Wallpaper* Magazine July 2009. - We love the fact that in working with Morgans Hotel Group we were finally able to do what great hotels should do best; encourage AND enable sex, without feeling dirty about it.
Grey's Papaya offers their famous "Recession Special"
Ito recently came across THIS campaign by Harley Davidson who reminds their customers to “Screw It. Let’s Ride”
We were reminded of our own work for The Morgans Hotel Group, suggesting the battle cry “Fuck the Recession,” which we created for the boutique hotelier back in October of 2008 as a preemptive strike against the looming recession.
We also found some similar examples of anti-recession marketing from the likes of Virgin Mobile Canada with their “Screw the Recession” campaign as well as a local staple, Smith and Wollensky’s “Screw It” ads promoting NYC Wine Week.
Twitter vs. Facebook
Whether you think that Twitter will out do Facebook, or Facebook will out do Twitter, there is one thing for sure, Twitter is riding this wave of publicity. Facebook has 175 million users and over a billion visits per month. Twitter, on the other hand, has barely 6 million users and just under 60 million monthly visits. When Facebook chose to change its interface to emulate Twitter’s they inadvertently diverted a lot of attention to Twitter.
Twitter, once a mystery to the masses is now getting a lot of attention. As many people following this know, Twitter has been publicly pressured to explain the point of its existence even as it grew by 700% in 2008. Will 175 million people “updating Facebook” suddenly give the act of “Tweeting” meaning? I think not. If the online world is any reflection of reality then both have a place. One is an outloud comment to a room half filled with ’strangers’ and the other is simply talking among friends.
The fact, however, that people are so desperately searching for meaning in something that is actually happening, I believe, is about a greater fear of the unknown. Why else do people want to put Twitter in a tidy little box? What are they afraid of? It’s my belief that this desire to put Twitter in a box is a symptom of insecurity. The simple fact that something exists in our world that is very tangible in one form (one off comments made in public) and yet so foreign in another form (millions of one-off comments made in public for all to hear/read) is uncomfortable for people. No one is to blame really. Most of us were not schooled to understand patterns made up of 60 million variables.
Secondly, tweeting might be a symptom of the world getting too small for comfort.. If we think about it for a minute, sharing a random thought with a stranger in a line at the airport, or at a baseball game might subconsciously be feeding our desire for community, even if it’s temporary. Perhaps Tweeting is just that, people are sharing because it just makes them feel good about community. Perhaps Twitter is pointing out, very publicly that we desire community beyond the people in our immediate circle. It’s funny to me that Facebook, the ultimate online community, would be late to this realization.
I say go Twitter go. Make your own box! Go boxless! Keep doing what you do and we’ll keep reading into it for meaning, even if most of what is said is intentionally meaningless (in isolation).
