The nerdosphere (a place I proudly call home) has been on fire the last two weeks with the introduction of Google+, the search giant’s latest foray into social media. There’s a lot of talk about it being a Facebook or Twitter killer, but here’s my take:
One of my first jobs when I was fresh out of college was as a marketing assistant at a Sci/Tech publishing house. The main focus of the job was basically finding targeted direct mail lists in niche markets like organic chemistry, landscape management, wastewater treatment, and various human organ disease treatments. Exciting stuff, huh?
I spend a lot of time on Twitter. I follow a lot of local, small businesses on Twitter. I see a lot of tweets from nameless, faceless logos. I see A LOT of 140 character sales pitches. I haven’t fallen for one of them yet
I’ve often pontificated about the importance of the script in the video production process on this blog; today I’m contradicting myself, sort of…
Is your business on Twitter? Facebook? LinkedIn? YouTube?
Like many things these days, it all started with an innocent little tweet from Rob Michael (@atmostrio on Twitter):
Just caught a spot while watching The Deadliest Catch that caught my attention… which is saying something these days. The spot for The Coleman Company (THE camping equipment folks) makes the bold claim that Coleman is “The Original Social Networking Site”… well, actually, I’m not really sure if that claim is about the website or about any campsite using Coleman equipment, but that’s not the point of this.
The Good News: the New Jersey Economic Development Authority will not loose money during the current recession because of bad investments on mediocre films.
The Bad News: They already lost $2,000,000.00 on Gracie.
According to this article on the Star Ledger website:
At their regular meeting today, members of the state Economic Development Authority wrote off $2 million in loans and loan guarantees they had extended four years ago to help bankroll production of “Gracie,” a feel-good movie about a Central Jersey soccer player.
Apparently they made direct “loans” to the film’s financiers, a first in NJ… and well, the rest of the story kind of writes itself, doesn’t it?
Best quote:
“We realized we’re not good at financing movies,” said Caren Franzini, the authority’s chief executive.
While this is a bad day for the big studios, who can always look to other funding sources, it’s a day of smug satisfaction for us little video guys. The State already provides a 20% Tax Credit for filmakers who meet certain criteria: 60% of the total expenses used or consumed in New Jersey, Principal photography commences within 150 days after the approval, and directly from the Definitions section of their application:
Film – a feature film, a television series or a television show of 15 minutes or more in length, intended for a national audience. “Film” shall not include a production featuring news, current events, weather and market reports or public programming, talk show, game show, sports event, award show or other gala event, a production that solicits funds, a production containing obscene material as defined under N.J.S.2C:34-2 and N.J.S.2C:34-3, or a production primarily for private, industrial, corporate or institutional purposes.
The $2M in Gracie was above and beyond this tax credit.
There are no (Zero, Zilch, Nada) tax incentives available for smaller films, videos, web-based video projects, internal training videos, corporate promotional videos, or any of the other thousands of video/film projects that might, you know, cause economic development to actually happen!
Sorry to the folks at Picturehouse (aka TimeWarner), but you already got your money. Hey New Jersey Motion Picture and Television Commission: it might be time to overhaul your definitions and guidelines to help us non-feature-film makers out a bit, we know you’re not going to be investing in any movies anytime soon.
Any other NJ film/video pros have any thoughts?
If you’re a blogger of any sort, this little video (by way of The Blog of Steffan Antonas) will make you say “ooooohhh shiny.”:
By the way, Dear WordPress: Do Want Now!!!!
How can I put this delicately?
There really is no way to… err… Have you ever been or known a 10-year-old boy? (Or or a 40-year-old one?)
Ummm….. Well, there really isn’t anyway to be delicate about this one. If you follow the link below, you’ll see that it’s:
Harry Hoover from My Creative Team, Inc. twittered an innocuous little post:
Sometimes I can’t believe I get paid to do this: http://www.laughyourgasoff.com/
The only word I could come up with for my reaction was Gobsmacked. Yes, it is funny, and yes it should drive traffic to the site. I was gobsmacked by the guts it took to pitch this to the client, BernzOmatic, but even more gobsmacked at the guts of the BernzOmatic folks to OK the campaign.
So kudos to BernzOmatic, and to My Creative Team. Now, how can I pitch something like this to the folks at The Gutster?
Marketing is fun sometimes.