Attention lust and Olympic craziness
For many organizations and individuals, attention is the most precious resource. The pursuit of attention for our ads, or our city or our careers dominates all else.
How else to explain the silly math that is used to justify Olympic hoopla? Can imagine how little patience people would have for the IOC and their internal politics if they didn't have a show that so many people wanted to watch?
Almost every city that has hosted an Olympics regrets it financially. The TV networks spend billions. The advertisers pay for it. The hoopla is vast and loud.
For what?
For the attention. It's the attention that gets cities to put up with the ridiculous system for choosing host cities and gets the TV networks to ship camera crews half way around the world. It's the attention that turns the Olympic committee into vigilant trademark and copyright police. It's easy to cut countries or companies willing to bankrupt themselves for pride or attention a little slack. After all, the Olympics is a magical event.
Except it's not. The same craving for attention happens every day in every organization in search of just one more pair of eyeballs. As marketers discover that more eyeballs does not equal better, the quixotic quest for attention will start to abate.
The formula is simple but depressing: marketers have been lousy at harvesting attention because there was just so much of it. So it was more like strip mining than careful, efficient use of a natural resource. Now that attention is harder to get, people are overpaying for it and the Olympics is just one example. The alternative is to create focused, intense networks that ignore the masses. For most marketers, that's exactly what we need.
California Assemblyman Tom Ammiano introduced a bill to help the Port of San Francisco with some financing issues. It sailed through both houses of the California legislature with little opposition and went to Governor Schwartzenegger for his signature.
But Arnold had other ideas. He vetoed the bill and sent Ammiano and his fellow legislators a veto letter. Not just an ordinary veto letter, mind you, but an oddly-worded letter with a Da Vinci Code-like message that reveals the Governator’s true feelings.
To decode Arnold’s message, just read down the first letter in each line on the left side of the letter.
While we can’t help but admire Arnold’s sentiment and ingenuity, we long for the likes of Harry Truman, who would have just come out and said what he meant.
Source: SFBG.com
Compared to this, T. rex was a kitten"
Impressive video at the BBC this morning showing the fossilized skull of a pliosaur. Since it was an aquatic creature, it's body size was much larger than land-based dinosaurs. ""It could have taken a human in one gulp; in fact, something like a T. Rex would have been breakfast for a beast like this."
“Democrats are an opinionated bunch. You know the other side, they just kind of do what they’re told. Democrats, y’all thinkin’ for yourselves.”
- President Obama, October 20
Some blogger saw this ad and thought the model appeared to be ridiculously think for her height and head size. He/she posted about it and soon after, received a letter from Ralph Lauren's lawyers claiming copyright infringement. Much more here.
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