I like cars. Always have, always will. Planes on the other hand, not really the same love affair there, but put a plane and a car combined, that actually performs both roles flawlessly, that’s a different story.
That’s why I am geeking out over the Terrafugia Transition. It is exactly that: a plane and a car all in one.
A plane that can fly 460 miles at 115mph?
A car that has foldable wings and still gets 30mpg?
Plane. Car. Whatever. It doesn’t matter because it rules and I want one.
The best part about it is that under ‘Safety Features’ it reads: “Drive in case of inclement weather.” Given the way some people drive on the road around Cincinnati in the rain, I’d actually consider going from plane to car less of a safety feature, but that’s just me.
I need to find $195,000 to get one of these, so feel free to email me if you have any ideas or want to do a time-share.
It’s been a little while since they did anything to the packaging, so I personally do think it was due. The logo has been minorly tweaked, but the packaging on the cases is where you’ll really notice things. Even if you’re not very familiar with the brand, you’ll notice things right away. The ‘Girl in the Moon’ logo adorns the sides of the packaging now and the front/back is much simpler and fitting for the brand. It doesn’t feel like the box is shouting at you, it feels more polished. Other minor tweaks to logo sizing for example are there, but that’s about it.
In terms of how I view the brand, everything about the changes seem fitting to me. For a brand that also has apparently been seeing growth in recent years with consumers changing their beer choices with the economic rollercoaster, I think the update was well deserved and hope that it does well.
The fine folks over at Netdiver recently gave us a shout out on their blog (thanks guys!) after taking note of some of the recently refreshed elements on HyperQuake.com.
I regularly review recent ads and videos from all over the country (if you don’t already, check out/subscribe to Out to Launch, a witty blog full of soon-to-be or recently launched campaigns, promotions, sites, etc.) so as I went through the list of the Cannes Ad Festival winners of 2009-10, I was surprised to run into only a few spots I had seen before.
Saturday I found myself dancing along to the cutest band that ever there was, who happen to be from Ypsilanti, Michigan, right next door to where I grew up, and just a wee bit west of Metro Detroit.
Oh, poor Detroit.
The whole state is suffering terrible economic times, with one of the highest unemployment rates in the country; much of its woes concentrated in Detroit. How many news items about the area have you seen that feature an endless image parade of decrepit, boarded-up homes? It’s really like that, and it didn’t used to be.
Sufjan Steven’s 2003 song, Detroit, Lift Up Your Weary Head (Restore, Rebuild, Reconsider!) describes Detroit as “Once a great place, now a prison,” perhaps alluding to people being too financially insecure to be able to leave. Interestingly, in the background of the last chorus he repeats “Hesitate to burn the buildings,” but that is exactly the city’s plan to revive itself.
“The basis of Detroit’s new plan is essentially the shrinking of a city. While it seems counter intuitive to most city planners: making a city smaller instead of bigger…what’s left is a bold plan to concentrate the city population…Mayor Bing has implemented a task force to oversee the destruction of over 3,000 homes in the next few months alone, with the goal of removing 10,000 during his four-year term. 77 public parks are also on the list to close. Trash cans will be removed, events canceled and the once-groomed lawns and gardens will return to the wilderness…A large city with vast open space is an unknown.”
Bulldozing half a city and rebuilding it is a risky move, and it will be interesting to see what will become of the once-great Motor City. Will it be able to start from scratch, to rebuild itself into modernity like the European capitols after the world wars? Or will southeastern Michigan be reclaimed by meadows?
So in the past few weeks apparently a wide spread, seemingly (but also much disputed) consumer-generated drinking game popped up and started gaining lots of viral traction online. The interesting thing about it though is not so much the game itself, but more the many questions that surrounded it.
Known only as Bros Icing Bros (which lived online at this website before being shut down this week), the core focus of the game was the sweet malt beverage, Smirnoff Ice.
The game was quite simple as the entire premise was that if someone approached you with a bottle of Smirnoff Ice and you didn’t have one of your own to fend off the attack, you’d be ‘Iced’ and have to get down on one knee and consume the bottle of Smirnoff that your attacker approached you with. Given the need to have your own ammo to arm yourself against these sniper like attacks and the apparent desire by many college students to ‘Ice’ their friends, cases of Smirnoff began moving fast from the shelves, leading some to believe that it was merely a viral marketing ploy by Smirnoff’s parent company Diageo, known for successful viral marketing campaigns, to move products.
Move products it apparently did, but many people, myself included, doubted that it was a viral marketing ploy by the company because it was essentially one huge binge drinking game. It was very hard to understand why the company, viral marketing campaign or not, would want to be associated with a.) binge drinking and b.) people essentially using the product to make fun of the product. Individuals interviewed in some articles made this clear when they would indicated one wouldn’t want be iced because Smirnoff Ice is a “pretty terrible” drink.
Well, answers came yesterday as Diageo apparently confirmed that the past few weeks of games and the online site www.BrosIcingBros.com were not part of a marketing campaign. The site is down, saying only “We had a good run Bros…”
Right now, the Bro the started the whole thing, apparently only known as ‘Joe’, may or may not be in hot water for copyright/trademark issues stemming from the game and the site.
Should be interesting to see how it all plays out.
So you may remember a couple of months back when we shared with you some news about the newest poster in our poster series having been printed and released to the world.
Create Your Own Environment
Well, since then, poster #3 in our series has been finding its way to the far corners of the earth and all spots in between.
Most recently, one of the prints made its way over to Melbourne, Australia (I told you we were there!) where we sent one out to the crew at LifeLounge.com (a design/art/typography blog) as a thank you for feeding our creative juices and providing us with inspiration on a daily basis. Turns out, the gang over there gave us a shout out on their site, which you can check out here. Thanks guys!
HyperQuake's 'Create Your Own Environment' Poster Featured on LifeLounge.com
If you have not been to their blog before, and you didn’t click on the link above, what are you doing? Definitely go visit, do it now, because you are missing out. When you get there, tell them the crew over at HyperQuake says hi.
Long gone are the days when a consumers relied on “their” newspaper and “their” news station to provide them with all of the daily happenings he or she needed to know. In our era of instant gratification, we want information as fast as possible, with the source as a secondary issue.
A recent study by the Pew Research Center reveals what we already thought to be true: the leads in social media news differ greatly from those in the mainstream press. What is interesting, however, is the difference between social medias. Twitter appeals more to those looking for a technology update, while blogs, as well as the mainstream news, focus more on politics and government.
Today’s consumer is used to, and many times prefers, utilizing a variety of sources, Twitter, Facebook, CNN, etc. based on the interest of that particular person on the news on a particular subject. More often than not, a person will consult multiple news sources to ensure that it is indeed valid.
While the consumer may not feel affiliated with a certain news source, he or she is much more attached to the messenger. For example, if Katie Couric switched from CBS to a rival station, odds are the viewer would still see Couric as a valuable information source and rely on her, regardless of location.
