Season of the Witch

I'm hearing good things about Windows Phone. If the UX really lives up to the endline then Microsoft might just have thrown themselves a life line through the window. The American launch ad that follows (up) has that typically didactic but youthful tone of voiceover that I find patronising but it's still a strong point of view that I'm interested in.

Mad Men

I'm not really into Mad Men. I understand the narrative has broadened a bit in the last few series and that the script writing is on occasions quite good, though in this episode there was no mention of advertising till about two thirds of the way through when I gave up and concluded it was still about getting laid or the consequences thereof.

The reason for posting this latest episode is merely to highlight that not only are the latest episodes of American content swiftly turning up on Chinese video sites but that the quality is impeccable and from what I can see the user interface fine-tuning is superior to Youtube.

This could be a long rant about I.P. and while I have already stated my unorthodox position on that subject, I don't think I want to spell out, and/or think through some of the finer details like there's no question that the United States produces the finest serialised acting content with the best production in the world. Period.

There's a fair bit of irony in posting free content about a period of time which on one level was directly about the monetization of eyeballs. Some things China selfishly does I whole heartedly approve of.

Society of the Spectacle

I don't usually post advertising here (not much of it is remarkable enough) though yesterday reminded me that Kirsty Angus does tend to discover the kind of work I like and that includes the last time I felt irrationally warm towards marketing communications. It's an ad for Oogmerk Opticians in Holland. Like all incredibly good work it transcends language and doesn't need a 100 slide powerpoint to explain the strategy.

As a genre optician brands make for great advertising. Indeed the single best ad I saw in Beijing a couple of years ago was this one below as I blogged about in my everything is contextual post. (It may well be a European execution. It's not very Chinese)

The copy reads: Crooked mouth but nobody notices. Everyone's looking at your glasses. Brilliant. This wouldn't be a proper post on the subject if I didn't include the ad I once saw over at Rob's and which I've managed to locate on Youtube.

Lastly I couldn't pretend otherwise and not point out that I sheepishly stole my headline from Tim Footman's post which is well worth a read for clever and contemporary comment on British cultural bullshit. You may also wish to look into Guy De Bord's original work on the subject, which is increasingly salient in these times.

Alternatively, take note of the last sentence of the last paragraph over at Intelligence Squared's hosting of Cory Doctorow's recent interview with William Gibson on Intelligence Squared. The writer highlights William Gibson lamenting the following:

One thing that seemed certain was the sustained threat to any genuine subculture. We are now left, he lamented, with only ‘splinters of Bohemia,’ the violation of which seems almost complete in a world where ‘the way D. H. Lawrence looked is … much more important than what D.H. Lawrence wrote.’

Anyway you can listen to the whole interview over here. It does seem that recently, many are reflecting on the notable absence of a satisfactory presence increasingly disrupting what was once hoped to be a meaningful future.

Yet at the same time, it does and it doesn't feel like a vision thing.