Fun

You don’t have to think too hard about this category

I love C-Ville!

Date: September 23, 2006 Author: Sean Comments: Leave a reply

Found this while surfing at work today (yes, thanks to J O B, I will be working all weekends from now through early November) thanks to Adrants:

Welcome to C-Ville – Where Choices Define You

C-Ville Population

C-Ville is an all-Flash site that teaches kids/teens about the risks of smoking, why making good choices are important, and why choosing not to smoke is important short and long term.

While I agree with the message, the execution is what really stands out. From the music to the grapihcs, the video shorts used in the production, the overall look and feel just clicks. It is fun and immersive and gives users a reason to explore and click and check things out with a really open and not-intuitive-in-a-good-way navigation. The look and feel brings you in, feels immersive and has a ton of objects on each screen to play with.

From the AdRants post:

Final Cut’s Carlos Arias explains the approach saying, “Kids are so sophisticated these days so we don’t need to make the message obvious. This is a new way of communicating with youth — by not spoon-feeding them.”

Kudos to these guys for coming up with a smart design, solid execution, good message and real appreciation and respect for the user. While the site loads slow on the network here in the bunker, the video encodes are really tight and the payoff is there – it frickin works.

Psyched – woodworking class kicks off today

Date: September 20, 2006 Author: Sean Comments: Leave a reply


My excuse to leave the office before 8pm started tonight – Woodworking/Furnituremaking class at SVA downtown. We got a tour of the studio, discussed safety and the equipment available and talked about the why we were there and what to expect from the class.

Homework? Figure out what I want to build, put together a scale drawing, figure out what kind of material I will need.

Good times…

cool – the leading (and first?) business magazine in Second Life!

Date: August 1, 2006 Author: Sean Comments: Leave a reply

http://www.slbusinessmag.com

I am digging into Second Life more and more and found the link above today (thanks PSFK!). This team has put together a magazine for and about SL business. The topics are neat, the layout is pretty good and they even have advertisers.

THe most interesting thing about the story is this:

You have the potential to reach for your dreams. The team of SL Business Magazine is proof of that. I am deployed in a war zone with the US Army in Afghanistan. I can escape the shattered terrain and death outside my mud and plaster building when I create an exciting and beautiful world full of friendships inside Second Life. It also allows our Creative Director in China to provide you with the stunning designs found in this issue. Our Editor in Canada can easily meet with our Copy Editor and Sales Manager in the United States. We have contributors from locations such as Australia, Germany, Japan and other global locations. So the point here is the obvious! And that is the idea behind our motto: Reaching. Connecting.

This is actually really well done. I cant wait to see issue 2

Clueless marketing

Date: July 7, 2006 Author: Sean Comments: Leave a reply

Tom Hespos discuss another member of the Coalition of the Clueless:

One of the challenges I face in pitching Conversational Marketing to clients is the notion of finding bloggers who will take up the task of blogging about the client’s business. Paramount is lucky to find not one, but several. And what does it do? Piss one off to the point of getting two key ones (and probably more to follow) to boycott coverage of Paramount’s upcoming (Name of Movie Removed by SB) flick.

Its ironic that they didn’t learn from LOTR (including some of their mistakes).

When you engage a community, especially a leader in a community, you strengthen the ties between yourself and that tribe/culture/group/pod/whatever. Would it hurt to seed this guy with some behind the scenes stuff (photos, maybe a visit to the set, a frickin tshirt?). Those photos were going to get out there anyway. So instead of someone who thinks enough of your crap to write about it and drive FREE PR, you piss off a whole bunch of people.

I disagree with Tom that the marketers at Paramount dont get it. I have had, lots of clients who get-it. I bet the guys and gals at Paramount who are responsible for promoting this movie (which I will not mention to avoid giving them any google-love) got up this morning, saw the news and vomited all over their Wheaties.

I have a theory that every big organization (corporation, non-profit, federal agency) has a guy I call Oscar. Sometimes he is in legal, sometimes marketing, sometimes PR. Oscar is the guy who kills good ideas from the internal and agency folks. He is the guy who sends an email with one line “this wont work – lets go with what we know”. Oscar gets paid to make sure things happen, not innovate. Oscar is the champion of the status quo. He is dismissive of the ‘kids’ (referring to the 20-something to 80-somethings who blog, visit these sites, proudly call themselves fan-boys, etc). Oscar sucks.

Paramount (thanks to Oscar) is taking us for granted because, even if they shut him down, his audience will see the movie anyway.

Maybe even grab a bittorrent of it. 🙂

Exxxxccccceeeeleent

Gnomedex – Second Life Breakout

Date: July 1, 2006 Author: Sean Comments: Leave a reply

Awesome – beth from SL has been participating at gnomedex this weekend and today gave a group of us a short tour in second life.
Discussed:

Avatars

Construction

Land

Cool spaces (art gallery, fan-built MYST game, record label online with lounge for listening to artists)

Quick primer on buildinf objects in 2L

AWESOME – easily the best pres so far today