commercials

Audi pokes fun at Lexus (and Lexus drivers)

Grant McCracken has a great post about the Audi A4 commercial that pokes fun at Lexus' new car that parks itself. You may have seen the ad on TV - the camera is holding still on an empty parking spot on a quiet leafy street with lawn sprinklers puffing in the background. An Audi A4 comes zooming up and does a 180 to land perfectly in the spot (between two Lexuses by the look of it!).

Grant comments that Audi has turned its perceived disadvantage (lack of a tech whizzy feature) into an advantage:

[The ad] makes the Lexus look … Read more

Michel Gondry's Razr2 ad: Too creative for TV?

Pretty much everyone is aware that Motorola's Razr phones are skinny. Much fewer people know about director Michel Gondry's own skinniness.

But anyone who's seen director Gondry's films (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Science of Sleep), music videos, or straight-to-YouTube clips is aware that his work is exceptionally creative, visual, and artistic.

Gondry was hired to create a TV commercial for Motorola's highly rated Razr2 phone, but apparently, the result was far too interesting to air on TV. See for yourself.

According to AdWeek, Motorola CEO Ed Zander felt the spot didn't … Read more

TV viewing to be plagued by a rising tide of snipes and bugs

Monday's New York Times highlights one of my growing pet peeves: increasingly invasive on-screen ads and information that are invading all manner of TV programs. The article ("As the Fall Season Arrives, TV Screens Get More Cluttered") explores some of the supposed reasons behind the trend, which runs the gamut from "bugs" (channel logos) and on-screen data dumps (news and financial market tickers, scoreboards), to--in my opinion, the top annoyance--"snipes" (animated ads, for either upcoming programs or sponsored products).

On news, financial, and sports programming, I'm a lot more forgiving of … Read more

Linus Torvalds: Open source without commercial interests = crap

Linuxworld has a thought-provoking interview with Linus Torvalds that is a must-read. Linus is always interesting, but this one is particularly valuable because he addresses the role of commercial interests in making Linux better. He also talks about his personal motivations - financial and otherwise - and suggests:

The thing is, being a good programmer actually pays pretty well; being acknowledged as being world-class pays even better....So I think I would have missed the opportunity of my lifetime if I had not made Linux widely available [rather than made it proprietary and built a company around it].

So, if you marry the wide adoption of open source with the talents of a Linus Torvalds and the commercial interests of a Red Hat or MySQL you get...a fantastic community, and one that is good for developers, customers, and vendors.

Linus gives particular praise to commercial interests that have made Linux better:… Read more

In the trenches with...Chris Harrick of SugarCRM

One of the first people I thought of when thinking up this In the Trenches series was Chris Harrick of SugarCRM. I've known Chris for a year or two, and have always been impressed. He's the sort of employee that any company would want, whether proprietary or open source. Fortunately for the open source world, he left Siebel to join SugarCRM.

When you talk with Chris, you don't get the sense that he spends much time mucking around in the ideological side of open source. He cares about customers and figuring out how to make them happy. And, as you'll see below, he thinks a lot about this and other issues that affect an open source business.

Name, company, title, and what you actually do

Chris Harrick, director of Product Marketing, SugarCRM. My team is responsible for communicating the benefits of SugarCRM products to open source users, prospects, customers, analysts, partners, and the media. Responsibilities include creating product messaging, competitive positioning, supporting sales, developing demos and webcasts, briefing analysts and the media, and authoring lots of collateral (White Papers, Datasheets, Press Releases, Web Site, Customer Case Studies).… Read more

Will the Transformers movie spark a backlash from parents?

A full-out assault has arrived in my living room. Transformers movie tie-ins are being marketed non-stop through ads on Nickelodeon, selling everything from Burger King kids' meals to Pontiac cars. We only watch about a hour of commercial TV a day, but there are multiple ads featuring the Transformers being shown within a single commercial break. The contradiction of a violent action flick based on Hasbro toys is spelled out right in the Burger King commercial--hey kids, get your kids' meal with one of eight toys based on characters from the movie (PG-13, some material may be inappropriate for children under 13).

The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood has turned a spotlight on this situation but has not yet received a lot of response. Transformers star Shia LaBoeuf has said that producer Steven Spielberg fought back against a proposed R-rating. Yet the movie is being marketed to kids all the way down to the toddler years. (Opti-mash prime Mr. Potato Head, anyone?)… Read more

Request for content: individual contributors within commercial open source companies

I spent some time talking with Martin Plaehn, CEO of Bungee Labs. He said something that I found deeply poignant given my current role with Alfresco:

There are no old gladiators. There are only old gladiator coaches.

His point was that you often get promoted to management because you were the best in your given role, but you don't remain the best at that role for long. There are always better people coming up through the ranks, and your job as a manager is to enable and channel their superior expertise.

Thinking about my own team today, I realize … Read more

Video classifieds enable show-and-tell sales

Hillary Clinton's spoof of The Sopranos finale, posted widely on YouTube, seems to be generating the buzz her campaign sought. But aside from some banner ads, YouTube doesn't really provide commercial interruptions, nor does it encourage users to use videos for marketing purposes.

Meanwhile, several start-up sites are serving up video classifieds, letting you upload homemade commercials to show off what you might normally put out on eBay, Craigslist, or at a yard sale.

The free Real People Real Stuff has been described grandly as the "YouTube & Craigslist love child" and a "Web 3.… Read more

OSI and the value in holding firm

I was reading The Economist on my flight home from London today, and came across this paragraph in an article that resonated with me, because it reminds me of the various non-profit "lobbies" within the open source software movement.

Too many Brussels think-tanks accept large chunks of their funding from EU institutions and national governments. Others depend on big corporate sponsors, so that the lines between research and lobbying becomes queasily blurred....Nobody seems able to change the default formula for Brussels policy seminars: good coffee and croissants, dull speeches and a brief exchange of conventional wisdom. The painful comparison is with Washington, DC, where the best think-tanks refuse public money, compete to set the agenda with provocative ideas, and enjoy extraordinary access to administration and Congress alike. (June 9, 2007. 45) Open source software has the OSI, the Free Software Foundation, the Software Freedom Law Center, he Linux Foundation, various conferences (OSCON, OSBC, LinuxWorld, etc.), and various other overtly open source or friendly-to-open source organizations. How effective they are in promoting open source is, to my mind, directly proportionate to their independence.

I thought it was a net negative to see the Free Standards Group merge with OSDL. FSG was a "bottoms-up" organization, despite its corporate funding. OSDL was never more than an attempt to rein in Red Hat. I think very highly of Jim Zemlin, and think he bleeds more FSG (his original home) than OSDL, and believe he can do much good. But he has his work cut out for him to ensure the community's voice is heard in the Linux Foundation.… Read more