NINTENDO3DS

@Hollywood and Highland

@ Promenade in Santa Monica

I have seen these guys popping up everywhere in LA lately! These pictures were taken on different days in different locations. When I first say them I n never thought that I would see them again but I was wrong! Through out the past few weeks I’ve seen several interactive Nintendo3Ds advertisements. The ones I’ve seen each have been different. The first one consisted of people dressed in white body suits with Nintendo3DSs’ attached to them for the public to play with. It was very eye catching because the Nintendo team people were all grouped together and made a huge mass of white among all of the other bodies on the street. The second interactive ad I saw was in the Promenade in Santa Monica and it stood out just as the previous one I mentioned. it was a massive tent with Nintendo3DS branded in huge text on the side. It was very eye catching as well. I think Nintendo did a very good job with its street team for this product. There were all over the place and made me really interested in the product. Nintendo appeals more to a general gaming population than Sony or Microsoft do so I found it suiting that they chose this method of advertising to draw in their audience even more so–as the general population tends to be easily impressed and impressionable.

5 very good reasons to punch a dolphin in the mouth

Matthew Inman, the creator of theoatmeal.com and author of the book “5 very good reasons to punch a dolphin in the mouth,” made an appearance and book signing session at the Barnes&Noble at the Santa Monica Promenade on 03/22/2011. His website is basically a huge comic strip in which he pokes fun at “everything but religion and politics.” During his talk he spoke about how he started being a web-designer and eventually decided that he didn’t for companies that requested his creative services to market products. His website, The Oatmal, is very much so popular in the online social communities of reddit and digg–both of which I have frequented for over five years. It was very interesting seeing how a young man’s website could grow to become so popular through the help of social bookmarking/news communities.

It seems that in this era, one’s ability to network online is becoming more and more important in determining the success of a business–online or offline–as Mr. Inman stated that the companies that were coming to him we not just online-based. He also mentioned that his growth was affected greatly but outside sources. For example, he mentioned that a particular comic of his became instantly popular after PETA supported it and that his page received more traffic when the website tumblr.com is down. I found all of this to be very interesting as it shows just how much social media can fluctuate and how easily influenced online-popularity is.

Battle: L.A.

I watched the movie Battle LA on opening day during my trip to North Carolina. I was surprised by the fact that it was opening day and my gf and I still managed to get in. Althought in a completely different state, I found the cinematic experience to be quitie similar to that here in CA. What was unxpected however was the feeling I experienced from seeing the city I live in be completely demolished by alien forces. This lead me to the thought that this movies, although it has a storyline and skilled actors, was primarily a huge propaganda machine for the city of Santa Monica/Los Angeles and the United States military. Coincidentally, both are struggling to keep themselves steady during these hard economic times. In the movies, the U.S. Marine division was highly idolized and the phrase “Marines don’t give up” was repeated countless times through out the film.

International Woman’s Day

Visual media serves as a faucet of expression for a variety of subject matter. Yesterday was international woman’s day and at Santa Monica College, there were purple ties around all the trees in the center courtyard. Although no words were attached to the ties nor were there posters hanging around them, the ties still conveyed a message that could be clearly understood by all: today is a different. For those of us who knew about the holiday, the ties served to trigger thoughts about this specific day–to thank suffragettes for fighting for our rights. But for those who did not know what the purple represented, its display had the possibility of conveying an equally powerful message. The usage of vaguely identified ideas serve to draw the public more into an media message and the fact that there was no information surrounding these trees is very likely to have encouraged students to further investigate and ask their fellow classmates what they represent. This technique is seen often on movie billboards. Sometimes film companies occupy an entire billboard with one small URL and the public, more often than not, embraces the mystery and looks it up. Humans are naturally drawn to things they don’t understand because it is our nature to try to understand our world. I applaud the execution of this media message because it used something very vague to attract attention.