Recently I researched ads from the 1970's specifically and in this post I am sharing some of my favourites...

...I am doing this because they instantly helped me generate some cool new ideas.

...Plus I am quietly confident when you compare these golden-age ad's with today's somewhat lame ad's you too will experience influx of new ideas based on 1970's golden age thinking.

I have included the headline of each ad in a heading tag above each image:

Handy Ideas From Big Red

I just haven't seen an ad like this recently.

I am sure there probably is one.

Yet this style just isn't commonplace. Why?

The idea here is hot. The advertiser is branding the product as the optimum solution for the prospect by being informational.

In our information overloaded world where the demand for information is much bigger than in the 1970's this perhaps above all on this list if the one style of ad you could adapt for the 21st century the easiest...

Say you're a web designer called Fred.

Freddy, you could have an ad like this with 6 ideas what to do after you design your prospect's website. And Fred because you are a hot designer every site you make gives your prospect a blog an optin form on every page, a contact page, and a laser-focused-landing-page for use with PPC advertising.

Fred here is an example of how you're 1970's inspired ad may be structured:

1. Get interviewed by the offline media and then send people to your site.
2. Record a series of simple YouTube videos and brand them with your website.
3. Phone up your best 10 customers and tell them to register for a free newsletter on your site.
4. Become friends with a top Digg user and tell them to Digg your post on "10,000 ways to hangup the phone" blog post .
5. Link to your site on your Facebook and Twitter.
6. Buy traffic from Google and send to your landing page so you generate leads while you sleep eat and go to the toilet.

The distinction with this approach is instead of beating your prospect over the head with what your features you can vividly illustrate how they can use your features and thus benefit from them.

What you don't know about tires can be expensive

When was the last time you saw so much text to sell a tire!?

Perhaps companies don't advertise like this anymore because the people of the 21st century don't have sufficient attention-spans? Shame.

Nonetheless, it feels a joy to read. Gulf is positioned as a conversational friend writing me a letter showing they care about me all while explaining in easy to understand language while their particular type is the business.

There's A Better Way To Go

The contrast is clear. Without this solution due to the energy crisis you're going to need to go back to victorian times to get around...but with this solution you can cure energy crisis drama with a simple tweak under the hood of your car.

This sort of approach could be adapted for the 21st century in so many ways...

Imagine you have just developed a premium WordPress theme...You could have an image of a clueless blonde trying to frantically learn PHP, CSS, HTML and SEO with her laptop screen showing a broken WordPress theme in front of her...then contrast this with your easy peazy wordpress theme which cuts out all coding and is SEO friendly from as soon as you switch it on with your mouse...

93 Ways to get a perfect fit!

One glance at this and you'd have to be a caveman not to understand this brand of shoes have an almost endless choice of shoe sizes for the "perfect fit". Simple yet effective.

How could this be adapted to the 21st century internet entrepreneur?

Let's say you create an iPhone app for sending people you know birthday messages...

...And the unique part of your app is the 76 different templates for saying 'Happy Birthday'...

You could present this feature in a paragraph of text OR you could line up 76 screenshots of the different templates beneath a headline like "76 Ways To Say Happy Birthday".

Well perhaps this is not the best example, you've probably got a better one. If so...good. You can leave it in a comment below.

Anyway, onward:

WHY SEARS CENTRAL AIR CONDITIONING IS SO EASY TO INSTALL BY YOURSELF

The sell here is "peace of mind". You're getting air conditioning for the same price as it would cost if you installed it yourself except you don't have to install it yourself, one of these 5 happy people is here to do it for you.

It works longer than you do.

The big idea here "It works longer than you do" is still in use in Right Gaurd's advertising of today - which proves this idea has worked and continues to work...

How could you adapt this for the 21st century?

Let's say you have a system which automates the execution of a pay per click marketing campaign...your big idea could be "It works while you sleep" or you could say "It's a better than the best salesman in the world" (because obviously whoever the best salesman in the world is, they have to sleep, eat, and have to maintain some sort of a social life...conversely an automatic marketing machine works 24 hours a day 7 days a week all without food, sleep and miller time requirements.

Raise the roof tonight in a Dodge Charger.

What does this say to you? It says to me "COOL. Right now it's saturday and I would just love to get my hands on one of these to "raise the roof". I am sold. How about you?

ONLY DATSUN has the small pickup with room inside for long legs and large roads

Have a question about motor oil? Lubricants? Engines? Ask the Pennzoil experts...

At first glance no features and no benefits are clear. In fact there isn't even one of those headlines set in futura type. The advertiser isn't really selling here, what they are doing is positioning.

What do you make of it?

Have you seen an ad like this recently?

I haven't.

14 Day Free Trial How to form your own corporation without a lawyer for under $50

This is classic direct response. It's got a order form you cut out and mail plus a guarantee 'and wait there's more!' it's got testimonials and text galore...

I know for a fact this ad ran for years. A real winner.

How come I enjoy smoking and you don't?

Notice how the warning is so much smaller compared with cigarette ads of today...

The big idea here is "You'd enjoy smoking if you smoked Salem".

This isn't going to be the best example but I am pretty sure you'll get the idea...

As an example imagine you developed an iPhone app would connected with your email and color coded incoming email based on people who regularly email you. Your parents and family could be blue, your friends green, the love of your life red, and business emails black plus all other emails could have a loser transparency so when you look at an inbox of 100 emails or so you can see in an instant which emails matter...

This you could lead with "How come you don't enjoy checking your email when you have 100+ new emails? ... It's got to be my iPhone app EmailFocusColor. EmailFocusColor highlights emails which matter. You'd enjoy checking your email even when you have 100+ emails too if you used this EmailFocusColor iPhone app.".

...Very simple, yet it could be wickedly effective at communicating a benefit for your product related to a frustration your prospect is having...

Any ordinary camera could have taken this photograph. The Yashica FR is no ordinary camera.

Here the unique selling proposition is the star. Any average camera can take a picture like above...but any average camera has to stop at every stop whereas the the Yashica FR does not. The end result is the Yashica FR shoots what you see when you see it without any delay...

How could this be adapted to the 21st century internet entrepreneur?

It could be adapted to almost anything!

Think about it. Say you manufactured digital video cameras...You could begin with "Any ordinary digital camera could have captured this movie" then have a picture of a movie on YouTube... "The McAwesome R is no ordinary digital video camera" then talk about how an ordinary digital video camera doesn't have a built in video editor, or an ethernet port and an onboard application to upload straight to youtube pronto...

To install Fram wipers you don't even need a pair of pliers, just a pair of hands.

Here the focus is the classic 'complex made simple' idea at play...But here it's presented so vividly...

Nothing beats the feel of black velvet

You've heard it more times than you have fingers and toes multiplied by 45. Sex sells. Focus more on the ad, than the leggy blonde...and you could adapt the simple approach in this ad in a multitude of ways...

If you are called Victor and you sell a premium wordpress theme you could lead off with "Nothing beats the SEO success of Victor's SEO WordPress themes."

...Or if you had an iPhone app to wake up up with the music of your choice (yes I know there is one but I forget what it's called) you could have "Nothing beats the feel of waking up to dancing queen for Trevor" then insert a picture of Trevor the stereotypical gay hairdresser abba fanatic. Trevor just loves to wake up by mincing out of his bed while singing along to Dancing Queen ...

Before I begun this mission into 1970's advertising I had a suspicion the ads were superior than those of today. Now I am sure. How about you?

Let me know how these ads impacted on you plus how they compare to the ads of today.

1 From A Whim

This is what it's all about. Fantastic. Awesome. Positively infectious. From A Whim are the next From A Whim! The music on show here is catchy, high quality and is exactly what the world needs to hear.

Stand Out Tracks: "Simply Love" and "Memories and Meltdown".

[rating:5]

2 Marc Thomas

[rating:4.5]

3 Flo

Soul, Funk and R & B from Flo (Florence Quaye-Sowah), a singer/songwriter from Glasgow, UK.

Stand Out Tracks: "Let You Down Easy" and "The Way I love You".

[rating:4]

4 Eva Lazarus

She is 22, she plays guitar, she sings, she writes, she's called Eva Lazarus.

Stand Out Tracks: "Mercy Me" and "Burn Down" (free mp3 download available).

[rating:4]

5 Black Arrows

Black Arrows look like a proper rock band. Black Arrows sound like a proper rock band. Black Arrows are solid rock. Rock on!

Stand Out Tracks: "Egotistic" and "Sweet Dreams".

[rating:4]

6 Manny

Manny, from Luxembourg plays psychedelic acoustic rock with real substance.

Stand Out Tracks: "Empty Glass" (free MP3 download available) and "Feelin' Happy" (free MP3 download available).

[rating:4]

7 Rosalita

The award winning Rosalita, have supported acts like The Foo Fighters and Babyshambles. Their unique blend of punk metal is a really refreshing sound in amongst most of the punk metal mediocrity that pollutes MySpace music.

Stand Out Tracks: "AWOL Sean" and "Dating Agency".

[rating:4]

8 Dean Meldau

Dean produces happy, fun and memorable pop from a unique angle.

Stand Out Tracks: "Beautiful" and "Is It Someone Like Me".

[rating:4]

9 Damaged Goodz

Heard of 50 Cent? Grandmaster Flash? DamagedGoodz has supported some of the big names in rap including 50 and the Grandmaster. There are a lot of hip hop artists on MySpace who suck big time, but DamagedGoodz is in a totally different league. Just check out this man's beats, you'll soon hear why he rightfully made this list.

Stand Out Tracks: "Blissphemy" and "MTV Cribs".

10 RAAR

This is metal, from somewhere you would probably never look for it - the Scottish highlands, this is RAAR! RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR!

Stand Out Tracks: "It's Alive" and "In The Night".

[rating:4]

1 FFF WordPress

It's the subtle touches that rightfully place FFF WordPress at the top of this list. You can go check out those subtleties for yourself - FFF WordPress.

[rating:5]

2 JS Box

JS Box is based on K2 which is a very feature rich theme yet boring looking theme. But, JS Box fixes the "boring" look of K2 and adds some really cool features. Just check it out, it's very cool. Capiche?

[rating:4.5]

3 Organique

The key words that sum up Organique are simplicity, beauty and happy.

[rating:4]

4 Particles

Alright, alright yes I know Particles isn't that sexy, but still it's not that ugly either - it' meant to be that way I think it's called minimalism? What makes it impressive is the way content is displayed on the home page. Unusual indeed.

[rating:4]

5 Deep Red

It's colourful. It's bold. It's intriguing. It's Deep Red.

[rating:3.5]

6 TimeManager

While TimeManager is indeed unusual a better word to summarize is, bizarre.

[rating:3]

7 Revolution

Revolution is so good (allegedly) that it costs money!

[rating:3]

8 Blue Zinfandel

Get your fix of more minimalism with Blue Zinfandel.

[rating:3.5]

9 Bloxpress

Bloxpress is full of so much AJAX that you and your visitors can drag and drop content from your screen into space and beyond. May the force be with you.

[rating:3.5]

10 Skittlish

Skittlish is just, nice. The way you can switch colour schemes is nice. The sidebar is nice. The header is nice. The content is nice. It's just really lovely and nice.

[rating:4]

1 Digital Mash

[rating:5]

2 Hydra

[rating:5]

3 Svenigson

[rating:5]

4 Benjamin Kruse

[rating:4.5]

5 George Huff

[rating:4.5]

6 Keith Gibbs

[rating:4]

7 Reality Photography

[rating:4]

8 Jeremy Cowart

[rating:4]

9 Unvirb

[rating:4]

10 Its Matt Adams

[rating:4]

They want to shake you, disturb you, infuriate you, and even blow you up!

Don't ever sleep in again. Wake up!

1 Sonic Bomb Alarm Clock with Bed Shaker

[rating:5]

"Louder than a Jackhammer"

The Sonic Bomb Clock has a loudness of 113 decibels - a jackhammer only has 100!

If 113 decibels doen't wake you, the accompanying Bed Shaker device will absolutely ensure that you don't oversleep!

2 Drag Racer Alarm Clock

[rating:4.5]

"Vroom! Vroom! Vroom! Wake up!!!"

This is genuis!

When it's time to wake up, the Drag Racer alarm clock plays the sound of Dragster's revving their engines. The lights are illuminated in a squence until the green light shines, and the revving sounds transform into the sounds of Dragster's taking off at great speed and noise!

3 Peaceful Progression Wake Up Clock

[rating:4]

"And now for something completely different! Progressive waking."

The Peaceful Progressive Wake Up Clock - the gentle way to be woken up. Just set your desired wake-up time, place some aromatherapy beads (included) into the aroma bowl, and choose a natural sound setting. Thirty minutes before wake-up, the clocks light begins to glow softly, subtly brightening over the next half hour. As the light increases, the warmth from the lamp releases faint aromatherapy scents into the air to stimulate the olfactory senses, speeding the waking process. Fifteen minutes before wake up time, the clocks speaker generates the sleepers choice of soft, yet lively nature sounds, and at the set wake up time a buzzer sounds to finish the cycle.

4 Clocky Robotic Alarm

[rating:4]

"Get woken up by R2-D2's long lost cousin?"

The Clocky Robotic Alarm, started it's life as a special project for engineering student, Gauri Nanda. Gauri was having trouble waking herself up and so developed Clocky to annoyingly yet effectively wake you up. Clocky loves to leap off tables, and really enjoys making random turns while you do your best to catch it and shut it up.

Check out the following video, demonstrating Clocky at work:

5 7-day Alarm Clock

[rating:4]

"Ensure maxium sleep."

The Neverlate 7-day Alarm Clock has 7 alarms, one for every day of the week. Perfect for busy students with early starts on only a few days of the week. The Neverlate allows you to get the absolute maximum of possible sleep time, without comprimising your schedule.

6 Flying Alarm Clock

[rating:3.5]

"Fancy playin' hide 'n seek in the mornings?"

When it's time to wake, the Flying Alarm Clock, launches a rotor into the air that flies around the room as the alarm sounds. The alarm won't stop ringing until the rotor is returned to base, on the alarm itself.

See the below video, for an insight to the work of the Flying Alarm Clock:

7 Danger Bomb Clock

[rating:3]

"Bomb disposal expert required. Are you up for it?"

The Danger Bomb Clock wakes you up every morning with an, explosion sound. To stop the bomb, you have to pull out just one wire from three. The safety code is set randomly every morning.

If you enjoyed this post, please show your enjoyment by digging, stumbling, del.icioing etc below.

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[rating:4.5]

Krystal Blue is a recording artist. Krystal Blue has 364,382 friends on her MySpace profile!

364,382 friends! 364,382 friends! 364,382 friends!

I wanted to discover why Krystal Blue has 364,382 MySpace friends. Then, create an action plan for my MySpace profiles, to achieve 364,382 friends and more. So, I decided, to investigate ...

Krystal Blue

Initial Observations

• Krystal Blue updates her blog very frequently.

• Krystal Blue has chosen to modify the original MySpace layout design and has not deployed a div overlay.

I Like ...

• Krystal Blue is very distinctive and well, attractive. I think this helps things. What do you think?

• Krystal Blue's pics show off an attractive girl with a very, expressive personality. While attractive girls, would appeal to male's, the fact that her pictures show both beauty and personality, this must surely help her relate to both gender's.

• The "Picture Of The Month" is a good idea. This provides content that is updated at a pre-specified interval - every month - which provides viewers with a reason to come back, next month: For a new sexy picture!

• It's not only the "Picture Of The Month" section that provides viewers with a reason to return, in Krystal Blue's "Top News" section, she writes "I just got back from San Jose today and I had a blast there! I'll post pictures from my trip in my blog soon! Stick around!" - the user is now thinking, "Cool, I look forward to seeing those sexy pictures!".

• Krystal Blue's media section is a nice idea, that help's to establish credibility in her artistic credentials. Media sections are not common on MySpace profiles, therefore it's existence on Krystal Blue's MySpace profile is very unique and informative.

I don't like ...

• The usual MySpace comments list has been disabled. While disabling the comments list, enables profile's to appear neater by requiring less scrolling, I really don't think there is any clear advantage disabling them. I believe people like to see their comment and, the comments of others on MySpace profiles. The main reason a lot of pages disable them, is to satisfy the warped views of graphic designers posing as web designers. You know, most web users actually like to scroll pages (vertically), as long as they are reading content that provides them with value, and they are provided with lots of outgoing links (honestly, this is true!) ...

• The widths of the MySpace module table cells, aren't equal. This makes things, unneccessarily messy.

• The rounded corners on the MySpace module table cells could be better.

• Krystal Blue's biography, while very well written, is too long and detailed. A few short, paragraphs would be better.

Krystal Blue Final Thought

[rating:4.5]

From what I have observed on Krystal Blue's MySpace profile, there are 4 primary reasons why Krystal Blue has amassed, 364,382 MySpace friends. Firstly, she is a very attractive girl, with a unique look with a big and likeable personality. Secondly, she updates her profile regularly with content that her user's want. Thirdly, Krystal Blue's MySpace profile is original! Lastly, Krystal Blue's MySpace profile is a success because Krystal Blue continually provides user's with reasons to come back to her profile again in the near future.

Get 364,382 MySpace friends Action Plan

1 Get pictures taken of yourself that show off your positively infectious personality and unique looks.

2 Update your profile often.

3 Ensure your MySpace profile is unique.

4 Give your MySpace profile viewers good reasons to come back next time.

I love and use firefox. Not only is it popular with yours truly, it's popular with the entire internet - internet explorer's popularity has decreased while Firefox has continued to grow and grow and grow. It's popular because it's known for being more secure, having better features and being extremely customizable. But, it can be slower than other browsers, especially when compared to other standards based browsers such as Opera and Safari. Over the past few months I have investigated the best techniques that can be deployed to speed up Firefox dramatically and reduce Firefox memory usage leaks. What follows is “Make Firefox Go Vroom!”, 5 techniques in all that have made my Firefox leaner and meaner, and could make your Firefox leaner and meaner as well. Please let me know if these techniques have increased the speed and efficiency of your Firefox browsing experience by dropping me a comment... Enjoy!

View On YouTube | View On Google Video | View On Yahoo Video | View On iFilm

1. 1 Release Memory When Minimized

   By releasing Firefox's memory usage when minimized, there is extra memory available for other tasks. It also means if you need to switch to Firefox you can, and its running how you left it. Here how to get this function enabled:

   1. Right click in the browser menu and select “New > Boolean”.
   2. Enter “config.trim_on_minimize” into the popup window.
   3. Select “True” then press ok.

2. 2 Assign Memory Cache

   Firefox is setup to use system memory by default, but by assigning a fixed memory cache memory usage can be controlled and reduced.

   1. Enter “about:config” into the address bar.
   2. Enter “browser.cache.memory.enable” in the filter field.
   3. Double click on “browser.cache.memory.enable” “false” to “true”.
   4. Right click on “browser.cache.memory.enable” and select “New > Integer”.
   5. Double click on “browser.cache.memory.enable” “false” to “true”.
   6. In the dialog box that opens enter “browser.cache.memory.capacity” and click ok.
   7. Enter the following values depending on your amount of RAM:
      • "4096" (256MB RAM).
      • "8192" (512MB RAM).
      • "10240" (768MB RAM).
      • "16384" (1024MB RAM).

3. 3 Only Display What You Click

   By default Firefox downloads pages from links it thinks you may click on. This uses extra bandwidth and the bottom line is that it's unnecessary. To disable ...

   1. Enter “about:config” into the address bar.
   2. Double click “network.prefetch-next” to change it's value from “true” to “false”.

4. 4 Disable Back/Forward Cache

   Firefox has feature that makes recently visited pages load faster. But, if you don't revisit the pages you've recently visted then its just a waste or processing power and memory usage.

   1. Enter “about:config” into the address bar.
   2. Enter “browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers” into the filter field.
   3. Double click “browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers” to change it's value from “-1” to “0”. Setting “browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers” to “0” disables this feature. If you think this feature will help you then set “browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers” to “5” (for 512 RAM) and “8” for 1024 RAM)...

5. 5 Enable Pipelining

   Firefox has feature that makes recently visited pages load faster. But, if you don't revisit the pages you've recently visted then its just a waste or processing power and memory usage.

   1. Enter “about:config” into the address bar.
   2. Enter “network.http.pipelining” into the filter field.
   3. Double click “network.http.pipelining” to change it's value from “false” to “true”.
   4. Enter “network.http.proxy.pipelining” into the filter field.
   5. Double click “network.http.proxy.pipelining” to change it's value from “false” to “true”.
   6. Enter “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” into the filter field.
   Double click “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” to change it's value from “3” to “25”.
   7. Click anywhere in the browser and select “New > Integer”.
   8. Name the integer “nglayout.initialpaint.delay” amd it's value to “0”.

1 Behemoth

Behemoth - "Demigod"

Behemoth Links

Behemoth at Wikipedia

Behemoth at Last.FM

Behemoth Official Website

Behemoth Myspace Profile

Behemoth Purevolume Profile

2 Ektomorf

Extomorf - "Set Me Free"

Ektomorf Links

Ektomorf at Wikipedia

Ektomorf at Last.FM

Ektomorf Official Website

Ektomorf Myspace Profile

Ektomorf Purevolume Profile

3 Demonoid

Demonoid - "End of Our Times"

Demonoid Links

Demonoid at Wikipedia

Demonoid at Last.FM

Demonoid Official Website

Demonoid Myspace Profile

4 Immortal

Immortal - "Antartica"

Immortal Links

Immortal at Wikipedia

Immortal at Last.FM

Immortal Official Website

Immortal Myspace Profile

Immortal Purevolume Profile

Wow. I'm gonna share 8 more bands that could blow up your speakers. I'll reveal all in forthcoming posts - fix up and look sharp soldier.

And why are they so popular?

Evolution of Dance

Video Details

• Added: April 06, 2006
• Plays:44,068,361
• Runtime:06:00

Tags

• Dancing comedy

Categories

• Comedy

Observations

• Is this really the most watched YouTube video of all time?

What Makes It Good.

• The fact that the video is one continual shot, but there is a continual change in actions and music means that the viewer is motivated to watch the entire six minutes, which is abnormally long for a YouTube video. The viewer is asking, “What song is coming next?â€?, and “What dance will he do next?â€?.

Angry Professor

Video Details

• Added: April 18, 2006
• Plays:2,746,026
• Runtime:00:36

Tags

• Dancing comedy

Categories

• Howto & DIY

Observations

• Very short.

What Makes It Good.

• It is real life. So the fact that the camera is not on the Lecturer, and all we hear is him speaking keeps the audience on the edge of their seat and tension is built to the climax at the end.

Free Hugs Campaign. Inspiring Story! (music by sick puppies)

Video Details

• Added: September 22, 2006
• Plays:11,454,664
• Runtime:03:39

Tags

• free hugs campaign sick puppies juan mann

Categories

• Entertainment

Observations

• Touching.

What Makes It Good.

• Fantastic concept.
• Very well excited.
• The audience knows the structure just from reading the title and watching the first few seconds, but the implementation of that structure is continually changing. Who will he hug next? What street will we see him in next?
• The fact that he has used music from the Sick Puppies and stated that in the profile means that he is leveraging the popularity of the Sick Puppies to great effect.

Americans are NOT stupid - WITH SUBTITLES

Video Details

• Added: January 25, 2007
• Plays:1,637,376
• Runtime:05:48

Tags

• stupid us usa united states of america intelligent american george bush president dumb

Categories

• Comedy

Observations

• Unbelievable.

What Makes It Good.

• The audience know the interviewer is interviewing stupid Americans. But they don't know how ridiculous their answers are going to be, so they keep watching for the entire duration.

Real Life Simpsons Intro

Video Details

• Added: March 03, 2006
• Plays:12,389,434
• Runtime:00:59

Tags

• Simpsons Intro Opening Credits Real Life Actors

Categories

• Comedy

Observations

• Impressive.

What Makes It Good.

• The quality of the green screening is almost faultless.
• In fact the whole video is almost faultless – at providing a real life Simpsons intro.
• It seems people want to watch it from start to end and share with their friends, even though they know what is going to happen and have seen it many times on television. Its just the magnificence of the creation that keeps them watching. “How similar will the real life Marge be?â€? “Will the real life Homer look like Homer?â€?.

Pokemon Theme Music Video

Video Details

• Added: November 28, 2005
• Plays: 21,107,055
• Runtime:03:14

Tags

• pokemon theme song music video smosh anthony padilla ian hecox

Categories

• Comedy

Observations

• Pokemon is not something I am interested in, and I was not interested in this video. But it has had over 21,000,000 views. After watching all I can conclude is that its not that great is it?

What Makes It Good.

• The concept of doing a music video for a popular cartoon is unique and the million of people interested in Pokemon have clearly shared this with their friends.

Ha ha

Video Details

• Added: November 01, 2006
• Plays: 11,304,949
• Runtime: 01:40

Tags

• laughter revelry child

Categories

• Comedy

Observations

• Very simple.
• No story.

What Makes It Good.

• Its cute. Its the sort of thing people would want to share in emails and instant messages, “go check out this cute little babyâ€?.
• Its different.

funny cats

Video Details

• Added: December 20, 2005
• Plays: 4,080,866
• Runtime: 01:38

Tags

• cats funny

Categories

• Comedy

Observations

• A video about cats doing funny things.

What Makes It Good.

• The music.

Numa Numa

Video Details

• Added: August 14, 2006
• Plays: 1,721,910
• Runtime: 01:38

Tags

• numa

Categories

• Entertainment.

Observations

• A video about cats doing funny things.

What Makes It Good.

• The audience is laughing at Numa man directly, this is him being him. I may have intended to be funny, but I doubt this funny.

next big thing, really

Video Details

• Added: March 03, 2006
• Plays: 6,504,421
• Runtime: 04:50

Tags

• trash hardcore

Categories

• Comedy

Observations

• They they they are good.
• This boy band are ugly. They have poor physique. They cannot sing.

What Makes It Good.

• Like the Numa video the audience is lauging at the subjects directly.

Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us

Video Details

• Added: January 31, 2007
• Plays: 1,799,665
• Runtime: 04:31

Tags

• ksudigg web2.0 digital ethnography hypermedia anthropology

Categories

• Howto & DIY

Observations

• A strong statement.

What Makes It Good.

• Interesting editing.

Mika Grace Kelly

Video Details

• Added: January 15, 2007
• Plays: 2,685,982
• Runtime: 03:24

Tags

• Mika Grace Kelly

Categories

• Music

Observations

• A very polished video.
• The video itself is not that fantastic.

What Makes It Good.

• Very original song.

lion sleep tonight

Video Details

• Added: January 15, 2007
• Plays: 9,946,455
• Runtime: 01:03

Tags

• lion sleep tonight

Categories

• Comedy

Observations

• A popular song with a nice animation.

What Makes It Good.

• Obvious.

humor

Video Details

• Added: January 15, 2007
• Plays: 5,854,093
• Runtime: 03:51

Tags

• humor

Categories

• Comedy

Observations

• Just like “You've Been Framedâ€?

What Makes It Good.

• The concept is not original. But this type of montage will probably always be popular.

This is something I am very interested in. So I decided to analyze the top 6 features MySpace videos at MySpace.com today (13th March 2006) and evaluate what I liked and didn’t like and what my general observations are.

1 Milk-Proof? Poncho Gear Test (featured video)

Milk-Proof? Poncho Gear Test (featured video)

Tags

• Backpacking, camping, gear, hiking, milk, poncho, proof, rain, test

Categories

• Comedy and Humor, Instructional, Science and Technology, Improv, Sketch Comedy, Prop Comic

Observations

• Its almost conventional now for Internet videos to use Trigger Happy style moving text graphics, and they are used in this video.

• Some very negative comments.

Strengths

• By starting with a list e.g. "2 Ugly Waterproof Boots" and proceeding, tension is built and the audience wants to the resolution to this recipe.

• Appropriate background music.

• The graphics add a fourth person perspective to the video. We see the subject wearing a Poncho, then a graphic overlay displays "how not to wear a poncho".

Weaknesses

• Very poor camera work.

• Graphics placed on top of video are often solid red and look very amateur, little or no attention placed towards to fontography.

• Graphics have a wipe transition this is annoying, only a simply transparency fade should be used.

2 Sandwich Pals (featured video)

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=1993210033

Tags

• adam, comedy, humor, pals, ray, sandich, sketch

Categories

• Comedy and Humor, Improv, Sketch Comedy

Observations

• The video uses certain elements to take the Michael such as clapping and motion of graphics in a very cheesy way.

• Very good comedic performance.

• It really is much ado about nothing!

Strengths

• The combination of crisp graphics, comedic action, appropriate background music and clear sound voice over makes for an exciting introduction.

• Music works. Very cheesy!

• The editing is well done as it moves the narrative along at a good pace.

• Good camera work where we see a mobile phone on focus then the character in the background in focus.

• By leaving the audience without a conclusion and requesting they tune in next time, it increases the chance that people will come back.

• Good logo at the end.

Weaknesses

• While generally the quality of shots is quite good the camera work is a bit dodgy in part and they obviously did not use a Tripod and I doubt they were attempting avante garde film making.

3 Over the Hiccups (featured video)

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=111861254

Tags

• blondes, comedy, date, girlfriend, jokes, ragtag, sex, webseries

Categories

• Comedy

Observations

• "We Need Girlfriends" - what a fantastic title for a series of comedy programmes on the Internet.

• The production is very polished, the whole thing is like a industry standard situation comedy.

• The editing throughout is good. Strikes a balance and every cut is justifable.

• The girl the main character has big breasts.

• The film was just great. I really enjoyed it. Well directed. Well edited. Good performances and I liked the story. Fantastic work!

Strengths

• Looks like a film.

• The delivery and time of the above line is helped to work by the good choice of editing.

• They leave the audience on a knife-edge at the end. Fantastic! Now the audience have a reason to tune in next time.

Weaknesses

• Title sequence is too long. This is the Internet not TV.

• Nothing really original here. I have seent his sort of awkward romantic comedy malarkey on years of TV.

• The girl who goes out with the main character on a date is poor and lets the whole thing down.

4Living The Dream (featured video)

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=2011896123

Tags

• comedy, digital, film, funny, Hollywood, mockumentary, movie, short

Categories

• Comedy and Humor, Entertainment, Video Blogging

Observations

• Good graphic on the first frame of the video. Very appropriate for the Internet.

• The myspace URI fade in over the widescreen black bars at the bottom of the video.

• Fantastic concept for an Internet Film – this is what I want to see, people Taking The Michael!

Strengths

• The running theme of the boom mic operator sticking his mic in the frame almost becomes sequential. But by the smashing the desktop light it breaks this sequence and the result is comedic effect.

• "I saw an ad for boom operator and it said free snacks and lunch and thats all I needed to hear brother."

• "I had an acting coach tell me one time, that its not the size of the role that matters, but its the amount of lines and I got like 20 lines in this movie, so, I am pretty happy!"

• By layering audio from scene B over scene A in the mix 1 second before the cut to B it moves the narrative along smoothly.

• The main character remains talking into the titles at the end. This is well done.

Weaknesses

• There are weaknesses to anything but I have found no obvious weaknesses with this video. It is very very good.

5 Ghostride the Volvo (featured video)

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=2011990822

Tags

• asia, fab, ghostride, huge, in, mistah, volvo

Categories

• Automotive, Comedy and Humor, Sports

Observations

• These guys look hard. I think its good to look hard. They look funny. The sort of guys you would love to call your friends.

• I have no idea what the story is actually about. But I can understand that they are annoyed and that they are on the verge of action. This means tesnion is built and I want to continue watching. Sometimes its good to watch films that one cannot fully understand as one then has a desire to watch them even closer than normal.

Strengths

• Fantastic combination of styles. The music video is fused nicely with the mockumentary!

• It seems the ending is cut while still during the climax of the film and text displays "the end". The music abruptly stops and this means that the audience is given a jolt and they want more.

• Classic documentary structure. The Problem, background to the problem, the current situation and a conclusion! This was great!

• The music when they are Ghostriding is perfectly timed. Just magnificient.

Weaknesses

• Slightly dodgy performance in places, with smiles in the wrong places.