My children took swimming lessons when they were toddlers. It was one of those Australian schools where the kids jump right in and experience the difference and the trauma of water and the inability to breathe (and the ability to sink!). We also signed them up for lifeguard training at the age of 9 so …
Swimming with Sharks: Media Defense in Bloody Water Read More »
This is a post for the parents out there, but there are probably some kids that will get a kick out of it. The media world your kids live in is quite different than the one you grew up in – but in many ways, it’s the same. Apologies for stating the obvious here, but …
Fortnite Marshmello Concert Signals Astonishing New Media Trends Read More »
Psychologists, journalists and those in the health industry have been peppering you with messages about media consumption, screen time, and gaming. Yet, these people don’t quite understand how your kids work. They offer trite, simple advice like: Reduce screen time Set schedules Addiction is bad (black/white) Lock down devices Set-up security filters Don’t install certain …
Why Youth Screen Time and Video Game Obsessions Are Not the Issue Read More »
Honeydew Farms (and sponsors) beautifully showcased by Growers Network Cannacribs YouTube Video https://youtu.be/tA0Klgvv5wY Native advertising is an art form when done right. This particular video shows you the high bar. There’s no trickery. The sponsors are clearly in there for a reason, and the sponsor that didn’t pay for the ad placement (the wine marketing company) gets …
Native Advertising Colossus! Marijuana Video Nails the Format Read More »
Excerpt from the new Amazon almost best-seller Media Collusion: Journalism and Marketing Experts Share the Secrets of Sneaky Advertising, Targeted Persuasion, AI and Tracking, Political Deception and Coercion, and Dishonest News In the early days of Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, the revered marketing and persuasion author David Meerman Scott coined the term for the practice of including popular, …
How totally naive is this?: “Children’s time and attention should never be used for profit.” From the article: What Our Brain On Tech Means for Kids and Adults Alike My view from the comments section: The final point seems a bit naive — “Don’t Target Kids with Ads.” One of Marvel’s biggest achievements in 2018 was introducing Thanos …
Katie Couric Misses the Boat – Kid Advertising Is Where the $$$ Is Read More »
Excerpt from the book, Media Collusion (Available on Amazon today in paperback and Kindle formats) “Fear is freedom! Subjugation is liberation! Contradiction is truth! Those are the facts of this world! And you will all surrender to them, you pigs in human clothing!” – Satsuki There used to be a well-defined line that separated hard news and …
The Mythical Wall Between Editorial and Advertising Read More »
Excerpt from Tim Wu’s excellent advertising text, The Attention Merchants. This little bit of info is difficult to imagine these days. Yet, there was a time when Americans (world citizens, in fact) were unmolested by advertising pitches. FROM THE BOOK: As David Halberstam writes, “Whereas at the turn of the century, only an occasional door-to-door …
The Absolutely Outrageous Scandal of Advertising Read More »
TRANSCRIPT: ADAM CURRY: All right two parter of this then we’re done, and this comes down to our questioning of the effectiveness of the ad buy that the Internet Research Agency did and how they were able to change the minds of millions of Americans to vote for Donald Trump, as well as . . …
TRANSCRIPT: ADAM CURRY: This next piece is really you know it is a real nugget. I’m just going to ask you what is your impression of the Trump campaign’s involvement with Cambridge Analytica and data. What do you know about that just from what is the accepted truth on Snopes JOHN C. DVORAK: Well Snopes. …
Brad Parscale Clip 4 – Cambridge Analytica and the Trump Campaign Farce – No Agenda Show Read More »
TRANSCRIPT: ADAM CURRY: The rest of my clips are not as long but I think it’s really important to hear some of this because it’s debunking a lot of the theories that we’ve been blanketed with. Now this guy maybe full of crap . . . JOHN C. DVORAK: I don’t think so, I think …
TRANSCRIPT: ADAM CURRY: So then the you know of course there’s Facebook is doing things like oh we’re going to publish all the ads and show that there are political ads everyone can see the ads and we all know it’s good transparency. INTERVIEWER: And what do you mean. What do you make of the fact …
TRANSCRIPT: Interviewer: Does it work in the advantage. I mean I’m just wondering because you know how social media works right. You know what the algorithm favors content that’s engaging favors content that that is emotional off to some degree. So you’re saying that the messaging that the campaign did not play on that in …
Brad Parscale Blows Lid Off of Social Media Strategy – No Agenda Show – Clip 1 Read More »
[CLICK ABOVE FOR PODCAST INTERVIEW ON THIS TOPIC] Last spring, my son (15) shared some interesting news. The game he and his buddies play – Fortnite – got a new character feature that’s directly from the Avengers: Infinity War movie. In the game, he said, you can become the Thanos character from the movie and have all-dominant powers. Then …
Fortnite and YouTube Wrestle for Advertising Dollars [AUDIO] Read More »
The “new normal”: Fake news, fake reviews and gamed algorithms put product and news consumers at risk. Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal’s latest article about fake product reviews on Amazon gives mainstream credence to a trend that’s been bubbling for years. The ultimate take-away confirms something all of us have suspected: the internet …
Political passions aside, this illuminating interview between Trump advisor Brad Parscale and PBS Frontline journalist James Jacoby describes the new media world we now inhabit where opinion and commentary drives ad revenue. The interviewer and interviewee have much different opinions on how smart or stupid the American public is with respect to the way news …
Opinion Vs. News: Trump Adviser Brad Parscale on the Big Media Shift Read More »
Excerpt from the book, Media Collusion (Available on Amazon today in paperback and Kindle formats) Think about all of this with a comparison of two people. Ted and Steve are recent college graduates. They attended respectable schools and graduated with 3.5 grade point averages, some party skills, and a slightly better understanding of females than …
Who are you? A Steve or a Ted? Two media consumer profiles Read More »
The “news” comes at us fast and furious, but what sneaks by is often comical. Broadcasters and print journalists (to a lesser extent) frequently offer unsourced and anonymous quotes from who knows where in order to support their particular angle on a story. Here’s one from CNN’s Wolf Blitzer’s Situation Room program that’s pretty outrageous. Here’s the …
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Sharyl Attkisson of Full Measure interviewed CdMHS graduate and incoming Harvey Mudd engineering freshman Eddie Jacobs along with Phil Dunn of Media Collusion. We talked on camera about youth media habits, “fake news,” “fuzzy news,” Rowdy Roddy Piper in They Live and lots more like Marvel’s Thanos in Fortnite and YouTubers in Bora Bora’s Four Seasons Hotel. The …
Case Study My older sons (13 and 15) have been following people on Instagram for a couple of years now. One of the first guys they glommed onto in a celebrity kind of way was someone who referred to himself as Uncle Tito. This is a surf industry guy, about 32 years old, who’s hyper focused …
Excerpt from the new Amazon almost best-seller Media Collusion: Journalism and Marketing Experts Share the Secrets of Sneaky Advertising, Targeted Persuasion, AI and Tracking, Political Deception and Coercion, and Dishonest News “Ours has become a world where a tragic number of people have become more fascinated by materialism and the lives of distant narcissists …
