the police tried to kill me

“The police tried to kill me! the police assaulted me! stop police corruption!”

This man was up on Nelson´s Column in Trafalgar Square (at the heart of touristic London) letting people know about his story.  Photo credit: ickbins

Oakland University YouTube Submission

Earlier this week I submitted a video to the OU youtube contest, check it out below:

Media BLACKOUT for David Barstow

If a story is never told, does it even exist?

  

Last year on April 20th, 2008 New York Times investigative journalist David Barstow wrote an article (found here) exposing the Bush administration’s tactics to use American media to sell the Iraq war.  

  

The article went on to PROVE that the Pentagon, coordinated by Donald Rumsfeld provided TV and Radio Networks (NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, FOX) interviews with “military analysts”; the analysts were nothing more than retired government workers and former generals deemed as “military experts”.  These analysts have appeared, or were quoted over 4.500 times on US cable networks in the last 8 years.  The former generals basically served as the vessel for the Bush Administrations message, whatever it was that month.  These interviews and quotes from the “military analysts” were used to promote the Iraq war, and talking points that were laid out by the Bush Administration.  

   

Remember this is fact, not opinion.

    

One year after David Barstow’s article was originally published, he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for investigative journalism for his piece.  More interesting than all of this though, is that NONE of the American media (NBC, ABC, CBS) choose to even MENTION this story.  Looking back at that week, we can see the media had more important news to cover, like Hannah Montana for example as ABC, CBS, and NBC all devoted time to Miley Cyrus, they never once mentioned this report. 

  

Fast forward to today, one year later.  Will the media give any attention to David Bartow’s story, including his recent Pulitzer Prize achievement for it?  Not likely.

  

Neither the CBS Evening News nor ABC’s World News reported on the Pulitzer Prizes during their April 20 broadcasts.  

   

On the April 20th, 2009 broadcast of the NBC Evening News with Brian Williams, in a report on the Pulitzer’s, Williams neglected to mention Barstow’s achievement as one of the five won by the New York Times.  Below is a transcript of Monday’s NBC Nighly news report on the Pulitzer’s:

   

WILLIAMS: ” The Pulitzer Prizes for journalism and the arts were awarded today. The New York Times led the way with five, including awards for breaking news and international reporting.Las Vegas Sun won for the public service category for its reporting on construction-worker deaths in that city. Best commentary went to Eugene Robinson of The Washington Post, who, of course, was an on-air commentator for us on MSNBC all through the election season and continues to be. And the award for best biography went to Jon Meacham, the editor of Newsweek magazine, for his book American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House.”

      

    

For more information on this story,
DO NOT turn to network news…

   
GO STRAIGHT TO THE SOURCE:

Read: David Barstow’s Pulitzer Prize winning article, “Behind TV Analysts, Pentagons Hidden Hand ”.

Download: PDF’s used in Barstows research, including transcripts, “How the Pentagon spread its message“.

Contact: CBS, ABC, NBC, and let them know you are disappointed in their decision to silence this story.

   

What makes a word buzz?

You hear all kinds of new words being thrown around these days, but where do they come from and why are people using buzzwords?  

1. Relevancy – Most buzzwords become hip for the simple reason that they are relevant to the times.  Remember Y2K?  Throw a buzzword into ANY or EVERY conversation you have and nobody will argue it.  People will remember it and use it themselves.

2. Contagiousness - Buzzwords are fun to use, they’re easy to say, and often spread like wildfire.  Buzzwords can be heard everywhere these days- in the news, on TV, on the internet, and more recently from Advertisements.  Politicians drop buzzwords on the public too; in 2008 we heard about to avoid pork-barrel spending, or earmarks.

3. Meaning – New words give new thought, which is the whole idea behind using them.  In 2008 it was all about going “green“, and how we can reduce our carbon-footprint, and become more eco-friendly.  The words are out there for anyone to use; they help corral thought and give direction.  

Thought-provoking buzzwords can come from just about anywhere these days.  Companies like Budweiser that invest heavily in market research can afford to make up words.  Just look at the new drinkabilty ads for Bud Light.

Now, what are your favorite buzzwords?

Marketing the Person of the Year (2008)

So while TIME MAGAZINE has just named President Elect, Barack Obama 2008’s Person of the Year, and Shepard Fairey’s artwork graces the cover internationally, a few of us are still wondering who was working in the background to make him look so… well, stunning.

On Wednesday, TIME Magazine named Barack Obama its 2008 “Person of the Year.”   The issue marked December 29th, 2008 hits stores today.

Aside from all the hype, we must begin to look at the bigger questions like, who was behind the hype?  We all know Obama was the original hype-man in every sense of the word, but who were his henchman, who helped make history?

VSA partners (Chicago) was the agency that developed Obama’s campaign logo.  A team of three including strategist, Sol Sender took on the project last year, and finalized a logo that would soon follow Barack Obama around the world and into the white house.  

VSA partners offers a video released this month, upon the hiring of Sol Sender to detail exactly how the project was managed.  Both parts together are about 13 minutes long.
Click to watch:  PART 1. PART 2.

Some of the designs mentioned in the video:

In 2004 and 2000 I can remember analyzing the font choices from each candidate, the colors, and each message typically had a piece of clip art attached in some form whether it be a flag, or a star.  Now I’ve heard this campaign logo become the butt of a few jokes, but like Obama, this design is full of win.  Before this election, a candidate has never used such strong imagery or go so far as to design a logo for their campaign to run with.  Stickers, signs, and buttons have always been traditionally used, but this breed is different.  Have you ever seen a candidate launch a social network?  Neither have I, nor has anyone for that matter.  Now take a visit to my.barackobama.com  if you haven’t yet, and get used to it.  

It seems that with the help from this campaign logo this year we have broken from the mundane order of politics in this country.  More importantly whether anyone has realized it or not, we’ve also just accepted candidate branding.  Or better yet, government branding.  The world is changing people!

Remember: Marketing is Power.

Next-Generation for Pepsi-Cola Logo

So I’m walking through Meijer yesterday to pick up some cat food for Ally when something caught my eye.  Take a look:

New logo/package design for Pepsi. 

This is interesting, the Pepsi brand has always seemed pretty solid to me.  Pepsi’s packaging has always evolved, changing slightly from year to year, but here we see them re-branding with a new logo.

They’ve kept with the same red and blue colors, adjusting only the curvatures of each shape.  Many might not ever notice the difference, so for these people the re-vamped logo will have absolutely no bearing on their perception of the brands image.

Pepsi’s VP of portfolio brands, Frank Cooper said of the new logo: 

“We felt like, as we move out of this traditional mass marketing and mass distribution era into today’s culture, there’s an opportunity to bring humanity back, both in terms of the design but also in the way we engage consumers,” he said. “By making the logo more dynamic and more alive … [it is] absolutely a huge step in the right direction.”

By more alive, I think what Frank means is that this logo was created to move.  The new logo can dance, it can sing, and it will talk to new consumers simply by standing still.  

Is the new logo smiling at me?  

At first I was skeptical, but after some thought, the logo does seem pretty powerful and this will probably work out great for them.  Pepsi is reshaping their brand starting with the white space, by opening it up for Pepsi Max, and slimming it down for Diet Pepsi. 

PEPSI vs. pepsi

This new typeface was long overdue.  It looks like it could be a throwback to the old Diet Pepsi design (from the 80’s), but what’s striking is the change from all capitals to all lowercase.  The brand suddenly stopped screaming.

Is the font telling us that Pepsi wants to be taken more serious?  Not likely, this is a brand that has always been about fun and this typeface still says that but it reads in a more modern way. As for the decision to go with all lowercase, I think that’s just a hot trend in design right now.  So to wrap things all up Do I think Pepsi still has a bright future in beach balls?  Absolutely.

 

R.I.P.

FORDIRELIFESAKE: 10/31/99 -12/28/09

This band was a gem.  A diamond in the rough, something for young detroiters to be proud of. Something my friends and I grew up on.  They reminded touring bands who came to town just how to play.  They battled through tough line-up changes and scheduling difficulties for sooo long and all we have to remember them by is this.  Tonight.

 

Dr. Pepper delivers

Today marks the long-awaited (17 years to be exact) release of the new Guns N’ Roses album, “Chinese Democracy”.  Sadly, the album was debuted exclusively on the bands myspace page, while I might suggest ignoring the ads and the headache by downloading it here on the pirate bay.

Okay okay so the new GNR is worth noting (not really), where does Dr. Pepper come in?  

A few months ago in March, the company publicly pledged that if Guns and Roses actually does release their new studio album, they will give every American a free can of Dr. Pepper.  Yay for corporate promises!

Fast forward to today, and we get FREE DR. PEPPER (allow 4-6 weeks for delivery).

“We never thought this day would come,” said Tony Jacobs, vice president of marketing for Dr Pepper. “But now that it’s here all we can say is: The Dr Pepper’s on us.”

The promotion ends tonight at midnight so go get some!  All they ask for in return is a bit of personal information, I’m not a huge fan of giving away ANY personal information, but the company needs to know where to send the coupon right?  If your having trouble at the website, call 1-800-696-5891 and get hooked up.

Also, I was watching ESPN the other day when I noticed this at press conference with Dallas Cowboys head coach Wade Phillips:

 
Great placement guys, but are we really putting company logo’s on our microphones now?!  This is ridiculous when will it end?

Can I propose that if Dr. Pepper has the money to put its logo on a microphone at any NFL conference, then they should consider buying and rebuilding our failing Detroit Lions organization?  This could be the future!! Just think, logo’s on the field, logos on the jerseys, logos on the stadium, everywhere you look Dr. Pepper.  Why the hell not?  It might be a good thing, they might actually put some time into recruiting so this football team wouldn’t lose every sunday (unlike Ford).

The Detroit Lions are now 0-11, if the team remains winless throughout the rest of the season they will have broken a new league record for consecutive losses and be dubbed the worst football team in history.  Any buyers?

Chicago/Miami Bums Rejoice!

BK dropping money from the sky.

If you live anywhere near Chicago or Miami, watch where your walking.  Burger King has launched a fall viral campaign that involves leaving over 5,000 wallets on the streets or at hot-spots.  The wallets containing actual money (ranging from $1 to $100) and BK gift-cards (ranging from $5-$20), are an attempt to lead visitors to local stores and get people talking.  

In addition to the cash the faux leather wallet also comes along with business cards from ‘the king’, local burger king location maps, and a fake drivers license for “the king”.  GE Finanial did a similar promotion back in 2000 with a similar campaign that made 1 in 5 lost wallets found a winner.

Great strategy, good timing, and proving yet again going viral works!  BK must’ve learned something from their subservient chicken campaign. Chicken Mask Really?!?! Click here for the .PDF file, did the really expect people to wear this thing?

interesting stuff nonetheless, thanks to ted.me for the photos!

Love him or hate him, he gets it.

Looks like America’s favorite left-wing nut is at it again, but give Michael Moore some credit.  His last two documentaries (Sicko, Fahrenheit 9-11) reside in the list of top 3 height grossing documentaries of all time.  His latest film “Slacker Uprising” is slated for release on September 23rd across America and Canada, but this time Moore is borrowing a few tricks from Radiohead by releasing the film for free.

Moore gets it!  His low-budget film ($2M) aimed at young democrats will be circulated in high-definition on servers across the world, beginning at the film’s homepage: slackeruprising.com

Movies will be pirated, so why not give a little back?  Thank you Michael Moore, from all of us on the net.  I highly recommend any content developers to follow Moore’s and Radiohead’s lead and look into releasing your media through a creative commons license.  

The world is changing, lets take the money out of big companies’ pockets and put it back into the hands of hard working individuals where it belongs.  

Moore appears on Larry King Live (CNN) tonight at 9:00 PM, take a gander and open up your minds because this man gets it.