EA Sports: on the ball

This is just the way it's going, isn't it? EA Sports see a YouTube video by some guy who thought he'd spotted a glitch in their Tiger Woods golf game, and they make an ad in response. With Tiger. And put it up on YouTube. And Neatorama picks it up, and it pops up on my RSS from Neatorama, and I pass it on to you.



Consumers driving advertising. (I'm tempted to say 'calling the shots', but that would be cheesy, wouldn't it?) Brands in a direct dialogue with their fans. Free media for what were once TV ads.

We're through the looking glass here, people.

More on Orange

My last post had a right go at the new never-ending Orange thing. On the more positive side, this site from Dutch store Hema - discovered through johnson banks' excellent Thought for the Week- seems much better.

It's short. It's funny. It's imaginative. It's charming. It's cheeky. It's not trying desperately hard to be achingly hip. It just works.

(Oh be quiet about Honda's Cog ad. There's nothing new under the sun.) 

Orange heresy

Lots of people (Scamp, Ben, and others) clearly love Poke's new Orange website, Good Things Should Never End. 

I don't. I know I seem to have it in for Orange at the moment, but I just don't like this thing.

I mean, it's all right. (Although it took the devil's own time loading up on my new MacBook Pro.) The illustrations are nice, the music's good... but so what? Little funky/trendy animations that go on forever but don't do much. The odd sales message from Orange. Ooh. Wow.

I got interested when a sort of soft telly called Buzz tried to speak to me, but he couldn't hold a conversation. Try throwing him the mildest curveball and he suffers a sort of e-stroke.

You can steal the little animations and put them in your own site or blog, like this:



Which is nice and easy to do but suddenly I'm advertising Orange on my blog. Do I want to? No. (Although enough people will fall for this to make it well worth the effort.)

I know I'm wrong. I know thousands of snazzy online-y people love all this stuff. It's brand engagement, it's interactive, it's viral, it's all those wonderful things that keep the kids sitting on their ever-expanding arses instead of climbing trees. But I just got bored. Fast. 

(Scamp claims this site will engage you for half an hour. If it does, you need a bit more going on in your life. Watch an episode of Frasier, for heaven's sake. Or amaze yourself for real with a couple of the talks on TED. Or read a damn book.)