Earl's Lumon Business Card

 

Sylvia and I have been watching and thoroughly enjoying Severance, a mysterious horror/satire that addresses late-stage capitalism and the banal inhumanity of office life. And in a clever bit of viral marketing, you can now create your own custom Lumon business card--even if the thought of working at Lumon fills you with dread, as it should. 

Petulant Pet Peeve: Sticky Stickers on Books and Movies

It's a first world problem if ever there was one: the ticklish task of removing stickers from books and DVD packages. Sensible retailers use stickers with light adhesive so that they're easy to remove. But some cruel miscreants use stickers with what seems like Krazy Glue, making them almost impossible to remove without damaging the cover/packaging. I HATE THIS. Stop preventing me from reading my back cover copy, sticker-putters-on-ers! 

Marketing Boo-st

Friendly Compromise

Once again I've fallen victim to a clever marketing scheme. This time, courtesy of Warner Brothers' Pacific Rim, you can design your own Kaiju-fighting giant robot. I call my trillion-dollar death machine "Friendly Compromise," because, well, maybe the giant Godzilla-like monsters can be reasoned with after all...

Here he is in a typical Canadian winter.

Number of Interest

About an hour ago I fired up the PVR to watch last week's episode of Person of Interest, "Relevance." Once again, this show proves itself one of the smartest mainstream hours on network television with a clever inversion that turns the show's regular formula on its head.

As usual, the episode opens with Harold Finch's initial monologue, "You are being watched..." But only a couple of sentences into the title sequence, it's interrupted by the Machine, who dismisses the sequence as "IRRELEVANT" and shuffles through its endless collection of files to uncover a "RELEVANT" story, the assassination of a computer expert. From here we follow the adventures of a pair of covert operatives working for the US government, and we quickly learn that these two are, like Finch and Reese, working for the Machine - only they're working on the officially relevant cases, the ones the Machine was built for, the threats of large-scale terrorism. The operatives kill a group of terrorists in Germany who are building a dirty nuclear bomb, and from here the episode follows their story, with Finch and Reese not appearing until midway through the story. It turns out, of course, that the operatives are Finch and Reese's "numbers" this week, but in this case the audience follows the victims rather than the series protagonists. It's a cool way to subvert the formula.

But perhaps even cooler is a clever bit of marketing during the episode's coda. Near the end, Finch hands his card to the week's guest star, imploring her to call if she ever needs help again. The camera lingers on Finch's phone number for just a second too long, and viewers can clearly see that it's not one of the ubiquitous 555 numbers Hollywood uses to avoid liability - it appears to be a genuine phone number, 915-285-7362, in the New York City exchange.

Aha.

Moments ago, I dialed the number. I was rewarded by a recording: "Hello, you've reached Harold Wren at Universal Heritage Insurance. I'm currently out of the office. I'm sorry I'm not available."

Another voice then indicates that the user's mailbox can't accept any more messages. Harold Wren, of course, is one of Finch's cover identities. Awesome!

Now, wouldn't it be cool and incredibly scary if the Machine phoned me back..?

Leaf Rapids Co-op

When you're the only game in town, you don't need to spend money on a fancy building or slick logos. Despite its uninviting utilitarian exterior, the Leaf Rapids Co-op was a popular shopping destination, and one of the places I found comic books on spinner racks to fire my childhood imagination. I believe it was here that Mom or Dad purchased my first comic book, an issue of Spooky: The Tuff Little Ghost.

These days, the Co-op is located in the Leaf Rapids Town Centre. It's the only place you can buy gas and other essentials, or at least that was the case back when Sean and I visited in 2009.

At some point the Co-op improved their signage before moving into the Town Centre, but there's no sign of the original building. It's a little sad; Leaf Rapids was deliberately constructed as a new kind of community, one meant to exist in harmony with nature rather than conquer it, and now nature is steadily reclaiming this fragile outpost as its residents flee in search of better economic opportunities.

Marketing Man of Steel 2

Man of Steel won't even be released until 2013, but I've already devised a sequel pitch: call it Men of Steel and have Superman fight Metallo, Brainiac (pictured above) and an army of retro 1930s-style giant robots, as suggested in yesterday's post. It's simple: giant robots invade city, Superman defeats them, clues lead to Metallo and Lex Luthor (man of steel will), but behind the scenes is alien invader Brainiac, who's been manipulating Metallo and Luthor and softening up the world for his final assault. In the end Superman's brawn is insufficient to defeat Brainiac, and he has to draw upon his wit and even his compassion. He convinces Luthor and Metallo to join forces against the greater threat. When the dust clears, Lois Lane ruminates: "Sometimes you don't need to be a man of steel," she says, referring not just to Superman but Metallo and Luthor, "Sometimes it's enough just to be a man."  Roll credits!

Facebook Blocks Blogspot.ca

Yesterday I discovered that Facebook will no longer allow me to share links to this blog. Naturally I'm disappointed, since much of my readership comes from folks who follow those daily links.

Perhaps I'm paranoid, but I wonder if Facebook has categorized blogspot as "spammy" because blogspot is owned by arch-rival Google. If that's the case, then this seems to be a case of money-motivated censorship.

Many will argue that because Facebook is a business they have the right to censor what they will, but this action certainly seems to fly in the face of their business model, which urges users to share as much detail of their private lives as possible. Besides, if I'm going to be used by Facebook as a source of marketing data, then I think I have the right to complain about Facebook's decisions.

Maybe this is just a glitch, one that Facebook will correct today or the next day. But even if they reverse course, those of us trying to build an audience and a personal brand on the web should remember that we are very much at the mercy of the large corporations that seek to control the web. Blogspot is a wonderful service, but it could disappear tomorrow at the whim of a CEO. All the more reason to save your work offline...

The Coca-Cola Christmas Company

For the last century or so, Coca-Cola has done a masterful job of insinuating itself into Christmas traditions. They appropriated and reshaped Santa Claus' iconography back in the 30s, and now they have these admittedly cool ornament-shaped bottles. I doubt they're hung on many trees (not while full, at least), but they certainly evoke the Christmas spirit. I hope whoever designed this bottle received a hefty bonus.

When Branding Goes Too Far

A "Hostess Cup Cakes Scented Candle" spotted at an Edmonton dollar store in late 2006. I kid you not.