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 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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Posted by Joel Hladecek on Mar 25, 2009 in Rants | 0 comments
ABOVE: Apple's 16GB iPhone 3G - in White. Optional keychain ring and free pink eraser not pictured.
When Apple started using the color white as it’s industrial design foundation back in the late 90s – it evoked all the coolest parts of Star Wars’ Storm Troopers, 2001: A Space Odyssey – and bathroom fixtures all at once. It was a powerful design conceit that differentiated the company assertively for a decade – and big-banged out trends that are still rippling their way down the lower design food-chain today.
Then, with the advent of multicolored aluminum iPods, Black MacBooks and silver iMacs, Airs and Mac Pros, it looked as though His whiteness was finally, at long gasping last, bowing out. And none too soon.
The fact is, the whole white consumer technology thing has been done to death. There is all manner of non-Apple, white and plastic-chrome “iWhatevers” on the market. So ubiquitous is the white and “chromed” plastic look that anything done that way today usually has “made in taiwan” embossed on the side or comes from a gum ball machine.
And then Apple unveiled the iPhone 3G.
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Posted by Joel Hladecek on Mar 24, 2009 in Rants | 0 comments
There is one thing I think mobile users have done well. We generally turn off our ringers when we go to the movies. Seriously, that’s an impressive thing when you think about it, and we should all feel pretty good about that. Yes, most of that is based on pure peer pressure, admittedly. There is nothing in average-day society that is more humiliating than the rush of realization as your pocket-muffled, yet vibrantly audible ringtone fills the theater. And man, it only gets worse as you’re forced to perform the pocket-pull of shame, adding insult to injury, liberated from your pocket, the phone bursts to full volume, and all eyes have found you with the help of the ungodly bright screen that lit up when you opened the thing.
But that’s never happened to me.
And smart people, which is most of us in this case (right?), remember to turn off the ringer. It does, however bring me to the point of this post.
My in-theater misanthropism has found a new mobile offender, and for once it is not audio related. It’s those people who read sms messages during a movie.
You usually know who he is before the feature starts. He glances at it while the lights are up and everyone is seating. The possibility already sinking in, you scrutinize him, his mannerisms, clothes, who he’s with, all in an effort to privately judge whether he’s one of those. But hey – we all do that while the lights are up, right? And then he does it during the trailers. You’re behind him, but you stare at the back of his head anyway with your laser vision because you like the trailers, and even though your eyes have not completely adjusted to the dark room yet, that phone’s screen was bright enough to counter the sun ten minutes ago. It’s just a trailer you remind yourself. Maybe this is one of those feature-respectful false alarm people. Fine. And then you forget about it as the movie starts and whisks you away.
You’re distracted as he shifts his weight with purpose and immediately sense what’s about to happen – in fact you mentally dare him to. And it’s startlingly bright. I mean, it’s so bright that in that blackened room you see a Doppler Effect. It doesn’t matter that he holds it low, in some feigned effort to be considerate – your pupils just constricted off.
I have learned that you can’t publicly ridicule screen abusers in a theater as you can “ring-holes.” The lack of an original offending sound renders your otherwise audience-gratifying “Turn it off jackass!” unacceptable.
You can however, rest your foot on his chair back. That provides options.
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