Art Meets Commerce

On Friday, Laura Bush honored TADA! at the White House with the Coming Up Taller Award, given to the top 15 youth development organizations in the nation.  (PCAH member Debbie Allen was also recognized.)

Congrats, TADA!  Just in time for their newly designed AMC site.

Let’s face it.  Obama and his team are internet geniuses.  Since the very first eblast, I’ve been amazed at the cunning technology and first-class marketing that has been developed to shape the campaign.  Experts are saying that he’s only just begun.

Mr. Obama has said he’d like to appoint a chief technology officer, perhaps at the cabinet level, and he’s made it clear he will embrace new technologies in office — technologies such as Skype, a video tool Sieberg used to get this quote from John Tedesco, a Virginia Tech political communications professor: “(Mr.) Obama recognized that young voters are using social networking sites and social networking software, and he brought his campaign to the young voters online.”

Ultimately, according to tech experts, the most important part of Mr. Obama’s future strategy is to ensure his digital followers continue to feel empowered.

Click here to read the full article.

Forbes describes the ongoing struggle to create Facebook games that both entice players into logging online daily and make a return on investment.

The COO of Playfish, a leader in this type of game development, describes how he aims to create games that are “very engaging, entertaining worlds and lead to the discovery of new friendships and relationships.” 

Playfish and its competitors make money by advertising and selling virtual goodies.  They host video ads on their site and sell gifts to give to friends — including $40 virtual lip-shaped couches. 

(We live in interesting times, don’t we?)

Here’s Forbes list of the 10 hottest games.

If you haven’t seen this ad for CW’s teen show, Gossip Girls featuring the Parents’ Television Council’s scathing review yet, you will now: they are everywhere.

Gossip Girls could have responded to the Parent’s Television Council with a “very special” episode showing teenagers the consequences of risky behavior. Instead, the show created an entire advertising campaign around negativity. There’s two other ads in the campaign featuring the quotes “every parent’s nightmare” from the Boston Herald and “a nasty piece of work” from the New York Post.

Is the ad campaign itself “nasty?”  Sure, but I think it’s clever and different enough to break through to the target demographic who want to do everything their parents find “inappropriate.”