Category Archives: Strategy

Get The Door, The Pizza Meme is Here

Sep 9, 2010

Move over, hot dog.  Pizza was up last week.  Thanks to illuminating viral videos “P-I-Z-Z-A” and “Pizza,” last week saw an uptick in pizza searches and an overall increase in pizza consumption.

First, the Olsen Twins released a little known blooper from one of their fantastically successful video series, “Olsens Outta Underwear: Learning to Use the Dishwasher.”

 

 

Google got in on the hot, melty, cheesy action as well, releasing a ten minute ode to the crusty sustenance, cleverly disguised as an introduction to using an iPhone and styling yourself as though it were 1993 and you’re just sitting down for a Comedy Stop headshot.

 

 

The pizza meme also carried over to ancient posts, such as this hotly accessed Green Box pizza transportation device tutorial from over a year ago.  Analytics show September 26th broke the bank for views with almost thirteen thousand unique visitors– impressive when hits were only 70 a mere 3 days before, on September 23rd.

 

Hits went up September 24th, the day popular tech site BoingBoing linked to the Olsen Masterpizza Theatre.  While Saturday saw no significant increase, Sunday exploded with attention, thanks to the multiple Tweets linking to the unique pizza box video.  Over the past 24 hours, the Green Box has been linked to from personal blogs and soft news sites, such as Tumblr, Boy Genius Report, and Feedjunkie.  Quite the increase for a video that’s existed for OVER TWO YEARS.  It’s gotta be the meme.

 

Screen shot 2010-09-27 at 8.57.47 AM
Compete.com shows overall interest in www.pizza.com has long overshadowed other easily eatable snacks sites like www.hamburger.com and www.falafel.com.  The existing affection for pizza means the tipping point for widespread pie fury is much more accessible that that of bunned or pita-wrapped edibles.  Would an Olsens video for hamburger reach such levels?  Likely, no, due to the accessibility of pizza.  Delivery, the act of bringing food to the consumer, is almost exclusively the realm of pizza joints.  Squareup.com and online delivery make this even simpler for the tech-attuned computer person, typing away at home.

Screen shot 2010-09-27 at 9.14.43 AM

Twends shows mostly neutral Twitter comments regarding pizza, indicating that people are thinking about pizza without emotional motivation.  Comments such as “am sooooooo damn sleeepppyyy uuggghh! I’m really thinkin ab goin home n cumn bk 4 work! N oh order me sum pizza & wings!” from @LovelyLady2010 and “woo! second pizza in 14 hours will be ready in 17 minutes. What to watch while eating? #Sharktopus? #Predators? #NightmareOnElmStreet?” from @NotScarySteve indicate a zombielike craving for the cheesy snack.  One explained by… the emergence of the Pizza Meme.

If you find yourself eating a slice of ‘za today– and you look into the mirror, your face slick and greasy with pepperoni oil– don’t flay yourself emotionally.  Just remember.  It wasn’t you.  It was meme.

 

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Killers Wail

May 5, 2010

I have a killer headache.

Killers

Plastered across every possible out-of-home format in Los Angeles:  buses, billboards, bus stops, digital billboards, wild postings– a single poster design is screaming out for attention.  Simple, clean, featuring the slim and attractive Mr. Kutcher and Ms. Heigl, two actors who, in a perfect world, would remain inside the TV box, overacting their way to obscurity, never to be rendered epically outsize by film.

I digress.

It's Everywhere The Killer Ads

Yes, the movie’s going to be bad, and we can all tell that without even viewing the trailer, but the posters represent something deeply vile about American culture.

I Can't Hold This Gun I'm Stupid Hot

Killers.  Individuals who take the lives of others.  This is a solemn, irreversible, traumatic, godlike, primal, vicious, and serious transaction.

Ashton Wants to Shoot Your Face

This movie poster contains no other implication of substance within the title than consumption of human life.  The man and woman used as actual letters in the word/title “Killers” literally embody the concept.   And this method of taking life must be accomplished by gunshot, no?  A happy Pantone pink gunshot splatter dots the i in the stark pink font.

Killers Pink Blood I Dot

Who are these judges of life and death?  Squeal!  It’s just a couple of silly jokesters, people!  Look how sexy they are, wielding their weapons of execution carelessly!  Even incorrectly!  Because how crazy is killing a dude, really?  You just have a gun, and then somebody’s dead.  Maybe they’re dead.  I dunno.  I dunno even how to hold this thing.  But I’m a killer, like, a hot one.  Lemme check my lipstick.Every time this ad assaults me, I get angry.  Anyone who’s ever had a friend shot, had a gun held to their head, experienced a holdup, needs a gun to protect themselves, or merely observes proper gun handling procedures would likely find this ad triggering.  (I’d use a word other than “triggering” so as not to be punny, but there’s no other term for this.  Telling.)

Make Them Go Away

You don’t have to be part of that group to find it offensive in its ignorance.  But given the way America treats guns, murder, and violence in Hollywood films, it’s ingrained in our consciousness to accept it, laugh, and move on.  Simple, right? Maybe not, if you never had to deal with finding this.  NSFW.

Killers-poster
What do you think about the Killers poster campaign?

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Teenage/ 28 connection

May 5, 2010

16 yrs
The author at sixteen

I was a teen with older friends.  I was an ambitious teen, making movies and art and proclaiming big outrageous things that were perhaps more often than not obnoxious.

    BALLERINA
A Portland teenage ballerina queen  

But that bluster and bombast didn’t alienate these people in their late 20s and 30s, these friends of mine who rolled their eyes but showed me lots of fantastic things and smuggled me into clubs and actually spoke to me like I made sense.  I loved them but didn’t understand how I’d gotten accepted.

 

Now 28, I finally understand why I had 28 year old friends as a teenager.  

 

    Daniel1.JPG
18 year old train hopping brother

 

Maybe it’s a Saturn Return kind of thing.  It’s a syncing of life stages.  It’s a threshold between tyranny and freedom.  As we nearly-thirtysomethings are escaping the poverty, chemical overindulgences, and social scramblings of our early 20s, so are teens escaping the shackles of their parents and lurching towards a new type of life.  Independent life.  The independent life of eating toast for weeks. Spending your last six dollars on an uncarded single beer.  Messing around with people you shouldn’t be messing around with.

  COOLGIRL  Rad looking Portland girl at a skate competition

 

And what are we 28 year old people lurching towards but the bottom of another ladder?  We may not be munching toast and living off of $100 a week anymore, but all our smart ideas and hopes and presumptions at this point— in a decade, will be as relevant and quaint as Friendster in 2010.

 

Sisters select candids112.JPGTeens sketching out life schedules during a research project

 

This is where things sync, and here’s why 28 yr olds can and should learn from teens.  Teens are smart and cool and clever and unafraid to fucking dream way fucking big.  They face fear daily:  Wardrobe.  Friendship.  Parental units.  Feelings.  Bodies. Futures. Grades.  Everything. Fear and future are facts of life that teens deal with in a most manic manner.

  3-BOYS
 Style obsessed teens shopping in Santa Monica

 

It means the world and it isn’t anything.  The biggest things are horrendously terrifying and the smallest issues are crucial.  Yet nothing really matters yet, does it?

 

Untarnished, fresh, erudite, bold, proudly clever.  These are the teens I’ve met recently.  Their naivete regarding the horrible early twenties experience in store is absolutely refreshing, a reminder to  never take anything too seriously, because it’s gonna keep getting tougher and more intricate and achy and wrinkly and you better enjoy the fuck out of what you have now.

 

 

ALL PHOTOS TAKEN BY ME.  EXCEPT THE ONE OF ME THAT MY FRIEND ERIN TOOK 12 YEARS AGO.  TEENS SHOULD NOT HAVE THEIR FACES ALL UP ONLINE SO THEY HAVE BEEN CROPPED AND EDITED TO PRESERVE ANONYMOUS-NESS.   EXCEPT FOR MY BROTHER, WHO PROBABLY DOESN’T CARE.

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