chroma

No, I said "thespian"

There is a new reality show in the works, "My Bare Lady", testing porn star's acting ability.

Can someone please tell me: Is this necessary?

Safe Digital Secrets

Spies, sneaky spouses and internet cafe dwellers will love the Stealth Surfer.

We're living in weird times, best to keep your digital footprints safe in your pocket ;)

Windy City Bus Shelter

Hot bus shelter ad. No, I mean literally, it's hot. 

In the middle of winter, this poster advertising travel to warm, sunny places is a great idea.

(via advergirl)

Plane-Vertising

The more we hear about media clutter and the free-fall of traditional advertising, the more we're exposed to marketers who seem to think the solution is to just find new places to put up the same old S&*T. 

The result: a Bodog.com "billboard" on a plane. And the predictable rationale:

"There is so much message clutter on television, in print, even on the Internet these days," Stoddard added. "Our partnership with the airline enables us to help an advertiser take its message to a captive audience while also helping the airline secure an additional revenue stream. Additionally, we are not painting the planes per se, rather using a more efficient and cost effective technology - a decal which allows quicker turnaround for both the advertiser and airline."

Geek Shoe

The ultimate geek shoe, for updating your weblog while you're out and about.

Hip to be Green

Dan Pink has written an excellent article on the rise of  hip, style-conscious environmentalism for Wired. What's behind the fusion of style and sustainability?

Call it the green aesthetic. Tearing a page from the playbook of centrist politicians like Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, the green aesthetes are charting a third way, triangulating between the hippies and the hip. They've detected the first stirrings of a new constituency in the marketplace: Prius-driving, solar panel-installing, Sierra Club-donating, look-at-me environmentalists.

(read more)

BBC 2.0

Wow, very impressive plans for the BBC UK website, which will be redesigned to add a lot of familiar Web 2.0 standards (user-generated content, tags etc.)  The whole thing will be structured around the three pillars of "share, find, and play" (so 2.0). 

Mr Highfield said the share concept would allow users to "create your own space and to build bbc.co.uk around you", encouraging them to launch ther own blogs and post home videos on the site.

The BBC is also running a competition to revamp the bbc.co.uk 2.0 website, asking the public to redesign the homepage to "exploit the fuctionality and usability of services such as Flickr, YouTube, Technorati and Wikipedia".

At the heart of the play concept is MyBBCPlayer, which will allow the public to download and view BBC programming online and was today rebranded as BBC iPlayer.

"BBC iPlayer is going to offer catch-up television up to seven days after transmission," said Mr Highfield. "At any time you will be able to download any programme from the eight BBC channels and watch it on your PC and, we hope, move it across to your TV set or down to your mobile phone to watch it when you want."

It's a major newspaper morphing into MySpace, right before our eyes ;)

Luminous Idea

All's fair in love and corporate sponsorship: John Frieda's Luminous Colour Glaze will sponsor a weird, "experiential" fan zone during the airing of the Daytime Emmy's.

It's going to get a lot worse, before it gets any better.

Balance

Today's generation of graduates don't want to make the same mistakes previous generations made regarding the balance of work and life outside of work. Rather than burn out as workaholics, more young people are hoping for a more healthy balance, which is a great sign.  This is also sure to mean big changes in consumption habits, as values are realigned for this generation.

In 1992, as expected, fully 80% of 18-23-year-olds wanted to begin climbing the career ladder toward more responsibility. By 2002, that had dropped to just 60% for the same age group.

Paul Bernthal is with DDI, a human resources research firm. He says a survey of 4500 leaders from 1000 companies show attracting and retaining talent is their top concern. He says corporate leaders wonder where their replacements will come from if today's talent is revolting against all work and no life.

Chew On This

Great article in The Guardian about the ugly side of marketing to kids, excerpted from Eric Schlosser's new book "Chew on This". 

Aside from going to school, American children now spend more time watching television than doing anything else except sleeping. The average British child spends two hours and 20 minutes every day watching television and 25 minutes playing video games. In the UK, more than half of children under the age of 16 have a television in their bedroom.

During the course of a year, the typical American child watches more than 40,000 TV commercials. About 20,000 of those ads are for junk food: soft drinks, sweets, breakfast cereals and fast food. That means American children now see a junk food ad every five minutes while watching TV - and see about three hours of junk food ads every week. American kids aren't learning about food in the classroom. They're being taught what to eat by the same junk food ads, repeating again and again.