1st of 3: Ephemera

It has been too long since I last posted. It has been mad and at work and I am here, in the office: in fact I have worked 19 days straight without a break, which is quite depressing. I have structured my list of things to do around three blogging breaks today. The car will pick me up for home at 01.00 - which is too depressing to think about really - and I have a breakfast meeting at Vogue Café; and then basically meetings, breakfasts and dinners everyday. They'll be 14 hour days, every day.

Anyway, there are a couple of YouTube videos I have recently seen I want to share.

The first I saw at the often interesting Lebanese Bloggers. It starts as a simple piece of satire and then gets bitingly good. The last line is a brilliant punchline.

Catch it while you can, because earlier versions seem to have been pulled.


Anyway, this clip has been bouncing around the English-speaking Middle East; and they love it.

I was just thinking today that, after this posting, I am definitely heading back to the Middle East. I really want to go back to Beirut.

Anyway, as a teenager - briefly thinking about becoming a total whore and going into advertising (where did that come from?) - I remember the great Apple launch ad which, it is true, pretty much confirmed that the best advertising in the 1980s was done in Britain. This iconic ad has now been brilliantly appropriated and used for a Barack Obama viral campaign (Actually I am thinking this may have been done by a PAC committee and not by the official campaign, but we all know how PACs work. It's what I would have done: to keep the Candidate looking squeaky-clean and not down-in-the-gutter nasty). It was designed purely for the YouTube generation. Inter alia, it tells you the Obama campaign is prepared to be sneaky and mean: they could be winners I'm thinking.

Epically good political vital marketing. I am not holding my breath for anything that good to appear here for December 2007 or May 2008!



It has that wince! Ouch! factor don't you think? Or maybe only other Hilary fans will think like me. You go girl!

BTW, this was the original Apple launch ad: By Ridley 'Bladerunner' Scott. It is from 1983. I love it still. These were the days when we talked about an "Apple Mackintosh" and not a Mac, right? Is it really 24 years ago?!? Oh boy...



Of course, Scott took the Orwell 1984 idea and mixed it with a bit of TV series, 'Blake's 7', which while finished by then, had still a lot of resonance on early 80's contemporary British pop culture (Brit boys between 35 and 45 will go misty-eyed at the rocking sci-fi show that was 'Blake's 7': their wives, girlfriends, 'etc' and all foreigners will think they've cracked).

At the time the Ad, and Blake 7 for that matter, sub-consciously played on our deep fear of the USSR; and what we thought were the mad, bad, evil geriatrics in the Kremlin, trying to end our world. The grey, dumb slaves in the Apple ad? I am sure that is how, as a 15-year old in 1984, that is truly how I thought Soviet people were... Come to think of it, I am quite shocked that, then, I used to think 'Russians' were really quite bad people...

Oh go on then, I can't resist a little bit:



Oh...and since we're having an orgy of YouTube, let's end on this very neat, smiley little Apple ad, also designed specially for the YouTube generation. I wonder if my Russian reader will get the joke?