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Way to get into the holiday spirit, Costco hot-dog condiment bar!

Dear Chicago Blackhawks Marketing Staff – You’re Doing It Wrong.

still doing it wrong

Catching up on my hockey blogs over the weekend I found an amusing post over at Hit The Post sharing a couple of funny mock-political ads made by the Chicago Blackhawks – presumably to spur fan voting for the all-star game. The spots were unusually funny for in-house marketing, and contained a couple of good Canada jokes, so I fired the link off to my brother and forgot about it. Behold – viral marketing in action!

Except for the part where he went and discovered that both the videos had been pulled off YouTube by the Blackhawks claiming copyright violation.

Confidential to Chicago Blackhawks crack marketing team: When you make a viral-type video – it is with the express purpose that you hope it will show up on YouTube (or Veoh, or Digg, or any of the myriad of bastard social-networking sites – some of which will re-host your media, and some of which won’t). The entire point of this type of marketing is to encourage your fans to spread your message far and wide – even if it is out of your control. Why it might get to the point where a Calgary Flames fan reads about them on a Flames blog, and e-mails his brother… who just happens to be in the process of filling out his all-star ballot at that exact moment. Read more

It’s like an encyclopedia of “80s Toy Manufacturing High Concept”

In trying to solve a contest question for the effervescent E Dub today, I came across this YouTube.

While I’m not sure I agree that these are the “top” cartoon themes from the 80s (It was a big decade for Cartoons stretching from “Danger Mouse” through “The Simpsons”) I will say this is a really interesting cross section of early 80s toy-based “high concept” cartoons. Literally pretty much every permutation and combination of “space”, “cars”, “robots” and “dinosaurs” is represented herein. Most importantly the clip contains the requisite amount of “I completely forgot about THAT!” moments, 80s futurism design, and hair-rock.

Plus, Jem is at #2 which is only one spot off… since I think it’s unarguable that Jem had the quintessential 80s cartoon theme song. Period.

Enter: Xavier Becerra

Given the large effect US intellectual property policy has on the world at large, it’s always good to keep an eye on there. The Obama administration has announced Xavier Becerra as it’s new Trade Representative. Laura Quilter over at derivative work has an excellent summary, as well as links to profiles and lobbyist funding sources for the democratic representative.

Sadly “supporting Hollywood” is often synonymous with “restricting copyright”, but Laura cites an instance where Becerra seems to take a more progressive approach with respect to patent law… so there may be hope yet.

Lots of good information on someone that will be worth watching in the coming months.

On politics…

I don’t have a strong position on the current Canadian political fracas, as I don’t have a partisan banner at which to rally. At the moment, I’m equally enthused with all of the major parties… and that’s not a good thing. I will, however, cross-post an edited and updated version of what I wrote in a comment thread over at Nunc Scio, just because it summarizes a couple of odds-and-end random thoughts I haven’t seen get a lot of play elsewhere:

I’ve yet to be convinced by anyone that the obvious course of action for Michelle Jean isn’t to just throw this whole mess back to the electorate, prorogue be damned. Given that she likely never expected to have to make an actual political decision – let alone one of this magnitude (the King-Byng being the only time something even remotely similar has ever happened in the history of the country) I always suspect the most likely course of action (regardless of what the pundits predict as savvy politics) is the one that will cover the most butt. “This is a decision that must be decided by the people, not an individual” is never going to be a vilified argument in the history books (even if it’s wrong, and absolutely no one wants an election). It’ll draw flack in the short term – but contrast that with the risk of letting a (potentially) explosive coalition (including a separatist party), led (albeit temporarily) by a party leader who has essentially resigned due to his perceived lack of compatability with the electorate – rule the country for an indeterminate period of time. “Option B” has the potential of being an all time hi-lite reel political melt-down. Read more

Your Wednesday Moment of Venn…

I’ve gotten some weird spam in my day, but sometimes you just have to question the sender’s basic underlying assumptions.

Missed Opportunities, Part 2

Aw man, here I already write one post about Pixar today, and I totally miss that the trailer for their 2009 film is “up” today.

I’m slipping in my dottage.

I also long ago discovered it’s nigh impossible to judge Pixar on their concepts. See “Rattitouli”.

Somali Pirates to Acquire Citigroup

Man you know the market’s getting slap-happy when you start getting multiple market humour posts on the same day…

Somali Pirates to Acquire Citigroup