to all ad agencies out there: if you play to the corporate ego enough, you can always milk a multi-million dollar home-town branding campaign from it. {0} Comments

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