Woody!

Big news for readers waiting for big news: I’m switching to pencils. I’ve got a bunch of tack-sharp yellow #2 HBs looking for a standardized test to bubble in.

It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there and nothing better prepares you for survival than sharpening your pencil for 20 minutes a day. And I know I’m not alone on this. There ARE more of us out there. Check out this badass clip:

Kluster.com Will Pay You for Your Ideas

Kluster.com just might be onto something big. They’ve created an online social community! Wow… OK, sarcasm aside, there is, of course, a bit more to Kluster than being a simple online community. The site and the community have actual purpose. Put simply, the site brings together talented people to work towards, and actually accomplish, common goals.

Once you sign up for the site, you’ll go through the standard steps that you generally need to deal with once you join any other online community: background, interests, avatar selection, etc. However, for each segment of your profile that you fill in, you’ll also receive a quantity of “watts” that get added onto the 1,000 watts you receive for signing up. I’ll get to what these are for in a bit but think of Watts as your Kluster currency. However, in an effort to avoid getting ahead of myself, let me explain what the site is all about. Continue reading…

Department of No Comment

Vertis Survey: Newspaper Inserts Grab More Attention Than TV

From MediaPost’s Marketing Daily — by Karlene Lukovitz, Monday, Feb 25, 2008 5:00 AM ET

NEWSPAPER INSERTS AND CIRCULARS ARE more attention-grabbing than TV advertising, according to the latest Customer Focus survey from Vertis Communications. Vertis, which supplies print advertising and direct marketing vehicles for retailers and consumer services companies, has been conducting the annual telephone survey since 1998.

In this year’s survey, conducted on a representative sample of 3,000 adult U.S. consumers, 47% said that inserts/circulars best capture their attention, 43% cited television ads and 38% cited newspaper display ads.

That represented a 9% increase for inserts, a 10% decrease for TV ads and a 7% decrease for newspaper ads since the 2003 survey.

Locking in Viewers to Watch the Commercials

From the New York Times — By BILL CARTER Published: February 25, 2008

Looking to strike a blow against the proliferation of digital video recorders, the ABC network, its affiliated broadcast stations, and Cox Communications’ cable systems are establishing an on-demand video service that would allow viewers to watch ABC shows like “Lost” and “Desperate Housewives” any time they choose.

ABC and Cox will offer ABC shows on demand, like “Desperate Housewives,” above, and “Lost,” top. Viewers, however, will not be able to fast-forward through commercials. The catch: It uses a new technology that disables the viewers’ ability to fast-forward through commercials.

Technorati Tags: Advertising Agencies, marketing, New York Times, TV Commercials

Taxi Cab Driver Creates His Own Viral Campaign Debunking the “HIV Hoax”

Jumped into a cab in Brooklyn today, and the cabbie had a talk radio show going, like real loud. When I asked him to turn the damn thing down, he only did so reluctantly. The talk show host, Gary Null, was going on about healthy eating, the power of God, and something about dissident views on the connection between AIDs and the HIV virus.

We pull up to a light and my cabbie signals to another cabbie next to him — when the other cabbie rolls down his window, my guy waves this nice sign at him:

This cabbie has his own guerilla campaign going for Null! I asked him about Null’s politics and he told me Null was “The greatest research scientist in America!” When I asked what kind of research Null did, my cabbie reported that Null “Is the healthiest guy in America!”

Damn, you gotta respect that kind of passion. When I got the office I discovered that Null also believes cell phones are dangerous:

Hey, no kidding… But when you click on Read More you get a piece about the dangers of Caffeine. I’m sure it all connects. Somehow.

Technorati Tags: car culture, Creative, Gregg Hale, Marketing News, social media, Viral Marketing

Using Google Maps To Report On Today’s Maine Caucus Vote

A political junky named Bryan created a Google map of today’s Maine caucus vote. Obama won, by the way, 58.7 to 40.7.

Technorati Tags: Elections, Hillary, Media, New Journalism, New York Times, Obama, Social Media

Big Hoax

Kevin Hart, a 6-5 290 pound guard from a small Nevada school, recently accepted a scholarship offer from UC-Berkeley. On National Recruit Signing Day last week, he called a press conference at his high school gym, invited the student body and his coaches to attend, and made a big show of picking the UC-Berkeley cap from a row of hats representing the schools from which he was considering accepting scholarship offers.

Problem was, he was never offered a scholarship from Berkeley and was only mildly recruited at all from the big football schools. Kevin apologized in a written statement, saying, “I wanted to play D-1 ball more than anything.” Here at Campfire, we love a good hoax. And this one proved irresistible to several news outlets, including the 2 TV stations and the local paper that covered the event. This charade really livened up the rather dull (for me) college football commitment process. You can see some of the effects of the hoax here, here, and here.

To paraphrase our man Ron Burgundy, “Kevin, that escalated quickly… I mean, that really got out of hand fast!” I hope you get to play college football somewhere. Apparently, you’re a mid-major prospect after all!

Technorati Tags: conversation, hoax, Social Networks, Viral Marketing

Internet Voting: Are We Ready?

As we look back on the 2008 Super “Duper” Tuesday presidential primary election results, much of the attention has turned to the Democratic Party’s dangerous experiment, Internet voting.

Democrats Abroad held the first global primary ever via their site, votefromabroad.org. Many question this bold move of accepting votes from the Internet with the risk of hackers tapping into the system or even a possible global network failure. However, votefromabroad.org is secured and powered by Everyone Counts, a leading expert in high-integrity online elections.

With an overwhelming large number of young voters participating in this presidential election process, the question of voting online is and will continue to be a hot topic.

Fighting Through the Giants Parade Dude Throng

OK. The Giants won the Superbowl. They deserved it and everything. I’m not a huge football guy but it was still a bummer to see Boston lose one to New York (finally.)

Because of the victory, the city is throwing the team a parade which, of course, means streams of grown men dressing up like professional athletes by wearing absurdly over-sized “official” game jerseys and getting drunk by 10am so they can serve up better chest bumps. Not that I’m criticizing, as I did the same thing when the Sox won the Series in ‘04 (minus the game jerseys and chest-bumping.)

This morning, following my activity of responsible citizenry (i.e. voting) I jumped on the PATH in Jersey City to head into the city. This involved roughly six minutes on a train packed with Giants fans and a 15-block walk to work against a steady stream of dude-guys. Hand-blistering high-fives and rumbling chants of “18 and 1″ were common place. Given the losing battle that AM sobriety was fighting coupled with the fact that it is ALSO Fat Tuesday, I don’t envy the city’s sanitation crew.

Oh yeah. Go vote. Voting today will likely have more of an impact than in November.

Top 10 artists played by Campfire employees for the week of January 28 – February 3, 2008

Top 10 artists played by Campfire employees for the week of January 28 – February 3, 2008:

The Shins again? Really? I always thought of them as hip elevator music — they sound great over the speakers at Whole Foods, but c’mon! Worse yet, we follow up with Yeah Yeah Yeahs, another generic indie bland. Not even a Miles Davis or Coltrane busts through this week! At least Party Ben makes a showing to mash things up a bit.

Okay gang, let’s fire up something a little more inspiring this week, mmmkay?