This is where I have to give a big shout out to Feedly, my RSS reader of choice, that every morning feeds me a fresh page of content based on my Google Reader subscriptions. Feedly presents the best content from those subscriptions in a beautiful magazine-style page that is a pleasure to read. This is not a paid advertisement, I just love Feedly that much.
So here are some things Feedly helped me find this morning:
Victory Journal, “the new refuge for true sportsmen,” found via iainclaridge.net, which posted the above cover from said journal.
MG Siegler, Marco Arment and Brent Simmons hate on Business Insider for the truly annoying and despicable habit of splitting articles into multi-page slideshows.
AdWeek has a great piece on the New Era rivalry commercials starring John Krasinski and Alec Baldwin. The spots help bring back some cool to baseball and help bring non-fans into the game. Interesting tidbits include the fact that Krasinski and some writers for the Office rewrote most of the scripts to amp up the humor. Also, Alec Baldwin does most of his acting for this series and 30 Rock off of a teleprompter, which he uses to help get his timing right.
The spots have only aired a few times on television, but have found a huge audience online. In fact, my wife — not exactly a baseball fan, but a huge Krasinski and Baldwin fan — told me about them.
Good words on creativity from Wieden + Kennedy global creative director John Jay. The message is essentially: Get out there, get out of your comfort zone and experience things you normally wouldn’t experience in life. If you’re an executive, get out in the street and find out what people are doing, what they’re thinking. Don’t experience life through PowerPoint decks and strategy briefings.
Via Business Insider: Here’s The New iPad Ad:
“Unlike many tech companies, Apple understands that consumers don’t buy “technology.” They buy products that makes their lives easier and better. They buy products that look beautiful, are simple to figure out how to use, and then “just work.” They buy products they love.”
Via Mashable: 9 Viral Videos That Are Actually Advertising:
“So, a few questions: Is it actually better to try to orchestrate a viral campaign in which you distance yourself from the campaign? Are there well-known viral videos out there that are actually ads and we just don’t know about them? Why are so many Australians involved in these things?”
A few days ago a ran across this video from Nike for their Better World campaign. It’s made of 100 percent recycled ads and — par for the course — it’s powerful stuff. It convinces you that sport can change lives and change the world through inspiration, hope, perseverance and goodwill.
Personally, as an international soccer fan, I believe all of this hook, line and sinker. However, I also believe that sport can be ugly and inspire hate, greed, war and corruption — not to mention debilitating and life-ending injuries. You’ll notice there are no clips of American football in this ad.
What makes the ad particularly powerful for me is that I remember at least half of these ads, and remember them fondly. So in addition to finding inspiration in this piece, there’s also quite a bit of nostalgia. And as we all know from Don Draper, nostalgia is a powerful thing.
As good as this ad is, the Better World site is even better. It has good, powerful content laid out in one long scrolling “page.” It’s a nice tight campaign from Nike, but would you expect anything less?
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Director of Digital Marketing for Ocean Conservancy -- husband and father of 2. You can read more about me here and find me at the following locations: Tr | Fb | Li | G+
