You are currently browsing Karen Farmer’s articles.
I’m not normally one to fly outside of coach, but I may have to change that if I fly Virgin Atlantic. Along with a new and improved bar for the Upper Class passengers, Virgin Atlantic is now offering these passengers a drink with the CEO himself. How is this possible? Sir Richard Branson’s head will be floating in their drinks.
Upper Class passengers are being served very special ice in the shape of Branson’s head. The new cube was created over six weeks by four designers using detailed photographic techniques and laser scanning technology. An interesting use of this technology, but if you’re going to do something big, might as well do it right.
Luke Miles, head of design for Virgin Atlantic Upper Class says, ”We’re delighted to be able to offer our Upper Class passengers access to the newest, longest bar in the sky, and what better way to celebrate this than giving passengers the opportunity to share a drink with the face of our business?” Though it’s an odd way to go about it, Virgin Atlantic will definitely be remembered. Though I find it somewhat creepy, I had to add a picture.
Unless I am stocking up on a massive load of groceries or getting a lot of produce, you will find me checking out at the UScan when I’m grocery shopping. I like that it’s faster and I don’t have to feel ashamed about the multiple bags of candy I am buying. However, when produce is involved I tend to go to an actual cashier. I hate when I grab an apple that doesn’t have a sticker and have to go through the list to find the type of apple I picked up (that’s if I’m lucky enough to remember if I grabbed a Fuji or Gala). It is impressive how many sticker-less veggies I find.
If you are like me, I have some great news. Toshiba Tec is now developing the Object Recognition Scanner, which reads items without the use of barcodes. It looks at colors and patterns of different products to determine what type of produce you are purchasing without having to type in a code. It can even differentiate between two types of apples! With this technology, Toshiba Tec now has the large task of developing a comprehensive database of produce and other products to be recognized by the scanner. This database would be sold with the scanners so that individual stores would not have to train the machine themselves. The database will have a full year’s worth of data so that all vegetables will be included no matter their season. Even though this product is still in development, I can’t wait until it hits the US, and in particular Durham, NC. I’d probably buy more produce just to test it out!
Check out the video below to see how it works!
Though I am not the girliest girl out there, I love the color pink. I even have a pair of pink flip flops. Sadly, my world was rocked today when I stumbled upon an article titled “Does the Color Pink Exist?” on Time.com. Upon further exploration, I found that there is a war happening on the color pink. According to Robert Krulwich, a co-host on NPR’s Radiolab, pink does not exist. In the below video, he brings up our old friend ROYGBIV and how Red and Violet are nowhere close to each other on the scale and never meet. However, these are the colors that make up pink. As he says in his blog post “Because pink happens when the red and violet sides get together, but they don’t get together — which makes pink an act of wishful thinking, or, to put it bluntly — pink is a made up color.”
But not all people agree. Michael Moyer wrote a blog for Scientific American in which he agrees with Krulwich that there is no single wavelength that appears pink and that pink is not “out there” but he agrees for different reasons. He brings up the point that no color is really “out there” because color is all in your brain. Referring to the biologist Timothy H. Goldsmith’s article “What Birds See”, Moyer quotes, “Color is not actually a property of light or of objects that reflect light. It is a sensation that arises within the brain.” Therefore, pink may or may not be real, but if that’s the case all other colors are or are not real.
Interesting perspectives from both parties but I’m going to stick with the fact that I love pink and that’s that. Whether it’s a figment of my imagination or just the way our brains work or both, as long as I get my pink flip flops, I’m a happy camper.
This past Sunday was a pretty big commercial day (and I guess there was some football in there, too) and I noticed quite a few brands teamed up to try and catch viewers’ attention. Co-branding works a lot of times as you can tell by the popularity of Haagen-Dazs’ Bailey’s Irish Cream ice cream or Betty Crocker’s brownie mix with Hershey’s chocolate syrup. But this Super Bowl there were a few interesting combination commercials that were unexpected, which may or may not be a good thing.
This year, GE worked with Budweiser to show how the turbines GE produces provide the power to make the beer and to keep it cold. It’s an interesting combination; not one you’d expect from either company. Another odd combination included Old Spice teaming up with both Charmin and Bounce. While you do see the Bounce Dyer Bar and Charmin Freshmates, Old Spice takes over the commercials saying “It’s so powerful it sells itself in other peoples’ commercials.” Interesting concepts but in all honesty, the Old Spice commercials scare me a little.
In my opinion, the best show of teamwork goes to OK Go and Chevy’s new Sonic, who produced a music video that was referenced in their Super Bowl commercial. In the 60 second spot, Chevy intrigues you with shots of “Sonic’s first music video” with OK Go along with “Sonic’s first skydive” and “Sonic’s first bungee”. I was most intrigued by the music video and checked out OK Go’s new video for their song “Needing/Getting” and have been obsessed ever since. The video took four days of filming, stunt driving lessons and over 1,100 custom-made instruments to make and it was all worth it. I’m intrigued to see how successful this was for Chevy’s newest product, but with over 9.5 million views on YouTube, it definitely gets the name out there.
Be sure to check out the Chevy Super Bowl ad and OK Go’s “Needing/Getting” video (below)!
A few months ago, Wildfire conducted an ROI survey of over 700 marketers across different industries all around the world to see how social media is used in their businesses and why. The below infographic shows how social media is used to grow brand awareness, increase communication with consumers, and how marketers use this information to determine the impact of social media on their business.
I don’t know about you, but I am a snoozer. It’s bad. Really, really bad. I hit the snooze button 5 times yesterday.This morning it was 4 times, but I admit, I badly wanted those extra 9 minutes one more snooze would’ve gotten me.
Sadly, for those like me, snoozing has now become expensive, both financially and socially. Two new apps are on the market that will change the way you wake up. The first is Snooze by LetGive, a charitable giving organization that works with charities like DoSomething.org and Action Against Hunger. This app charges you $0.25 every time you hit the snooze button and donates it to a charity. It’ll let you know how much money you’ve sent to these organizations twice a month and I’m sure my bill would be pretty high by the end of the month. At least it’s for a good cause!
The second is OKITE by the Japanese developer Eureka. This app connects with Twitter so that every time you hit snooze a weird and/or embarrassing tweet goes out to your followers. Some examples of tweets it could send include, “Dressed as a sailor now” and “Not enough talented people like me in the world.” Depending on who follows you, this would be a great way to make sure you get up right away. Who knows what looks you’d get if your coworkers saw something like this on Twitter at 730 in the morning.
I, for one, would love to try these apps but temporarily. Let’s be honest, I would most likely have no money to buy groceries and my Twitter Followers would probably unfollow me for being even weirder than usual. For those snoozers out there, would you ever download these apps and do you think they’d be successful at getting you up and out of bed?
As Stephen Colbert said on Monday’s episode of the Colbert Report, “Cyber Monday is a follow up to Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, when Americans awake from their tryptophan induced comma to trade gluttony for greed.” And in my opinion, he hit the nail on the head. Everybody knows that Black Friday and Cyber Monday are the biggest shopping days of the year and that people go crazy for them, even to extremes such as pepper spraying people for waffle irons. Don’t get me wrong, I love waffles, but this is getting out of control. Not only are we going insane, we are also spending record breaking amounts of money. Though the final sales numbers for Cyber Monday have not been released, comScore projects that around 123 million U.S. consumers spent $1.2 billion this year compared to $1 billion last year.
Patagonia is not a fan of this type of consumerism or how it impacts the environment. Through their Common Threads Initiative, Patagonia is trying to get consumers to buy less of everything including their products. To push this initiative, they sent out a special email message yesterday telling people to not buy their jackets. Some may think this is just a ploy, but they really are asking consumers to “buy less and to reflect before you spend a dime on this jacket or anything else.” They even tell you what it takes to make one of their most popular jackets and explain how it affects the planet’s natural resources.
To make the R2 jacket “required 135 liters of water, enough to meet the daily needs (three glasses a day) of 45 people. Its journey from its origin as 60% recycled polyester to our Reno warehouse generated nearly 20 pounds of carbon dioxide, 24 times the weight of the finished product. This jacket left behind, on its way to Reno, two-thirds its weight in waste.”
This advertising campaign and the project itself is really amazing and hopefully the idea of reducing the number of items we buy and recycling items we don’t use will catch on just a little more because of it.
Check out the video for Patigonia’s Common Threads Initiative and read the full AdAge article here.
