Month: March 2007

Random 10 tunes

An idea stolen from Bob @ FlackLife, who posts his gems just about every Friday. My take is a bit different, because I’m playing mp3s on Winamp and using Predixis MusicMagic, which creates a playlist of tunes from your collection that are similar to a tune you pick. The song I selected was Wilco’s “War on War,” and here are the first 10 of the random 20 songs that MusicMagic’s formula somehow connected to that tune:

  1. “Take A Walk,” Spoon
  2. “Neighborhood 2 – Laika,” The Arcade Fire
  3. “Hotel California,” Less Than Jake (Eagles cover with a ska flavor)
  4. “I Will Follow,” U2
  5. “Take the Fifth,” Spoon
  6. “Go,” The Replacements
  7. “Sad Song,” Blue States
  8. “Just Desserts,” Chumbawumba
  9. “Plea from a Cat Named Virtue,” The Weakerthans
  10. “Cool’n’Out,” Joe Strummer & the Mescaleros

What’s in your playlist? Why not play along and share your own random 10 on your? If you do, please let me know and I’ll post a link from here.

Friday Five: Global Marketing Summit wrap-up

It’s Friday — huzzah! — and as good a day as any to wrap up comments from the Global Marketing Summit. Here are five more takeaways from that event:

  1. I’m not as digitally savvy as I thought I was. At the opening of her talk, Google’s Maureen Schumacher gave us a 25-question quiz to gauge how “digitally connected” her audience was. I scored a lowly 13 out of 25, because I don’t have a Slingbox, a wireless network at home or a Second Life avatar; I’ve never bought or sold on eBay or watched a mobisode; and I don’t own an iPod (although I have two other mp3 players). On the plus side, I do text, blog, buy music online, use a VoIP phone and IM at least once during a typical day. Schumacher said 20 percent of the MBAs who apply for jobs at Google routinely get 20 or more points on this question.
  2. That eye-slitting scene from Luis Bunuel’s Un Chien Andalou (YouTube vid) is just as disturbing today as it was when i first saw it in a college film class. A couple of ad guys showed the eye-slit clip as part of a session on shock advertising.
  3. I can see the value of shock advertising for certain non-profits for raising awareness (.i.e., about AIDS or the dangers of smoking) but I’m having a hard time seeing how shock advertising might translate to the higher ed sector.
  4. The most fascinating session of the day was one on advances in neuroscience to predict how consumers might engage with a brand in a TV ad. This session was presented by representatives of two Boston-based companies: One to One Interactive and Innerscope, an MIT Media Lab spinoff. The presenters discussed their research on using a “smart vest” that measures a subject’s heart and breathing rates, skin conductance and motion, combining those readings with eye-tracking measurements to determine how a subject reacts to a test commercial. As an example, they showed us a test they did for Heineken and overlaid an “engagement map” to show when the audience was most engaged. This white paper offers more details on the technology behind the research. It’s fascinating work, even if it does sound a bit like something straight out of A Clockwork Orange.
  5. An executive from MTV — Todd Cunningham, the senior vice president of brand strategy and planning — talked about how that megacorp manages to think globally while marketing locally. He referenced MTV’s “Circuits of Cool” research into what role technology plays in “coolness” for young people. He ended with four suggestions for maximizing the role of technology in young people’s lives: 1.) associate with the things that matter (make sure the technology enables or supports those things); 2.) make it easy to make the right choice; 3.) help consumers manage their future occasions (a la Facebook); and 4.) make your brand experiences time well spent (people want simple experiences; avoid “feature creep”).

Let that be the end of the matter. The Global Marketing Summit is now officially a wrap.