Tune In Saturdays: Chin Chin

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Chin_chinBrooklyn's Chin Chin makes music to be naughty by. Or music to be naughty with. Or naughty music to do naughty things by. Either way, it's packed with funk grooves, latin rhythms, hip hop undertones and pop hooks. Cool shit that would make any Gnarles Barkley fan proud.

From Obscure Sound:

The primary aspect that makes Chin Chin so enjoyable is its tendency to stray outside the norm, playing with a variety of styles in ways that conventional thinking would not be able to comprehend. Despite utilizing a tight rhythm section and a plethora of brass that appears typical of most funk music, Chin Chin’s inclusion of elements such as dance and world music makes it a very unique experience.

Chin Chin: Appetite (video)

Plus, you can stream the album in its entirety at chinchin.tv.

More More More Ads for the ABC Player

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Cs_abc2I've mentioned this inevitable end for online network television viewing a couple times, but it seems those advertising gluttons just couldn't resist another minute. Remember those nice one-ad breaks during your favorite prime-time television shows like Lost and well, Lost? They've heard we liked 'em so much that they'd add another.

Albert Cheng, executive vice president at Disney-ABC Television told The Reporter:

It would be premature for us to say people only want one ad. It’s a likely sort of thinking, but we want to push it a little bit to see how it would go.

Did he just say that we WANT one ad? No, we tolerate one ad. And rightfully so. We all understand that ABC has to pay the bills, but you'd hope not at the expense of something that's working for them (and us). Or maybe they'll just make a Dancing with the Stars spin-off. Like Dancing with the Stars on Ice. That'll make up the lost income from all of us spending our time with Hulu, or NBC, or YouTube, or Revision3, or whatever of thousands of shows all across the web rather than wasting our time with longer ad breaks.

Jackass...

via NewTeeVee

The Age of Conversation, Part 2: Business Model Evolution

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EvolutionThe second iteration of the Age of Conversation is due this August. Right now authors are furiously banging out their chapters, each looking to be one of the few that will inevitably bubble up to the top as the most thoughtful, the most interesting, the most thought-provoking. Not all of you care to point out the somewhat competitive nature of the thing, but it exists, so might as well bask in it.

So the subject I’m in the process of tackling is “Business Model Evolution.” Presumably that’ll mean, for me at least, what the modern agency will ultimately look like. I’m through about a half dozen pages of scribblings and diagrams and whatnot, but still left sort of scratching my head. Which scares the shit out of me, to be honest.

Mediaocrity First the companies that now own the media are losing serious cash due to diminishing returns on their bread and butter mediums, be it television, on paper, or just about anything non-web or mobile. So they, now empowered by Google’s obvious treading on agency space, have begun to go direct to the advertiser, claiming the same abilities as the agency. Most of them suck horribly at these new responsibilities, but I wouldn’t expect that to last forever. Money doesn’t buy everything, but it can buy talent.

Google_logo Automation has obviously started to change the media planning and buying process. Jobs once reserved for the agency are now being eaten up by computers. Through the same interface as adwords, I can buy print, radio, even television, in addition to the internet. I can use Spotrunner to buy my mass TV audience, as well. Granted these resources are seriously lacking and rarely deliver the same returns as most agencies will. But that won’t last.

Creativity is being measured to a fault, each instrument being tested to death at the expense of the orchestra. Red or blue? 3 words or 4? 34 year-old white male or 26 year-old Hispanic woman? It’s not abnormal for us to set the scene, but not choose the players or harmonize the script. It’s still a process based on people, but this kind of incrementalism or segmentation of parts without regard to the humanity of the whole can’t bode well for whether we can maintain the integrity of the overall performance. To what extent will machines drive our industry’s creative product? Will it even matter if our interruptive nature is no longer accepted? That remains to be seen.

For now the big boys are surviving. Omnicom, WPP and Publicis all seem to be kicking a little ass, even if it is somewhat based on the growth in global, not necessarily the booming business stateside. But will it continue? What holds the secret to our future? The technologies we build? Will content be the key? Will our insights save the day? Will the dive into all areas of business be the thing that keeps us relevant? Or will we be doomed to die by the hand of the technologies that are driving our growth today?

These answers and more, in a single page, on the next, Age of Conversation.

And now for some AOC author link love…
Gavin Heaton, Drew McLellan, CK, Valeria Maltoni, Emily Reed, Katie Chatfield, Greg Verdino,Mack Collier, Lewis Green, Sacrum, Ann Handley, Paul McEnany, Roger von Oech, Anna Farmery, David Armano, Bob Glaza, Mark Goren, Matt Dickman, Scott Monty, Richard Huntington, Cam Beck, David Reich, Luc Debaisieux, Sean Howard, Tim Jackson, Patrick Schaber, Roberta Rosenberg, Uwe Hook, Tony D. Clark, Todd Andrlik, Toby Bloomberg, Steve Woodruff, Steve Bannister, Steve Roesler, Stanley Johnson, Spike Jones, Nathan Snell, Simon Payn, Ryan Rasmussen, Ron Shevlin, Roger Anderson, Robert Hruzek, Rishi Desai,Phil Gerbyshak, Peter Corbett, Pete Deutschman, Nick Rice, Nick Wright, Michael Morton, Mark Earls, Mark Blair, Mario Vellandi, Lori Magno, Kristin Gorski, Kris Hoet, G.Kofi Annan,Kimberly Dawn Wells, Karl Long, Julie Fleischer, Jordan Behan, John La Grou, Joe Raasch, Jim Kukral, Jessica Hagy, Janet Green, Jamey Shiels, Dr. Graham Hill, Gia Facchini, Geert Desager, Gaurav Mishra, Gary Schoeniger, Gareth Kay, Faris Yakob, Emily Clasper, Ed Cotton,Dustin Jacobsen, Tom Clifford, David Polinchock, David Koopmans, David Brazeal, David Berkowitz, Carolyn Manning, Craig Wilson, Cord Silverstein, Connie Reece, Colin McKay, Chris Newlan, Chris Corrigan, Cedric Giorgi, Brian Reich, Becky Carroll, Arun Rajagopal, Andy Nulman, Amy Jussel, AJ James, Kim Klaver, Sandy Renshaw, Susan Bird, Ryan Barrett,Troy Worman, S. Neil Vineberg,C.B. Whittemore, Mike Sansone.

image thanks to kevindooley & eric_phillips

Bezos on Innovation

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"Companies get skills-focused, instead of customer-needs focused. When[companies] think about extending their business into some new area, the first question is "why should we do that—we don't have any skills in that area." That approach puts a finite lifetime on a company, because the world changes, and what used to be cutting-edge skills have turned into something your customers may not need anymore. A much more stable strategy is to start with "what do my customers need?" Then do an inventory of the gaps in your skills."

-Jeff Bezos in Business Week.

Advertising Age Proves that Bloggers Can Sit at Large Tables

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P150rt3As most of you know, Ad Age invited some bloggers to their offices in New York a couple weeks ago to talk about the Power 150, the future of Ad Age and the broader social media landscape. Being the interweb powerhouse that I obviously am, of course I was invited.

I won't drone on about the details, but after all the discussion about how Ad Age needs to change their content to suit our needs, I can't help but think they need to focus on their core product more than anything else. That's not to say they shouldn't use and improve the Power 150, continue blogging over digital next and continue to cover the digital advertising and social media landscape. They should for sure. But I don't feel a lack of social media perspectives.

It is literally impossible for me to keep up with the instructive and informative voices that are here now. And that doesn't even count all the shit blogs! (Don't worry, I'm not talking about you).

What I do expect to hear from them is a reflection of what executives are thinking about. I do want to hear about how recessions affect both the agency and the consumer marketplace. And frankly, I'd probably never bore you to tears with Macy's localized strategy, but it is useful information for me to have when I walk into a boardroom.

It's important to make your content easily distributed and available, it's important to talk about the new and sexy, but it's just as important to keep up with the shifts in the things that the blogosphere isn't necessarily chatting up. And no it's not an either or proposition, but it can be a fine line between expanding and chasing.

Either way, a big thanks to Jonah and Charlie for bringing us out there, and to the man, the myth, the legend, Todd Andrlik for setting the whole thing up. Unfortunately, after having their pictures appear 3 times in the same Advertising Age, Sean and Armano have both set up their own security details and the collective entourage has now jumped into the double digits.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I'll be able to get into one of them, though. Maybe as Armano's hat keeper or Sean's director of electrical devices. I'll keep you posted.

What is an Encyclopedia?

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On this day in 1616, the author of Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes, died. How do I know?

For all you bloggers out there, Encyclopedia Britannica just pulled the very cool move of opening up their content to all the content providers, or web publishers, out there. It's a qualification that's a little difficult to prove, I think (does a myspace blog count?), but I'd being willing to bet they won't be in the business of pissing off those that straddle the "acceptable" line.

The Encyclopedia Webshare program allows access to all the articles that usually go for the price of $70 per year, or $1400 bucks for the hardbacks. No small price. And if there's anything you'd like to share with your readers, they'll throw those articles in, too. They might even throw in a widget for good measure.

Kudos Britannica. Very cool stuff.

http://www.britannica.com/bcom/ig/topic/gadget.html?id=15397&skin=1