April 9, 2004
given up on life
Hugh MacLeod
Hi, I'm Hugh.
My life is committed to drawing little illustrations that spread messages, inspire people, help businesses kick butt & support causes.
Gapingvoid is based upon the science of how these cartoons work.
If we can help you or your business, please email us here.
Prints |
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Archive for April, 2004
starbuck’s, krispy kreme & dunkin donuts
The article points out that globally, Dunkin
April 8, 2004
untitled
(Another early one. Laminated. Summer, 1998. New York City.)
I kinda like this one. Back then I was messing around with a lot of purely abstract drawings (no headline etc). Even though that angle had been around in painting 50-plus years, the idea of using it in cartoons first seemed rather strange to people I showed it to.
So it’s OK for a painting to do it, but not a cartoon? Why?
subscribe to gapingvoid
(Please click here to subscribe. Thanks)
I do a monthly newsletter to my friends, where I send them a link to all the new cartoons, to keep them up-to-date, give them the gossip etc. Signing up (and/or buying the occasional box of blogcards) is the best way to support to the site. The sign-up page is a wee bit buggered, but it still works.
Click here to join and it’ll take you to the page. Scroll down, and in the red field at the bottom, type in your e-mail and a password of your choice. I’ll fix the page to look “nice” when I get around to it etc etc.
Back when the subscription list was only a dozen or so people, I also included JPEG cartoons. As it grew and the spam filters got more fussy, I built this website to show the new work to everybody. Far more efficient.
The general understanding I have with people is that I don’t mind people copying the work to post on their own websites or to e-mail to their friends etc, so long as I get some form of copyrighted credit and maybe a link back to gapingvoid.
Also, I’d rather you make a copy and host it on your own server than ‘hot-link’ directly from me. If your website won’t allow that, fair enough, then just hot-link. But please save my bandwidth and use your own server if you can.
The other thing to do is just to syndicate the website via RSS. That works just as well.
Anyway, I hope you’ll sign up if you haven’t already.
Thanks =)
April 6, 2004
commodified
(Another early one from January, 1998. Laminated. Drawn while sitting at a crowded bar, New York City)
the passion
Everybody and their uncle has an opinion about Mel Gibson’s ‘The Passion’.
This is the best thing written on it I’ve seen so far.
Good work, Jenny!
Cheap labor is best!
I like cool-hip-sexy advertising industry websites like this one.
The more advertising-hipster media that’s out there, the more young adults start believing in its hipster-career factor. The more they believe that, the cheaper and easier they are to exploit as slave labor.
Cheap labor is best!
10 days to go
Young Adam opens in America a week on Friday i.e. the 16th of April.
Hope y’all will be on the lookout for it. I’ll try to find out more about where it’s playing etc.
(The director, Dave MacKenzie, is one of my oldest friends, hence all the gapingvoid plugs etc.)
i’m lovin’ it (so i’ve been told)
I like McDonald’s a lot. Always have. People who get all whiney about corporate greed, fattening food etc I have no time for. They’re just people who secretly hate their parents, nobody’s fooled for a second.
But this “I’m lovin’ it” tagline of theirs is unfortunate.
I guess they’re hoping it becomes a catchphrase. So the bus is coming. “I’m lovin’ it!”, you exclaim. The boss gave you the day off. “I’m lovin’ it!”, you holler. Sak’s is having a sale. “I’m lovin’ it!”, you scream. Suddenly the world of happy, day-to-day expression becomes a viral marketing campaign for Mickey-Dees on a grand scale. Right.
And who is this “I” in the “I’m loving it”? It isn’t McDonald’s Coporation (there is no “I” in “TEAM” etc). So is it supposed to be me? You’re trying to tell me what to say? Put words in my mouth, without asking first? That’s not very nice.
There’s no core belief in the phrase “I’m lovin’ it.” As a result the campaign has no soul. Only wishful thinking.
April 5, 2004
millions of bloggers can’t be wrong
Rick Bruner cites all known stats on the size of blogging: “Millions of bloggers can’t be wrong.” Essential blogvertising reading.
Super-popular blogger Glen Reynolds, of Instapundit.com, leaves his traffic logs open, where we can see that he averages around 100,000 visitors a day and more than 2 million uniques a month. Considering that he’s only one guy, that’s astounding. By comparison, HoustonChronicle.com reports 1.5 million unique monthly readers. Granted, Instapundit is one of the most widely read bloggers out there, but it puts the phenomenon in perspective.
I agree. Astounding.
Personally, I think blogging has hit “critical mass”. By that I mean, I think it’s large enough where other media’s opinion of it, positive or negative, will not help or hinder its growth to any noticable degree. The train has already left the station. Nobody cares what the ageing hack thinks.
Bruner’s an interesting guy. For the whole blogvertising schtick, I recommend his blog highly, plus Marketingvox, this other group blog he sometimes works with. Both are on my blogroll.
new york is dangerous
By the way, I am no longer in New York. I was, but then the whole dotbomb/9 – 11/recession thing kinda drove me away. Been trying to get back ever since. Currently looking for a job good enough to get me back there etc.
It would have to be a pretty good job, though. Moving to New York “to be discovered” is fine and dandy, but… I’ve already been discovered. Heh.
advertising is toast
Writing about blogvertising is not like writing about celeb gossip. There’s a lot of the latter around. With blogvertising you’re pretty much limited to here, here, here, here, here, and the occasional salient remark from this guy or this guy. There are a few others, not many.
This scarcity may be a good thing. It could mean the demand for new thinking is probably greater than the supply.
There’s currently lots of talk in the advertising biz about doing away with straight broadcasting messages and replacing them with virals or whatever. “Broadcasting doesn’t work”, they say.
Yeah, well virals don’t work either, as any avid reader of this guy will know. He also talks about advertising being the main viable income generator for weblogs. Bad news if you’re trying to run a traditional ad agency. You’re really not needed in the new equation.
“Oh, gosh, our TV and print ads are no longer working. We’ll have to switch to the internet.” Wrong answer. You can’t fix the problem if you are the problem. When your business models suck, your service are overpriced and your creative departments are mainly filled with intellectual lightweights, you’re going to have problems. Ad agencies are over. Doomed. Toast.
You may not agree with that last thought, fair enough. But the number of people in power who do agree with it will continue to increase every year, not decrease. Can your current business model handle that? Or are you just hoping for some new miracle technology/media/buzzword/trendy creative schtick to come along and save your ass before the client bails?
saigon food blog
Noodlepie: A food blog from Saigon, Vietnam. Written by an expat. Wonderful.
get lippy
Handbag.com, a female focused, lifestyle website, has launched ‘Get Lippy’, a website targeting young women 18 – 25 and billed as a place for women who want to “look good, feel good but not necessarily be good”. Oh how cutting edge.
Hmmm.… you know why you’re working this weekend? You know why you’ve been leaving the office at 10pm every night for the last 6 months? You know why you haven’t gotten a raise in 3 years? Because down the hall from your cube a bunch of thirtysomethings are sitting in a meeting room, brainstorming concepts like this one.
Luckily you’ve got that screenplay project to fall back on. Ha.
young adam– u.s. tour
(Tilda Swinton and Ewan McGregor going at it in Young Adam: “The best Scottish movie ever. An utter masterpiece of seething, beat-novel-film-noir sexuality etc etc.”)
Talked to Dave (the director) today on his mobile, as he schelpped around the airport. He’s off to the States for his Young Adam publicity tour. He will be travelling with Tilda Swinton, the lead actress.
Bit of a gruelling tour, from what I hear. Arrive in airport, schlep to hotel, schlep to radio station, schlep to TV studio, schelp back to hotel, schlep to airport, arrive in new city, repeat.
i.e. lots of schlepping.
Cities include:
Washington
New York
San Francisco
Chicago
Denver
Minneapolis
Dallas
The other thing is: I have to write this interview e-mail to Tilda Swinton. Dave thinks he can get her to write one back, to post on gapingvoid. That would be good.
Dave think blogging is a great way to pimp a movie. I agree, hence all the pimping I’ve been doing. Now it’s just a case of getting to Hollywood Grand Poobahs to concur.
Young Adam opens in America Friday, 16th April.
kung fu
I’ve started training again in Shaolin Kung Fu.
Nothing fancy or hardcore. Just a few basic moves that have served me well over the years. Like with my biz card drawings, I tend to gravitate to the very simple, small, compact etc.
I’ll let you know how I get on.
I first learned about how simple Kung Fu could be when I studied Wing Chun under Sifu Eric Oram in Los Angeles a few years ago. His teacher, William Cheung, trained with Bruce Lee back when they both were teenagers.
Bruce Lee belonged to a street gang back then. If you watch his movies, you’ll notice how simple and brutal his basic technique is. Sure, he’ll do the occasional stunt for the camera, but to actually win the fight it’s just whack-crunch-fight-over. His style evolved from the need to win fights on the street, not to land movie parts.
William Cheung calls it “The Three Second Rule”. Basically, the ideal Wing Chun fight is over within three seconds. If you haven’t won your fight within three seconds, you’ve probably lost it. Wing Chun is not like the movies.
A brief history of Wing Chun is here.
tips for agency pitches
Josh Greene, a marketing guy over at Time Warner, posts a rather incisive list of things ad agencies should do if they want to win the business of folks like him.
All good info, none of it rocket science, a lot of it often forgotten by ad creatives.
Josh is a wee bit of a hero of mine, after he made the first corporate buy of Blogads.
Comments Off blue piece
(One of my rare excursions into color. Ink and watercolor on blank business card. June, 2000)
fred wilson to do blogads?
Fred Wilson is thinking of bagging Google Adsense in favor of Blogads.
Jeff Jarvis and Hugh Macleod think I should switch to Blogads. Maybe I will. I’ve learned all I am going to learn about AdSense. If I can continue to send the checks to The Grameen Foundation [the charity where Fred donates all his ad revenues to], you might start seeing BlogAds here soon.
Nice to get a mention– Thanks, Fred. In the comment section I left this message:
Well, as Jeff said, I’m sure a lot of VC-related folks would be delighted to advertise [Blogads] on your site, and pay good money for the privelege. And unlike Google, you can accept or reject their application, depending on merit.
Blogads to me is less a numbers game, more of a way of starting a dialogue with a new segment of the blogosphere. I find when I buy blogads, my decision is based less and less on pure traffic numbers, and more on feelings of personal affinity with the site.
What makes blogads so effective, I believe, is that unlike Google Adsense, the advertiser, “Mr VC Lawyer Guy” has to like Fred Wilson, and Fred Wilson has to like him back… or at least, give him a nod.
That nod is worth a lot.
I hope Fred does start placing Blogads on his site. I’d certainly buy some, budget permitting.
Fred is well known in New York as a successful venture capitalist, so obviously he’s not doing this for the money. My guess is it’s a business that interests him, and he wants to get some first-hand experience of the game before considering investing.
My guess is blogvertising will be big business in a few years. Google has the numbers, but not the humanity element. Blogads has the humanity element, but not the numbers. Just a matter of time before somebody comes up with a package that offers both.
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jarvis fisks google adsense
Good article by Jeff Jarvis on how bad Google’s Adsense is and how good Blogads is.
AdSense is not a path to success for online publishers — whether big guys or bloggers — because the program isn’t terribly effective and because they are hostage to Google, as this move proves.
But I do believe that contexual ads are quite effective. The problem with AdSense is that the ad placement is barely contextual; it’s coincidental: If a word like “host” happens to appear on a page, then Google plops a web hosting ad there. That’s about as low on the ad value chain as you can get.
Look at Fred Wilson’s blog. Fred is an influential venture capitalist who sometimes mentions RSS so AdSense slaps RSS ads on his page and he gets a few, very few bucks (which, by the way, he donates to charity). What a waste. If Fred used Henry Copeland’s BlogAds, people could use his site to reach an amazing audience of VCs, entrepreneurs, and corporate executives. If I were, say, a venture lawyer, I’d pay big bucks through BlogAds to reach that audience.
Google’s drawbacks are many. They have a virtual monopoly on blogvertising, even though they don’t tell the bloggers what percentage of the money generated they get. Their method of placing ads based on context and content is crude and ineffective. Their ad designs are ugly and inhuman. I could go on.
The good news for Blogads is, once more people find out exactly how limited Google is, they’ll rush over to Blogads in droves.
more real to me, somehow
If you’re an artist of any semi-talent, you’ll have certain ambitions.
“I’m going to Hollywood and be a movie star!“
“I’m going to New York and show my paintings!“
“I’m going to write the Great American Novel!“
Having worked in a variety of media and businesses, I’ve had my fair share of it. But since I discovered blogging, I’ve lost major interest in the external trappings.
This is my current artistic ambition:
1. Continue drawing cartoons.
2. Continue posting them on gapingvoid.
That’s really about it.
Sure, there’s a few other things in the pipeline– prints, books etc. All very well, but I’d rather save the excitement and effort for the day job. More real to me, somehow.
Yes. Useful.
For those of you who know nothing about RSS, go read this. Best intro-to-RSS article I’ve seen yet.
Basically, RSS is not perfect, but it’s good for somebody who reads a lot of blogs. This guy claims to read 1,500 of them on a regular basis. So he’s prime RSS material.
In other news, Nick Denton assumes the average schmoe will never willingly adapt to RSS, so today in its place he launches Kinja.com.
My first impression is, it sounds like one of those ideas that sounded good when first conceived (it was in development for 15 months), but by the time it actually got to market the world had moved on.
And I think people will start using RSS (or its spawn) in vast, ‘mainstream’ numbers once Microsoft decides how they want to bundle it on to Windows.
The novelty of blogging is… well, no longer that novel. Stop going “Oooh, Ah, Blogging” and start actually doing something useful with it.
Yes. Useful.
Comments Off April 1, 2004
joi ito on content
“People and companies in Hollywood are not famous because they’re nice and give you their money.” –Joi Ito.
Worth reading if you have any interest in the future of paid content at all… Not that paid content has a future, of course. Heh.
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