Word Poem On Words

Taylor Mali is one to watch.  He's a poetry slam innovator as well as an experienced classroom teacher.

And after serving as adjunct college faculty ourselves, we KNOW teaching's tougher than poetry slamming.

Watch the attached video of Taylor reciting a poem, set simply to a fount of font animation that brilliantly brings his points to life.

After viewing, don't miss another example in this style, entitled 'What do teachers make?'

Both of these make us want to widely spread the word.  
And stand up and be heard.  Or read.

Here's to the outspoken word...especially when it's animated.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEBZkWkkdZA

Critters Make the Brand?

Interesting POV in Advertising Age on the importance of support to establish a mascot for your marketing product or service.

http://adage.com/article/guest-columnists/marketing-makes-mascot/149381/

We'd argue that what's also critter-cal, is to make sure that the mascot is dimensionalized.

Does 'it' have a personality?  Catch phrase?  Certain voice?  

We still remember the first time we did a tie-in with a major, long-standing cartoon property.  

The studio's dossier on every aspect of the cartoon characters was longer than any personnel file HR could fill.

Critters we've worked with and created must be true, like a person.  For fictitious characters to be successful, they must live and breathe, animatically speaking.   A Tony the Tiger drawing on Frosted Flakes is far less captivating if one can't hear and see the growler on TV, radio, and print over time -- same as any celebrity in flesh and blood.

As the web keeps booming, there's even more chance to birth new branded mascots -- like we did for a client of ours who've bootstrapped a fun, fishy fanatic to leverage in eblasts, online and at trade shows:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEJ4NlgfOGw&feature=player_embedded

Makes Charlie the Tuna look like sashimi, eh?

Super Bowl Winner Recall!

No, we didn't take away Green Bay's victory.  Just wanted to share how well our readers did in our first ever poll on ad recall in the Big Game.

Overall, our smart readers did pretty well.  

VW was ranked first in correct responses, with 80% connecting l'il Darth Vader with their car.

The rest of the right call percentages?

• 72% got Skechers

• 72% got Groupon

• 68% got Stella Artois

But the toughest question: only 32% guessed the correct cost of a 30 spot for the time alone.  Almost half guessed $2 million, when the actual cost this year was $3 million.  And that doesn't include the cost of Ozzy n Bieber.

Will next year's TV spot cost change? Our guess: as the quarterback says...'Hike!'

Thanks for playing.