Month: July 2007

DEK…? WT"F"

You can know something for a long time before you finally fully realize what it means. This period of less than complete awareness of a situation is usually described by people who have just won the Super Bowl or have experienced the passing of someone close to them. It usually goes something like, “I’m waiting for it to hit me” or “it hasn’t had time to sink in yet.” Later they find themselves at Disneyworld or they open a drawer to come across an old picture and awareness is heightened.

Yesterday I had a moment like this as I embarked for South America. Though I have not formally introduced it in a post, I’ll be in Bogotá for the summer working with researchers and their data to develop my thesis. I knew I was going but it doesn’t always set in that you’ll be in a foreign place until you are confronted with some of the differences. The Avianca plane that carried me from Ft. Lauderdale to Bogotá provided this (see left) subtle hint that there was no tuning back and gave me a deeper understanding of exactly where I was. Ironically it did this by confusing me. I thought I had the sign figured out but I asked someone today why there was a “K” and they had no idea. No worries I had the aisle.

One thing that becomes very clear with a fair amount of travel is that the same books keep popping up over and over again. On each of my flights yesterday I was sitting one seat away from a woman reading ‘Wicked.’ Maybe I’m jumping the gun here, but when I was traveling several times a week for work at Akzo, it was the DiVinci Code. That thing was everywhere (they had everybody on that case). Maybe it’s because they only sell certain books in those airport magazine stands. If someone gives you one of those books as a gift, they probably picked it up, last minute, at the airport.

In any event I arrived safely, found my accommodations and have since begun my work.

Robobots & Convincicons

Tuesday night I went to see a sneak preview of the new Transformers movie. Save the fact that my seat was two away from the outside wall and one row from the front, it was pretty entertaining. At first I thought the perspective was going to make me ill, but ultimately it was the humor that was most disturbing. However, this is not a movie review (this is), rather it is a re-visitation of my fascination with advertising.

Transformers prominently features two major product lines that obviously made huge deals with the studio. The movie is like a big commercial, which is becoming more and more common these days. It’s almost exactly like this picture except that car shouldn’t be German. I don’t wanna ruin it for you but one’s a car company and one’s a computer manufacturer. Watching the movie I was more interested in some of the more subtle product use. For example, when the noticeably un-nerdy and, for some reason, Australian code breaker from the NSA decides which media to use when transferring the most important sound in the world (which disappears from the plot) how does she choose? Something tells me there’s more to her portable disk of choice than meets the eye. I couldn’t resist, and neither could the screenplay writers.

One particularly interesting aspect of this use of film as advertising, is its use for personal/group publicity. For example, when sports jerseys are worn in films, whose name will appear on the back. Did Clinton Portis’ agent get on the phone with Spielberg and make that happen? Or was it just because the story was taking place in Washington and they probably don’t sell a lot of John Hall jerseys? There’s a particularly interesting scene that gets at these deals in Thank You for Smoking. Nick Nailer is meeting with a Hollywood executive to strike a deal that will feature a lead man smoking in his next movie.

Maybe this sort of thing has been happening for ages. Actually, that is most likely the case. As long as there have been things to sell, there have been people trying to sell more of them to us. It is somewhat ironic that it took this movie to help me see – or at least motivate me to write about – how advertising is transforming entertainment.

John Hall’s agent… you’ll be hearing from me.

A Pacific Trip to the Atlantic Coast

I am not sure if anyone else is running into this problem but this year has been abnormally bad with ticks (for myself). I’ve found three in various places on me so far. Though none following our trip to Connecticut, the area perhaps most infamous for the insect. The latest came during a trip to the Georgia/South Cackalack coast over the weekend.

I suspect it hopped aboard during one of a couple hikes around the marshes of Skidaway Island State Park. Our first clue should have been the deer we saw when we pulled in to find a site. In any event, after the ride down there without A/C and following an incredibly hot, yet remarkably dry (see our camping record) night we were in desperate need of showers which would not come until several hours later.

After rising early on Saturday and making a second trip out to the Skidaway Narrows, we decided we’d try and make it to Hilton Head and get some beach exposure before heading to Savannah. Neither of us had ever been to Hilton Head but had heard a great deal about the place. Lauren from her mother and me from the hoards of high school classmates who sought the place out as a spring break destination. I was very surprised to see some of the attention put into sculpting the island’s development, which I can only imagine was a rapid and entropic process hesitant to be wrangled. The island has its share of retail including big box stores like Lowes and Best Buy as well as outlet stores. These merchants line the large main road (highway) through the island. However, all the stores are barely visible from the roadway. They are accessible via smaller service roads that line the main road but are hidden behind large stands of tall pines. They’ve managed to maintain some of the area’s attractiveness while adding businesses and limiting access points. It’s almost like a boulevard but there is no parking on service roads. The parking lots are also didactically interesting (if that may be said). Again, large tress have been preserved and provide shade for the cars.

As an example consider these two gas stations I snapped in passing. The top from the main route on Hilton Head Island. The gas station barely visible and, in this case I think the service road runs on the opposite side of the station and the division provides enough room for a landscaped bike/ped path (not that it’s used). The bottom gas station is something we’re probably all more familiar with. This example comes from somewhere in SC, AKA Juarez, MX. Of course there are a number for reasons we see both approaches and HHI is not perfect (I’m sure we could get the flaws of developing ecologically sensitive barrier islands at all), but it is good to see real-life case studies for how things can be done differently and hopefully better.

That said I do not want to get into all the ways that Savannah’s Historic Review Board manages to have it’s way in the city’s growth and rejuvenation while the surrounding coast gets gobbled up. I like what they’ve done but think that those in the historic district could be leveraging their power to ease some pressure on the coast. Regardless, I always enjoy my time in the old city. We stayed in a wonderfully restored bed and breakfast thanks to a wedding gift given to us by friends from Atlanta. It even had showers, or as I like to call them, the watery grave of the Skidaway tick.

http://picasaweb.google.com/s/c/bin/slideshow.swf
All in all it was a great weekend to get away from all the video games, gutters (which are finally back up), and possible injuries that Atlanta offers. It was a also a fitting way for Lauren and I to spend our last weekend together before I leave to Colombia (where ticks are not one of things you have to worry about).