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Jul
16
Apparently I’m not the only Gorrie who is a sucker for punishment and enjoys doing his own thing. My father (www.gorrie.com - 122 yrs of retail displays) and my uncle are both 30+ yr entrepreneurs. But it goes further back than that! Wired Magazine had an article on my great, great uncle, Dr John Gorrie. I’ve known about him for a while now (family indoctrination don’tcha know…) but he’s not exactly a household name.
Dr. Gorrie invented the original Ice Machine back in 1850. He’s the reason for the cool frosty mugs-o-beer we all enjoy. Apparently he liked his brew and had a flare for the dramatic too:
He arranged a dramatic demonstration of his machine for a social, rather than medical, occasion. It was a muggy July in Florida. Ice from the North had been exhausted. Gorrie attended an afternoon reception given by the French consul to honor Bastille Day.
The doctor first complained about drinking warm wine in hot weather, then suddenly announced, “On Bastille Day, France gave her citizens what they wanted. [Consul] Rosan gives his guests what they want, cool wines! Even if it demands a miracle!”
Then he signaled for waiters to enter with bottles of sparkling wine on trays of ice. Mechanically made ice in the sweltering Florida summer: It was a sensation. Smithsonian magazine dubbed that party the “chilly reception.”
Unfortunately, he was a miserable businessman so I’m hoping I’ve learned a thing or two since then 
So…nothing to do with Digital OOH I’m afraid, but I got a kick out of it.
Funny enough, Ken Goldberg from Real Digital Media called me on this very thing about 3 months ago…apparently, near his town, there’s a statue to good old John’s honor in a town near him.
Jul
11
Entertaining DOOH Content on NY Taxi
Filed Under Advertising, Digital Signage, digital ooh, humor | 2 Comments
As much as we all love talking heads from the news room with “kitchy commentary”, I take so many cabs in NY, I see the same loop over and over again. It gets dull …and I’ve already read my news (the stuff that interested ME) that morning anyway.
So it was nice to see some content that was actually entertaining yesterday evening in the cab! Looks like NY10 got a sponsor (Dave Middleton show and Loopt at http://www.loopt.com/) and they went bonkers with their intro sponsor wheel, which was …maybe 3 minutes long?
Two things I want to call attention to:
1.) I like this content. It was entertaining and at the very least DIFFERENT. Is it really that hard to come up with something other than repurposed and retranscoded wheels from TV? You’ll find the talking heads at the end of the video if that’s your thing. The sponsor also had some social relevance (again, to me) and they had a clear call to action that could be completed RIGHT THEN, via phone. They are, of course, a mobile service.
2.) You will get an idea of what driving in an NYC taxi is like. Sorry for the vertigo. Hey - you try holding the camera steady going 40 around corners with no suspension!
Video:
Mar
23
Blatant Consumer Abuse?
Filed Under Advertising, Digital Signage, humor | 1 Comment
There’s blatant abuse of consumer attention/captive moments and then there’s REALLY blatant abuse of captive time. A recent Air Canada flight just took the cake for me - note this is just my opinion but read on.
Now, I’ve got to give it to Air Canada, they’ve got a pretty slick little interface set up in their new planes. Great touch screen, responsive, decent content (although they need some more). What they’ve done to make money in between a consumer mindlessly pushing buttons and consuming content is to add customized pre-roll to the front of the content wheel. As a consumer, I expect this. You give me free content, I will watch ads. I haven’t resigned myself to it - I’m actually completely accepting of it….within reason.
When I hear pre-roll, I usually think 1 ad, maybe 2….3 at the most. Specifically to captive networks that aren’t TV, I also expect them to be 15 seconds’ish.
So I was awestruck when I started playing around with their system and found that their TV/Signage Pre-Roll Maxes Over 3 Minutes!
Feb
6
Ideacast Promo Video - More (Well Done) Humor For The Digital Signage Masses
Filed Under Advertising, Digital Signage, humor | 1 Comment
Ah memories…
It seems like only yesterday that I was a young punk in the late 90s watching hilarious Internet company advertisements for every single new type of service under the sun. That was the stage that the media folks were jumping ship from every ad company in Manhattan to join this new “Interweb” thing and see if they could make their mark and their millions. It was such a fun time because even back then, advertising creativity had seemed to stagnate a little and these young companies infused a level of satire into the media biz again which made watching ads kinda fun again.
Everyone I knew in the Internet and ad business was fixated with adcritic.com (which despite bandwidth issues could have become the original YouTube till it ran out of money) which is now defunct from the original masterpiece. Ad Critic ran all of the ads it could find from all over the world…and some of them were classics
So it’s nice to see that some folks have “upped their game” in promoting and selling Digital Signage to the masses. The fine folks over at ideaCast have put together some fun ads on the relevance of today’s TV medium in the current media environment.
Jan
11
Digital Signage Mac Spoof
Filed Under Advertising, Digital Signage, Event, humor | Leave a Comment
Well at least SOMEONE has a sense of humor about the Digital OOH industry.
Found this across the pond on Adrian’s site yet again.
Screen Expo Europe has put together a nice little spoof page to promote their upcoming event based on the oh so famous Mac/PC ads.
Good for a giggle and worth sending around to folks who still don’t understand why you left your old job with traditional media to jump into the Digital OOH game
There’s 2 spots currently up and 2 more to come.
This reminded me of another great post from the summer in the same light:
May
25
Nothing to do with Digital Signage
Filed Under humor | 2 Comments
OK, I couldn’t help myself on this one. This really has nothing to do with Digital Signage and I don’t want to waste anyone’s time but I couldn’t stop laughing so had to throw it up here. I almost think this has to be a spoof.
For the life of me, I just can’t imagine somebody actually buying this. I found this product on the Adfreak blog
It’s the Himalayan Institute’s “Netipot” - apparently for cleaning your nasal passages.
This is killer infomercial 101 material! Talk about a product knowledge spot
If you want a REALLY good demo of how it’s used, check out their ONLINE DEMO VIDEO
