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Near the Christmas break, I participated in a black market exchange. It did not involve drugs.
I’d become a fan of a Chinese web novel with a multi-part animated series that had amassed a considerable following of fans. This meant fanwork being produced at fan conventions, where rows of booths sell fanart, pins, and other merch that they’ve created. There aren’t that many big conventions in Australia compared to Asia, so I was happy to be able to attend one in Singapore while I was there on break. More importantly, I wanted to buy merch from the novel. Except that I couldn’t, even though it was there. This particular novelist was known to have a zero-tolerance approach to fanwork. Though she didn’t go as far as suing people, she did have a large army of fans who effectively enforced her decision.
This had the general effect of driving the sale of merchandise underground. A fanwork black market was created where people have resorted to a barter system, trading stickers, and other merch — or Pocky — for art. Promotion was limited to discreet little signs on booths or kept on social media. This had, unsurprisingly, no dampening effect on demand. I went to the convention on the second day, first thing in the morning, and most of the booths had already “sold” out. Remix culture sells, even if you have to access it through some sort of black market. It sells because the customer approaches the product with a pre-existing emotional attachment to the product. That’s why a lot of ads try to tie in to popular movements and media, memes, pull in celebrities, and more. It’s possible to do this right. It’s also possible for it to go wrong — even when you don’t want it to.
Remix Culture and Modern Advertising
You might have seen a brief stoush that popped up during the Superbowl, aka the grand finals of some sport that only Americans really care about that sells the most expensive ad slots in the world. T-Mobile aired a Superbowl ad about its partnership with Lyft that used the popular “This is your Uber driver” meme/joke by @decentbirthday:
There was a furor on Twitter where various users assumed that T-Mobile had stolen the ad, and @decentbirthday eventually had to post a tweet assuring everyone that T-Mobile had licensed the joke from them:
It was licensed, don’t worry! Love y’all
— decent pigeon (@decentbirthday) February 4, 2019
Why did the general public instantly assume the joke had been stolen? Probably because the creative industry doesn’t generally have a great track record on this point. You might have seen the ongoing backlash against the extremely popular Instagram account @fuckjerry, which used to boast 14.3 million users, a following that was built on stealing jokes and content from other people despite being called out for it. The owner of @fuckjerry, Jerry Media, is a social media company that went on to do the social media advertising for the now-infamous Fyre Festival. After that collapsed spectacularly, they then proceeded to produce the popular Netflix documentary that was out this year. A reckoning has been arriving for Jerry Media as comedians and other celebrities banded together to drive an unfollowing campaign, but it stands to see whether the total effect on them would be more than the loss of a few hundred thousand followers.
Moral of the story: Want to use popular memes and jokes in your advertising? Best not to — unless you’re willing to license them and yet still cop possible abuse when people think you’re a thief. Yes, brands get away with copying all the time, especially when swimming through the gray area of copyright law. Not just Jerry Media, but fashion brands like Zara and Old Navy famously copy not just independent artists but big brands like Balenciaga. You might legally get away with it, but you’d damage your brand in the process. In an ad? Copying will just make you look desperately out of ideas.
Advertising Copying Advertising
In 2017, McCann was accused of copying a 2014 ad from South Africa in their work for the Phillippines Department of Tourism and promptly got fired from the $13million account when the similarities were pointed out online. Both ads involved a visually impaired man who visits a foreign country, has various experiences, and whose disability is only revealed at the end when he pulls out a cane at the end. Initially, McCann said:
We acknowledge the feedback that the way this story was told may have similarities with the South African tourism campaign. It is unfortunate that the Philippine Department of Tourism has been called out and accused of plagiarism, for work we have done to highlight the testimonial of a real retiree. We take full responsibility, as all ideas and storyboards presented were conceptualised by McCann Worldgroup Philippines. We also underscore that there has never been any intention to copy others’ creative work. McCann Worldgroup Philippines has always strived to adhere to our guiding principle, ‘Truth Well Told,’ in everything we do. We stand by the integrity with which this campaign was developed.
It’s entirely possible that McCann developed the ad without realizing the South African one existed, though you’d think that an agency that big would have done better due diligence on competitor ads before pitching the concept. In 2014, AirBnB launched a new logo that was promptly called out for looking exactly like the brand identity of Automation Anywhere as well as to a decades’ old design book:
What Chen does bring up, though, is the role of design and the thought-processes behind making a logo, where designers will agree: nothing is original.
“Logos can’t be too unique,” says Mike Hankin, product designer at London design company morrama. “Design is more of a science than an art. In the arts, you can constantly innovate and try out new things. Art, unlike design, doesn’t have a job to do.” Designers have clients who want to stand out and a logo’s role is to communicate a company’s values or a product’s intended purpose. Yet standing out too much in the saturated marketplace can result in something that’s disastrously uncomfortable or equally forgettable, like the design for the 2012 London Olympics, which was criticized for resembling a Nazi symbol.
Design, as in advertising, can’t be too original — or it’s unlikely to pass client muster in the first place. Unless you happen to have a client who loves risk. So we remix things that already exist to create something hopefully new enough to be something different, but not too different.
Advertising Eating Everything
Back to the Chinese web novel. In the animation, there are these hilarious Cornetto ads, where scenes from the animation are recut to sell Cornetto ice cream in a hilarious way, with the actual voice actors saying new lines. It’s funny and terrible at the same time but it worked — although I don’t like ice cream or Cornetto, I went to the convenience store near my apartment and bought a goddamned Cornetto. It tasted like sugar and my personal failings.
Remixes and advertising can work. Whether it’s branded films, ads, or something new. Want to learn more? Contact us.
Pixar’s Purl is a Sparkshots short film featuring an animated ball of yarn trying to fit in at her new job in an all-male startup company called B.R.O.. Via Short of the Week:
Though Pixar have become somewhat synonymous in the world of animated shorts, finding these films online is more of a rarity, than a common occurrence. However, this all looks to change with their latest program SparkShorts, a series of films designed to discover new storytellers, explore new storytelling techniques, and experiment with new production workflows, that all look set to be released online. Kicking off this series, is Kristen Lester’s Purl, a deceptively cute tale of toxic masculinity in the workplace.
Set in the high-powered world of B.R.O capital, Purl follows its titular central character as she goes to work in a male-dominated office and finds herself struggling to fit in. A story centred around themes of belonging and understanding, Purl is left with a tough decision – change her ways to fit in or carry on being herself and face a life of loneliness and isolation at work. The story was obviously a personal one for writer/director Lester, as she reveals in this Meet the Filmmakers video:
“It’s based on my experience being in animation”, says Lester, “my first job, I was like the only woman in the room and so in order to do the thing that I loved, I sort of became one of the guys. Then, I came to Pixar and I started to work on teams with women for the first time and that actually made me realise how much of the female aspect of myself I had sort of buried and left behind”.
Burger King had a surprising ad for Superbowl which was accused of being “advertising for advertising people”. It involved Andy Warhol. Yes, the real Andy Warhol, eating a Whopper. Via AdAge:
In the future, maybe everyone will eat a Whopper for 15 minutes. Or at least 45 seconds.
“I still remember the first time I watched the complete length of the film of Andy Warhol eating a Burger King Whopper, and my head exploded,” says Fernando Machado, Burger King’s global chief marketing officer. “I was like, ‘Is that really Andy Warhol; why is he eating that? What’s happening there?'”
A few years later, an advertising dream of Machado’s has come true. Burger King, with the help of agency David Miami, got the rights to use footage of Warhol from “Andy Warhol Eating a Hamburger,” directed by JØrgen Leth, in its Super Bowl spot. The full scene originally appeared in Leth’s 1982 film “66 Scenes from America.”
“One of the things that was unique about the negotiation was that we didn’t want to change or touch the film in any way that would take away from its original intent,” says Marcelo Pascoa, Burger King’s global head of brand marketing. “We knew that the best thing we could do would be to keep the film as intact as we could.”
Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds bury the hatchet by making ads for each other. Or did they…. Via News.com.au:
With muscles like those, you’d think they’d fight it out offline.
Marvel men Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman have put to peace their fan favourite internet feud. The ultimate truce maker? An advertising collaboration, of course.
“Official truce with @realhughjackman! As a gesture of goodwill, I’m gonna make a beautiful ad for his company, Laughing Man Coffee. Can’t wait!” Reynolds tweeted, along with a photo of him and Jackman holding hands.
Hey, even these superheroes are willing to put their pride aside when there’s a money-making ad opportunity at hand. The Twitter war between the Wolverine and Deadpool actors has been brewing online since 2017, much to the enjoyment of their respective fanbases. Highlights of the ribbing have included Jackman asking viewers to urinate on Reynold’s Hollywood Walk of Fame star, and Reynolds tweeting, “Pretty sure those are protesters,” in response to a post of Jackman posing with fans in Beijing.
The result was a heartfelt ad by Ryan Reynolds for Hugh Jackman’s coffee company, albeit with a painful pun involving Hugh’s name… and a less-than-heartfelt ad by Hugh for Ryan’s gin company. Watch it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQ6TE6mzkl8
Chance the Rapper x Backstreet Boys for Doritos. That’s right. The Backstreet Boys are still alive. Their band name hasn’t aged well. We could link you a glowing review of the ad, which while we didn’t think was great was at least amusing to us, but here’s Rolling Stone magazine being really upset about it instead:
Doritos has a new flavor: Doritos® Flamin’ Hot® Nacho. Instead of rolling the new chip out in a reasonable manner, a marketing team decided to play millennial musical Mad Libs to the tune of (presumably) millions of dollars. The result is Chance the Rapper remixing The Backstreet Boys’ classic “I Want It That Way” into a dreadful piece of advertising disguised as a sickly sweet nostalgia cocktail for the Rap Caviar set.
Imagining the target demographic of this monstrosity is a baffling exercise. The only connective tissue between “I Want It That Way” and Chance the Rapper is that the former released on April 12th, 1999, and the latter was born on April 16th, 1993, which means that both the hit song and the hatted musician are technically Aries. Besides that, it isn’t clear who in the world thinks Chance rapping “Hot stuff all over my nachos/Walkin’ like a taco/Driving over potholes/Hotter than a pot roast” is a worthwhile thing to put into the world, even if the end goal is as modest as selling some spicy chips.
Another year, another Superbowl Alexa commercial. This one isn’t as funny as 2018’s, but at least it has Harrison Ford and a cute dog. Via Digital Trends:
Amazon’s having fun with Alexa with this year’s Super Bowl Sunday TV commercial. The online retail giant is set to run at least one television commercial for the Amazon Beta Testing Program during Super Bowl 53 this Sunday, February 3. After seeing Amazon’s earlier teaser videos we guessed that the program has something to do with Amazon’s Alexa digital voice assistant, and we were right. Check out the video at the top of this article.
To spark interest in the so-far-under-wraps announcement, Amazon enlisted actors, comedians, and astronauts in short teaser ads. In the ads, actors Harrison Ford and Forest Whitaker, Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer from Broad City, and NASA astronauts and twin brothers Mark and Scott Kelly all react to That-Which-Is-Still-Secret.
In each video, the actor slides open a two-section horizontal shutter or door, looks at what’s inside, and utters a short reaction. What each clip has in common is that the contents emit or reflect blue Amazon Echo light that illuminates the character’s face. The inside surface looks like egg-crate acoustic soundproofing, but no further details are visible. All that Amazon mentions in conjunction with the teasers is “Amazon recruited some famous friends to test new Alexa technologies. To see what happened, tune into the big game on 2.3.19.”
Here’s what happened when we acted on the suggestion to ask Alexa:
DT: “Alexa, what is the Amazon Beta Testing Program?”
Alexa: “I’m not supposed to talk about the confidential Amazon Beta Testing Program until the big game on February 3. However, I think you can keep a secret. Just say this access code: Blue 126. Again that’s Blue 126.”
A Day in the Life of a Sushi Master — as can be seen through films like Jiro Dreams of Sushi, it’s a lot more work than you’d think. Via High Snobriety:
We’ve shown you how to make your favorite sneakers out of sushi, but you probably don’t realize what it takes to become a sushi master. Chef Nozomu Abe, owner of New York’s Sushi Noz, has been mastering the art of making sushi for 20 years. In an effort to go behind the scenes to see what it really takes to be a true master, food network Tasty spent a day with Abe to share what his day-to-day schedule is like.
His work day starts at 9 a.m. when he arrives at the restaurant, however, his employees are already hard at work. Abe then inspects the quality of the day’s fish, all while mulling over the courses. After the menu has been finalized, the chef and his team then begin to prepare the items. Abe states that 90 percent of his work is taken care of before his customers even arrive.
Prior to seating his guests, Abe meticulously decorates the restaurant, ultimately aiming to transport each customer to Japan. When they arrive, it’s all about bringing out the energy of the food as he makes each dish in front of his guests.
The DeLorean Paradox — once, thanks to Back to the Future, this car was supposed to be the car of the future. What went wrong? Via Vox:
The video above explores the past and present of the DeLorean Motor Company, which made the infamous DMC-12. Though many today know the car through the movie Back to the Future, DeLorean has its own incredible story to tell (and one that’s almost harder to believe than a story about time travel).
John Z. DeLorean is at its center as the founder and namesake of the company. His path through the upper echelon of General Motors seemed to set him on course for that company’s presidency — but he dreamed of starting his own company. The result was the DeLorean Motor Company, which was established in America and eventually planted a factory in Dunmurry, Ireland, near Belfast and during the Irish sectarian civil war known as the Troubles.
For this video, we interviewed Barrie Wills about his experience working at the company — but we also talked to DeLorean owners about the ways the car has endured, thanks to the movie Back to the Future and, more importantly, their own ingenuity and creativity. A DeLorean community has kept the car going. And despite the fact that the car’s production ended in the early ’80s, it continues to inspire new fans even today.
If you’re still interested in this iconic car, you can check out the motor company’s website here. Yes, the gull wings are still a thing, and you can get parts, but it’s no longer making new cars — instead the website links you to pre-owned.
Animal Planet’s Puppybowl and Kittenbowl is back for another year, following the Superbowl! It encourages adoption of rescue cats and dogs. And, it’s adorable. Adoption is for US only, but in case you were curious, Bustle has the low down:
Whether you love the Super Bowl or hate it, pretty much everyone can agree that the Puppy Bowl is a glorious occasion. Just as in past years, you can adopt the puppies in the 2019 Puppy Bowl, though according to USA Today, most of the furry friends you’ll see on-screen found homes last fall, when the Puppy Bowl XV was filmed. Still, there are many more puppies available for adoption from the featured shelters. So while your potential new dog might not be a Puppy Bowl MVP, they still could very well be the MVP of your heart.
For its 15th year, Puppy Bowl worked with 51 animal shelters and rescue organizations from more than 20 states, the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico, and Costa Rica, per USA. There will be a grand total of 93 puppies featured and there are 36 puppies in the starting lineup from 27 different shelters. Some of the standouts are Gallagher, the Saint Bernard from AHeinz57 Pet Rescue & Transport in Iowa; Melody, the Maltese and Yorkshire terrier mix from Memphis Humane Society in Tennessee; and Will, the three-legged Old English sheepdog from Doodle Rock Rescue in Texas. (Will is one of three dogs with special needs who will be competing.) But there are so many dogs that everyone watching the Puppy Bowl can have their favorite — and it may lead you to look into how you can get a dog like these adorable competitors from Team Fluff and Team Ruff.
Are you browsing a website on Chrome? Head to your website and check out the address bar. If you’re a business, ideally your IT people have already switched over your site from HTTP to HTTPS, given you the nice green lock icon and a ‘Secure’ statement. If they haven’t, or if you have no IT people, chances are your website either has a “!” mark or it’s already been marked “Not Secure”. Once Chrome version 68 comes online, all non-HTTPS sites will be marked “Not Secure”. The Register has already called it the “looming Google Chrome HTTPS certificate apocalypse”:
Tens of thousands of websites are going to find themselves labeled as unsafe unless they switch out their HTTPS certificate in the next two months.
Thanks to a decision by Google to stop trusting Symantec-issued SSL/TLS certs, Chrome browser users visiting websites using a certificate from the security biz issued before June 1, 2016 or after December 1, 2017 may be warned that their connection is not private and someone may be trying to steal their information. They will have to click past the warning to get to the website.
But wait, you might say. I don’t use Syman-whatsits. I don’t even use Chrome, I’m a diehard Mozilla/Internet Explorer/Safari user. If you’re using Firefox/Mozilla, good for you, it’s apparently faster and more secure than Chrome, but its low integration with Tweetdeck tanked it for us. Like Google, Mozilla has already been pushing people towards HTTPS for a while: all new Firefox features in 2018 will only work with HTTPS. If you’re using IE or Safari… eh… sure… but HTTPS websites are also visibly marked secure on those address bars. Inaction will still hurt your website even if you can’t see its immediate effect. It will affect your SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) — you will rank lower on search engines and receive fewer visitors to your website.
Hang On, Slow Down, What Even Is All This?
HTTP stands for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol, and the ‘S’ at the end of HTTPS just stands for Secure. It means all communications between the site and the browser are encrypted, protecting sensitive data such as online banking and forms. Initiating a HTTPS connection to the website gets the website to send you its SSL certificate, a public key that allows you to begin a secure session with the website. Think of it as heading into a bank to talk to a banker. Instead of talking to the banker out in the lobby of the bank, you get a key for a secure meeting room where you can talk about your financial matters/health issues/your dog in relative security.
Benefits of having HTTPS certification include:
- Customer info is encrypted and can’t be intercepted (between the browser and the website).
- Visitors can see that you’re a registered business and own the domain.
- Visitors are more likely to feel that you’re a trustworthy business.
- It’s good for the health of the internet in general.
Visiting only HTTPS websites does NOT mean that people can’t get scammed online:
- Yes, nefarious websites can also acquire a HTTPS certificate. In the words of the Mozilla blog, the job of HTTPS is to provide you with a secure line. It doesn’t ensure that you’re not talking to crooks with the line. As a business, this means having to be actively conscious of the possibility that people might be using phishing to mimic your site to trick your customers.
- HTTPS certification helps prevent people from seeing what info you submit to a website. There are other ways that attackers can use to gain private information: keyloggers, for example, are malicious software that log every key that you make on a keyboard, then email that information to a hacker. And of course, hackers routinely hack customer databases such as Sony’s and Adobe’s to acquire data like passwords and credit card details.
So What’s Happening?
Many sites have been migrating to HTTPS over time. Chrome’s deadline came about because they think that by July, a sufficient majority of websites would have moved over, enough that they can brand all remaining HTTP sites.
Google and Mozilla have already been trying to nudge people from unencrypted sites for years. Remember clicking through to a site and then running head-first into a “You’re About to Enter a Not Secure Website Error Error Are You Seriously Going to Do This” kind of page? Scary, right? I’ve left sites before instead of heading through. That happened because of the stoush between Google and Symantec (check out the Register’s article above if you’re curious) which resulted in Symantec selling off their SSL certificate business.
Let’s Encrypt and Other Solutions
Your hosting provider might already have an inbuilt solution on hand — contact them if you have any questions. If they don’t, you’d have to get a SSL certificate from an authority. You can get ones for free from Let’s Encrypt. There are instructions for installation in that link, as well as a list of hosting providers which are Let’s Encrypt compatible. For those that aren’t, you could either choose to live with HTTP or try to do it manually. Need to know more? We’re happy to chat.