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(Credit:
AMC)
What a season finale it was. ‘Shut the Door. Have a Seat’ was a “tight balance of emotionally pungent drama and company coup d’etat,” the LA Times wrote. And indeed, Mad Men came through in the end. And all the mad men and women came through: Sterling, Cooper, Pryce, Pete, Peggy, Joan, and, more than anyone else of course, Don Draper.
He took Conrad Hiltons’s advice to heart and instead of “crying and relying on other people’s moves” he became the master of his fortune and finally did something meaningful. You could see the glow in his eyes, the pride, and the deep satisfaction of someone who has found (or accepted) his calling. “So you like being in advertising after all?” Sterling asked (a rhetorical question). Facing a divorce from his wife and separation from his kids, Draper, for the first time, gained the stature of a man who has a moral compass. With faith both in himself and in others, the boss turned into a leader.
The final scene with the new agency crew gathered in the makeshift hotel room office poignantly displayed that Draper’s evolution mirrored the dramatic changes a whole society was undergoing at the time: Gender equality, democratization of ideas, flat(ter) hierarchies, and employee empowerment, and an angst, underlying all this progress, triggered by JFK’s assassination. “People used to buy things. Then something terrible happened. And people changed. They want different things now. No one really knows how everything’s changed. But you do,” Draper says in his pitch to Peggy, as he’s trying to convince her to join the new venture rising out of the ashes of the firm formerly known as Sterling Cooper. Although set against the backdrop of the early sixties, the Mad Men finale could be read as commentary on the current cultural climate. Times are as transformative as they were back then. The sentiment is equally nervous, and after 9/11 and the Great Recession people are looking for new meaning in a post-materialistic and, sorry Don, post-advertising world.
And yet, Mad Men’s finale represented both swan song and rebirth of an industry. It may be very American to consider every crisis an opportunity, and in this sense, the end of Mad Men season three was a genuinely American happy ending, or better, an ending with the happiest possible departure – the beginning of a whole new story. Peggy, the empathizer and Pete, the innovator, both had tears in their eyes when they were asked to join the new firm, because, at last, they were given the recognition they deserved, and the opportunity to “build something.” Happiness lies in its pursuit, as we all know, and the Mad Men finale reminded us of a great national pastime: If we throw all our talent and passion together, we can build something great. It can be an advertising firm, a movement, or an entire nation.
On the occasion of Barack Obama’s nationwide TV prime time infomercials last night, Fast Company’s Ellen McGirt reviewed the campaign’s media strategy and in particular its innovative use of amateur (or “professional” amateur a.k.a. "promateur") video. While the Obama camp has heaped millions of dollars on traditional TV broadcasters, setting a new record for ad spending ($250 million), McGirt believes that the true winners in this campaign are amateurs and democracy
To get an insider’s perspective, McGirt interviewed Obama’s director of field video, Arun Chaudhary, at an event in July in New York. Some of the insights Arun shared were pretty amazing. You thought we’d live in an age of snack-size media? Think again!
One thing is clear: the Obama campaign - just awarded "marketer of the year" by AdAge -- has raised the bar for political communications and has created new ways of citizen engagement. During the last presidential election I was working towards a masters' degree in communications at the Annenberg School, and I remember that I wrote a lofty paper about “super-democracy,” in which I drafted a radically idealistic vision of a media-driven democracy in real-time. It’s amazing to see that four years later this has become a reality beyond my boldest imagination. Leveraging the power of new web technologies, the Obama campaign has transformed political media from something to watch to something to do.
This means of course that we citizens expect this form of participatory democracy, transparency, and authenticity to extend to the White House. Interactive visualizations of federal budgets and tax dollar spending, open platforms for public deliberation and collaborative decision-making, instant polling via mobile apps, RSS feeds with policy updates, and fireside video chats with the President are just some of the possible formats that come to mind for the New Governance Media Platform – McGirt is right: Obama and team are on the hook (if they win).
Sanyo has these "Infobar 2" phones showing at their booth, in lots of funky colors. They are quite large (about 1.5"/40mm longer than a standard candy bar phone, and relatively thick), but have a nice rounded smooth shape to them and interesting texture finishes. The smooth keys make them a bit of a challenge to use, but the 2.6" OLED screen has a 16:9 ratio that is geared toward watching movies and TV. They come with a built-in digital TV tuner.
They also come with a docking stand that charges the phone and keeps the screen at an angle for viewing.
Doesn't sound like they'll be coming to the US - CDMA only.
(Credit:
GOOD Magazine)
I've been curious recently about how much electricity all our devices that stay plugged in all the time and in some sort of standby mode consume, even when we are not actually using them. And what does that translate into in terms of real money?
Coincidentally, GOOD Magazine has created this handy chart that graphically depicts the impact.
The real surprise on it is plasma TVs--who knew they were sucking so much energy when "off"? And that game console of yours? It's costing you $25 a year just sitting there, even when you're not using it. Have more than one console? Well, do the math...
The chart does not include all the wall-warts for cell phones, laptops, cameras, and the like that tend to stay plugged into the wall (and consuming some amount of electricity) even when not actually charging their devices. By some estimates these are responsible for 4 percent of all U.S. electricity consumption, equivalent to almost 100 million tons of oil. Hmm, no wonder the U.S. is 5 percent of the world's population but consumes 23 percent of its energy...
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 like a choice of the mechanically incompetent or automotively timid. Cars continue to be a demonstration of other kinds of competence in our culture. (This is why "getting your license" is our great rite of passage.) The Parking spot makes Lexus looks like the choice of people who are intimidated by the task of parallel parking. Let's be honest. We are all intimidating by parallel parking. Who do you know who is prepared to admit to this intimidation? Audi is the luxury car for people can park themselves...at speed...while moving in the opposite direction...as it were. Audi becomes the car for people who are equal to the task. Lexus the car for the faint of heart, the limp of wrist, the wan of spirit.
I find this particularly ingenious because for years Audi's slogan has been "Vorsprung durch Technik" (progress through technology), and in this case Audi is perceived as lacking in technology. What they have done is turn this around to say that philosophically they are focused on technology that enriches the driving experience, rather than removing the driver from it.
You can see a video of the ad here.
Video of the Lexus parking itself, courtesy of Gizmodo
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