Alec

McNayr

With so much comedy being broadcast around the web these days, it’s difficult to rise above the fray on concept alone.

UK’s answer to the Cup O’ Noodles, Pot Noodle has a comedy-friendly brand (hey, the feature dwarf wrestlers on their web page, after all), and they recently worked with ad house AKQA to create a little viral buzz.

They created a news report from the 80’s about a guy who develops sheep-like wool after eating enough Pot Noodle. “You are what you eat,” the guy claims. It’s funny, but certainly not funnier than anything else I’ve seen online.

The value comes from its editing — the video itself was copied onto an old VHS tape and re-imported to give it that static-y, 80’s feel. AKQA also teamed up with The Sun to run a fake news article about the video.

The video only has about 1200 views on YouTube, but is creative enough for me to take note.

CNN suffers, like most respectable news entities, to keep news at the forefront of their business. It’s so easy to walk down the entertainment/celebrity/buzz path to draw attention and readership (or viewership). I think they do a fair job, even though the Tina Fey/Sarah Palin SNL sketch has been all over their site of late).

Where this doesn’t apply so much is the opening up of a marketing campaign to draw in viewers. As news continues to become commoditized, how do you stand out?

CNN crossed two mediums that don’t seem to work together. Headline T-shirts.

Brilliant. What does CNN have an endless supply of? Headlines. What would be the least-relevant news delivery-vehicle? Clothing. Put them together and you have a humorous, self-referential motif that really works.

In this case, the number of shirts they sell don’t matter as much as the concept itself. They are printed on demand, and carry the benefit of a buzz-worthy idea.

I don’t think I’ve stumbled upon Loyola Marymount’s site in quite some time, because I haven’t seen this new design.

The home page, like every other university web site out there, has a large photo-centric center section that corresponds with a recent news-ish story.

There’s a tiny bit of interactivity with the mouse on LMU’s page, however, and despite how subtle it is, it really works. It got me to stick around the page minutes longer than I otherwise would, and it just makes it more fun.

Quantifiable? No. It’s a surprise a little feature like this made it through the various discussions that I know happen at institutions of higher learning (“Will people get it?” “Is it too flashy?” “Will this make us look too hip/trendy/fun?”).

Way to go, LMU. It almost makes up for your crazy, almost unreadable URL-naming system:

• Admissions = http://www.lmu.edu/page76.aspx
• Contact Us = http://www.lmu.edu/page70.aspx
• Quick Facts = http://www.lmu.edu/pagefactory.aspx?PageID=110

Give bloggers a chance, will ya?

Presentation Zen design master Garr Reynolds has an extensive breakdown on John McCain’s background visuals during his speech at the Republican Convention last week. His comments are mostly non-partisan, and a good read.

I am really impressed by the size and brightness of that screen, and was overall impressed with the visuals that went behind it.  At times, they seemed out of sync with what he was saying, and other times, added to the moment.  The biggest problem with the setup was that they didn’t make sense to the TV audience during the close-ups (Garr goes into details about this).  He should make available a wide shot photo of each and every slide with him in front of it.  It would give bloggers something to talk about, rather than just the missteps.  My visuals grade: A for Effort, B+ for Execution.

Conversely, Barack Obama painted a different backdrop at his speech at the DNC.  His staging wasn’t that fancy: what seemed like a bunch of American flags in front of a building (looked like a ranch-style house, or stable?).  But the true backdrop was the crowded Denver stadium.  The TV cameras were able to cut away to thousands of average, seemingly middle-class people listening to the speech.  It was a different way to generating and furthering a message.  My visuals grade: B for Effort, B for Execution.