The Blog of रायन

So today, or yesterday depending on where you are from, we witness a huge huge first in viral advertising / marketing strategies and it paid off BIG, like Nintendo Wii Big!  For the first time, at least that I know of, a company decided to talk to their customers, as in literally take questions(albeit silly ones) on the air and then respond directly back to that person.  Not only that but create an endless stream of commercials in near real-time based on what their customers were saying.

As most of us living outside of caves will know Oldspice has a new Manly front man Isaiah Mustafa and new hilarious ads from Craig Allen and Eric Kallman.

The ads themselves are funny as hell and creatively shot to boot with the ‘I’m on a horse’ ad being done in one shot with the only special effects being the diamonds pouring out of his hand.  Now Oldspice in the past couple of years has developed some of the funny ads around but the news ones were a notch above the rest, however it wasn’t until today that they truly blew everything out of the water, and this time it wasn’t with a new ad in the traditional sense of the word it was by doing something that has never been done before to this scale.

So today, or yesterday depending on where you are from, we witness a huge huge first in advertising / marketing strategies and it paid off BIG, like Nintendo Wii Big!  For the first time, at least that I know of, a company decided to talk to their customers, and not only that but create an endless stream of commercials in near real-time based on what their customers were saying.  As most of us living outside of caves will know Oldspice has a new Manly front man Isaiah Mustafa and new hilarious ads from Craig Allen and Eric Kallman.

The ads themselves are funny as hell and creatively shot to boot with the ‘I’m on a horse’ ad being done in one shot with the only special effects being the diamonds pouring out of his hand.

The Numbers

Instead of paying Isaiah to spend another day or two shooting an expensive ad what they did was put him in a bathroom with a high quality camera and simply had him answer youtube comments, tweets, facebook messages and the occasional reddit blurb here and there. Obviously his retorts are hysterical and of the same tone that you’d expect his commercial character to be in, but that is it.  Well I should’t say ‘that is it’ as if it we’re no big deal, it’s the sheer magnitude of what they are doing that is amazing.  At last count there was 181 video responses from Isaiah up at http://www.youtube.com/oldspice , ranging from 30 to 75 seconds – and this is only the FIRST DAY.  In 24 hours http://www.youtube.com/oldspice has become the most watch youtube channel for the day, each of these videos is getting around 16,000 views on the low end and upwards of 340,000 views on the high end for replies to celebrities like Paris Hilton, Ellen Degeneres or even Twitter themselves, keep in mind this is just the First 24 hours.

Now Youtube doesn’t update their overall stats for upload views in real time but in total all of the oldspice videos up until these new video replies garned an impressive 53,022,437 views at last count with the original Isaiah ad that starts in the bathroom having 13 million views over the past 5 months.  After the first day the combined viewership of all of these replies was sitting at 6,703,414 and considering these numbers are only updated once every 3-5 hours you can bet your bottom dollar this number is actually closer to 10 million.  36 hours after the first replies went live on Youtube they had garnered a combined viewership of 23,198,055

Pretty god damn impressive, but just how impressive?  Well let’s put this into perspective.  First off the cost of producing these ads was basically the electricity to run the camera and lighting, the writers salaries for the day and then Isaiah’s salary for the day.  There is no post-prod or much editing so you can budget minimal amounts for that.  That’s IT!  Now we are looking at around 10 million views in 24 hours, roughly 24 Million views in a 60 hour time frame and no doubt topping 30 million views after 72 hours.  That is as many ad views as you garner during a SuperBowl(considering a 102 viewership with 25% of the people staying for commercials[1] and 30 seconds of ad time during the superbowl is roughly $3 million  [2].  In 72 hours this stroke of marketing brilliance has accumulated a worth in the advertising world of $3 million, what will it be worth in 96 hours?  What about next week?

These guys are for the first time, in a massive way leveraging the power of all major social networks and completely decentralizing the efficiency of the delivery platform.  They are relying on youtube for the actual delivery, but it isn’t because of youtube specifically that these ads are being seen as they could have easily gone on vimeo or any other video hosting site.  Granted youtube is the top dog and they are the reason the videos are available but they aren’t the sole reason the videos are so popular, that power has been given to the users, the viewers themselves.  The people are promoting the videos because A.) They’ve democratically voiced their opinion that they are funny as hell and worth watching and B.) Because the ad geniuses realized if we just had Isaiah talk directly to theseusers on twitter, facebook, reddit, etc etc then of course they are going to tell all of their friends to watch it, causing this massive explosion of free viral promotion the likes that this world has never seen before.

This is definitely breaking ground around the world of marketing and you can bet your ass every single advertising executive and their neighbours dog is making phone calls trying to figure out how the hell to emulate this, and you can also bet that everyone over there at Old Spice is sitting extremely smug all saying the same word over and over and over again in perfect unison.

‘Ka-Ching’

Update: Ah, alas, as was mentioned in the below videos it looks like all good things must come to an end.  Old Spice is not having Isaia do another day of replies

Update #2: As of 12 noon 3 days after the video replies there are a total of 183 replies(including the good bye video) that have received a total of 23,198,055 views which was nearly 1/2 of the total views that all of the other Old Spice videos combined on youtube have received since the channel went live 4 years ago

Heres Interview with Leo Laporte on the Making of the ‘I’m on a Horse’ commercial, showing how they did it with one long continuous prop shot using very little special effects:

I was sitting in Vancouver with a very special person when this audio clip came on the CBC’s Radio show ‘Aprapo’ and we just had to stop everything we were doing and give this hauntingly beautiful voice of the late Lhasa our full attention.  I have not heard such a wonderful metaphor for life in a very long time and I was just captivated by it.  Take some time, find a quiet place where you can listen to this undisturbed.  For the entire CBC radio show head over to http://www.cbc.ca/apropos/archives.html and listen to the show from Jan 16/17

Here’s the song to listen to:

And now a little info on Lhasa care of Wikipedia:

Lhasa was born in Big Indian, New York, of a Mexican father, Spanish instructor Alex Sela, and a Lebanese-Jewish-American mother, photographer and actress Alexandra Karam.^[1] Her first decade was spent criss-crossing the United States and Mexico in a converted school bus with her parents and siblings, who were home-schooled by their mother.

She started singing in a Greek cafe in San Francisco when she was thirteen. Aged 19, she moved to Montreal, and sang for five years in bars, where she developed the material that eventually became her first album, La Llorona, released in 1997. La Llorona, which mixes traditional Latin American songs with original songs, was strongly influenced by Mexican music, but also Klezmer music, Eastern European gypsy music, Middle-Eastern music and alternative rock. The album was released by the Canadian independent record label, Audiogram, in Montreal, and brought her much success, including the Quebec Félix Award in Canada for “Artiste québécois — musique du monde” in 1997 and a Canadian Juno Award for Best Global Artist in 1998.

After touring in Europe and North America for several years, Lhasa left her singing career in 1999 and moved to France to join her sisters in Pocheros, a circus/theatre company. She eventually reached Marseille, where she started writing songs again. She then returned to Montreal to produce her second album, The Living Road, which was released in 2003. While La Llorona had been entirely in Spanish, The Living Road included songs in English, French and Spanish.

A two year tour followed the release of The Living Road, taking her and her group to seventeen countries. She was a guest singer on the Tindersticks‘ track “Sometimes It Hurts” off their Waiting for the Moon album, and later joined Tindersticks’ singer Stuart Staples for a duet on the track “That Leaving Feeling”, found on his Leaving Songs album. She also appeared as a guest on the albums of French singers Arthur H and Jérôme Minière, and the French gypsy music group Bratsch. She received the BBC World Music Award for Best Artist of the Americas in 2005. The accumulated worldwide sales of her two albums are nearing one million. ^{[citation needed]}

De Sela’s third album Lhasa was released in April 2009 in Canada and Europe^[2], and the next month in the U.S. She could also be heard on the title track of Patrick Watson’s new album, Wooden Arms, released in April, as well.

Following a 21-month-long battle with breast cancer, Lhasa died, age 37, on the evening of January 1, 2010, at her home in Montreal.^[3]

http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/20070617_religion_politics_and_the_end_of_the_world/

An Incredible debate between two very well respected and well spoken men

Religion, Politics and the End of the World

Christopher Lynn Hedges (born September 18, 1956 in St. Johnsbury, Vermont) is an American journalist, author, and war correspondent, specializing in American and Middle Eastern politics and societies.[1] His most recent book, which he discussed on CSPAN‘s Booktv [2], is Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle (2009).[3]

Sam Harris (born 1967) is an American non-fiction writer, neuroscientist and proponent of scientific skepticism. He is the author of The End of Faith (2004), which won the 2005 PEN/Martha Albrand Award,[1] and Letter to a Christian Nation (2006), a rejoinder to the criticism his first book attracted.

Read Chris Hedges’ opening statement and Sam Harris’ response.

There are links to the MP3′s recordings of the event(Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4), which are completely unedited as apposed to the video’s below which have been modified to shorten them up a little bit. What I am so blown away by with this debate is how I found myself siding with both arguments and even at the end I didn’t blatantly endorse one and condemn the arguments of the other. I found myself agreeing with points on both sides even when those points came at the expense of me disagreeing with the other side. A great great conversation about something we are going to no doubt see more and more in our society as religion’s decline happens faster and faster.

http://www.closertotruth.com/episodes

I stumbled across this absolute diamond today and my jaw figuratively dropped when I realized what it was that I had found.  This might just be one of the most profound video programs I have seen.  The panels that have been assembled to ask the questions that are being asked is mind bloggling.  You can go here: http://closertotruth.com/participants to see who has taken part in discussing topics ranging from ‘Does God make sense?’ to ‘What would multiple universes mean’.  There is a full list of TV episodes listed at: http://closertotruth.com/episode-list but it would seem the full watchable web videos are only found at the link at the top of this post.

Enjoy

I was watching an episode of Babylon 5 last night and these was an except from a Tennyson poem read that tugged at me in just the right way.  So I had to go out and track it down to see if the rest of it was as captivating, ‘lo and behold it was!

Ulysses

It little profits that an idle king,

By this still hearth, among these barren crags,

Match’d with an aged wife, I mete and dole

Unequal laws unto a savage race,

That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink

Life to the lees: all times I have enjoy’d

Greatly, have suffer’d greatly, both with those

That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when

Thro’ scudding drifts the rainy Hyades

Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;

For always roaming with a hungry heart

Much have I seen and known; cities of men

And manners, climates, councils, governments,

Myself not least, but honour’d of them all;

And drunk delight of battle with my peers,

Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.

I am a part of all that I have met;

Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’

Gleams that untravell’d world, whose margin fades

For ever and for ever when I move.

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,

To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!

As tho’ to breathe were life. Life piled on life

Were all too little, and of one to me

Little remains: but every hour is saved

From that eternal silence, something more,

A bringer of new things; and vile it were

For some three suns to store and hoard myself,

And this gray spirit yearning in desire

To follow knowledge, like a sinking star,

Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
This is my son, mine own Telemachus,

To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle–

Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil

This labour, by slow prudence to make mild

A rugged people, and thro’ soft degrees

Subdue them to the useful and the good.

Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere

Of common duties, decent not to fail

In offices of tenderness, and pay

Meet adoration to my household gods,

When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port: the vessel puffs her sail:

There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,

Souls that have toil’d and wrought, and thought with me–

That ever with a frolic welcome took

The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed

Free hearts, free foreheads–you and I are old;

Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;

Death closes all; but something ere the end,

Some work of noble note, may yet be done,

Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.

The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:

The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep

Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,

‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world.

Push off, and sitting well in order smite

The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds

To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths

Of all the western stars, until I die.

It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:

It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,

And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.

Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

My favorite DJ in the world right now – Dj Kenneth Thomas – mixed in a song called ‘Welcome Lebanon‘ by Kintar at the 55 minute mark of Obsessions 228 and this track impacted me so much that it’s led me down this rabit hole of discovery.   Kintar did a good enough job with the track, the more I listen to it the more I appeciate what he has done here, but the real impact comes from the monologue in the song that is read by Lawrence Fishbourne.  After much searching I discovered that it was a Haiku taken out of a remarkable film called ‘Ashes and Snow’, which forms part of an unbelievable art exhibit by Canadian artist Gregory Colbert.  Before I get too deep into that however I think it’s worth while to sit down, turn the music up and experience everything that this song is:

Here are the words read so beautiful by Laurence Fishburne :

Ever since my house burnt down, I see the moon more clearly, I gazed upon the Evens that have fallen in me, I saw Evens that I had held in my hands, but let go, I saw promises I did not keep, Pains I did not sooth,Wounds I did not heal, tears I did not shed, I saw deaths I did not mourn,Prayers I did not answer, doors I did not open, doors I did not close, Lovers I left behind, And dreams I did not live, I saw all that was offered to me, that I could not accept. I saw the letters I wished for, but never received; I saw all that could have been, but never will be.

It certainly wouldn’t be fair not to mentioned a little bit about Kintar, the man that led me on this quest of discovery before moving on to talk about Ashes & Snow:

Jonatan Tesei is the man behind KINTAR. He was born in 1983 in Buenos Aires, Argentina… His first steps were in 2001 when he was 18 years old; with a huge dream in his mind: showing the world his unique and distinctive music.

He sometimes appears with Sebastian Pazos “REX” (known together as KINTAR & REX) and many times he appears with his individual project called “KINTAR”.

With over 40 releases and 1 album (Serendipity), we can say that Jonatan has a place within the Electronic Dance Music scene worldwide.

In addition, Jonatan founded SUDAM label: as the second part of his huge dream.  He wanted to share it with friends and hundreds of artists… so, being part of that label became the dream of many more. Today SUDAM is a great team which is working hard like an artists community showing different styles of music such as Progressive, House, Tribal, Break, Downbeat, Soundtracks.

Something that stands out of KINTAR is his ethnic and mystic sound which hides behind the Progressive House… creating an incredible atmosphere and easily recognizable on the dance floor… This feature is the reason that makes him to have so many followers around the world.

Now as for Ashes and Snow, this whole project is truly something to be marveled.  I won’t tack it on to this blog post but will create a new one dedicated just to that.  So Stay tuned

Stumbled upon this article over at NewScientist that peaked my interest and led me to look more into This show put on by the Rationalist Association in the UK.

To quote a little bit from the New Scientist article:

Welcome to Nine Lessons and Carols for Godless People, a variety show featuring a stellar cast of comedians, musicians and scientists, who – with cerebral sparkle and some realist tinsel – descended on London’s 3000-seater rock venue, the Hammersmith Apollo, last night.

The show was organised by the Rationalist Association and New Humanist, with the musical backing of the Mystery Fax Machine Orchestra. Last night’s performance was an encore to the show’s sold-out run at London’s Bloomsbury Theatre.

“Curator” Robin Ince, the British comedian and broadcaster, kicked off the night with an evocative quote from the late, great Carl Sagan but swiftly moved on to pantomime villains – from “spine wizards” (chiropractors) to columnists Anne Coulter and Melanie Phillips – as he outlined the ethos of the evening: atheists were to shake off their glum image and put on a joyful face as they celebrate the majesty of the universe and (almost) everything in it.

I found this by complete fluke this morning.. I was on some site, probably looking at the Black Mesa trailer when i saw this advert on the side of the screen that really made me scratch my head because it wasn’t about anything at all. The entire advertisement was simply a video of a dude talking about racing shopping carts down a hill. No product placement, no sales pitch, just Big Al talking about the thrill of racing a shopping cart down a hill. At the end there was this tiny little link that took me to the following film and I found myself sitting down at 5am watching the documentary by Murray Siple from start to finish.

The wonder and Beauty that is the genius of Bear McCreary

Spurred on by a twitter conversation with @PJayB I thought I’d bless everyone on twitter that’s wondering what the heck we’re talking about, as well as the world in general, to the absolutely stunning, breath-taking, masterpiece of work that is the Battlestar Galactica Soundtrack, most notably seasons 2 and 3.

I make no point in hiding my opinion that this show is undoubtedly the best piece of Drama, small or large screen, ever created and there can be no doubts that a large part of it’s power comes from the musical score.  I am confident that Bear McCreary was one with the universe during the creation process of this work as it is beyond the abilities of a mortal human.  A channeling of divine sound one could say as this masterpiece of work has no equal on this planet as far as I am concerned.  Just the sheer breadth of the work, from bringing you to tears with the haunting beauty of ‘Roslin & Adama’ to rousing you into the spirit of battle with the mighty drums of ‘Fight Night’, is remarkable beyond words.

So if you have the time, a pair of high quality headphones or sound system than close your eyes, breath deeply and exist in a moment of oneness with this music.  It might just change your life I know it has mine:

One of the most spine tingling moments of BSG was, after a season of being taunted and teased with snippets of this song we finally were able to hear it in its entirety.  It absolutely blew me away, I remember yelling in excitement when I figured out what song this was a cover of.

Lost

Heard this poem today and had to share.  It’s titled Lost by David Wagner

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.