Recently,  I caught the video of We are the World 25.  It is the remake of the original We are the World song with proceeds going to support Haiti.  The first thing that struck me was I could not believe it had been 25 years since the original We are the World.  Let that soak in for a second, 25 years!  I work with some folks who were not born yet when the original came out.

It kind of blew my mind because I totally remember the original We are the World.  I was 13 at the time and only one of my friends had cable TV.  We all went over to his house to watch the video of We are the World on MTV.  MTV was running it once an hour every hour.  And now 25 years later, there are all new rock stars participating in this one.

I have to tell you the first time I listened to the new version, I hated it.  I think it was more because it was different from the original that I had grown up on and loved.  Though I have to tell you, the new version has grown on me.

What do you think?  See below for both versions.  If you are old enough, what memories do you have from the original one?

Original:

New:

I would like to dedicate this video to my friend David.

Can you please tell me why CBS and Fox both rejected this Trojan Condom commercial?

Technorati Tags: CBS, Fox, Trojan Condom

Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton ran a contest on her web site for people to vote on what her campaign song will be. Now if that was not exciting enough, she put together a little Sopranos spoof leading up to the announcement of what song won. The video includes her hubby Bill. See below.

Thanks Sadie for sending.

Technorati Tags: Hillary Clinton, Sopranos

An absolutely amazing video by a soldier named Lizzie Palmer. She puts into perspective that no matter how you feel about George Bush and the war, you cannot forget about the honorable soldiers over there doing their jobs.  We must hold them in the absolute highest regards.

Interesting article I found via Adrants about Jonathan Schoenberg of TDA Advertising & Design. About a year ago, a video was launched on YouTube where he was lecturing a class and he proceeded to grab a students cell phone who was talking on it and smashed it to the ground. The video has gotten a lot of play and discussions online. We later found out that the whole thing was stagged and according to Schoenberg, he wanted to show the power of “disruptive communication“. Whatever….

What is interesting is that we now have learned that even though the video has been viewed a little under 3 million times and has almost 7000 comments, this video did not generate a single click over to the TDA Advertising web site, NOT A ONE! So what does that say about Schoenberg’s disruptive marketing?

My take is that anyone can create cheap theatrics and it might grab our attention for a short period of time, but in today’s world, just grabbing people’s attention is not enough. If you want to market a product or service, you need to truly engage with the market you covet. They need to reached on a more emotional level that causes them to take some sort of action and want to do more with your brand.

What do you think?

Technorati Tags: YouTube, disruptive communication

I saw a video on Sean’s blog, Craphammer that took me to a real interesting campaign P&G is doing called Jingles for Pringles. They launched a contest where users create their own custom video promoting Pringles of course and upload it to their custom site. Very much like YouTube, users can comment and rate the videos to see what the community likes the best. Along with this online video campaign, P&G has also chosen some malls where they will be having street teams videoing people right there and uploading those videos to the web site as well. The winners get some sort of prizes.

I have been real impressed with a number of campaigns that P&G have been doing lately. They really seem to be one of the few large corporations that have really embraced the internet and a number of these community and viral campaigns. I was going through the Jingles for Pringles site and was real impressed with how the technology worked as well as the user experience. What I liked most about it was that P&G did not try to stuff their product down the users throat. They setup the campaign correctly and understood that everything that the user is creating is focused already on their brand and product and nothing else was needed. This is a critical part of any kind of viral/community campaign, you as a marketer cannot push too hard with your message or product or you risk alienating your community.

What do you think? Can I ask everyone a favor and go over to the Jingles for Pringles site and take a look? You do not have to register to view the videos and surf the site. I really would love your thoughts on what you like and what could be better. Thanks!

Technorati Tags: P&G, Jingles for Pringles, YouTube, viral, community

Folks, I introduce you to the Erin Bracht Phone Experiment. A woman named Erin has posted a video where she gives out her cell phone number and wants to see how many calls she can get. I would be interested to see how many people call her and whether this viral video is for real or not. Her video is below.

Update: I actually called the number, I wanted to see if this was for real or not. The number had been turned off. Do you think that makes the experiment successful or a failure?

Technorati Tags: Erin Bracht, viral video

All of the 2008 presidential candidates are jumping on the YouTube-MySpace social media bandwagon, but what role if any will user generated videos have on the presidential race? The 1984 Macintosh commercial was used as the back drop to promote Barack Obama’s campaign. It will be interesting to see just how far these home grown can go when it comes to impacting who will be our next president.

Technorati Tags: 2008 presidential candidates

I can’t figure out if this is the worst commercial I have ever seen or the absolute best.  You be the judge.

Technorati Tags: worst commercial