MIDDLE EAST
CREATIVE SHOWCASEOPINION
Flatline diarists
Is the once-mighty blog dying? Is it dead? Has it been slain at the altar of microblogging, Facebook or general
fatigue? The answer is yes, sort of
do more than glance at their last few tweets
to see if they are worth following or not. Old
Tweets are too instant, too fly-by-night to
build into a coherent, visit-worthy website.
Yet in a way they are truer to the original,
personal journaling spirit of blogging.
Part of the problem with an old-style,
genuine blog is that you need some kind
of talent. Not everyone can write. Picking
up a football doesn’t make you David
Beckham any more than clicking a mouse
on Blogger.com makes you FakeSteveJobs.
RONI HAD
It’s no accident that many of the world’s top
blogs are written by professional writers.
FakeSteve is a published novelist, former
SINCE, TECHNICALLY speaking, a blog Forbes editor and Newsweek writer.
is no more than online publishing in a It also takes a lot of effort and a lot of
top-first, reverse chronological order, it’s time—years—to build up a compelling,
alive and well. There are millions of sites content rich site. Many blogs die after
that publish news updates in this manner. less than half a dozen entries. People are
Many of the most-visited blogs are just fickle online, particularly when sites are
blog-format magazines such as Engadget free. They get bored of a blog and start
and Techcrunch. another, then quit that and try a miniblog,
But what most people understand as or just stick to updating their Facebook
a true original-style blog is the personal feed. That’s another blog killer: Facebook’s
online journal of a particular individual, status updates. More than you ever needed
where they record their daily lives and to know about people’s dreary lives and
thoughts. Sound dull? No wonder the vapid whimsy.
concept rapidly evolved into vlogs, What this all points to, however, is not so
phlogs, moblogs, tumblelogs and other I went for a walk. Then I ate. Then I turned the sofa yellow. Then I went for walk. Then I ate... much the death of the blog as its evolution
obscure neologisms. into new forms. People across the world—
If any one technology put blogging to the blogging services, LiveJournal, actually Likewise, most microblogging services from Omaha to Osaka—have discovered
sword, it is RSS. Getting blog updates arriving worked this way from the start. Most users are not really about blogging. They’re that the internet allows them to regale
as news feed, mixed in with dozens of other read one another’s blogs by subscribing to more like chat lines or breaking news alert potentially millions of readers with updates
blogs and news sources, destroys the blog them through a ‘friend feed’—a single page systems. It’s rare that you would ever visit on their cat’s trip to the vet. Now they’ve
as a distinct destination. One of the earliest of amalgamated blog updates. an individual Twitter user’s page, let alone started, they can never be stopped.
Cold Kash
As insurance company Geico is discovering, there’s a
very fine line between advertising that’s appealingly
enigmatic and annoyingly vague
I HAD nurtured a hope, near the end of last year, that on January 1, 2009, Geico would mer-
cifully scrap its hated “Kash” ads. With a new run debuting, that hope is dead.
The spots feature a little stack of money, or what a stack of money might look like if it
appeared on The Muppets, with novelty googly-eyes. Throughout various spots, the money
stack turns up at random points in people’s lives and—well, doesn’t really do anything. It
sits there. It’s weak, unimaginative and a total waste of money.”
In one ad, a roofer notices that the money’s staring at him. Hmm. In another, a tipsy older And so on.
woman, sitting with her husband in a restaurant, performs many strange jerky movements If these Kash spots had gone further, either plainly
and giggles flirtatiously at something in the foreground, which the waiter points out is the showing that the money was in fact a ghost haunt-
money they could have saved had they bought their insurance from Geico. ing its former owner for effectively killing it with his
The ad, for me, poses some troubling questions. Is the woman drunkenly coming on to needless profligacy, or having the money beg for its
the money she could have saved with Geico? If so, why? Is the money really a ghost? Is Sam life when the time came for said owner to renew his
Beckett in the house? Why am I getting so angry about this? overpriced car insurance, it could have worked. As it
Inscrutability in advertising is a dangerous game, which few can play. Handled skilfully, is, though, it broadcasts that rare quality that makes
it can work well, creating a sense of curiosity and, ultimately, suggesting that the riddle can millions hate it simultaneously. If that energy could
never really be solved until you go out and buy the product or service being advertised. be harnessed, the world might finally wean itself off
A great example of this was the mysterious, multi-platform teaser for the monster movie of fossil fuels.
Cloverfield. Geico once created a character so successful that
But the Martin Agency, the firm responsible for the Geico ads, misfired horribly, seem- someone made a disastrous TV show featuring him
ingly forgetting that if people get the sense that they will never get to the bottom of what an (the aggrieved caveman). And it is still making ads
ad’s trying to say, they become angry. Livid, really. Ads aren’t like literature or film, where featuring the popular, and successful gecko. So here’s
the temptation is to pretend to apprehend the work in order to appear mordant and cul- my resolution for Geico for 2009: Bring back the cave-
tured. Just look at the reaction in the blogosphere: man, and have him club Kash to death. The lizard can
“Ooh, creepy pop eyed stalker money! I hate that.” root him on in classic cockney fashion (“That’s it guv!
JOE KEOHANE
“Just another insult by the pencil pushing dweebs in charge of drool media advertising, Blimey! You show ‘em!”). There is no other way.
www.mediaweekme.com 25 JANUARY 2009 / 21
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