Dane101 is reporting that Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison’s legendary Babcock Hall dairy operation will be creating a special “Google Fiber” flavored ice cream to attract Google’s Fiber Project to Madison.
The final version should be out in three or four weeks. Drop by!
See the whole matrix at Brandchannel
Earlier I looked at how Audi is using heavy product placement of its R8 sports-car model to lift the brand’s overall image and how those placement were ramping up in 2010 with The Joneses and Date Night. Add one more; with the new Iron Man 2 trailer, it looks like Audi has Tony Stark in the brand’s driver’s seat once again.
Russ Darrow, an auto-dealer in Wisconsin, is giving away a free iPad with every Mazda purchase. The commercial in its entirety.
Three is a trend, right?
While the health-care debate rages crawls on, one thing seems to be clear: Everyone from “The people” to politicians are in agreement that doctors are a problem. Either they are too greedy or they are too clueless and out of touch with real patient needs or they are incompetent, slowlky killing us all one mistake at a time. So it’s a great time to make shows focused on the real heroes of health-care, nurses.
And to make the nurses look more heroic and competent, doctors are being played off as arrogant, dismissive imbeciles whose lack of knowledge about medicine is killing people left and right. (One line, in response to a patient who asks what the nurses are good for, from the nurses on the show Mercy: “We protect you from the doctors.”
Trailers for the upcoming nurse-centric NBC show Mercy, Edie Falco’s project Nurse Jackie and Jada Pinkett Smith’s Hawthorne all, to some degree (Mercy is the absolute worst), play off the audience’s already-held beliefs about doctors being absolute shits. Part of this doctors-as-the-problem comes from the recent docs-in-
pop-culture shows like Grey’s Anatomy, which, working on a CSI-level of misinformation about a profession, lead audiences to see doctors as self-absorbed jerks more concerned with their lack of orgasms than their patients’ mortality.
Gone are the days of ER, when nurses were capable and so were the doctors.
Sick people, and even healthy people, generally fear doctors because they (the doctors) have all the power in the relationship. Meanwhile, nurses seem more “like you and me.” Kind of like how George Bush was, you know, not one of those wonky eggheads; he was a guy’s guy. Nurses, likewise, are the ones you’d like to have a beer with.
Stupid doctors.
I recently pointed out the product placement mind-f#*k that is the upcoming film The Joneses. Upon closer look it’s clear that Audi’s R8 is a huge beneficiary of that product placement (below).
No surprise. Audi’s is using the R8 to create an entirely new image for its brand. While the conjoined rings have had no trouble appearing in films (The Transporter series is essentially a trilogy of Audi commercials), the R8 says something more about the the pedigree of the automakers entire line: Sexy.
And it’s starting to turn up everywhere. From it’s role as the ride of Iron Man Tony Stark a few years ago to 17 Again and Transformers: Rise of the Fallen last year, to its upcoming appearances in The Joneses and Date Night, it’s becoming the product placement hot rod of choice… the Macbook of cars. Below, a few of the auto’s latest roles:
The remake of Karate Kid is also titled Karate Kid. But in China, where the film takes place, kung fu is practiced, not karate. In the trailer Jackie Chan even says “king fu.” Karate is Japanese.
But hey, Japanese… Chinese… they look the same and probably share a lot of cultural identity and stuff and get along great, right. They’re not going to mind being confused, right. RIGHT?!
Related: The Manchurian Candidate remake.
Who would have thought Law Abiding Citizen would torture us with gruesome murders and Apple product placement. From iPods to Macs, Apple was everywhere. And the nonsensical premise that city district attorneys use Macbook Pros was about par with the rest of the film’s plot
More…
Look at this. Gawker appears to be slowly spinning its Deadspin title into more of a comprehensive male-oriented site Deadspin XY. It makes sense for Denton to capitalize on the audience, especially since the blog faces so much competition in the very segment it practically created.
It’s like Esquire’s more athletic brother. Wonder when we’ll see the first post on fashion.
Oh my, this isn’t the charming Canada we all know and love mock:
“Martin Macias Jr., an independent media reporter from Chicago travelling to cover the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver BC, has been rejected by Canadian border agents… He was travelling with political organizer Bob Quellos of No Games Chicago, who was allowed to enter Canada. They were both to be picked up by Chris Shaw, a member of the Olympic Resistance Network, local Olympic critic, and author of ‘The Five Ring Circus’…”
It appears that there is one “nation” that is not all rainbows and sunshine about the Olympics.”First Nations” (knows as Native Americans in the US) are upset that, despire signing partnership agreements with Games organizaers, they are not seeing the promised development money being spent to improve the quite poor living conditions for most First Nation peoples:
“…controversy continues as to whether the inclusion of First Nations iconography is simply propaganda to make the Games appear “Indian approved” or a sign of sincere cooperation”
But First Nations aren’t the only ones upset about the Vancouver games. It seems that despite making up a significant portion of the population, society and economy of the region, Asians are upset, having largely been shut out of any recognition:
“Usually in any Olympic Games, the host city will use the opening ceremony to show the world what that city is all about,” said Peter Kwok, a civic leader in the Chinese community. “They did a good job telling the early history of Canada - then they forgot about today’s Canada, which is multicultural.”
“The point is, if you were watching the opening ceremonies on television, you wouldn’t even know that it took place in the most Asian city in North America. Have any of the producers been to a high school in Vancouver?”
It’s hard not to see their point. Those with Chinese and South Asian heritage comprise one third of the area’s population (about 2 million).
Powered by WordPress