Had a great, jam-packed day at Northern Voice today. The opening keynote by Stewart Butterfield was very engaging and I had a bit of Sunshine Coast pride to learn he spent his early years in Lund on the Sunshine Coast.
I also enjoyed Chris Heuer’s session on “Death of Advertising” which Ruth Seeley covered better than I could at this late & tired hour. The most memorable thing for me was discovering Blentec’s Will It Blend campaign. It’s mainly videos of their CEO in a “lab” testing their blender’s ability to make “smoothies” out of iPods, lightsticks, and so on. Apparently since this campaign launched their blender sales have gone through the roof and they even get paid to do blender demos as entertainment at events.
On the one hand I want to cheer them on – way to go! Leverage new media creatively! Make it work for you!
On the other, I was so sad to see the toxic waste-filled innards of the iPod mulched and fuming into the atmosphere for the purpose of selling more stuff.
This is at the root of my discomfort around so much branding and advertising: the despair I feel for our overtaxed planet and our underfed souls… some of us at times spending and spending to fill an emptiness that traditional advertising has worked so cleverly to enlarge.
So I guess I have to give Blentec kudos for this campaign; regardless of my conflicted feelings they have created something remarkable.
**OK, so it’s not really sordid, but that sounds catchy doesn’t it?
I think Mhairi did a much better job of covering Chris’s presentation than I did.
http://www.out-smarts.com/2009/02/20/death-of-advertising-chris-heuer/
She won’t be taking the prize for world’s longest grammatically correct and perfectly punctuated sentence away from *me* anytime soon though.
Ruth Seeley’s last blog post..Northern Voice 09: the love-in
Thanks for that, she DID do a great job covering it!
Sounds like me. I’m fascinated by marketing at the same time I despise it. Although as Seth Godin points out sometimes, such as with non-profits, it can be used effectively to get a message out & create awareness. I’m reminded of a line from a odd movie called Yes, “… A load of greed and a life spent longing for things you don’t need.”
btw … The movie is odd partly because it’s all a poem. All the narrative is verse. And this is how it ends:
…There’s no such thing as nothing, not at all.
It may be really very, very small
But it’s still there. In fact I think I’d guess
That “no” does not exist. There’s only “yes”.
Oooh, thanks for sharing that. Love the ending. Reminds me of Dr. Seuss somehow.
I’ll have to see if my indie video store has that!