Fake Plastic Noodles

I love it when big companies get their knickers in a twist for getting coverage on things they didn’t mean to get coverage on. Like when Diet Coke got upset at the Mentos video or Google started sending out cease-and-desist orders for anyone who used their name as a verb.

Enter JCPenney. The ugly and cheap department store is apparently really upset that this video, which hints at teen sex, was leaked by someone, somehow, somewhere. (Although all signs point to a rogue at Saatchi & Saatchi, Penney’s ad agency, who I doubt will have a job much longer). Both companies are staying as far away from the controversy as possible by attempting to have the spot “removed from public circulation.” Removed as in, deleted from the Internet.

::Queue laughter::

From the Wall Street Journal:

Mr. Boylson [chief marketing officer] said he still was questioning Saatchi late Monday to find out how the video got made and has instructed Saatchi to take any action it can to have the ad removed from the Internet. “It’s obviously inappropriate and nothing we would ever condone,” he said. “We’re very disappointed that our logo and brand position were used in that way.”

Saatchi was quick to apologize, issuing this statement:

Saatchi has a long history of producing principled and respectful advertising for JCPenney and its entire client roster. The Speed Dressing TV commercial, which was submitted to the 2008 International Advertising Festival at Cannes, was created by a third party vendor without JCPenney’s knowledge or consent. It was produced and released to the public without any knowledge or prior approval from JCPenney. Saatchi & Saatchi did not enter the spot and deeply regrets the message this ad presents. Saatchi & Saatchi apologizes to JCPenney, its associates and its customers. The commercial is being removed from public circulation.”

Oh boy, I’d like to see them try. If anything, the buzz surrounding this one will ensure that the video lives online for a long long time.*

UPDATE: Looks like the video I posted originally was taken off YouTube. But never fear, you can never remove something completely. It lives on!

TechCrunch eat your heart out: Web 2.0 is taking over the world. And lucky us, I think Michigan is somewhere around Tumblr. We’re important like that.

Ap Appeal via The Presurfer

I had one of those lovely college-esque Saturdays where I left in the morning to do something responsible like shopping for produce at the Farmer’s Market and ended up getting back some 14 hours later after bottomless mimosas at Cafe Felix, getting caught in a thunderstorm, a Summer Solstice wine party, Top of the Park and reunions with old friends. Needless to say I was pretty useless on Sunday. In fact, besides a fantastic brunch, I would say I spent the majority of my Sunday thinking about potential blog posts. And you know what I came up with? About six drafts of nothing.

Gah… Is the Internet making me so stupid that I can’t actually sit down for more than a few minutes without completely zoning out? Even when I’m bored?

Even now, I’m sitting here in a lovely cafe, listening to a guy who sounds strangely like a cross between Eddie Vedder and Connor Oberst (but otherwise free of distraction) and the only thing that’s translating to type is a long-winded bitch session about how I can’t write anymore!

I’ve decided therefore that there need to be some changes in my life. I need to get my attention span back and I think the only way to do it is to drastically cut down the time that I spend watching television and surfing the Internet with no real purpose.

See, most people when they come home from work at night get to take a break from their jobs, but considering my job and this blog is mostly about surfing the Internet, it’s kind of hard to get away. Isn’t it sad that I’ve caught myself coming home from work and going immediately to the computer to check my e-mail and Facebook when I quite literally checked them both at the office 15 minutes earlier? It’s becoming an addiction and while it would be impossible to go cold turkey, I’m instituting some ground rules:

1. Read. I just started a new book and I hope to have it done this week.
2. Turn off the computer at 8:30 (not sleep mode, not energy saver - off).
3. When watching a DVD of a TV show, watch two episodes max. There is no need to sit and watch six hours straight of Arrested Development episodes you’ve already seen 27 times.
4. Cook a proper dinner more often, especially experimenting with more ambitious sauces.

That said, it’s almost 8:30. I’ll let you know how it goes…

Photo: Simon Letch taken from Sydney Morning Herald

Continuing with my as of late trend on Fridays where I write posts that generally have little to do with London, avant-garde PR or the pastafication of tofu, I must declare my absolute adoration for the new Sigur Rós album: með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust. I’ve listened to it back to back all day today and it’s just about the only thing keeping me afloat. Festival and Ára bátur, in particular, have already made me cry at my desk. Twice.

(Let the ridicule begin.)

Anyhoo, if you haven’t heard the new album yet, stream it here. And if you’re the kind of person who cried at the end of (and pretty much throughout) Big Fish, make sure you have a box of tissues next to you.

Zappos has made quite the splash online lately. There was the mention in that awful piece on 60 Minutes, B.L. Ochman professing her love for the company several times on What’s Next and more Twitter accolades than I can count. Now, Zappos is so sure about their place as a Super Company Number One that they’re daring their new employees to quit by offering an incentive to do so.

During an intense new employee training course of four weeks, Zappos comes out with The Offer, which basically says “If you quit today, we will pay you for the amount of time you’ve worked, plus we will offer you a $1,000 bonus.”

The thought process is that if you’re willing to take the money, you don’t and will never have the commitment and enthusiasm Zappos is looking for in their staff.

It’s hard to describe the level of energy in the Zappos culture—which means, by definition, it’s not for everybody. Zappos wants to learn if there’s a bad fit between what makes the organization tick and what makes individual employees tick—and it’s willing to pay to learn sooner rather than later.

It’s an interesting idea, but I can’t help thinking that it’s a little pompous. What person knows if they’re going to like a job within four weeks? It generally takes me a few months before I can decide whether or not I’m comfortable where I am and with the people I work with.

Even if you did take the buy out, what would that look like on your resume? It gives off the impression that you’re not even willing to try. And that’s not exactly a quality people look for in new hires.

From Discussion Leader via The Denver Egotis
Photo from Team Sugar

There have been a few things I’ve been playing around with online that I want to pass on…

The first is SonicLiving. I mentioned a few weeks back the ridiculous amount of shows that were coming up in the Detroit area. Most of the time I heard about them through word of mouth or by the sheer fact that I went to the band’s site to look up tour dates because they had just released an album. SonicLiving changes that.

The site features a calender interface where you can import your iTunes library and your Last.fm and/or Pandora profiles so that they get a sense for the type of music that you like. Based on that music, SonicLiving alerts you when one of your artists is coming to your town

Why I like it: You can sign up for as many cities as you like (so if you’re moving soon or going on vacation, you’ll be able to see who’s where when). I’ve already been notified of a few bands I didn’t know were touring. You can also find tickets and set up show reminder alerts. Rock on.

Second we have Social|Median. I received this invite through a special offer on PitchEngine

Social|Median is a news service crossed with a social network. The main feature of the site are the daily news updates based on the news networks you choose to be a part of, whether they be as broad as ’sports’ or as narrow as ‘iPhone’ (ok, maybe that one isn’t so narrow) . If you don’t see a news network you’d like to get updates on, you can create one and submit stories to it through the site or a toolbar application. More social network goodness includes the ability to share and comment on these stories, which they call ’snips.’ How 2.0 of them….

Why I like it: It’s nice to be able to expand outside of my RSS feeds for news. I’ve been able to discover new sites to subscribe to as well as stories that somehow missed their way into my Bloglines.

What really impressed me, though, was an e-mail I received from Jason Goldberg, one of the founders of the site. Within one week of me signing up, Jason e-mailed me to ask how things were going. It was a basic e-mail, asking for site feedback, nothing schmancy, but the fact that it even happened made me feel appreciated. My feedback was that I would like to be able to click through directly to the story from my daily e-mail instead having to go through the Social|Median site.

Social|Median is currently in alpha with just over 3,000 users, but if anyone is interested I have a couple invites to give out - Just leave a comment. For more info, check out their FAQ.

…it might go something like this:

Happy weekend, everybody!

via Valleywag

I really hate the term Millennials when it’s applied to someone my age. I did not grow up during the 2000s. I grew up on Fraggle Rock and Zoobilee Zoo. I played with Popples and Barbies who wore hideous shades of neon. Hell, I wore hideous shades of neon myself - just ask my mom about the home video she has of me dancing in our living room to Billy Ocean in a neon pink spandex unitard.

I was always told that I was a part of Gen Y (you know, that one after Gen X), so you can imagine my consternation when in the last year, I’m suddenly being labeled a Millennial. It bugs the crap out of me. Why? Take a look at this video from 60 Minutes.

I’ll warn you, the piece is 12 minutes long, but it’s worth it (if not for the scowls I’ve seen on the faces of anyone 23-30 who have had the pleasure). If you don’t have time, I’ll summarize: Anyone born after 1980 is an ungrateful tech-saturated brat who believes everything should be served to him or her on a digital silver platter without having to lift a finger.

Some quotes from the transcript:

They were raised by doting parents who told them they are special, played in little leagues with no winners or losers, or all winners. They are laden with trophies just for participating and they think your business-as-usual ethic is for the birds. And if you persist in the belief you can, take your job and shove it.

‘It’s their way or the highway. The rest of us are old, redundant, should be retired. How dare we come in, anyone over 30. Not only can’t be trusted, can’t be counted upon to be, sort of, coherent.’

‘These young people will tell you what time their yoga class is and the day’s work will be organized around the fact that they have this commitment. So you actually envy them. How wonderful it is to be young and have your priorities so clear. Flipside of it is how awful it is to be managing the extension, sort of, of the teenage babysitting pool.’

But for sure, there is an almost evangelical fervor about this work philosophy — no stick, all carrots. And believe it or not, all this prodding, praising, peddling, cajoling and psychobabble is worth $50 billion a year in business. Ain’t America great?

So who’s to blame for the narcissistic praise hounds now taking over the office?

Faced with new employees who want to roll into work with their iPods and flip flops around noon, but still be CEO by Friday, companies are realizing that the era of the buttoned down exec happy to have a job is as dead as the three-Martini lunch.

So basically they got the oldest correspondent on TV to condescendingly judge our work ethic, our parents’ abilities and how technology has made us incapable of having any sort of communication skills.

I’m not having any of it. The first two points I won’t comment on as it’s all very circumstantial. My parents, for example, were amazing in teaching me the ethics and values one needs to be successful in life, but I know that’s not the case for everyone. However, the whole attitude toward technology in this piece - as in just because you know how to operate your iPod you think you are entitled to a six-figure salary - pissed me off.

Technology plays a huge role in my life today, but it wasn’t always the case, which is precisely why I don’t consider myself to be a part of the Millennial generation. Gen Y remembers what life was like before the Internet, Millennials do not.

This is not to say that computers weren’t a part of our lives at a young age. We had typing class in elementary school, we learned how to program our Turtles in 5th grade and we all lost pixelated family members to dysentery on the Oregon Trail, but I still remember learning the Dewey Decimal system, dammit! I didn’t even get a proper computer with an Internet connection (America Online dial-up, naturally) till almost high school. And even then the Internet didn’t become a huge part of my life until I went to college and got broadband.

It’s fine if we want to try and define our generations. From a marketing standpoint, we have to know who we’re selling to, but I don’t think we should be to quick to lump decades and decades into one generation like we did in the past. Technology is changing the way that we live our lives, and while previous generations have been defined by world events, I believe that future generations will be defined by the technology that surrounds them. It’s going to go much faster too. That’s why we can’t forget Gen Y. We’re the only ones who are able to bridge the gap between the often less tech-savvy Gen X or Boomers and the Millennials who have no concept of a life without the Internet.

Thanks to Lish for the video!