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This is the personal blog of John F. Morton. It's where I talk about the stuff that interests me. Primarily technology, marketing and pop culture. If you are looking for my portfolio of work, visit johnfmorton.com. Thanks for stopping by!

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Filtered by Category: Mashups

Thursday, January 24, 2008

Parody Ads Tell You A Lot About Your Brand

Not Your Ad

Last year Tom Ford released a fragrance for men that has received less than stellar reviews. A friend showed me the parody of the site. If you want to see them both, do so at your own risk. They are not what I’d call “safe for work”. Click here for the original site. Click here for the parody. I can see why someone did a parody of those Tom Ford ads. They are pretentious and stupid. I think the parody serves as fair warning for any brand with such crappy advertising.

But what happens when a brand listens to their customer and gives them what they want? I’ve got a couple example to share that show what happens when consumers really love a brand/product and take the marketing materials and make it their own. Yes, it’s an Apple example, a brand that almost seems unfair to compare any other to, but it’s worth the comparison if only to show how high the bar is set.

Witness “Hit Me With Your iPhone,” a song composed by a fan and with video remixed from a marketing video on Apple’s site:

Next, take that same video, remix it with a feature suggestion for an improvement to the iPhone. That ”I love you” at the end speaks volumes as to how this brand reaches people.


iPhone Copy and Paste

P.S. iPhone, I love you too.

Posted by John on 01/24 at 10:50 PM
AdvertisingMarketingMashupsTrendsVideo • (0) CommentsPermalink
Monday, March 19, 2007

Hillary Got YouTubed.

Back in mid-January, I wrote an entry here I called The YouTubified Election of 2008. I expected this election to get pretty mean simply because it seems to be the trend in politics. But when you add in the power and the anonymity of the internet into the mix, things can get really dicey.

This morning I heard about a mashup video circulating around the web—one part Apple’s famous 1984 commercial, one part Hillary Clinton’s videos from her website, one part a supposed message to support Barack Obama. From a technical point of view, I’m impressed by the skill of the masher/creator, but the piece leaves me feeling cheated somehow. There is no substance to message and, more importantly, no one to question about their motivations for creating it. Is this the work of a true Obama supporter? Somehow I doubt it. Is it the work of the group behind the Swift Boat Veterans ad from the previous presidential campaign? I don’t know, but it seems plausible to me. This kind of attack can only lead to infighting amongst the leading Democratic candidates possibly giving an opening to someone else.

You can see the mashup ad below here.

Update on March 21 at 11:12pm: It looks like a tech guy who worked for the Obama campaign actually created and uploaded the ad. According to ABC News, “ Phil de Vellis, until Wednesday an employee of the company that handles Obama’s Web site, boasted in a posting on the Huffington Post that he made the ad, though he claimed neither the Obama campaign nor his former employer, Blue State Digital — which does software development and hosting for Obama’s campaign — was aware that he had.” Read the story here.

I think this is only the beginning of a new style of attack campaigning though.

Posted by John on 03/19 at 08:20 AM
MashupsPoliticsElections • (0) CommentsPermalink
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