November 30, 2007
Generally speaking I am opposed to writing anything about an advertisement because I think that is free publicity and they should pay for that sh*t, but in this situation, I am making an exception. The situation is not one I ever thought I would actually be in. It is late at night and the last three days have been pretty surreal for me as a writer. That is that I am almost done with my novel! Well, actually that is not true. I am almost to the [magic 50k words.][1] The story is not anywhere near finished. I am probably a good 50k behind, at least. The longest piece of fiction I had ever written before this was a few short stories that were maybe 4,000 words. Over the past three days I have written nearly 20,000. Today was close to 8k. And I am delirious. I have been in such a trance writing this that I actually think my eyeballs turned all white like that guy from HEROES while I was typing. ![][2] Either that or I just need some Visine from having stared at this damn screen for so long. Oh, and if you are wondering, the novel sucks. But it is almost written and there is about to be a big check next to "write a novel" on my great big list of "things to do" that I keep in my head. So that is cool. Anyway, this post was not actually supposed to be about [NaNoWriMo][3]. What I actually wanted to write about was an ad I liked on [Pandora.][4]I have to say that I would not have been able to do this without that site. The first few days I tried using my own mp3s and it just did not work. I was too busy messing with my itunes, spending too much time making playlists that did not suck and not enough time writing. Pandora saved me. I have a few scenes set in Miami and a couple in Cuba and I was able to find some great music to put me in the mood to write those. I had never done anything like that to get in a zone for writing, but it worked. And you might be amazed how much that can help when you are trying to write in an authentic way, which I was not, but if you were it would be a huge help, I bet. Anyway, I was on Pandora just now (which is 1:50ish in the morning) and they had an ad for Dewer's which was celebrating ['Repeal Day'.][5] The ad was nicely designed and all that, but the coolest part I thought was that they had two links on this bottle of liquor. One said "Underground & Cutting Edge: 1920's" and the other said "Underground & Cutting Edge: Now". I clicked on "Underground & Cutting Edge: 1920s and was immediately taken to a whole new station of tunes that were just that, new and apparently cutting edge music from the 20s. With a click I was transported to a smokey club filled with blues and folk songs that I had never heard. And i liked it! I did not get a chance to click on the "Underground & Cutting Edge: Today" link, but I bet it would be worth a look. Anyway, I just love this campaign because it incorporates the music into the ad. And that is the reason anyone goes to Pandora in the first place, for the music. Too often online ads are just a teleportation device to a site that no one really wants to go to. If someone clicks on your ad, they may want to learn more about your product, but they may not be necessarily interested in taking a weekend trip with you to a whole new site, messing up their formatting in the process and leaving their lovely music behindSmart advertisers in the future and today will need to think of ways to provide more info without ruining the user's experience. That may be something as simple as having any clicks lead to a new window opening so that the original site is not lost or left behind (which on Pandora would allow you to read about the advertiser without cutting your music). But the smart folks will be doing things like Dewars, which is providing more information with the first or second clicks without taking the user anywhere. After that a third click could take you somewhere else via a new window opening or a new tab in Firefox. Granted, the nature of Pandora's site makes this a somewhat easy thing to do, however I had not seen any other advertiser do that prior to the Dewar's campaign. FWIW.Okay, that was 768 or so words that I did not add to my novel, so I better cut this off. Back to Pandora. And an early congrats to the L.comrades that won NaNoWriMo! I never thought I would, but I'll join you tomorrow.teleportation is apparently not a word? and if you notice the lack of contractions, that is a little word count boosting habit i have picked up while doing nano. Every word counts! And i'll fix it when I edit next month. I mean, I will. [1]: http://www.lawrence.com/blogs/makes_sense_me/2007/oct/23/nanonano/ [2]: http://www.heroesfanatic.com/images/gallery/isaac-sees-the-future_384x288.jpg [3]: http://www.nanowrimo.org/ [4]: http://pandora.com/ [5]: http://www.repealday.com/
Comments
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mitzibel (Misty Nuckolls) says...
Congratulations! I, unfortunately won't be at the victory party. Large quantities of narcotics have rendered this year's attempts futile, but that's cool.
November 30, 2007 at 10:18 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
OnShakedown (Chris Tackett) says...
sorry to hear, misty.
i won't be at the victory party. not in lawrence at the moment, but will throw one for myself down here.
hope you get to feeling better!
November 30, 2007 at 4:33 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
Jester (Nick Spacek) says...
That Repeal Day ad campaign was probably one of the best ideas of which I've ever heard. The Pandora angle was pretty nifty, but the idea of a liquor company celebrating the end of Prohibition is surprising in that nobody's ever exploited it before.
December 1, 2007 at 10:51 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
OnShakedown (Chris Tackett) says...
Jester,
in my tired state of blogging, i didn't think to include that, but i completely agree. at first i didn't know what they meant by 'repeal day' which sounds holiday-ish and that piqued my interest to learn more, as did the initially vague wording of the links. it is just a solid campaign all the way around, from idea to execution.
December 2, 2007 at 4:51 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )