Is it a song or a sales pitch?

It’s time companies stop using pop songs to conjure a connection with consumers in their commercials and bring back the good ole jingle. Or use lesser known songs. For example, using the Etta James classic “At Last” in an Oreck vacuum commercial is just plain wrong! The marketers for Oreck probably weren’t thinking about the couples out there that danced to this song as their first dance at their wedding. That wasn’t our first dance, but I’ve been to at least 2 weddings where it was used. Heck, the song was used by the Obamas as their first dance at all the balls they attended after the inauguration. If I danced to that song in my wedding the next time I hear it I want to think about that moment and not have an image of a vacuum in my head. I wouldn’t want to buy the vacuum that ruined my memory of that song.

I also saw a recent Hallmark commercial that uses John Mayer’s “Say” as its theme. The song is actually fitting for this purpose but it irks me that pop songs are used more and more in commercials these days. You can’t just enjoy an artist and his/her music anymore because everyone is now associated with a brand. Wrigley had Chris Brown, Neyo and Julianne Hough redo the jingles for Double Mint gum, Big Red and Juicy Fruit respectively. Chris Brown used the famous “double your pleasure, double your fun” tag line in his song “Forever.”  The first time I heard the song and the lyric I had to check with the people around me that they heard the same thing. The song was ok but having the line in there bothered me…why would he want to sample a jingle? I didn’t find out until later that it was the new jingle disguised in a full song.

Maybe artists don’t mind as much because they get paid when their songs are used. For those artists that have one hit song, it may be a much needed check. But music is one of those things that are associated with memories. When I hear the song “OPP” by Naughty by Nature, I remember being a 5^th grader, walking home from school and being past by this older Caucasian kid on his bike screaming “Are you down with OPP!?”  This image comes to mind as a reminder of how easily people are influenced and how big a part music plays in our lives. 

Marketers, please stop having these songs do double duty. If that's not possible, at the very least stop using classic songs to sell your goods.

What's that?

I'm really interested in what interests others. So every so often I'll look at things like Google Trends and Twist that tracks what's going on in Twitter. Looking at the top 20 list on Google Trends for Friday, 3/27, a couple of the searched terms made sense immediately, at least to me.

- At #13 was 'tom izzo', the coach of college basketball team Michigan State that beat the Kansas Jayhawks and eliminated them from the NCAA tournament on Friday. Besides, anyone that has two Zs in his name must be interesting.

- At #12 was 'william rast', Justin Timberlake's clothing line that he promoted on the Oprah show on Friday. The peak search time for the term was 1pm PDT on Google, likely when the show is shown around the country, and peaked around 2pm on Twitter. Being on Oprah jumps the awareness of anything probably by a ton. But that's a whole other issue on its own.

Some of the terms that caught my eye:

- At #9, the 'breville citrus press' which reached its peak at 8am Pacific. New York, NY did the bulk of the searching which probably means that at 5am Eastern a fair number of New Yorkers were watching some sort of infomercial and thinking, I want some orange juice.

- At #16 was 'kron 4' the SF Bay Area local news channel that streamed video of the memorial service of the Oakland Police officers involved in the tragic shooting.

- At #1 was 'Josh Blue' the The Last Comic Standing winner that also had a comedy special air on Friday night on Comedy Central. I'm guessing he must have been funny, I wouldn't want to search for someone that bombed.

- At #14 was 'job listing.' A reminder of the economic reality around the country.

Absence:Love :: Wind:Fire

This weekend I watched the season finale of "The City" on tivo. And yes, I do watch "The City" since I'm a fan of "The Hills" and liked Whitney enough to watch her show. I find both shows to be worthy of tivoing since it gives me something to put on in the background while I do stuff around the house. I should say though, that if I'm near the remote during certain parts, like the conversations between Allie and Adam, I forward through it since they tend to go something like this...

Allie: I'm tired of hearing how you're always around girls. Why do you put yourself in these situations.
Adam: I don't know, you know me, I wouldn't do anything. I love you honey...blah, blah.

Anyways, during the finale there was a nice scene between Whitney and Diane Von Furstenberg where DVF gives Whitney some words of wisdom as Whitney thinks about her breakup with Jay. This is from memory so it may not be exact, but you'll get the point:

Diane Von Furstenberg: My mother told me that absence is like wind. If it's a small fire, the wind will blow it out. If it's a large fire the wind will make it spread and grow.

She then goes on to say that it's important to love yourself first since you'll always be with yourself.

I liked that analogy enough to remember it and to Google its origin. There are two similar quotes from two French authors that hit on this point. One is from Roger de Bussy-Rabutin who said "Absense is to love as wind is to fire; it extinguishes the small and kindles the great." The other is by Francois de La Rochefoucauld who said "Absence diminishes small loves and increases great ones, as the wind blows out the candle and blows up the bonfire."

However you say it, it's true.

March Madness - What's with the really long shorts?

I love basketball - I enjoy watching it and playing it. I mainly follow the Golden State Warriors and the NBA. But every March I let myself get caught up in the NCAA madness. I caught a few games and in each one I saw, one thing bothered me...why are the shorts so long? Granted basketball shorts seem to have gotten longer by a half an inch every year but it seems college shorts are incredibly long and longer than NBA shorts.

I mean, they are like capris on these guys where it goes way past the knee. It's even better when someone wears their socks high so you don't see any leg at all. You might as well be wearing pants. The picture to the right is one example, but it's pretty representative of what uniforms look like these days in the men's college game. We're talking about basketball players - men that are taller than most and here they are with shorts clearly made to be longer than ever. And not only are they long, they're loose and super flowy. At some points I watched to see whether anyone's shorts would fall. It makes the guys look dwarfed in their uniforms. Personally, I would find shorts that go far past my knees to feel annoying while I run.

I wonder if the extra fabric has increased the cost of these shorts. Who decided that this was a really good look?

WD-40 to the Rescue!

This morning, after neglecting to exercise for awhile, I hopped on to my elliptical. Unfortunately, it developed an annoyingly loud squeak. Considering the early hour, I had to cut my workout short. Later in the afternoon, I got some WD-40 and with Melvin's help, we loosened, tightened and oiled some joints on the machine and now it's running quietly and smoothly. I love you WD-40! Now I don't have an excuse to exercise.

I've given in...I'm on Facebook

After being invited by a few friends and acquaintances and having a handful of conversations with people where the phrase "it was on Facebook" was used as the reason for knowing random pieces of info, I've finally decided to take the plunge and join Facebook. After a couple of days of being a member, I'm not sure how I feel about it. So I'll break down my likes/dislikes about Facebook itself and the concept of Facebook:

Likes

• Privacy Controls. In particular, controlling who can see you in the Facebook search.
• Email notifications when there's activity on my wall
• Integration with Yelp and other social media sites
• Seeing what's new with friends all in one place
• Making contact with people I haven't talked to in years! It's good to know that people are doing well.
  

Dislikes

• That middle school/high school feeling that I need to have more friends
• The concept of logging into a computer to get 'human' contact. Gotta love technology!
  
• Reading all the random updates from 'friends' that I didn't really need to know but read because I could.
  

It's only been a couple of days and so far the Facebook experience seems to be worthwhile. I'll check in again in a month.