Finally people are starting to demonstrate that they understand the value of video media in online marketing campaigns and are willing to take chances on it to enhance an all encompassing online experience.  

(side: sorry for sounding like such an evangelical twit-litist, but I’m invested in normalizing the use of video as one of the obvious staples of online-offline cross promotion so that I won’t have to do freelance for the rest of my life.)

Kraft’s been trying to get in on the ‘joke’ for the past couple of months; hiring Ted Williams (YouTube’s ‘golden voice’) and trying to replicate a more controlled Old Spice video blitz on TBS a few nights ago.  

The NYT even bolstered it’s new video journalist team on today of all days a few hours ago (I wish the paywall was a joke-is the video content part of the 20 or however many views of their free content before you have to pay?):

@nytimes The New York Times  ”For tweets from journalists in the NYT video unit, follow @annderry@matthew_orr @olsentropy #FF”

April fools is kind of a lame holiday offline (playing pranks at work can lead to office drama), but a couple of good online pranks played well, in my opinion.  The above video from Google and the joke on designers (typing helvetica in the search bar makes the font on the screen comic sans).  It wasn’t that funny if you didn’t have to stare at different fonts all day to figure out which works with what theme or whatever.

The most appropriate of all was the last place that floundering momentary celebrities go before their internet fame flat lines-Funny(Today it was Friday) or Die.  The parenthesis after Funny is just in case the site goes back to normal on the day that comes after today but before Sunday.  

These guys went all out.  The address and search bars have lyrics from Rebecca Blacks single and say straight out that this is a Fools prank, just in case you couldn’t catch it from the parody vids on the home page.

Lohan, Sheen (who both also had innuendos with Kimmel, if you know what I’m saying) and even Tequila turned to comedy to lighten the mood around their own controversy to show that they have a sense of humor about themselves.

At least we all have something to laugh about even if you missed it. Fun … Fun … Fun …

Source: mail.google.com

I found and posted this video, because I saw a story on Good Morning America or Today this morning about it.  First, I just want to say that I’m not condoning the actions of either boy; however, the instant I saw the first frame of grainy video and saw the high point to completion I had to know the story.  I immediately stopped paying attention to daytime television long enough to find the clip on YouTube.

And that’s why I posted the video.  It took me a matter of 15 minutes to find the clip reposted (because YouTube doesn’t condone kids body slamming each other and wobbling off on battle weary spaghetti strings either) and discussed to completion from both sides.  This is exactly the story that I was going to be told in however long it was going to take to get to it through the mud of old school legacy journalism trying to add new school flavor.

The New York Times believes that putting up a pay wall to more exclusive and engrossing content is going to save their dwindling profit shares.  I’m not saying that it won’t.  I’m not saying I have a solution.  And I’m not saying that this model may not work for a publication like The New York Times.

I’m just saying that it sets a very bad precedent for smaller news organizations that might try the same thing and be sorely disappointed.  

(disclaimer: I’ve already gone on for a bit and I feel a longer rant coming on.  So if you are done reading thus far and would not like to hear a deconstructionist psychoanalytic reader response break down of my own news consumption: here is your way out.)

I guess that The New York Times believes that it’s content has amassed a reader base willing and able to afford a mobile subscription to it.  The Wall Street Journal has something similar and doesn’t have to worry, because it’s journalistic content caters to a readership just like the one I describe.

In my opinion where NYT and WSJ differ is that, though the younger end of the readers for the earlier is the crowd to aspire to afford such things like Iphones, Ipads, and other Idiosyncratic mobile devices as well as a subscription to such a well to do highly thought of publication as itself: we do not live in such an age that our own economic standing can reflect it.

And yes I’m talking about me.  There is no way I could possibly afford this that and the other thing.  On top of that, after struggling to build a career from almost nothing and being thwarted at every turn, including one into the previlaged eschelon of elite bards that put ink quill to papyrus for meager earnings for such media moguls.

No matter how well the economy may appear to begin doing; will we be any less hungry or cold.  And now along with that an avenue to alleviate Maslow’s last obstacles to actualization:  I will have to be bored, anxious and in need of entertainment, while I wait for the pay wall to fall.

That didn’t turn out exactly like I was thinking, but thanks for reading.