Posted by Joel Hladecek on Jul 22, 2010 in Rants | 0 comments
I love Apple products.
But something has been troubling me, and when I get troubled, I mull, and when I mull, I stew, and when I stew I eventually write something that’s either really funny or insulting, and I don’t feel any jokes coming on at the moment.
People have been calling me an Apple Fanboy for many years. Before that term became trendy they called me an Apple fanatic. I used to resist these labels since from my point of view I was just reporting the obviousness between Macs and PCs. It wasn’t my fault Apple products were superior.
Anyway this isn’t about who’s better or who’s right . That’s old news. Apple is kicking butt these days and most of the anti-Apple people I’ve known have finally let go of their irrational embrace of a Windows PC-only paradigm, bought iPhones, iPods, iPads and iMacs and we can finally move on.
And my story starts there.
Because as any true Apple Fanboy will tell you, it feels oddly disorienting to see Apple kicking butt . It’s what we fought for over the last quarter century, and yet now that we have arrived, the universe is out of balance, only perhaps not in the way you might expect…
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Posted by Joel Hladecek on Jul 21, 2010 in Advertising, Rants | 0 comments
Three years ago some ad agency dweeb leaned into my office and smirked “Dude, our campaign just went social”.
And I think, after a brief pause, my immediate reaction was to throw up in my mouth. I silently hoped I would never hear that stupid little term again. That something “went social”.
But boy it’s catchy isn’t it? Sounds all proactive and edgy and exciting, right? If you work in an ad agency, you probably just enthusiastically thought ‘Hell yeah’.
Social Marketing: sequence of events
Those of you who know me know I hate these little, after-the-fact terms. Badges that agency people glom onto in an attempt to own the things that happen to them by accident. To claim it somehow, despite the fact that they exist outside the users’ intent. ”Viral”, “Word of Mouth”, and now “Going social”.
Hello!? It’s all the same thing, people. Yeah yeah, someone will feel compelled to bloviate on behalf of the need for, and variances between these dumb little labels. And it still won’t change the fact that users are in complete control – share what they want, how they want, only when they feel like it – and that advertisers have never actually had permission to interrupt or effect a desire of their own upon users no matter where they do it. And if, in wishful disregard, the advertiser still has some desire for proactivity of any sort, may at best, bow low and deep, and beggingly offer service to the king, the user.
But they rarely do. Advertising seems meaningless unless advertisers think they have control. So we now spend a lot of money developing and executing marketing plans that will “go social”.
In the words of my old friend Nick, Social “this.”
Ad agency people: in a couple short years you will no longer be uttering that term. So save yourself the pleated, acid-washed embarrassment, and don’t utter it today either.
Look at the big picture. Make things that are valuable. Then be silently grateful that something you created isn’t held in utterly dull regard by the user.
And then maybe I won’t be forced to keep swallowing my own vomit.
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Posted by Joel Hladecek on Jan 13, 2010 in Advertising | 1 comment
So after a particularly frustrating day of having Flash-based content crash my browser, I finally buckled under and succumbed to the recommendation of my old business partner Tim Smith and downloaded a little, free Mac Safari plugin called “ClickToFlash“.
ClickToFlash is a simple tool that blocks Flash content in the Safari browser and replaces it with a pleasant, ignorable graphic. And if you choose to click the ignorable graphic – the Flash movie loads normally. Simple.
But why would the average person want it? Most advocates will tell you because it will significantly reduce browser crashing. Which it does. But there is something else. Something I found infinitely more satisfying.
I’d resisted ClickToFlash previously because I thought, at the time, I wouldn’t want to miss out on all those cool experiences, those grey boxes would probably annoy me, and any extra clicking would degrade my experience.
Was I ever wrong on all counts.
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Posted by Joel Hladecek on Jul 15, 2009 in Rants | 2 comments
It’s cold in hell today. Well, in my private corner of it anyway.
That’s because my default home page – across all my browsers – was just changed to Microsoft’s Bing.com.
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Posted by Joel Hladecek on Mar 31, 2009 in Rants | 5 comments
The iPhone mic snags on any button-down collar, um... but not t-shirts.
I can’t be the only one. The only lifelong Apple fan boy who wears shirts with collars on occasion. Am I?
I ask because if there were others, if maybe even one of us worked for Apple on the iPhone team, the iPhone headphones would be designed differently. It’s a fact – no two ways about it. That somehow this critical design flaw should never have survived the Apple design process, unless of course, they really all do wear t-shirts – exclusively.
Hey, I wear t shirts. Cool ones too. But now and again – and maybe more often than some, I wear similarly stylish button-down shirts with collars. And this is where the design flaw reveals itself.
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