LOL Obama, Daily 27 March 2010

Finally, the Obama Administration gets serious about deficit reduction...

(although the ads from GM and SEIU are kind of taking money out of one pocket and putting it in another, but their hearts are in the right place, I guess)

Your Daily Photo (Happiness Is All Around You Edition)

Immodest Proposals, your one stop blog for daily photos, daily affirmations, Nestle advertising, and ...

Your Daily Photo (This Is Why I Drink Coca Cola Edition)

I'm not the first person to notice the nauseatingly Obama-centric ad campaign pooped out by Pepsi. Here's a photo with a shot of one of their damn billboards. I've always preferred Coke, anyway (the drinking kind, not the snorting stuff). Being an overcast night I think helped these photos, not sure, though, still don't know what I'm doing behind a lens, just goofing around.

And here's a whole flickr set of me fooling around with long exposures, some of them even look kind of interesting (the original for this photo is there too, before cropping and a bit of color tweaking)

More British Birds Without Much Clothing On . . .

. . . this time it's in the form of a little game.

Daily Mail had an article written by an improbably named woman who used to edit Esquire (Rosie Boycott), and she was complaining that the depiction of scantily (or completely unclad) clad women in the current generation of "Lads' Mags" was more demeaning and reinforcing of inequality between the sexes than her more tasteful and equality affirming depictions of hot women with little covering. Her article doesn't just attack the mags, though, she's also critical of young women for willingly exploiting themselves, and confusing freedom with sluttiness (or is that sluttiness with freedom?).

I'm not going to argue the merits of her argument, I'll just link to it. Reading the article I noticed that one of the most popular (and raunchy) of the "Lads Mags" NUTS, has just started a TV channel. They also have a website at Nuts.tv.

There's a variety of video and content aimed at the young male Brit audience. They've got lots of discussion regarding "footie", some stuff about "gear", and of course, plenty of young women, plenty uncovered.

Speaking of largely uncovered women, this series of videos featuring two well endowed women playing Wii topless is fascinating. There are four (NSFW) videos (part 1, 2, 3, 4), in each you are supposed to guess which sport they are playing on the Wii. It's not too hard to figure out. Wii Sports is the pack-in game with the Wii console and has five sports represented. You can figure out four of them by watching the videos (or just follow the wiki link), but there are only four videos in this Nuts series. I guess they figured their audience wouldn't be interested in watching these two young women play baseball (even topless). Damn provincial of them, don't they know they might attract audience over the web from baseball lovers as well?

This is 'tease' rather than porn. Still rather juvenille, and silly, but it definitely has its place within the media landscape.

Also, to rate the titillation factor of each game, I'd rank boxing lowest as the guard position limits the view, and I'd rank golf the highest, as the ready position for a golf swing (at least as performed by the women in the video) is pleasingly provocative.

Another thing, the popularity and link love sites like Daily Mail and Nuts gets outside of their home market presents a challenge to marketers. The adverts (since we're talking UK, I'll use the UK word for ads) are still aimed at the UK market, even though I'm linking from a USA based ISP. If they want to leverage their non-home market traffic, they need to find a way to serve ads that reflect the home market of the viewer, rather than the content provider. The technology is there, and because of the frequent Drudge links, the US traffic for Daily Mail is high, so US based advertisers would be smart to send some dollars Daily Mail's way.

There's a big revenue stream just waiting to be exploited.

Old People are Gynophobes, Anyway

Is that the subtext of this post?

CBS spinning the disappointing ratings of Katie Couric, claiming that they may be losing the +54 for crowd, but who wants them anyway?

They don't come out and say that old folks won't accept Katie because they still hold old fashioned ideas about the press and expect their anchors to come across all 'voice of god' like, but that is an interpretation that is readily available.

Thing is, all those new 25-54 viewers who didn't watch the news before and tuned in out of curiosity, will most likely tune out over time.

Also, TV's obsession with 'the demo' of viewers 25-54 is based on outmoded assumptions. The assumption is that folks 55+ are set in their ways, and beyond selling them on various prescription medicines, are set in their brand loyalties, uninterested in the latest in tech innovations, and uninterested in entertainment outside of their home. But, now many Boomers are 55+ and they are always going on about their exceptionalism and relatively youthful vigor, these folks aren't the same sexagenarians that advertisers used to shun back in the 60s and 70s. They have money, they have disposable income, often they still have some small children at home, they still chase the latest fashions and technologies, and they still have all the keeping up with the joneses zeal that used to only be the provenance of those in their late twenties through early forties. In other words, they still are a lucrative market to sell crap to.