The most exciting time of the year for advertising SUPERBOWL SUNDAY

If your in adverting you know that this Sunday is a day like no other. More money spent for one day of advertising then over the entire Christmas season. This year a 30 second spot will cost 2.8 million to 3 million dollars US, so as a visualization that's about the same amount of money that Charlie Sean spends on a party Badum bum bum....... Of course a lot of ads are longer than 30 seconds so companies drop up to 10 million for air time, and that's not counting the cost to make the ad. Look at the commercial for Bieber and Ozzy Best Buy ad wonder how much they made each for their time. So while so many people will be watching the game this coming Sunday and cheering crazy football plays, I'll be the one who cheers for a great ad because this is the day where you get to see their crazy plays.

$14 for 1 Hour of Pool and 1 Order of The Whole Nine Yards Sampler at Tailgators (a $34 Value)

$14 for 1 Hour of Pool and 1 Order of The Whole Nine Yards Sampler at Tailgators (a $34 Value)

Whats this link for? Well there is a new growing trend in advertising. Right now it seems to be spreading like wildfire. The long name for it is "social media flash sale sites" the one above is for a site called WagJag.com, and yes it is a shameless self promotion because i work for the company that runs it. But there are others, in the area where I live (Ottawa, Canada) ten of them in fact, groupon, livingsocial, dealon, socialbuy, koupon, kahoots, swarmjam, teambuy, tuango, and wagjag. I'm sure there are more but these are the ones I've discovered so far. Personally I think that they are a great new marketing tool, allowing businesses to reach new customers and reconnect with old ones. But and yes there is a but, is this to much to fast so many sites diluting the mix. It was recently announced that google and facebook were going to be starting thier own sites, this I think proves that this is a venuture which wont be going away, because you know those two companies wouldn't do anything unless they thought there was money to be made. I think in the next 4 to 6 months you will see all the small ones disappear, and you will be left with the ones which either offered more to thier clients or had the better marketing paln to promote themselves over the others. It will be interesting to see in a few months what is now happening with this new frontier.

approached to about promotions unwanted on my cell or computer?

So our task this week was to discuss if we had ever been targeted by a unsolicited promotion or offer on our cell phone or computer. Well my answer is no, though I am particularly careful as not to click on any pop-ups or spam I don't enter contests where I think my info is going places I don't want. The closest I think I get is spam by Rogers on my cell phone occasionally offering me deals on text messaging and picture messaging. A few of my IPhone apps have push notification on special offers and such if we want, but I always turn that off so it doesn't happen. I think I am of that older demographic that still doesn't trust the Internet with their money. I have entered a coke contest by a scratch card texting a code to a 5# to text to, but I did that once, and not since. I think part of the mistrust comes from those ads on TV for text such and such for ring tones or contest is you can see whats wrong with this picture or answer this ridiculously easy question, and lets not forget jokes of the day and such. All these have a charge and you keep getting charged until you request it stopped, sounds like a scam, so I think that's where my feelings of mistrust come from. So until they seem to become more mainstream or less spammy telemarketer like, I think I'll stay away.

no cable, no radio, no problem........no way

So i lasted about 4 days, once Monday rolled around I watched television for "Chuck" and "Spartacus" I guess I could have downloaded Spartacus, and watched Chuck online streaming. but I tried it with a few shows on spacecast.com and I guess my Internet is kind of lousy, cause they either would not load up or I would get no audio. It could also be that these sites are not Mac friendly. I guess I could get use to doing all my entertainment online if I had a decent Internet connection and a big monitor say about 42 inches? cause that is the other downside of watching shows on line my 15 inch monitor doesn't compare to my 42 inch television. I also don't like how on many of the sites a show is broken up into segments, like we have short attention spans or something. making you click on another part and be forced to sit through a commercial. Now I know that a student of advertising complaining about having to sit through a commercial sounds hypocritical, but online I'm forced to sit there and watch it, there is no free will, I can surf on TV when commercials come on, or it might just be the simple face that on TV I feel I have free will on whether I watch a commercial or not, online I feel like I'm held captive.

theres an app for that for some device somewhere whether you need one or not....

I think after looking around for several of these, and they range from locator's of stores, to updates of what the business or company is doing, is slightly ridiculous. I think its another example of "Oh everyone else is doing it we better too" syndrome. Do I really need a Starbucks locater ? They are on practically every block and chances are if I go to Starbucks i have a favorite one I go to and know where it is. And all the airline ones that are out or are coming out useless, they cant get a plane to take off on time if their life depend on it and they make an app to check for status updates for your flights????? wow an app that is never right, its not even as good as a broken clock it gets the time right twice a day at least. sure there is the odd useful one IPhone have one for restaurants in areas your in and offer reviews from other users so not bad, and theirs the one which tells you where every traffic cam is on your route as like a spy version of GPS, but is it legal? Or the one by gyco insurance which gives you updates of everything pertaining to your insurance with them and bloopers and funny videos of driving accidents and stuff? is that really appropriate? I'm waiting for some truly worthy business promoting apps to come out. How about ones from pharmacies or your Doctor with a reminder program for your med or appointments? or one from your news source local to the area? which you can set up for specific alerts relevant to your interests. I would love one that is a traffic report which is for you in your area and up to date say tracks all users on the road and their movement through the GPS that most phones have and use that data to give relevant traffic stats? Nope haven't seen that one yet guess I'll have to settle for an app which tells me where the nearest theater is and whats playing at it.........

still think the winner is......

So having revisited the sites I was on before and trolling around some more I still think the hurt locker is going to take best pic. At some recent European award show the hurt locker cleaned up and beat out Avatar. so this makes me think its got distinct possibility. Of course I still haven't seen either of these movies and cant put a personal opinion out based on me seeing both I have to go by what others are saying, but isn't that what is best about the Internet we can always fin someone with a opinion on any topic. I do get the feeling that most opinions are that the Hurt Locker has an actual story line where as Avatar is just a bunch of special effects, I don't thing that that is a reason to win best picture.

And the winner is.....

And the winner is…….(yes I know, a very cliché blog title)

So one site that I found had some decent discussion under it for all the nominees was a New York times blog at http://carpetbagger.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/02/oscar-nominations/. Another was http://oscar-watch.ew.com/. Which gets really annoying with all the pop ups, which with me using a MAC is really impressive in a bad way. I did read through this one (even with the damn pop ups) because this blogger offered his predictions on a few of the categories, not all but about ¼. And lastly for this day I looked at http://communities.canada.com/shareit/blogs/stonereport/archive/2010/01/29/my-oscar-nomination-predictions-cloudy-with-a-chance-of-james-camereon.aspx. Only commented on the first few catagories but at least gave some reasoning why he picked what he did.

I’ll be honest I have not seen a lot of these movies, so a lot of my reasoning for what I have picked initially is from what I have read online.

Best Picture 
“The Hurt Locker”
“

Best Direction 
“Avatar” — James Cameron

Actor in a Leading Role 
Jeff Bridges in “Crazy Heart”


Actress in a Leading Role 
 ”
Meryl Streep in “Julie & Julia”

Actor in a Supporting Role 
 Stanley Tucci in “The Lovely Bones”


Actress in a Supporting Role Mo’Nique in “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire”



Writing (Adapted Screenplay 
“Up in the Air” — Screenplay by Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner

Writing (Original Screenplay)
“The Hurt Locker” — Written by Mark Boal

Animated Feature Film 
“Coraline

Art Direction
 “Avatar” — Art Direction: Rick Carter and Robert Stromberg;

Cinematography 
“Avatar” — Mauro Fiore

Costume 
“The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” — Monique Prudhomme

Documentary (Feature)
“Burma VJ”
“The Cove”

Documentary (Short Subject)
“China’s Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province

Film Editing
“Avatar” — Stephen Rivkin, John Refoua and James Cameron

Foreign Language Film
“Ajami” — Israel
“El Secreto de Sus Ojos” — Argentina
“The Milk of Sorrow” — Peru
“Un Prophète” — France
“The White Ribbon” — Germany

Makeup 
“Star Trek” — Barney Burman, Mindy Hall and Joel Harlow

Music (Original Score)
“Avatar” — James Horner

Music (Original Song)
 
“The Weary Kind (Theme from Crazy Heart)” from “Crazy Heart” Music and Lyric by Ryan Bingham and T Bone Burnett

Short Film (Animated 
“The Lady and the Reaper (La Dama y la Muerte)” Javier Recio Gracia
“Logorama”

Short Film (Live Action)
 
“Instead of Abracadabra” — Patrik Eklund and Mathias

Sound Editing
 Either “Avatar” — Christopher Boyes and Gwendolyn Yates Whittle or 
“Star Trek” — Mark Stoeckinger and Alan Rankin

Sound Mixing Again either 
“Avatar” — Christopher Boyes, Gary Summers, Andy Nelson and Tony Johnson or 
“Star Trek” — Anna Behlmer, Andy Nelson and Peter J. Devlin or even 
“Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” — Greg P. Russell, Gary Summers and Geoffrey Patterson

Visual Effects
 And once more either “Avatar” — Joe Letteri, Stephen Rosenbaum, Richard Baneham and Andrew R. Jones or Star Trek” — Roger Guyett, Russell Earl, Paul Kavanagh and Burt Dalton