Print ad from the Coleman website

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.

It’s a bold statement indeed, enough to make me jump online and check out the Coleman website to see all of the cool things a venerable old company like Coleman was doing with social media… ummm, one word comes to mind: FAIL.

Here’s one of the TV spots:
(Oh, wait, they don’t give users the ability to share the videos through their social networks.

That’s OK, I’ll use their YouTube channel:
(I’ve been unable to find a Coleman channel on Youtube.)

How about Vimeo.com:
(Umm, this is starting to get embarrassing, nothing on Vimeo.)

Let’s try Dailymotion.com:
(Nada.)

OK, so maybe video sharing is a little too much to expect, I’ll just pop over to Twitter, and see what their Tweet Stream says about all of this, after all, they invented Social Media, surely they’ll have a presence on the fastest growing SM site… Don’t bother, they’re not there.

Facebook? Oh yeah!! We have Facebook… in fact, when you visit the Colman site, Facebook is the ONLY SM app they have a presence on, and the ONLY LINK under the “Start Networking” tab on the site. (And I’m sure they’re proud of their 850 or so fans… that’s right, 850 fans of a 109-year-old brand).

It’s such a shame when a possibly great campaign concept and beautifully executed “old” media pieces are overshadowed by the lack of follow through, or understanding. Coleman has a real chance to take a 100+ year old brand and bring it into the 21st century with this campaign, but unless they act fast, this campaign will end up being written off as an expensive mistake, and the only thing the company will “learn” from it is that “Social Media doesn’t work.”

According to joeytomatoes.com, the agency behind the campaign is Doner Advertising, a well respected group; so I’m not sure who will bear the brunt of the blame when this campaign fails or only succeeds mildly well.

To Coleman’s credit, they do have 2 free iPhone apps available… and desktop wallpaper, but since I’m a Blackberry user, I can’t tell you what the apps do, or if they are worth the download. (And they also provide an iTunes link to buy the music from the commercial.)

So let’s review, Coleman invented social networking, check. Coleman has a Facebook page, check. Coleman has iPhone apps, check. And that is the sum total of their Social Networking…

(Dear folks at Coleman and/or Doner Advertising: give me a call, drop me an email, find me on Twitter, or Facebook, or any of the other SM sites here. We’ll see what we can do to get the Coleman Social Networking program up and running. I would have left this all in a comment on your blog… but well, you know… YOU DON’T HAVE ONE.

I would address this to you by your company name, but of the three people who just called me (within 5 minutes) on your behalf, none could speak English well enough for me to understand. Not that I didn’t ask each of them to say the name of the company again; it’s just that they chose not to respond to my question, they just continued on with the script.

Happy 2009 NYC Post-Production House! I’m glad to see that you’ve been doing so well, that you can afford to throw money down the drain on marketing that does not work! In fact, I’m sort of in awe of the fact that you are in such good shape financially, that you can afford to annoy potential customers. Was the three-calls-in-five-minutes strategy your idea, or something you worked out with the quasi-legitimate phone spammers? Whomever came up with that ploy is a genius! What better way to alert your potential customer base that you are doing so well?

And, may I say, what a bold, laugh-in-the-face-of-convention move it was to springboard into the, just-keep-calling-until-someone-has-a-stroke gambit. Brilliant!

Congratulations again, hope to see you in 2010!
Mike

It’s 2009 folks. We all aren’t doing quite as well as the NYC Post-Production House. Ask yourself this before you start firing employees and/or consultants: Am I wasting money on old marketing that annoys more potential customers than it brings in?

Here’s to a GREAT 2009!

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?

By the way, Dear Wordpress: Do Want Now!!!!

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:

• puerile
• sophomoric
• uncouth
• indelicate
• One of the funniest holiday campaigns you’ll see this year.

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.

Just a couple of Holiday plugs for Brunswick Media Services clients:

American Repertory Ballet presents
Graham Lustig’s The Nutcracker

November means the holiday season kicks off, and what better way to start your celebrations than with that perennial holiday classic, The Nutcracker? If you’re in New Jersey, the only Nutcracker to see is American Repertory Ballet’s modern classic. While the performance venue list reads a bit like a Revolutionary War battle plan (Princeton, Morristown, New Brunswick, and Trenton) there’s a performance near you. Don’t just take my word for it, read The Star Ledger’s review by Robert Johnson.

… and now for something completely different…

The Gutster^™ Wreck The Halls Sale

The folks at the Gutster have been hitting the “Holiday Cheer” a wee bit early this year. They’re running a recession-busting “Wreck The Halls Sale” now through the end of the year. The newest, 24″ Gutster General Purpose Bar is on sale for $45.00, there’s an unbelievable 3-pack Sale at $150.00, and FREE SHIPPING on all orders here in the lower 48!

Go there NOW, before they wise up and end the sale early, besides, nothing quite says Merry Christmas than a 3-pack of Demolition Bars. And while you’re there you can check out all of our latest Gutster videos… you’ve got to see these things in action.

I went in this morning with one of those mid-Fall, grey, rainy days happening outside… I came out for a break at lunch, and It’s SNOWING… and I can’t decide if that’s a good thing or not… I’m just glad I’m not shooting outdoors today.

Happy First Snow of the Season!

According to the Indianapolis Star: Scaffold collapses, stranding workers on Downtown building

The Good

The workers in the above story were fine, because they were waring the proper PPE. (For those of you who don’t know what PPE is, PPE = Personal Protective Equipment (things like hardhats, safety glasses, and safety harnesses.)

The Fugly

Now I know you folks are trained print journalists, and the story was breaking as you shot this video, but is there really such a rush on the story that you couldn’t have at least worked on the audio, or white balanced the camera so the video at least looked a little better? There was obviously some post production editing done to the video, why not just run a simple limiter on the audio, or run a color correction filter, or something. My speakers buzz like crazy when I saw this video.

Next time, turn down the gain, or fix it in post. Please?!?!?

I have no idea if the phone lives up to the video, but the production on this little gem is seamless. Nice job.

A Quick After-The-Fact:

In a big boo-hiss development, the i900 runs on a Windows Mobile OS. Oh well, the viral was cool.

The July issue of EventDV magazine arrived on Friday, with perhaps the most memorable cover story I’ve seen in quite a long time: “Brian MacKenzie: Unicycling Glidecam Videographer.” Now, I’ve been at this video thing for a while, but I’ve never put those words together in one sentence. Talk about a specialist.

What struck me as I read the article, was just how matter-of-fact it is to him. Here’s a guy who just combined two of the things he does, that’s about it, but to us uninitiated folks, it seems like such a far-fetched combination, that no one could possibly put them together successfully. Well, he has, and seemingly quite well. Brian’s website is http://www.balanceproductions.ca/, if you’re looking for a Unicycling Glidecam Videographer.

The second thing that got me a-thinkin’ was a brief conversation with Tom Clifford (aka Director Tom,) who called me after I congratulated him in a blog comment on his new blogging gig at FastCompany. Like most conversations with video guys, the conversation turned to: “So what are you shooting these days?”

I told him about an ongoing project we’ve been doing for the Dome-Tech Group and one of their clients, Columbia University on their newest building Studebaker Hall. We’re documenting all of the building systems (HVAC, Fire Control, Building Management System, Plumbing, etc.) with reps from the installation companies for future reference; so 10 years from now, when a new boiler tech starts, he/she has access to just how each system works as-installed.

Tom seemed genuinely surprised when he said he’d never thought of that as a use for video before. (I’m paraphrasing) I suppose that’s one of our specialties here at Brunswick Media Services, but it never really struck me as anything out of the ordinary. For the most part, we do industrial & corporate video, which means on any given shoot, we’ll be crawling around a manufacturing facility taking shots of machines in action… a la Dirty Jobs, but without the slick on-camera hosting. So it was pretty natural for us to move into this kind of video: we know a bit about the machinery, we know a bit more about the video, voila: our specialty.

Sure we’ll shoot just about anything our clients need, but we’re at our best wearing steel-toe boots, and proper PPE with some Super-Axe-Hacker cranking away in front of the camera.

So what’s your specialty?